Sunday, June 07, 2015

Visiting Oklahoma? You can't do better than visiting Bartlesville right about now & GOLD UPDATEs

OKMozart International Festival
...not to mention that Bartlesville is the best looking city in the state, as it happens, and a great travel in time via the Frank Lloyd Wright tower ( the Price Tower) and the Phillips Museum tour, and the Frank Phillips mansion, and...man, it's tough to make a list.  When I dig 'em up, I'll be adding pics to this post from past excursions out that way, and when I get there this year, there will be current pics too.  Stay tuned, watch this space.



MiniUPDATE: Veni, vidi, vici da tee shirt.






I've seen those guys before this, and they've got the best brass in the business...


Here's a pic I took of them when they appeared near Edmond, at the Armstrong Auditorium (2012):




I'll bet that the presentation they gave at the Bartlesville Public Library for the kids went a little bit like this--


Ach du liber, Augustine!  These guys give permission to record and post on social media because they appreciate the free publicity. By all means, blog readers, copy the vid and spread the word!

These guys put on a light-hearted show, but will, on occasion, throw a serious curve ball...


Ohhhhhh yeaaaah, you guessed it: I'm a fan.

Meanwhile, back in Bartlesville in 2012, I was able to take pics and vids of the Price Tower innards when they had their blues/poetry theme going on.  They won't allow pics or vids now, so this next clip is something of a treasure.  No poetry in this clip because I gotta keep vids in compliance with Blogger's stupid limitations...



While some humanities arts involve historian-actors prancing about in costume on stage and lecturing, OK Mozart is more like a time traveler convention where exciting discoveries are shared.




...and the time traveler convention takes place in a town where one has breakfast with Bach and then can find the best damn BBQ lunch on the planet, ever, at Dink's.


Oh, I know that pic would hardly cut the mustard for an advertisement--I chose a rather small dish in the first place (The Special)--but they do have platters available, and the one thing that makes this a great lunch is the flavor.  Can't take a pic of the flavor.


By all means, get sauced! I did!


It comes in regular as well as this hot version. I'm just partial to the hot stuff.


Boy oh boy oh boy--*I* sure did. Like a ton of bricks.

As I was saying, the OK Mozart festival isn't so much about just Wolfgang Amadeus as it is a time traveler's convention, and it's via the gift shop that I encountered a kindred Macgyver spirit...


A person of this ilk is perfectly suited for time machine maintenance and operation, clearly. Very steampunkish, too...



Indeed, I found Jessica Holeman on Facebook, Liked her page, and found that she took better pics than I did of her stuff, so the next pic is from her Facebook account:




Noteworthy (so to speak) are "Those 2", footage of which appear in this blog.
The sked--


Sked of events at the Bartlesville Public Library--oh, those Canadian Brass!


The following vid was shot in 2012, the year Kyle Dillingham performed the grande finale. A group of harping ladies (not harpies--come on, now) performed what could be heavenly classical music, and when the performance was over, THIS broke out:





Friday mini-UPDATE: while prospecting for gold in my own back yard, I done hit the JACKPOT!!


The +cityofenid isn't short on cash when it throws it around on cronies...


Oh geez, you didn't see me there?...And you can plainly see I was in Bartlesville, right?  So how did I get this pic?  For me to know and for you to not find out. :P XD

To confuse you further, I was also in Oklahoma City for the DeadCENTER Film Festival, too:



In time and space, it's all relative. Of course.






Monday UPDATE, Gold Edition: Yup, STILL panning for it right in my own back yard...well...more like boxing for it.  It's that time of year when I'm up to my eyeballs in apricots:


...and that's just ONE of a half dozen saplings here, plus one full grown tree.  And then there's pecan season. Whew! I am seriously considering concocting apricot BBQ sauce!

Tuesday UPDATE, Dolezal/Mitchell Edition ...mainly because related topics were already covered in this blog in various posts, and particularly because the events pertaining to Rachel Dolezal and Joyce Mitchell have generated search engine traffic to those related posts. First, although I've lived in black neighborhoods I never claimed any racial affiliation other than being a member of the human race, and it's by the experience that I recognize many assertions of unjust privilege and discrimination as legitimate, and, further, that the people who do not recognize those assertions as legitimate are the same people who didn't directly experience those things themselves.

As for Joyce Mitchell, I've said it before and I'll say it again: people who try to find reasons for what happened even though she has a husband (and might actually still be happy with him), well--those people are trying to find reason in a phenomenon that never has and never will  have anything to do with reason at all.  It just happens--it just IS.  And when it comes into being, it opens the door to manipulation, and the press has now become part of the manipulation scenario when they buy all the claims of aforementioned manipulating con men that yarn about how Joyce was interested in having her husband killed.  In being suckered into believing the con men's story, the press themselves have been seduced.  Press, wise up because you're looking like lovesick loonies right now.

It's not that I've got anything against lovesick lunacy, you understand--I'm certain all of us have been there and done that not just once but on a number of occasions, and when everything and the universe actually clicks in tune to it, it's delightful--but the press is in the business of cold hard facts and factual analysis (unless we're talking about yellow journalism), so the press is what's inappropriately out of line when it gets snookered by stories told by con men.  Seriously, press--snap out of it. It doesn't look cute on you.

Speaking of the press, there's this Salon article about the "polyamorous" people.

Tuesday UPDATE, Dolezal Interview Edition:  I'm just now watching a late night repeat of the Dolezal interview conducted by Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC and that's evoked a number of issues I've heard in Oklahoma as to who is really Native American, too--and I've often heard it commented that a good many Indians claim bloodlines to prove tribal membership but "they don't look Indian, they look white". It's also historically true that blacks have "passed" on looks alone.  So Dolezal "passed" on looks alone, and that family member of hers who got before the press to declare her a white person could have passed as black on looks alone. There are blacks in Oklahoma who are Indians, and this is just recently a big issue within the Cherokee Nation whose government decided that although black Indians were regarded as members of the tribe, as of now, it's no longer the case, and we now have black Indians who are suddenly denied their heritage by fiat.

The conclusion was reached that there was no malice associated with Dolezal's embrace of an ethnicity which bore no privilege, while passing as white does involve acquiring privilege that whitefolk who don't step out of their privileged lives always take for granted and think EVERYBODY gets regardless of biology.  And those of us who have stepped out of our cozy corners of the world to see how other people live know that to be a lie.  Yeah, I'm inclined to cut Dolezal slack on that one, and I find her explanation of her lawsuit against Howard to be plausible even though there are white racists who claim "reverse discrimination" for completely bogus excuses.  Prejudice is the result of thought conforming to stereotype and applying one rule to all cases is in fact stereotyped prejudice--passing judgement without careful due consideration of ALL the facts of a given case.

Kudos to Lyle Mitchell for recognizing con men for what they are: CONS.

UPDATE, Con Capture Edition: That's what you get, Press, for believing the tall tales of cons. Mrs. Mitchell said what she did out of fear for her husband's life, suckers.  One question none of you has ever thought to ask, either: Is the arrested prison guard her superior and set the lackadaisical guarding standard for not just Mitchell but all of the people who answers to him, too? #FAIL

Tuesday mini-UPDATE: another corrections person was arrested, a guy named Gene Palmer. Wait, wait, don't tell me, lemme guess--he fell in love, too, right? Who could ever even imagine that con men could be so fickle? Oh, the humanity!!  And there's a skeptic out there who thinks it's all electronical magic that I appear to be in 3 vastly removed places at once.  Well, Sir Skeptic, how about THIS for proving that I was at least in Bartlesville, not Enid, hm?





No, that is NOT "photoshopped". In the mirror is the vidcam that took this pic and that's a fact.
Oh alright, here's a video of the OKMOA (Oklahoma Museum of Art) which was one of the festival's venues, and you can see the deadCENTER covers under glass in the front. I WAS THERE.


About the now-demolished Stage Center--I didn't take pics because there was just a fence around the area with black plastic fabric to block the view.  Except in one spot that the wind blew aside, and through that I could see one humongous pond.  No construction there yet.  I was ALSO in Bartlesville for OK Mozart. Deal with it.


UPDATE, Theory Edition: Just in down the pike is the opinion that I have minions. Plausible, to be sure, but just consider the political implications of my ability to attract and retain minions.  Well, it is a fact that I have city-wide political support in the form of the PEGASYS voter, so, sure--I'll buy that! If you're willing to commit to believing that I have amassed that much political pull the last time I ran for office, the only thing I can do is say that I can believe that, too!






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