Seventy years ago on this day the second of two atomic bombs was dropped on Japan, this one on the city of Nagasaki. The sad irony of targeting Nagasaki was that it contained the highest population of Christians per capita in all of Asia outside of the Philippines. In all fairness to Major Sweeney, the pilot of…
Continue ReadingCategory: History
Losing fear of a much maligned label
The 2016 Presidential campaign has taken off and it is hard to keep track of who said what about which and to whom. There is one thing however that has not escaped my attention amid all the hoopla. There appears to be a number of newfound champions of the Middle Class among those vying for the GOP nomination. Apparently…
Continue ReadingMaking Presidential history on Old Route 66!
What a week it has been along this the most conservative segment of Old Route 66! This past Wednesday in the Bryan County seat of Durant in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit that town since Teddy Roosevelt in 1905. Forget the fact that he…
Continue ReadingA massive political tectonic plate shift
It has been a rough couple of weeks to be a conservative Republican in America. As I sit here writing this my thoughts drift back to what happened in Gettysburg, PA 152 years ago this very afternoon. Members of the GOP, especially the Evangelical wing of the party, must feel like Confederate survivors of Pickett’s Charge. As one rebel…
Continue ReadingFarewell to toxic symbolism
It has been a very historic week in America in terms of commemorating notable events, landmark decisions handed down by the highest court in the land and executive orders issued by some southern state governors to remove archaic incendiary emblems from their purview. I myself could feel the tectonic shift of public opinion when the Supreme Court…
Continue ReadingMemorializing a wrong and worn out narrative
It was an eventful and amusing week along this exceedingly conservative stretch of Old Route 66 in the run up to the Memorial Day weekend. The justly earned “Tempest in a Teapot” award goes to the local ABC affiliate KTUL for their coverage of a Politico article posted to the Tulsa County Democratic Party Facebook page last…
Continue ReadingSaigon in memoriam
President Nixon’s achievement of “Peace with Honor” with North Vietnam came crashing down with the Fall of Saigon forty years ago this week. Three North Vietnamese Army regiments seized the South Vietnamese capitol virtually unopposed and crashed the gates of the Presidential Palace soon after the U.S. diplomatic contingent evacuated the embassy along with as many South Vietnamese citizens as…
Continue ReadingMovie review: The Water Diviner
War is definitely the gift that keeps on giving. It was appropriate that The Water Diviner, a fictional post-World War I historical drama, opened the day before the 100th anniversary of the start of the military campaign which inspired it. Russell Crowe directs and acts in the lead role and seems to gain a measure of redemption…
Continue ReadingThe Oklahoma Standard endures
Like many of my fellow Oklahomans, I have a list of memories of the Oklahoma City Federal Building long before it became the center of the universe twenty years ago for the worst of reasons. Like most other people I know, I never knew its namesake, Alfred P. Murrah, was an old federal judge until…
Continue ReadingAppomattox + 150
One hundred fifty years ago today marked the end of a period of national blood letting. At the home of Wilmer McLean in Appomattox, Virginia, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Federal Army of the Potomac effectively ending what is now known in the parlance of Americana…
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