Tuesday, April 29, 2008

THE LAST ROAD TRIP? THE LADY AND LITTLE SISTER, NATURAL FALLS STATE PARK DR. OMED VISITS THE LADY Pilgrims and seekers, aside from the poke I received from Fiona, this image is the numinous entity you have to thank for the return of Yours Truly to the blogging fold: The Lady, the naiad in residence at Natural Falls State Park. This is one of Oklahoma's numerous small state parks, tucked away in odd corners off blue two lanes all over the state. To reach this one, you drive almost to Arkansas and watch out for the small sign that marks the turn off. Blink and you'll miss it.  The place is small, and betrays its origin as a private, commercial resort--Dripping Springs I think it was called. The movie Where the Red Fern Grows was filmed "on location" at the park. The ferns do indeed grow in the mist from the Lady's dress. I go to see the Lady to find some peace--the peace that passeth understanding, if you will--from the weather of the world and my own dark heart. She does not fail. In spite of all human 'improvements', glamour, in the old sense of the word, clings to the place where she pours herself out. Don't go to her immediately. Walk the trails for a bit, cross your own path, then go down to the pool in the grotto by her foot, sit, and breath. That's all. Breathe out the bad ions and breathe in the good ions. Watch the falling water braid itself in a recursive spiral. Go on your way renewed. CROSS YOUR OWN PATH SIT, AND BREATHE. WATCH THE FALLING WATER. That's all. When I filled up my tank that day, on the pilgrim path, a gallon of gas in Tulsa was selling at three dollars and nineteen cents per in Tulsa, which consistently has the cheapest fuel in the country. It was a selfish indulgence, I must admit, but I figured I'd better get in that last road trip, and visit the Lady, before the price of gas goes through the roof. I'm glad I did. 12:25:53 AM    comment []

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

ICED TULSA: THE DAMAGE DONE Yes, I know. More gloomy pictures of trees mutilated in the big icestorm in Tulsa. This one reminds me somehow of the jungle pictures of Henri Rousseau. Go figure. These pictures were not taken by me. They were taken by Mrs. Dr. Omed's co-workers. These pictures convey, more than my own, the catastrophic nature of the damage done to the trees of Tulsa. 6:03:34 AM    comment []

A TENT SHOW REVIVAL: CHURCH SIGN ROUND-UP Dr. Omed passes Beams of Light Family Church on the way to his day job most mornings. The apothegms on their sign provides amusement and/or bemusement and/or fast food for thought on a regular basis. The one you see above caught my eye and caused me to make a rather sudden turn across a lane of traffic into their parking lot. It hit me upside the head like a fried catfish, like a corn pone Okie Zen Koan—what did it mean? Though Dr. Omed was not on the road to Damascus, pilgrims and seekers, I was mugged by a semi-revelatory petit-epiphany (Have you noticed that revelations frequently don't reveal anything?)—The message on the sign revealed to me an inspiration: that I must revive an old feature of the Tent Show that some of my regular congregants may remember, the Sunday Church Show Round-up. Yes, I know it's Wedesday, this is the teaser. Although I have not posted a Church Sign Round-up for a couple of years, I never stopped taking pictures of church signs, so I've got a lot of them saved up. Look for a full round-up on next Sunday—with hushpuppies and coleslaw. Virtually. 5:01:17 AM    comment []

Monday, December 17, 2007

ICED TULSA: BROKEN TREES ZINK PARK Snow fell on Saturday. Annie Beagle. PERRYMAN FAMILY CEMETERY And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. A.E. Housman 1:29:19 AM    comment []

Sunday, December 16, 2007

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LET THERE BE LIGHT... heat, light, and Internet access. CHILLIN' WITH THE GREAT SPIRIT MONDAY, WOODWARD PARK, TULSA, OKLAHOMA Dr. Omed's Tent Show is back on the grid, as of Saturday afternoon. Our humble home and hermitage has been without electricity since last Sunday afternoon, about 2, when one of the Frost Giants kicked over some trees in our backyard. Those Frost Giants spent all that night crashing about, making God's own toothpicks out of who knows how many of the trees of Tulsa. Dr. Omed took a whole lotta pictures during and in the aftermath of the Great Oklahoma Ice Storm of '07, some of which I posted to my back up blog, The Tent Show at Blogspot, from work, which has a big generator hooked up to a natural gas line. We are most humbly thankful to the Norns for the aforsaid heat, light, and internet access which as many as 75,000 Public Service Company of Oklahoma customers, mostly in North Tulsa, still don't have. Expect more pictures of Kristalnacht für die Bäume, at least until I get bored of it. Since I'm very, very fond of tress, that may take a while. In the meantime, Mrs. Dr. Omed woke me up about one this morning, snoring. Usually it's the other way around. I snore like my dear departed Uncle Bethel Jewel, which is to say like a bull elephant trying to bugger a steam shovel. Mrs. Dr. O sounded like someone trying to start a chainsaw just outside the back bedroom window, yanking the starter cord over and over. I'm don't normally have a case of the fantods waking up in the middle of the night, but the vision of Ol' Leatherface in our backyard, fixin' to start in cutting some kindling, if only he can get that chainsaw revved up, kinda kept me from getting back to sleep. Lost my perchance to that dream, so to speak. I've been up 'termiting' since then, it's almost dawn, and I'm tired. I'll be back after a nice morning nap.

Monday, November 20, 2006

I AM MY OWN GNOME ELK FALLS, KANSAS Those of you who are familar with the film Amelie will recall that she kidnapped her father's garden gnome, and sent it around the world with a friend working as a stewardess for Air France.  On her travels, the friend took polaroid pictures of the gnome posed in front of various world famous landmarks, and mailed them to Amelie's bemused father.  I don't have a gnome, so I use (if need be) the ten second shutter delay on my digital camera, and pose as my own gnome. 8:22:01 AM    comment []

Friday, October 06, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: DOWN BY THE RIVER ON BUTTERFLY ALLEY TURKEY MOUNTAIN FROM "BUTTERFLY ALLEY" Across from Turkey Mountain between the Riverpark's paved path and the Arkansas River is a narrow strip of trees, vines, and underbrush, and a footpath runs through it, undulating like a very relaxed snake. A footpad such as myself can stroll to its slight slither, insulated a bit from Riverside Drive and rush hour joggers and cyclists aerobically exercising their right to open space. In such slivers of undeveloped real estate I find a little residual wildness, a half hour of relief from what Henry Miller called “the air-conditioned nightmare”—updated—the suburban monoculture of box store boulevards, super churches, gated ‘communities’ of McMansions, horizontal hives of condominiums and apartments that is eating up the landscape of the country.  Mrs. Dr. Omed travels on business quite a bit, and she says it’s the same everywhere—from Boston to San Diego—“same buildings, same restaurants, same stuff—different trees.” A MOCKINGBIRD KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS. With a little time on my hands on after work, I parked the car in the lot, crossed the asphalt paved ‘trail’ and a swale of mown grass, and ducked under the low limbs of the tree that guards the entrance to the “Butterfly Alley.” Now I didn’t have a name for this micro-refuge until this last visit. I had on previous occasions noticed that there were often a lot of butterflies about in September, October, and even into November last year (don’t get me started on global warming), after the wild sunflowers began to bloom. But in the 30 odd minutes I had to myself that evening, the place was practically swarming with butterflies. Butterfly Alley is the appropriate moniker. There were Monarchs aplenty as well as other species. The best of show were dark swallowtail butterflies which I first thought were Black Swallowtails, but after a couple of hours of research, decided were most likely Spicebush Swallowtails. There were also a lot of Bonking Beetles bonking. SILVER SPOTTED SKIPPER, Epargyreus clarus FIERY SKIPPER, Hylephila phyleus (male?) SPICEBRUSH SWALLOW TAIL Papilio troilus troilus BEST OF SHOW The yellow flowers all these beauties are perching upon are not of the Sunflower family Helianthus. I tenatively identify them as Helenium autumnale, also known as Sneezeweed. It is called Sneezeweed because the dried flowers were once used as an ingredient in snuff. It tickles my fancy, if not my nose. Dammit, Jim, I'm a poet, not a botanist. 2:46:09 AM    comment []

Sunday, October 01, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: OXLEY NATURE CENTER WHITE TAIL DEER (LEAST BLURRED SHOT) Oxley Nature Center is one of the pockets of semi-demi-wilderness, like Turkey Mountain and Redbud Valley, that have been preserved from assimilation into the metastasizing McSuburb that is greater metropolitan Tulsa, by the donation of land by (in this case) a Oil Boom grease baron and/or his heirs and assignees—for which egregious souls such as I are duly and mightily thankful. Next slide. "FLOWLINE TRAIL" There is wooded lowland interspersed with small lakes, ponds, marsh, and open land bordered by Bird and Coal Creeks. An abandoned section of old two-lane highway runs through it on the Bird Creek side. It isn't very big—truly a little pocket of land within Mohawk Park, which also contains the Tulsa Zoo, a golf course, the city waterworks, and Yahola Lake, from whence much of Tulsa's drinking water comes. COTTONWOOD SAVANNAH (NO SAND TRAPS) HOLLOW TREE WAITING FOR A DRUID THE REAR END OF AN ARMADILLO THE ARMDILLO REARS UP ON ITS HIND LEGS (CAN I SAY IT HAPPENED IN A BLUR?) On my latest sanity stroll at Oxley, going where "the wild things go," I took my camera and not my beagle (no dogs allowed in the Nature Center), and snapped dpics with abandon. The lack of a dog at the end of a lead and the magic of digital technology compensate for my incompetence and my shaky hands, and I come away with some fine images: MONARCH BUTTERFLY PERCHED ON A THISTLE BLOSSOM. BUMBLEBEE ON A THISTLE HOGWEED AND DEAD THISTLES, AMONG OTHER THINGS HOGWEED BLOSSOMS AND HOGWEED BONKING BEETLES These yellow and black beetles were swarming on these plants with the clusters of small white flowers, doing what comes naturally to them. I did a little research and discovered that the plant was most likely Hogweed, and the bugs having the orgy were a variety of 'army' beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, commonly known as Hogweed Bonking Beetles. A WHOLE LOTTA BONKING GOIN' ON BONKING ON A THISTLE, WITH THE MONARCH LOOKING ON TIGER SWALLOWTAIL The Butterflies were thick on the ground—Literally: BLACK SWALLOWTAILS DOGFIGHTING IN THE LEAF LITTER UNDER THE TREES A HERON (NOT READY FOR ITS CLOSE-UP) LEAVES FOR OTHER WATERS   4:03:50 PM    comment []

Monday, September 18, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: BOWLING BALL PEACE MONUMENT ADMIRAL BOULEVARD FLEA MARKET Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace... You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one JOHN LENNON 8:43:20 PM    comment []

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: NO LONGER ROADSIDE THE TWO WAY TAXI NO LONGER GOES BOTH WAYS FOR MOTORISTS and the odd pedestrian (Dr. Omed) on the frontage road south of Hwy. 169. 7:33:55 AM    comment []

Monday, August 28, 2006

SCENIC TULSA: GRAFFITI WATCH SEEING EYE TO EYE I've been posting fairly regularly on the Tent Show main page, but my other categories have been languishing, for the most part. There are a number of reasons for this; it takes time and leisure to organize and post the sort of photo-essays I like to do for Roadside Attractions and The Fossils of Tulsa County, and before that I have to go out and actually take some pictures, which was not happening in the nasty hot summer Oklahoma has been having. Real life interferes with blogging, particularly extended blogging; it's much easier to tear off a quick hunka hunka burning rant in reaction to the Bush Regime's latest public gaffe or war crime. The long walks are not taken, and not blogged. Another thing that has bolixed me a bit in regard to Roadside Attractions in particular, is that I have discovered that when I google, say, Tulsa Graffiti, Dr. Omed is near or at the top of the page, and the official City of Tulsa anti-graffiti site is right below it. I have drawn too much attention to some other things in and about Tulsa that I love, and that has given me pause, but in the case of graffiti—an outsider, outlaw form of art of which I am inordinately fond—when I post an image of a local example of the genre, all a graffiti hater has to do is click twice to get from here to the place where he/she can report it to the local graffiti gestapo. I don't want to give up posting local graffiti, but I feel I must exercise discretion and not give away, in the text or in the images, the location of the work I photograph and post. I will apply this rule even to graffiti I know has already been painted over, or graffiti I believe has been done with permission or comissioned by the owner of the property it decorates. This is all rather deary, but the art is not, and it will continue to appear here on this blog, and to bloom on the blank surfaces and ulitarian artifacts of the urban waste spaces of Tulsa and cities all over the earth, bringing color, shape, and interest to eyes blighted by blind walls and naked concrete.   A NEW STENCIL FACE 1:07:01 AM    comment []