Title Text.
Barry Friedman At Large Archives
April at Large 2012 Oklahoma ... where the wingnuts come sweeping down the plain
Match at Large 2012 Colleen Brooks Memorial Column
February at Large 2012 Don't it make my brown eyes blue. I mean red ...RED!
Bad Penny Awards, 2011
December at Large: Never talk religion, especially during the holidays
November at Large: You say apoplectic, I say apologetic
October at Large: Care to see a menu?
September at Large: Heavenly hoaxes and heat
August at Large: We need a fundraiser
July at Large: The world didn’t end, though sometimes, it felt like it.
June at Large: We’re reborn and have the papers to prove it
May at Large: All Charlie, all the time
April at Large: Amazing Pace
March at Large: Winners, Losers, and the Rest of Us
February at Large (Almost) Everyone loves a parade
January at Large: Year in Review
Match at Large 2012 Colleen Brooks Memorial Column
February at Large 2012 Don't it make my brown eyes blue. I mean red ...RED!
Bad Penny Awards, 2011
December at Large: Never talk religion, especially during the holidays
November at Large: You say apoplectic, I say apologetic
October at Large: Care to see a menu?
September at Large: Heavenly hoaxes and heat
August at Large: We need a fundraiser
July at Large: The world didn’t end, though sometimes, it felt like it.
June at Large: We’re reborn and have the papers to prove it
May at Large: All Charlie, all the time
April at Large: Amazing Pace
March at Large: Winners, Losers, and the Rest of Us
February at Large (Almost) Everyone loves a parade
January at Large: Year in Review
Rodeo Daze
It’s the manure that gets to you.
Saturday, August 6. It’s the final night of the 25th Annual Pawnee Bill Memorial Rodeo, and we’re at the Lakeside Arena, two miles outside of town, and it smells like every animal here has suddenly and simultaneously defecated.
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It’s the manure that gets to you.
Saturday, August 6. It’s the final night of the 25th Annual Pawnee Bill Memorial Rodeo, and we’re at the Lakeside Arena, two miles outside of town, and it smells like every animal here has suddenly and simultaneously defecated.
Read more...
The Toll It Takes
(Writer’s Digest Award)
David leans against a metal cabinet in front of two Oklahoma Department of Transportation computer screens. Talking with both hands, he is standing between two sliding toll doors, their windows half covered in tin foil. On a shelf above his head is a 9" television/VCR combo and a microwave--a yellow post-it note, stuck on its glass, cautions "Do not use while the TV is on. They both may explode." A clock mounted on the wall behind David reads 12:15; he'll be here for another 6 hours and 45 minutes.
There's room for two in this toll booth, as long as one of us stands.
Read more...
Tales from the Turnpike
(Writer’s Digest Winner )
It is the kind of day in Oklahoma for which meteorologists like to take credit: a deceptively warm November Sunday with a few, fat lazy clouds sitting in the sky and a light breeze coming out of the south. The sun, slowing making its afternoon descent, is still bright over Christie’s Toy Box and Hunter RV in Sapulpa, and the Turner Turnpike, stretched out on this lazy day and looking like a postcard, cuts the horizon in half. On either side, the hills, like bookends, frame the road. If not for the leafless trees, you’d swear it was spring
Read more ....
My day at the Gun Show
It’s not the guns you notice first, the antique pistols or Glocks or knives or captured AK47s on rows of tables under the banners Bob’s Guns, Lea’s Guns, T.C.’s Guns; nor is it the fathers and sons in matching camouflage vests and hunting rifles, walking like sentries through the crowd; nor the rows and rows of vendors that line Expo Square, selling everything from Nazi memorabilia to cutlery to wallets to Beanie Babies.
It’s all the men with canes
Read more...
Science in Music
The band is in the middle of Like a Blind Man, a song about hope and Quixotic futility, and Tom Skinner, on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, has his eyes closed. His hair is gray and thick with a beard to match, covering most of his face, but you can make out the hint of a smile, as if he's in the middle of a conversation only he can hear. He looks more like a man who reads utility meters for a living, which he used to do, than a folk musician--or maybe he's what a folk musician is supposed to look like.
His voice is a storyteller's--not pretty, but reassuring, seamless, almost hypnotic. To his left is a guitarist, one of many on stage tonight, dressed in black, on electric, looking masterful and bored; flanking Tom on the other side, another guitarist, Brad James, who's sitting cross-legged, playing slide. James and the other guitarist swap leads like well-behaved kids with a soccer ball at recess. Behind them is Jimmy Karstein, a drummer, whose beat is the one that matters; on the right of the stage, below the big BEER sign, on keyboards, is Rocky Frisco in a world all his own, the youngest 68-year old in town; and in front of Rocky is Wes Gasaway, on fiddle, an instrument he says is a violin that didn't go to college.
Don Morris, everyone's favorite bass player, who co-wrote Blind Man with Skinner, should be here, but isn't. His wife is not well. The band is worried about Marilyn--Tom says it's like a dark cloud is hanging overhead.
Welcome to Tom Skinner's Wednesday Night Science Project, a loose affiliation of, arguably, the finest musicians in Tulsa
Read more...
Here She Comes
Two hours after Miss Oklahoma was named, a girl wearing a crown sat at IHOP, eating breakfast.
It was Miss Teen Oklahoma.
Read more...
How Big are the Baptists
There is a joke in which a man dies and goes to heaven and is met by St. Peter, who offers to show him around.
As St. Peter walks with him down a long hallway, the man sees a group of people, praying in a room. “Who are they?” he asks, to which St. Peter replies, “Oh, they’re the Catholics.” A few minutes later, the man sees another group, also praying in another room, and once again inquires as to who they are. “Those are the Jews,” he is told. He sees more groups, all praying in rooms off this long hallway, and is told he is seeing Methodists and Seventh Day Adventists and Presbyterians. The man then comes across the final room, where he sees yet another group of men and women in prayer. “Who are they?” the man asks. “Shhh,” says St. Peter, “they’re the Baptists. They think they’re the only ones here.”
There are approximately 34-million Baptists in the United States, making up almost 17 percent of the population--and it only seems like they all reside in Oklahoma. In fact, Oklahoma has almost one million Baptists, almost 30 percent of the state’s population. And even though Oklahoma ranks 27th in U.S. population, it ranks 7th in the nation in total number of Baptists and has the third highest percentage of any state, next to Mississippi and Alabama.
To put this in perspective, Oklahoma has more Baptists than Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have residents
Read more...
Vegas. The End Is Near
A man in a white coat is cutting hair inside the Style-Rite barbershop. There is a bus stop 10 steps from its door, where white men in casino-affiliated hats and African American women with shopping bags wait. Style-Rite has no receptionist, no price list, no hairdryers; instead, it has torn red vinyl barber chairs on a linoleum floor and a restroom that’s out of order.
On the Formica counter that runs the length of one side of the shop are scissors and straight razors and bottles of blue Barbicide water with combs swimming inside. The two wood cabinets under the Formica have broken doors, so the towels and shaving creams and tonics on their shelves are visible. On the opposite side of the shop, there is a television with a hanger wrapped in aluminum foil that serves as its antenna; there are 1950’s ads for grooming products on the wall over the mirror; and there is a lopsided table and two chairs—that’s where you wait.
Read more...
The Two Worlds of Ken Gibson
World One
If you ask, he'll tell you he's a house manager; if you push, he'll tell you he's an inpatient psychiatric counselor for adolescent boys
Don't push
Read more ...
Oklahoma Football
The July sun, looking half asleep itself, is making its way through the Sapulpa sky; despite a cool breeze, varsity football players, jogging down the hill between Chieftain Stadium and the practice facility, are sweating, the stains of perspiration already visible on their shirts.
Once reaching the bottom, the team breaks into groups: two or three near the equipment shed, four or five near an area closest to the parking lot, seven at the far side of the field, they look like schools of fish in a pond.
Girls about the same ages in Chieftain blue and white—trainers, they’re charitably called—drive around in golf carts, bringing them water and towels and smiles. Some players sit on the ground at this point, leaning back on their elbows to look at a sun that will soon torture them; some stretch; some yawn; and some hitch rides to the bathroom.
Coaches, with whistles and clipboards, fan out in all directions, placing blue cones, hurdles, and obstacle courses for upcoming drills.
The official start of football season is more than a month away.
The official start of football practice is more than a month away
Read more ...
(Writer’s Digest Award)
David leans against a metal cabinet in front of two Oklahoma Department of Transportation computer screens. Talking with both hands, he is standing between two sliding toll doors, their windows half covered in tin foil. On a shelf above his head is a 9" television/VCR combo and a microwave--a yellow post-it note, stuck on its glass, cautions "Do not use while the TV is on. They both may explode." A clock mounted on the wall behind David reads 12:15; he'll be here for another 6 hours and 45 minutes.
There's room for two in this toll booth, as long as one of us stands.
Read more...
Tales from the Turnpike
(Writer’s Digest Winner )
It is the kind of day in Oklahoma for which meteorologists like to take credit: a deceptively warm November Sunday with a few, fat lazy clouds sitting in the sky and a light breeze coming out of the south. The sun, slowing making its afternoon descent, is still bright over Christie’s Toy Box and Hunter RV in Sapulpa, and the Turner Turnpike, stretched out on this lazy day and looking like a postcard, cuts the horizon in half. On either side, the hills, like bookends, frame the road. If not for the leafless trees, you’d swear it was spring
Read more ....
My day at the Gun Show
It’s not the guns you notice first, the antique pistols or Glocks or knives or captured AK47s on rows of tables under the banners Bob’s Guns, Lea’s Guns, T.C.’s Guns; nor is it the fathers and sons in matching camouflage vests and hunting rifles, walking like sentries through the crowd; nor the rows and rows of vendors that line Expo Square, selling everything from Nazi memorabilia to cutlery to wallets to Beanie Babies.
It’s all the men with canes
Read more...
Science in Music
The band is in the middle of Like a Blind Man, a song about hope and Quixotic futility, and Tom Skinner, on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, has his eyes closed. His hair is gray and thick with a beard to match, covering most of his face, but you can make out the hint of a smile, as if he's in the middle of a conversation only he can hear. He looks more like a man who reads utility meters for a living, which he used to do, than a folk musician--or maybe he's what a folk musician is supposed to look like.
His voice is a storyteller's--not pretty, but reassuring, seamless, almost hypnotic. To his left is a guitarist, one of many on stage tonight, dressed in black, on electric, looking masterful and bored; flanking Tom on the other side, another guitarist, Brad James, who's sitting cross-legged, playing slide. James and the other guitarist swap leads like well-behaved kids with a soccer ball at recess. Behind them is Jimmy Karstein, a drummer, whose beat is the one that matters; on the right of the stage, below the big BEER sign, on keyboards, is Rocky Frisco in a world all his own, the youngest 68-year old in town; and in front of Rocky is Wes Gasaway, on fiddle, an instrument he says is a violin that didn't go to college.
Don Morris, everyone's favorite bass player, who co-wrote Blind Man with Skinner, should be here, but isn't. His wife is not well. The band is worried about Marilyn--Tom says it's like a dark cloud is hanging overhead.
Welcome to Tom Skinner's Wednesday Night Science Project, a loose affiliation of, arguably, the finest musicians in Tulsa
Read more...
Here She Comes
Two hours after Miss Oklahoma was named, a girl wearing a crown sat at IHOP, eating breakfast.
It was Miss Teen Oklahoma.
Read more...
How Big are the Baptists
There is a joke in which a man dies and goes to heaven and is met by St. Peter, who offers to show him around.
As St. Peter walks with him down a long hallway, the man sees a group of people, praying in a room. “Who are they?” he asks, to which St. Peter replies, “Oh, they’re the Catholics.” A few minutes later, the man sees another group, also praying in another room, and once again inquires as to who they are. “Those are the Jews,” he is told. He sees more groups, all praying in rooms off this long hallway, and is told he is seeing Methodists and Seventh Day Adventists and Presbyterians. The man then comes across the final room, where he sees yet another group of men and women in prayer. “Who are they?” the man asks. “Shhh,” says St. Peter, “they’re the Baptists. They think they’re the only ones here.”
There are approximately 34-million Baptists in the United States, making up almost 17 percent of the population--and it only seems like they all reside in Oklahoma. In fact, Oklahoma has almost one million Baptists, almost 30 percent of the state’s population. And even though Oklahoma ranks 27th in U.S. population, it ranks 7th in the nation in total number of Baptists and has the third highest percentage of any state, next to Mississippi and Alabama.
To put this in perspective, Oklahoma has more Baptists than Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have residents
Read more...
Vegas. The End Is Near
A man in a white coat is cutting hair inside the Style-Rite barbershop. There is a bus stop 10 steps from its door, where white men in casino-affiliated hats and African American women with shopping bags wait. Style-Rite has no receptionist, no price list, no hairdryers; instead, it has torn red vinyl barber chairs on a linoleum floor and a restroom that’s out of order.
On the Formica counter that runs the length of one side of the shop are scissors and straight razors and bottles of blue Barbicide water with combs swimming inside. The two wood cabinets under the Formica have broken doors, so the towels and shaving creams and tonics on their shelves are visible. On the opposite side of the shop, there is a television with a hanger wrapped in aluminum foil that serves as its antenna; there are 1950’s ads for grooming products on the wall over the mirror; and there is a lopsided table and two chairs—that’s where you wait.
Read more...
The Two Worlds of Ken Gibson
World One
If you ask, he'll tell you he's a house manager; if you push, he'll tell you he's an inpatient psychiatric counselor for adolescent boys
Don't push
Read more ...
Oklahoma Football
The July sun, looking half asleep itself, is making its way through the Sapulpa sky; despite a cool breeze, varsity football players, jogging down the hill between Chieftain Stadium and the practice facility, are sweating, the stains of perspiration already visible on their shirts.
Once reaching the bottom, the team breaks into groups: two or three near the equipment shed, four or five near an area closest to the parking lot, seven at the far side of the field, they look like schools of fish in a pond.
Girls about the same ages in Chieftain blue and white—trainers, they’re charitably called—drive around in golf carts, bringing them water and towels and smiles. Some players sit on the ground at this point, leaning back on their elbows to look at a sun that will soon torture them; some stretch; some yawn; and some hitch rides to the bathroom.
Coaches, with whistles and clipboards, fan out in all directions, placing blue cones, hurdles, and obstacle courses for upcoming drills.
The official start of football season is more than a month away.
The official start of football practice is more than a month away
Read more ...
The Woman and the Flag
The woman sat in pre-boarding at Gate 25 at Tulsa International Airport, holding an American flag in its ceremonial 13 folds on her lap. She had both hands clasped over it - in a sense, I imagined, over her son. I am familiar with the look.
Read more ...
When TV Works ...
by Barry Friedman , Friday, August 15, 2008
SURROUNDED BY OXYGEN TANKS, NURSES, and homemade frozen Ensure popsicles, my father-in-law lies in bed these days. Before, though, when the pulmonary fibrosis was just an annoyance, he used to sit, along with his wife, in the living room, watching FOX News -- like Archie and Edith, but she in the better chair.
Damon and Elena would watch all day. All day.
They might switch away for a sporting event involving their beloved University of Oklahoma; otherwise, Murdoch had them.
They loved it, but they didn't like it: Shepard Smith ("too soft"); Bill O'Reilly ("too hard"); Dick Morris ("too untrustworthy"); all the blondes ("too trashy").
"Would you look at that!?" asked Elena on more than one occasion, pointing to two low-cut dresses and four well-defined calves and thighs on the 48" Samsung HD. "I call this 'The Legs and Cleavage' Channel.' I've written letters."
She never sent..
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ARCHIVES
Have You Hugged Your Oil Company Today?
Here in Oklahoma, we have the OERB, the Oklahoma Energy Relations Board and, according to its Web site, its job is to educate...
Thank You, Good Night
After Rob Reiner directed "A Few Good Men," he was asked if he thought the country would now view him differently. Reiner replied,...
Russert Redux, Part II
The criticism of the coverage of Tim Russert's death was immediate and almost universally negative. From the Orlando Sentinel to The New York...
Sites for Sore Eyes
Years ago, when cable television was in its infancy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Russell Baker wrote in The New York Times: "We now have...
One down, One to go
Last week, citing a general malaise surrounding the production, upheaval and dissension in the cast and crew, negative feedback from critics, and a...
A Good Walk Hydrated
From my home in Tulsa, Okla., the drive to Southern Hills Country Club and the PGA was only five miles away, but as...
Rose's Cost to 'The Price'
Word that Rosie O'Donnell has taken herself out of contention (for the moment) to replace Bob Barker as host of "The Price is...
Comb-overs and Comedians--What's not to Like?
Watching Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump fight last week was a reminder, as Woody Allen once said, that no matter how cynical you...
Koenraad Johan Weber
No phone call, no email.
Nothing that usually defines how modern journalistic interviews are conducted, especially when the interviewer and subject are an ocean apart.
Instead, inside the FedEx package were eight carefully hand-written pages of responses on legal-sized European lined paper – graphs, too, as well as speeches, abstracts and illustrations, one, haunting, of a lone geologist at the base of an outcrop.
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Drilling into a Volcano
Italy’s Campi Flegrei, located just west of Naples, may be home to the most dangerous volcanoes on earth – which is saying something considering Mount Vesuvius is a mere 30 kilometers away.
You’d have to be crazy to drill into the middle of it.
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da Vinci
“Every branch of science developed so far owes something to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the master of every priority.”
That’s Gian Battista Vai, an expert on da Vinci and the opening speaker for this year’s plenary session at the AAPG International Conference and Exhibition in Milan – an event dedicated, appropriately enough, to not only the spirit and genius of da Vinci, but to his early effect and imprimatur on many disciplines
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Climate Change
Obviously, Mark Twain was not referring to today’s climate change debate when he said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
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Pasquale Scaturro
When Pasquale Scaturro calls, he is at Montreal's airport, on his way to Bismarck, N.D., where he will meet up with a group from Missouri.
And, in fact, a world-class explorer and geologist should be calling from an airport in Canada, waiting for a flight -- or from a police station in Ethiopia, waiting to be released from custody -- and not from a Lay-Z-Boy in his den, watching Seinfeld and eating Cheetos.
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What good is old data?
Imagine you have a collection of old eight-track tapes in a box in the attic; unfortunately, your eight-track player is long gone, sold in a garage sale in the late ’70s and by now, no doubt, in a landfill.
The music in that box, though – some brilliant, some forgettable – is still important to you, still helping to unravel adolescent and philosophical mysteries
Read more...
Katrina ... Who’s to Blame
It's been more than five years since Hurricane Katrina punished New Orleans and the coast of Mississippi; still, to geologist Stephen A. Nelson there remains a passion, an anger, about what happened, how it could have been prevented, about opportunities lost.
To him, the storm wasn't merely a metaphor for the incomprehensibility of nature or the incompetence of government; it was personal.
It was home.
Searching for Rocks; listening for Bells
People still talk about “the moment.”
It happened last year in Denver, right at the start of the AAPG annual meeting’s awards ceremony. Susan Landon, already an AAPG Honorary Member, past treasurer and much-honored and respected leader, was about to be feted again, for service to the House of Delegates.
Everyone knew that.
What everyone didn’t know was how Landon, who because of a near-fatal accident in 2005 must move hesitantly and cautiously, if at all, would be able to walk up stairs and cross the stage to receive her award.
What everyone also didn’t know was that a ramp was offered so she could avoid the few but steep steps.
Nor that when offered the ramp, she asked, “What is everyone else doing?”
When told others would be walking up and then back down the steps, she simply said, “Then that’s what I’m going to do, too."
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Can Water Flow Peach in Sudan
NASA astronaut Alfred Worden was orbiting the moon aboard Apollo 15, approximately 238,863 miles from a giant dry lake in northern Sudan, when he told Mission Control, “After the King’s training, I feel like I’ve been here before.” Worden was not thanking Elvis, but rather AAPG member Farouk El-Baz.
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The Birth of Geothermal
It was a July night in 1904 in Larderello, Italy, in southern Tuscany. As dusk approached and families, one imagines, sat down for a typical dinner of bistecca al fiorentina, rosticciana and deep-fried corgettes, lights were being turned on all over the region.
This is a story about five of those lights – for they were powered by steam emerging from nearby vents in the ground.
It was the first – and perhaps still the most practical – demonstration of geothermal power
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Embry ... A Scientist’s Love: His Son
Imagine.
Your son, a healthy, robust teenager comes home from soccer practice one day and tells you he thinks he may have had a stroke. Thinking of a bike crash he recently had, you tell him it's probably a pinched nerve and not to worry. Then, inexplicably, he falls down a flight of stairs and complains of dizziness, so you take him to a doctor, who tells you that he has Multiple Sclerosis.
Like any father, upon hearing that news, Ashton Embry was shocked and saddened.
But Ashton Embry wasn't just any father; he was also a scientist.
And that's when he got angry.
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Wine Offered; Geology Served
David G. Howell is something of a geological sommelier.
When it comes to the relationship between the land and the wine in California's Napa Valley, he can talk the talk and walk the walk.
It's the spit he needs work on
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Mud
Considering the story is and has been about mud, it’s a remarkably clear (if somewhat contentious) debate.
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The Story of Los Angeles Oil
In the under-appreciated “The Two Jakes,” a 1990 film in part about the burgeoning oil deposits in the Los Angeles Basin circa 1940, we hear the line: " ... you might think you know what's going on around here, but ... you don't."
Read more ...