Apollo's Brain

I spent Turkey Day 2020 at Red Rock Canyon Adventure Park, formerly known as Red Rock Canyon State Park, just south of Hinton, OK. There were a few more people than I would have liked, I'm used to having the place to myself but it WAS a holiday further enhanced by wonderful fall weather consisting of a blue, artistically cloudy, sky, mid-60s temperature and for Oklahoma, a low-key wind of 15-mph. Cabin Fever exacerbted by the Coivd-19 pandemic was certainly an ingredient in this mix of variables. There was noticable trail blockage caused by a recent major ice storm but one could push through or make a new path if one was determined.

I took a few photos. Clicking the photo makes it bigger.

Since I'm not going to Saratoga Springs in 2021, an idea I was toying with as a sort of race--let's call it my 70th Birthday Stakes (or perhaps Handicap is a better adjective?), I've decided to make the most of what's here in OKC. I went Wednesday and Thursday to RP for a couple of hours each, thought of going tonight but the weather is just too windy and cold since I stay outside on the plaza as much as I can and don't like to breathe in public rooms for very long with Covid on the rampage.

Pvt. James L. Martin, from the Dunning Collection at the Metro Library, OKC The very best thing I get to do at my library job is working a couple of hours a week in the Special Collections and Research department helping to inventory a very large collection of Oklahoma County memorabilia called the Dunning Collection consisting of all kinds of things ranging from postcards, directories, theater and sports programs, business cards, posters, political campaign materials, family photos and letters, ephemera (look that one up), newspaper clippings, high school and college yearbooks, personal scrapbooks--on and on it goes, most of it earlier than the 1980s. Eventually it will be viewable on the Metro Library's website From this long list of items my special favorites are the letters, photos, and postcards, even then I can zoom in still tighter to the photos and postcards with personal messages handwritten on the reverse side--lines about adventure, love, inquiry, loss, disappointment, hope, loneliness, death, weather, and war. There's a 6-page letter written at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, in the 19-aughts from an Army lieutenant to his aunt living in Oklahoma City, a letter with exquisite handwriting extolling the adventures and activities of military life.    Today, I ran across another communication from an American Army soldier named James Lloyd Martin, a postcard written from France in 1919 to his cousin, Gladys Gillette, in Oklahoma City. OK, you ask, weren't lots of postcards sent from France during WW I to relatives back home?  Sure, but here's what raised the follicles on my receding hairline:  Pvt. Martin had been in the Battle of Aisne-Marne of July-August, 1918,  This is the battle memorialized by the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Belleau, the very same cemetery that the Orange Bastard, often referred to as President* Trump, visiting France as part of the remembrance centennial ceremonies for the end of WW I, deigned to visit because "it's filled with losers."   https://www.abmc.gov/aisne-marne   https://tinyurl.com/y3tlr7qv Fortunately or we wouldn't have his postcard, Pvt. Martin lived through the Aisne battle as well as the Battle of Champagne-Marne, being "slightly wounded" and honorably discharged on May 13,1919, according to AncestoryLibrary.com. He died in 1975 at the age of 79 in Evendale Ohio. But WAIT, there's more..... Martin's cousin, Gladys, through his mother's side, continued her life in Oklahoma City, working in a number of jobs according to annual volumes of city directories including an "assistant" at the Carnegie Library ( destroyed in the 1950s) at Harvey and McGee (Third Street), the forerunner of the current county-wide system.  Her childhood home is thought to have been in the 900 block of Hudson so she could have easily walked to her library job.   Other Gillette family photos and postcards are waiting for me as guides to the bottom of the rabbit hole of curiosity.  I was thrilled at finding this postcard and recognizing its connection to a current scandal that has ripped the veneer once- and-for-all from any thought of humanity and decency directed towards the Orange Bastard who dismisses all people and history that can't advance his greed and cruelty.  Calling men and women who risk their birth rights defending their country losers and suckers are the words of a disgusting monster forever damned in history and forever tainting anyone associated with him.   I have much thanks to give to my colleagues in the Special Collections and Research department in the Oklahoma History Room at the downtown OKC library.  Lisa B. is a virtuoso of the computer keyboard, the screen could barely keep up with her commands.  Buddy J. is a paragon of leadership and encouragement. The opinions in this essay are all mine, composed on my time, on my laptop at home, but the facts belong to history.  No tax dollars were killed in the making of this essay. message on reverse Pvt. Martin, courtesy of Find a Grave

I can use very strong language but for this venue I'll settle for the euphemism of "Golly Darn!" SOMEONE with a big soap box at the NY Times has finally put in print for the national stage, EXACTLY my feelings and opinions concerning the candidacy of Pete Buttigieg !!!

Win or lose these frigging primaries, Pete Buttigieg has advanced all our gay citizens's civil rights--this includes the Stockholm syndrome sufferers known as Log Cabin Republicans--more than anyone alive that I know of, even mor

Something's wrong with FB, it's not letting me post visuals directly to my FB page.

Facebook won't let me post this directly on my FB page.

But here it is regardless.

I went out for a bit of biking this afternoon to Hefner Lake for some unlicensed shooting.

On my way home I exercised my white privilege and stopped at "POPS" in Nichols Hills for a soda. I was drinking a Virgil's Dr. Better cola at an outdoor table when three cars pulled in nearly simultaneously.

The first car belonged to a family of color--mom, dad, an eight-year old girl, and a snuggy little baby not a month old.

I have an email friend who's told me an acquaintance of his wants him dead as he refused to vote for Jill Stein in 2016.  The "threatner" claims such third party voting would have cost Trump the White House.  

People say the most dreadful things when the truth is all that's needed, imagination need not apply.

An observation: With public pressure calling for him to resign from the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents the subsequent defeat of Kirk Humphreys, former mayor of Oklahoma City and candidate for Senate in 2004 was an unquestioned example of a man who has outlived the principles he was taught as a child that minorities can be excluded from legal protections. However, it's only a small flaw in the big picture of the homo-haters.