BatesLine

As exciting as it was to see our 10-year-old win the Harry Potter costume contest last Friday night (thanks, Dawn -- we think so, too), we were even more excited and proud about something he accomplished earlier this month.

Right before Independence Day, we drove down to Stamford, Texas, to visit my wife's relatives there -- her dad grew up on a cotton farm northwest of town, and she still has a few aunts and uncles around.

At the same time, Stamford was hosting the Texas Cowboy Reunion, four days of activities including the world's largest amateur rodeo, a grand parade on the 4th of July, nightly western dances, chuckwagon barbecue dinners, and a fiddle contest.

We watched the fiddle contest when we were last there for the TCR, and when we began making plans for this visit, my son decided he wanted to enter. He's only had a year of classical violin training, but his performance piece for last fall was the fiddle tune "Old Joe Clark," and like the rest of the family, he loves western swing music. Once his spring performance was out of the way, he began working up a few more tunes.

We were six hours into the drive to Stamford when we realized that all of us had forgotten to bring his fiddle. We had music and a stand, but no instrument. The boy was heartbroken. The next day, my wife called the contest organizers and someone that her family knew to see about borrowing a fiddle for the contest.

He had been used to playing a half-size, and the size affects your finger positions. Suzanne Walker, who used to teach, had a quarter-size she could lend him, along with a book of fiddle tunes. Ray Clark of Tru-Sound Studios downtown lent him a full-size, painted silver. Neither were exactly what he was used to, so he practiced with both to see which would be the easier adjustment to make. In the end, he felt more comfortable with the full-size. He learned from his great-uncle that for the contest he'd need to play two breakdowns and a waltz. He didn't have a waltz, so in two days he learned "Streets of Laredo" from Mrs. Walker's book. He knew the song from years of listening to Riders in the Sky.

For the next couple of days, he worked in practice time in between the TCR parade, a night at the rodeo, a visit out to the old farm, a look at the artifacts in the Texas Cowboy Museum, games of Chinese checkers and Wahoo, and one delicious home cooked meal after another, each one featuring fresh peaches from the farm. The temperature was in the mid 80s all week, unseasonably cool for Texas in July, and we've never seen the fields so green.

At one point in all the practicing, I told my wife she needed to quit stopping him when he slipped up. It was more important for him to have the confidence to recover and keep going after a mistake.

Saturday morning came. It was not a huge field -- only four entrants in the under-18s class. Two were older teens, both excellent fiddlers, and there was another boy about our son's age. There were about 100 people in the audience. Former Congressman Charlie Stenholm was the MC, telling old jokes to break the tension and fill time as each fiddler got ready to play.

Our boy was sixth to play: "Bile Them Cabbage Down," "Streets of Laredo," then "Old Joe Clark," which he had relearned with double-stops (playing two strings at once for harmony). He got a bit lost on the first one, but recovered, restarted, and got through it. The waltz was solid, and the final breakdown gave him a strong finish. (You can see his performance on Google Video.) Our son was the only one to play without a rhythm guitarist accompanying him; guess I'm going to have to learn to play.

When the judging was over, our son finished third in his class, behind the two older teens, one of whom won the playoff to be grand champion. The third-place finish was good for a $25 prize. After the contest, all the fiddlers gathered up front for a jam session, playing songs like "Maiden's Prayer" and "Faded Love." Since he doesn't know that many songs yet, the other musicians kindly let him call a couple of tunes: "Cotton Eyed Joe" and "Little Liza Jane." We celebrated with an authentic chuckwagon lunch before setting out for Tulsa.

(By the way, the prize money was donated by the local Wal-Mart, which also covered the entrance fees. Wal-Mart helped us out again later that day: When the van lost a tire tread south of Chickasha, just after 8 p.m., my wife called and asked if they could stay open late and sell us a new tire, as we couldn't drive home on the compact spare I'd installed. They were very nice about it, and we made it home that night, albeit later than planned. Paul Harvey likes to say that if you've got a Wal-Mart in your hometown, you couldn't ask for a better neighbor. Mom-and-pop stores might dispute that, but there's no question that Wal-Mart, along with the good people of Stamford, made our 07/07/07 a lucky day.)

Our son still has a lot to learn about fiddling, but we're proud that he persisted in the face of some setbacks and kept his composure in front of a big audience. It was satisfying, too, that he now has a stronger connection to his roots in Texas cotton country.

I've posted a whole pile of pics of our trip on Flickr, including as many blurry rodeo pictures as a person could want. There are also some shots of our brief browsing stop in Archer City, Texas' version of Hay-on-Wye, home of Larry McMurtry's multi-building Booked-Up bookstore and the movie theater that inspired The Last Picture Show.

There's a separate set (for the historians among you) of photos of documents and artifacts from Stamford's museum, including pages from the 1940 town directory, a 1950 semi-centennial book about the town, a 78 rpm disc of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys performing "New Spanish Two Step," and a scrapbook presentation (a low-tech Powerpoint) that the Chamber of Commerce made in 1923 in their unsuccessful bid to become the site of Texas Tech.

I've also posted some video of the calf scramble at the rodeo. They let all the children 12 and under into the arena, then let loose some calves with ribbons tied to their tails. The kids who manage to grab a ribbon win a prize. My 10-year-old had done it three years ago; this year he was joined by his six-year-old sister. After it was over, I asked them about the experience and got reaction from the toddler, too. For more flavor of the event, here's someone else's video from the wild mare race at the 2006 TCR rodeo -- teams of three cowboys catch, saddle, and ride a wild mare to the other end of the arena and back.

I'm live blogging from the 41st and Yale Barnes and Noble, where about an hour ago my son won first place in the Harry Potter costume contest, entitling him to be one of the first seven in line to buy a book when the clock strikes twelve. He was up against some tough competition. It didn't hurt that he had been Harry Potter for Halloween, so we already had the robes and the glasses, and he and his mom had a pretty good idea of what was involved in dying his hair.

All of us were here for the first three hours of the party. My wife took the little ones home after the contest. There are a lot of people here, but not so many that you couldn't move around. I spent most of my time keeping the toddler entertained in his stroller, trying to keep him arms' length from all the books. We looked at a beautiful new book of historic Tulsa photos, including many from downtown's heyday. (There's a picture of a tree-shaded art deco cafe that once stood between 14th and 15th on Boston; wish I could just step into that photo.) The toddler was worried when I put on a set of headphones in the music department, but enjoyed taking all the "Cars" DVDs off the shelf as he made his "b-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-m" car sound.

While we roamed the aisles, the big kids had their picture taken with the advertising board for the book, listened to a classical ensemble play movie themes, watched a magic show, and listened to a bit of the live feed from the B&N on New York's Union Square, where the narrator of the audio books was giving a reading.

When the toddler and I grew weary of steering between shelves and people, we strollered down to Reasor's -- I bought him a banana and some cookies and got myself a Coke Zero.

When I told a co-worker how we'd be spending our evening, she told me that she was allergic to hype. Normally, I am, too. But it's fun to be part of a kind of mass event, in this day of hundreds of TV channels and millions of websites.

And as mass events go, this one isn't bad. It marks the end of an excellent series of children's fiction, and there's been a minimum of standing in line.

Of course, it helps when your son is a powerful wizard.

UPDATE: They had the seven winners line up at the registers about 5 minutes before the boxes could be opened. We watched them open the first boxes, and my son got his book right at 12:01. I threw in a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. We paid, left triumphant, and headed to Shades of Brown for something to drink. I read the first couple of chapters to my son there. (We read the first book together, before he zoomed ahead of me and worked through the remaining books in short order.)

As I've mentioned briefly, last month I visited Britain with my son, who was part of the Tulsa Boy Singers' first international tour in many years. The boys performed at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh, at York Minster, and at St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, in London ("the Actors' Church"), and they also sang a couple of anthems in Durham Cathedral, near the tomb of English church historian St. Bede. The tour also took us to Stirling and Oxford.

The photos I took of the Tulsa Boy Singers' tour are up on Flickr. I used Flickr's very cool map feature to pin down the locations of each photo as best I could. You can click "Map" on an individual photo page, and it will show you where it was taken.

I also took video of at least one anthem at each performance, and these have been posted at Google Video. I was using the Canon S3 IS to shoot both stills and videos, and it's not the easiest thing to hold still for long periods. Someday, when I find a decent video editing package, I'll edit a slide show of still images over the shaky and jerky parts of the video.

Here's video of two of my favorite anthems -- Thomas Tallis's "O Nata Lux and Richard Farrant's "Lord, for Thy Tender Mercies' Sake" -- in the north transept of York Minster, the largest Gothic church north of the Alps.

TBS is always looking for new singers. If you have a son eight years or older who loves to sing, learn more at tulsaboysingers.org. You'll find phone and e-mail contact information on the website.

This may look like a souvenir from my recent trip to Britain with my 10-year-old for the Tulsa Boy Singers choir tour, but it's not, although the trip reawakened an interest in it.

This is The London Game, a strategy game based on a map of the London Underground. The object is to be the first to travel to six tourist destinations and return to your starting point at one of London's main railway stations. There are "hazard" cards that either delay you or allow you to delay another player. Each "souvenir" card has a drawing and a description of the point of interest and the name of the nearest Tube station.

I remember playing this game with a friend of mine when we were probably 10 or 11. His family subsequently put it in a garage sale or otherwise disposed of it. I had always thought it would be a fun board game to have.

Three times in the past I've been to the London Transport Museum gift shop in Covent Garden, and three times I've balked at paying the asking price, not to mention wondering if I had room and sufficient spare weight in my luggage for the box. Last month, the museum shop had a special edition in a metal box for the low, low price of 25 pounds sterling -- about $50, and too dear for me. Once back home, I checked eBay and found a copy of the 1972 edition. I was the only bidder and price and shipping combined came to $15.

While my wife and our 10-year-old went to hear Weird Al Yankovic in concert last Friday, and after I put the 18-month-old to bed, the six-year-old and I played the game a couple of times. We opted not to use the station blocking rule and instead concentrated on getting familiar with where everything is on the board and how the basic rules work.

We added a rule that you have to say the name of each station as you pass through it. I figure it'll help the kids learn to pronounce Gloucester, Leicester, and Tottenham correctly and how to interpret a map and plan a route, and we'll all build a mental map of London which will come in handy when we go back as a family someday. There have been a few changes to the Tube map since 1972, but not many to the central London section that makes up the game board.

We had fun playing it, and we each won a round. I'll have to try the more cut-throat version, where you can block stations to delay your opponents, with the 10-year-old.

A couple of summers ago our family visited my wife's uncle and his family in Little Rock. He raises AKC Registered German Shepherds on a farm north of Little Rock. His dogs have been trained for police and drug work, home and family protection, and as companion animals for the elderly and disabled. We spent time around some of the dogs at their city house and the puppies out at the farm. They were sweet-natured and affectionate animals.

My wife's uncle has just learned that he won't be able to care and train the dogs for a while. His family is looking to sell the puppies they have as quickly as they can. The puppies are around six to seven months' old.

If you are interested in purchasing and could provide a good home for a German Shepherd with these qualities, please contact me by e-mail at blog -at- batesline -dot- com. Please DO NOT use the contact information on the farm's website at this time.

This is how he describes his dogs' heritage and character:

When we bought our breeding stock we required the following:

1. Temperament. The dog must be gentle and loving to all members of the family especially children.
2. Courage. If the dog senses that you are in danger it must get between you and that danger and do what is necessary to chase it away and not follow it after it runs away.
3. Size. We did not want giants, but we wanted large dogs that can do their jobs.
4. Conformation. We required that all dogs have excellent conformation by a German judge.
5. Color. We have about all German Shepherd colors except white.

Here's how he describes the training program:

• All puppies are born in someone's home
• Puppies are handled daily to imprint a good temperament and trust
• The dogs are worked with daily to develop courage, love and trust
• The dogs are developed to be loving family pets and strong protectors

No home protected by one of his dogs has ever been burglarized, and no owner has ever been injured by an intruder or the dog.

If you have a good home for a loyal canine companion, please send me an e-mail ASAP at blog at batesline dot com.

Saturday, after attending the three public hours of a five-hour City Council meeting on whether to move city offices to One Technology Center, I called my wife and suggested we head up to Woolaroc for the remainder of the afternoon. I picked up my son from a sleepover, and, after the usual hour or so required to prepare for the long trek (approx. seven hours away from home), we left, following a stop at McDonald's to get food (lunch at 2 -- kids were on a late schedule) and the library (needed to renew some books).

Got a bit lost trying to navigate the Matoaka shortcut, which heads west from US 75 on Road 24. The landmark used to be (35 years ago) a Moose Lodge, now it's a Christian school. My handy "Roads of Oklahoma Atlas" helped get me sorted out.

We got to Woolaroc about 3 -- two hours before closing. (We were told our admission would be good through Sunday, if we wanted to return. 11 and under are free, adults are $8, $7 with a AAA card.)

They were having a kids festival. The day was sunny and muggy. The big kids tried their hand at hurling spears with rubber points, then played at giant croquet, rolling rubber balls almost as big as they were through four-foot tall wickets.

I took the little one inside the museum, while the big kids explored some of the other special outdoor activities. He was very amused by the moving diorama of the Crow Indian dance.

Woolaroc Museum is home to the bronze models submitted in the design competition for the Pioneer Woman Monument in Ponca City. I'd seen them before, but it was interesting to look again since the pioneer woman concept appeared in so many of Oklahoma's state quarter designs. There are some impressive alternate designs -- one shows a woman and child pressing on, with her husband, shot through with an arrow, lying dead at her feet -- but I think they chose the right one, with the right balance of optimism and determination.

Jim Hamilton's statue, Dance of the Mountain Gods, with the antenna-like headgear and the long knives, looks to me like an ancient astronaut come down to do some serious cattle mutilatin'.

With only one kid in tow, and him in a stroller, I had time to take a closer look at the beautiful patterns on the Pueblo pottery.

We browsed a bit in the shop. There's a new book out called The Royal Air Force in Oklahoma, by Paula Carmack Denson. It is a detailed account, with many photographs, of the RAF flying schools in Ponca City and Miami, with complete rosters of the students. (You may know that two RAF flyers, who died in a training accident near Tulsa, are buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa.)

The big kids and I finished our brief time at Woolaroc with a walk along the rocky paths between the lodge and Lake Clyde. They remember walking down there last summer when we came up for a cousin's wedding. We bought a couple of snow cones and headed back to the van to meet Mom and the toddler.

Next stop Bartlesville. The intention was to look around, eat dinner, then go to the Bartlesville Playground (aka the Kiddie Park) when it opened at 7. The toddler would be big enough now to sit up and ride most of the rides.

As the weather turned from sun to gloom, I gave the kids a tour of Dad's historical sites -- the house we lived in on Delaware Street (demolished) which was walking distance from Dr. Denyer's office across the street (demolished), the Thunderbird Cafe (now an antique shop), our church (First Baptist), the Sani-Pool (demolished), Johnstone Park, and my dad's office (the Cities Service Bldg., now home to RSU's Bartlesville campus). We drove south past Aunt Connie and Uncle Dan's house on Dewey Street, McKinley School where cousin Kelley went to kindergarten in 1968-69 (I was 11 days too young to start the same year), and then to 1617 Rogers, near Jane Phillips Elementary School, where we moved in 1967 after my little sister was born. Our family lived in Bartlesville from approximately May 1965 to July 1969, when we moved, following Cities Service, to Tulsa.

As heavy rains moved in, we headed to Mr. Limey's Fish and Chips (est. 1969), in the once ultra-modern Comanche Center at the corner of Comanche and Frank Phillips. We all had fish and chips. With a late lunch, their half-order (one filet and a few fries), was plenty for me. I used my Treo to check the weather and learned there was a storm headed our way. I began to consider options. One possibility, quickly dismissed, was to drive another hour north to Independence, Kansas, and Riverside Park, which has a train and a carousel and some wonderful retro playground equipment, but we might get there only to hit more bad weather.

Although the rain had stopped by the time we left the restaurant, the Kiddie Park had decided to close to be on the safe side. The backup plan was to head to the Red Apple Bowling Center for some indoor fun.

The clerk at the desk presented me with a confusing and expensive array of options. We could rent a lane for a couple of hours -- about $55 for five people. We could buy individual lines of bowling. We could rent a lane for the rest of the night. I just wanted for four people to bowl a game, maybe two each. He wound up charging me $34 for one lane for an hour, with shoes, for four people. (Little Bit can't manage a 6 pound ball just yet.)

The kids had a good time. Eventually we figured out we could ask to have the bumpers put up. The six-year-old was offered the ball ramp to use, but she preferred to shove the ball down the lane by herself.

The balls were marked to make it easier to spot one that might work. The weights are printed in big numbers, and different colors are used for different weights. There are five or six standard hole sizes, which were also marked in large letters. I learned that for me a medium is too small (couldn't get thumb all the way in) and a large is way too big (thumb had too much space).

No one else there seemed to be familiar with bowling etiquette. I remember being schooled on where you could walk, where you couldn't walk, when you could start your approach and when you should hold off, how to pick up a ball, etc., when I took free lessons at Sheridan Lanes as a kid. The lessons were reinforced during the years I bowled in a youth league at Tiffany Bowl (now Plaza Santa Cecilia). Many customers seemed to think the area between the foul lines and the ball returns was just another walkway. Parents let their kids wander around on the approaches when they weren't bowling, heedless of the danger.

Even though it took some time to get shoes on, find bowling balls, and get the scoreboard setup, our hour started right away, and promptly one hour after the clerk rang me up, the lane went dark, about two frames into the second game. It was just as well -- it was nearly 9 and time to head home.

It did occur to me that I could have let the kids go nuts in the bowling center's video arcade for an hour and probably spent less than we did on bowling.

The Kiddie Park being closed was a disappointment, but I think we managed to salvage the day.

ELSEWHERE: It looks like a couple of other bloggers had some great family fun this weekend. See Dubya found an oasis of red state red meat in the midst of blue, blue California -- a rodeo -- and he brought back some great photos and a very entertaining write-up, in which he tries to explain to leftists how thrilling a rodeo is to a patriotic conservative. (You just need to read it.)

In conclusion, I am still so high and aroused from the weekend's potent brew of vicarious testosterone, jingoism, and aerosolized horse poo that I'm ready to jump on a Brahma bull and go invade North Korea. Or vote for Fred Thompson. Yee-ha!

And fellow former Bartian Brandon Dutcher spent the day with his family at Frontier City and has photos.

Here's a timely start-of-summer safety reminder from Tulsa World sports editor Mike Strain, who remembers the time when his son (and my nephew) nearly drowned in their neighborhood's pool:

I grabbed my son’s limp body by the arm and pulled him out of the water.

His face was the scary kind of white you associate with death. His lips were purple. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t moving.

About 10 years ago, my son could have drowned in a swimming pool as I sat about 15 feet away daydreaming in the sun. I never saw him jump into the five-foot end. Never realized that a fearless 3 year old who couldn’t swim was under water.

He had taken the “floaties” off his arms. He never liked those. Undetected by me, my wife and a lifeguard at our neighborhood pool, he jumped into the water. I don’t know how long he had been there – less than a minute probably. My wife was in the pool, and asked, “Where’s Jared?”

And then I saw him. He was about a foot under the water, arms stretched to both sides like he was about to give a welcoming hug. He was facing the sky and his eyes were wide open. He wasn’t moving. I will never forget the image – that moment when you don’t know if your son is going to live.

You can't take your eyes off them for a minute.

Last night we had an exceptionally noisy collection of creatures around our backyard pond. It has long been a popular gathering spot for American toads, but over the last three years it's started to attract tree frogs as well. We think there were at least four tree frogs at the pond last night, and at least a dozen toads. We discovered the frogs' favorite hiding places: They get a grip on the pond lining under the flat rocks that overhang the edge of the pond.

Pictures to come later, but for now, here's a 665 KB MP3 file of the toads and frogs singing. Better turn your volume down.

Yes, I'm still alive, despite not posting to the main blog in a few days. (You might have noticed that I have published some items on the linkblog in the meantime.)

It's been a busy (and sick) few days for our family. My wife has a chest cold. The 15-month-old is getting over an ear infection. Saturday I minded him and the six-year-old while my wife attended a church women's retreat. I spent most of Sunday going to and from Ponca City, where my ten-year-old son sang with the Tulsa Boy Singers at an evensong service at Grace Episcopal Church, a foretaste of their June performances at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, York Minster, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

A couple of happy memories from the past few days stand out.

Thursday evening the weather was in clear, calm, and in the 70s. My daughter doesn't have school on Friday, and my son had a field trip to Ft. Gibson the next day, so we didn't have the usual pressure of getting through homework. The little one was feeling miserable from his ear infection (trying to make the pain go away by saying "all done! all done!"), but he wanted to go out in the backyard. He walked around smiling, barefooted and barebellied, rolling a ball ("bah!") up the slide ("sigh!") with his big sister.

His vocabulary is growing at a rapid pace: He's been saying and signing for food ("foo?") for a long time. He likes to feed himself with a spoon ("boo" or, sometimes, "brrrrrrrrooo") and enjoys crackers ("gah"). The sound of a car or an airplane elicits a motorboat noise from his lips. He loves to "go-go-go" in the car. The signal for dropping something (even if deliberately) has recently evolved from "uh-uh-uh-uh" to "uh-uh-oh." He loves his "Dah," his big sister "K-k," and his big brother "Gng." (Hard to transcribe that last -- a kind of nasal grunt.)

By far, the cutest thing he says is "ma-ma-ma-ma" -- the vowel sound is midway between an "ah" and an "oh," and there's always a wistful look on his face when he says it. (It sort of goes down the scale, too, which is even cuter.)

My big son still had to get his violin practice in, but my wife let him do it outside on the deck. She brought out her own violin and tutored him on the minuet he's trying to perfect. When he was done with that, he worked on "Faded Love." The sweet sounds of the violins were mixed with the songs of mourning doves. (The little one says "click, click" and does the sign for "bird" when he hears them sing.)

The scene was enhanced by the bearded irises and tea roses in bloom and the lush, thick carpet of grass. A year ago, most of the backyard had been bare dirt. Our growing trees had shaded much of the bermuda grass to death. Last fall, we hacked up the dirt, and I scattered a bag of Pennington Enviro-Shade grass seed and a bag of lawn starter. The lawn has almost completely filled in, and it's as green as Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. That may be my most satisfying achievement of the last several months.

On Saturday afternoon I dropped the big boy off at a classmate's house, then took the girl and the little boy somewhere we could go for a stroll and enjoy the sunshine. We were down south, so we headed across the bridge to Riverwalk Crossing. We walked along the riverfront and bumped into Ray Pearcey (I run into him often enough and in enough different places that he's sure I'm tailing him), who was having lunch with Oklahoma Eagle publisher Jim Goodwin and his daughter. Jim had some very kind words for my work in UTW, a high compliment coming from someone who runs one of the longest-running newspapers in the state, with a proud heritage of serving the African-American community.

The kids and I had a very nice lunch on the patio at Los Cabos. The chips and salsa felt good on my scratchy throat, my daughter enjoyed her mini-corn dogs, and the little one shared the grilled chicken in my taco salad, and he didn't seem to mind the bits of sour cream and guacamole. Toward the end a trio of Mexican guitarists started playing, leading off with "Ghost Riders in the Sky." After working through some standards of the genre ("La Bamba," "El Condor Pasa," "Guantanamera"), they played and sang a Spanish version of Dion's car-crash classic, "Last Kiss." ("Where, o where can my baby be? The Lord took her away from me.") We finished our excursion with Chocolate Butterfinger and Vanilla Oreo ice cream. Later we went to a garden store to buy some annual flowers for my wife's birthday.

So I have been busy, just not here.

A couple of things to look forward to this Monday:

It's the maiden broadcast for my friends Gwen Freeman and Chris Medlock, the new co-hosts of KFAQ Mornings. Listen live from 5:30 to 9:00 on 1170 kHz or listen later to the podcast online. Break a leg, guys, or... strain a tonsil or... something.

Also on the air and on the web: Two of my favorite bloggers, two that I find consistently challenging and thought-provoking, shared a microphone recently. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, interviewed Dawn Eden, author of The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On for his radio show today. From this description, it sounds like a conversation worth hearing. (Too bad another Kentucky blogger, Michael Spencer, couldn't have been there, too. That would have made for a fascinating roundtable discussion.)

The show should be available here later today, but in the meantime you can hear Mohler's recommendations for must-read Christian biographies (here's the corresponding blog entry).

Or you can read this essay by Mohler, which Dawn Eden recommends, about how Evangelicals can and should work alongside Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians in challenging an increasingly secular culture, yet without compromising the "Evangelical affirmation of salvation through faith alone by grace alone through Christ alone.... [W]e must be ready to stand together in cultural co-belligerence, rooted in a common core of philosophical and theological principles, without demanding confessional agreement or pretending that this has been achieved."

UPDATE: Here's a link to audio of Al Mohler's interview with Dawn Eden.

Our 10-year-old was running a degree of fever Friday morning, so we kept him home from school. This morning he was at 104, was coughing, aching, and congested, and he threw up, so I took him to the urgent care center. They were very efficient at processing us in, and it didn't take much longer to get to the examining room than it would have if we'd made a normal doctor's appointment. (I was surprised, however, that the urgent care clinic didn't have access to his records and our insurance information, since his pediatrician is part of the same medical system. We had to fill out all the paperwork again for the urgent care clinic.)

The doctor ordered a nasal and throat swab to check for flu and strep. My son went back to the waiting room while I walked the samples down to the lab. About 20 minutes later we were called back in for the results: Influenza.

For goodness' sake, it's March already! The daffodils are blooming! Flu season is supposed to be over!

So we've got him quarantined in his room, away from little sister and little brother. He and I and little sister are taking Tamiflu.

Since my wife is still nursing little brother twice a day, we're debating what to do for her. Tamiflu could help her not get the flu, but since they don't know if the medication passes into breastmilk and what effect it would have on a 14-month-old if it did, her taking it means not nursing him. We're reluctant to stop nursing, because it immunized him against the intestinal bug that ran through the family two weekends ago. (Also, my wife says, nursing is nice. It would be sad to have to stop.)

Flu means the 10-year-old will miss a sleepover birthday party. The backup plan, if he didn't feel up to a sleepover, but was up to getting out (this was before we knew it was flu), was to take him to the Bob Wills Birthday Celebration -- he wanted to hear Oklahoma Stomp. (I would have liked that, too, and to hear the Texas Playboys' longer set tonight. Would someone please go tonight and e-mail me -- blog at batesline dot com -- to tell me all about it?)

We're quarantining ourselves as much as possible, so the other thing we're going to have to miss is a special program at Christ Presbyterian Church tomorrow morning. Jerram Barrs, head of the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary, will be the keynote speaker for our church's annual missions conference. He will be speaking during worship at 9:15 a.m., and then during a combined adult Sunday School class at 11:00. After a catered box lunch, there will be a further Q&A session.

Barrs teaches apologetics at Covenant Seminary. The title of his talk is "Finding Grace in Unexpected People." The vision statement of the Francis Schaeffer Institute will give you an idea what to expect:

The Church is to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person. Unfortunately, Christians can retreat into a subculture due to fear of the surrounding society. Many do not understand or are unsure how to respond to secularism, postmodernism, New Age spirituality, and the challenges of science and technology. Instead of seeking to grow in understanding, Christians can withdraw behind defensive barriers for protection.

The tragedy is that the barriers work both ways. They not only keep the culture away from Christians, but they also keep the Gospel away from those who need it. We can begin to develop an "us versus them" mentality which isolates us from our neighbors and prevents others from hearing the Gospel and seeing it at work in our lives. We often are regarded merely as "religious," not as earnestly concerned for truth.

The goal of the Schaeffer Institute is to assist Christians in breaking down these barriers, to become more faithful and effective in evangelism, and to become more obedient to God's Word in all areas of life. We seek to do this by training Christians to observe and understand the culture in which they live, and by modeling respectful dialogue with those who are not Christians. In this way we hope to prepare Christians to be involved effectively as salt and light beyond the Church in the wider culture.

So while much of this missions conference will focus on the missionaries and outreaches sponsored by our church in Ukraine, Uganda, Mexico, the Philippines, Cameroon, Brazil, and Kurdistan, among other places, tomorrow morning's focus will be on effectively stepping outside of the evangelical subculture to reach our fellow Tulsans with the truth of Christ.

One of the things that attracted us to this church when we joined 15 years ago was the commitment to reach the world with the Gospel. Missions wasn't just a special offering collected a couple of times a year, or a small percentage automatically deducted from the budget. The church was directly involved in supporting individual missionaries and missionary families, in sending its own leaders and lay members on short-term missions, and in helping our own members to become full-time missionaries.

You can learn more about the missions program and the 2007 conference from the CPC missions conference brochure (PDF format).

In case you missed last week's FDA announcement:

On February 14, 2007, FDA advised consumers not to eat any Peter Pan peanut butter purchased since May 2006 and not to eat Great Value peanut butter with a product code beginning with "2111" purchased since May 2006 because of risk of contamination with Salmonella Tennessee. Salmonella is a bacterium that causes foodborne illness, and “Tennessee” is a type of Salmonella. All Peter Pan peanut butter purchased since May 2006 is affected; only those jars of Great Value peanut butter purchased since May 2006 with a product code beginning with "2111” are affected. Although Great Value peanut butter with the specified product code has not been linked by CDC to the cases of Salmonella Tennessee infection, the product is manufactured in the same plant as Peter Pan peanut butter and, thus, is believed to be at similar risk of contamination. Great Value peanut butter made by manufacturers other than ConAgra is not affected.

Slate's Explainer explains how peanut butter could be contaminated with salmonella:

Peanut butter happens to be a pretty safe food when it comes to microorganisms. That's because the nuts are blanched, roasted, and ground up at temperatures high enough to kill any salmonella bacteria that might have gotten into the raw ingredients. But the germs can still contaminate the product in the "post-processing" phase of production—when the finished product is loaded into jars and labeled for sale. The only other known outbreak of peanut butter-related salmonellosis occurred in Australia in the mid-1990s: Post-processing contamination with fecal matter was the likely culprit.

I checked our pantry shelf and was relieved to see a jar of Jif there.

As a fan of the comic strip Pogo, I've read many biographical sketches of cartoonist Walt Kelly, but I never remember having read that he wrote and illustrated a comic book series based on the Our Gang shorts. (You might know them better as "The Little Rascals" -- Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa, etc.)

Earlier this year, Fantagraphics published a reissue of Walt Kelly's Our Gang comic books from 1942 and 1943, volume 1 of a planned series. The ALA Booklist blurb has this to say:

Although the Our Gang film series was on its last legs in 1942, Dell Comics launched a comic-book version of it that is more than a footnote to the films because it was written and drawn by Walt Kelly, seven years before he brought Pogo to the newspapers. Ironically, while the films were by then slick and mannered, having lost their low-budget modesty after MGM took over producing them, in Kelly's comics they regained much of their earlier, unaffected charm, thanks to his winsome story lines, homey characterizations, and engaging cartooning.

(*After Disney, Before Pogo. Kelly was one of the animators on Fantasia (1940); the Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony segment, featuring centaurs, putti, Zeus, Bacchus, and other characters from Greek mythology, bears his unmistakable touch. As a two- and three-year-old, my now-10-year-old son watched this segment over and over again, and Iris, who brought forth the rainbow after the storm, was his first imaginary friend. He called her "the rainbow princess.")

Earlier this summer, the Branson, Missouri, Convention and Vistors Bureau asked about a dozen members of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas (AORBS) to spend a weekend in Branson. They were filmed riding roller coasters at Silver Dollar City and clowning on stage at a number of Branson's theatres. The result is a three-minute promo set to a Beach Boys-like tune.

My dad, who went to his first AORBS convention in Branson earlier in the year, was part of the group brought back for the video. In the video, he's the Santa in the red ballcap and red shirt. (You can see him at the left end of the chorus line at about 1:49, and in the back row on the right when all the Santas call out "Merry Christmas" at the end.)

This is Dad's second season as a Real Bearded Santa, and he's having a great time. He spent three weekends at Philbrook's Festival of Trees. Here's a proof sheet from his first Saturday there, on the website of photographer Ian B. Danziger. A visit with Santa can be intimidating for little kids, and Dad says that Ian is great at getting kids to relax and smile for the camera. (Dad does a pretty good job of putting kids at ease, himself.)

If you need a right jolly old elf to grace your Tulsa-area Christmas event, give David Bates a call at 230-6258 or e-mail him at bateswd@yahoo.com. He's already starting to field inquiries for the 2007 Christmas season.

Here's a link to an entry from 2004, with links to some readings appropriate for Thanksgiving, including accounts of the first Thanksgiving, every presidential Thanksgiving proclamation, and the Wall Street Journal's traditional reprinting of "The Desolate Wilderness" and "The Fair Land".

I started writing this entry last Saturday, November 11.

As it was the second Saturday in November, we headed down to the south side of Oklahoma City to Uncle Dan and Aunt Connie's house for an early Thanksgiving celebration with Mom's side of the family. Good food, a chance for everyone to get to see the baby, and some time to slump on a comfortable sofa, watching the Nebraska-Texas A&M game through closed eyelids.

Since it was the old road's 80th birthday, I had hoped to drive some Route 66 on the way down, but we got off to our usual slow start and had to stick to the turnpike to get to Aunt Connie's in time for lunch.

On the way home, close to dark, we decided to drive some of the old road anyway. The 10-year-old boy immediately began agitating for a dinner stop at the Rock Cafe. We drove the segment from I-35 east of Edmond to I-44 east of Wellston. I had seen some billboards which left me with the impression that Pops, a new landmark on the highway west of Arcadia was already open. (It's not -- opening is set for summer 2007.)

Everyone was getting hungry, so we jumped on the turnpike at Wellston and got off at Stroud.

(A note to the good people of Stroud: Those ridiculously bright "acorn" lights may look lovely and quaint during the day, but at night the glare from them actually hides your Main Street buildings from view. Much of the energy of the acorn lights is wasted, shining up into the sky or into the eyes of oncoming drivers, rather than onto the street where it's needed. Consider at least replacing the bulbs with something lower wattage, or better yet, replace the fixtures with full-cutoff IESNA-compliant lamps that will give you the historic appearance you want, without the glare. Here's an entry from my archives about good and bad streetlighting.)

As we walked from the parking lot into the cafe, I spied a familiar-looking orange VW van. "That looks like Fillmore," I said to the kids, referring to the hippie van from the movie Cars, voiced by George Carlin.

The Rock's owner, Dawn Welch, came by the table to say hello. We told Dawn about seeing Cars at the film festival and hearing Michael Wallis speak.

(As I was watching Cars, listening to Sally the Porsche give an impassioned speech about taking care of and taking pride in their bypassed and beleaguered town, I remembered the poster on the wall behind the east end of the counter at the Rock Cafe, a snapshot of a white board from some sort of brainstorming session on how to make Stroud a better place. Art imitates life.)

Dawn pointed out the gray-headed fellow with the bushy beard who was sitting at the counter. As I had guessed, it was Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire, owner of that VW van. Waldmire and his van were the inspiration for the character Fillmore. Waldmire travels the road much of the year. Dawn says he never calls ahead; he just shows up. He creates beautifully intricate pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors of landmarks and birds-eye-views along the old highway, filled with tiny, neatly-lettered descriptive text. (Here's a webpage with a picture of Bob Waldmire and several examples of his work.)

After a while we introduced ourselves. Bob went out to his van and brought back a couple of cartoons he had drawn, depicting a meeting between Fillmore and his own van, and he signed one for each of the kids, and also gave them his calling card -- a postcard drawing of his van, announcing that "The Unofficial Old Route 66 Mobile Information Center (piloted by R. Waldmire)" is "coming soon to your town!"

With some prompting from Mom, my 10-year-old told Bob about some difficulty he was having painting a watercolor of an owl for art class at school. Bob went back out to the van, brought back his watercolors, and told my son about some of his watercolor techniques. Bob also gave him a card with his drawing of a great horned owl (showing how he used pencil along with inkpen to create the delicate texture of the owl's chest feathers), a watercolor cartoon showing the Cozy Dog couple as bikers riding down 66, and a watercolor he did for TNT Engineering, Inc., in Kingman, Arizona, depicting a VW bug and two VW buses (both split window and bay window) in front of a stunning desert landscape. (Here are two in-progress photos of a mural Bob is doing on TNT's building in Kingman.) He also gave us a copy of his Route 66 Scenes map of Oklahoma.

While we were talking with Bob, Emily Priddy, Route 66 activist and Red Fork Hippie Chick, came into the Rock Cafe. (She was wearing a very cool jean jacket with a big 66 shield on the back, with big shiny sequins outlining the numbers like the reflective discs you see on some old highway signs.) Emily was helping with the Mother Road 100, a 100-mile ultramarathon, which had begun Saturday morning at 7 in Arcadia. Emily was helping to pace a friend who was in the race, and then would be manning the aid station at Kellyville. (She has a detailed account of her weekend on her blog: "I don’t know whether that was the most amazing weekend of my entire life, but if it wasn’t, it didn’t miss it by much.") Emily got some photos of the whole family with Bob (which I'll post later). When I went to pay for our dinner, I learned that she'd perpetrated another random act of kindness. What a sweetheart!

We said so long to Bob as we left the cafe -- we'd see him in Clinton next June if not sooner.

I decided to drive the old road the rest of the way to Tulsa. We watched with amazement as the ultramarathoners made their way along the other side of the highway. Emily had told us they were only expecting 30 runners to make it to Kellyville, 84 miles into the run, but it was apparent that many more were still in the race. The last runner we passed was at 9:40 p.m., near the Creek County Speedway, probably about 85 miles in. That's an average speed of 5.8 miles per hour, including rest stops, sustained for 14.67 hours.

It was a magical evening, a perfect way to mark the start of the Mother Road's ninth decade, on her birthday and mine.

Started an entry on today's events, but I'm too tired to finish it. Suffice to say, we encountered a bit of Route 66 magic on the road's 80th birthday (and my 43rd). I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

We opted, as usual, for homemade costumes, which are more fun and usually look better than the storebought kind. My daughter's toothless fairy costume was a nice dress, a pair of butterfly wings, and a wand that she decorated herself. (Nature took care of the toothless part.) A neighbor sewed my son's Gryffindor house robe, and we added the house patch. We bought his wand, and a cheap pair of sunglasses and wash-out hair dye completed his costume.

About 6:30 last night, I took the two big kids around our block. Of the 40 houses around us, about 10 were open for business. We saw a few other families out as well -- but they seemed to have driven into the neighborhood from somewhere else.

My wife had mentioned a "trunk-or-treat" event at the church down the street. That's where people park their cars in the church parking lot, pop open and decorate their trunks and hand out candy. Seems kind of pointless -- stop at one trunk, get candy, take four steps to the next trunk, get candy, repeat. You lose the anticipation of walking up the steps and ringing the doorbell, wondering who will answer and what kind of treats they'll have. Making the circuit in a parking lot doesn't compare with deciding whether to turn the corner to the next block or head home.

Halloween was a neighborhood event when I was a kid. It was in the neighborhood, and it reinforced a sense of neighborliness. Nowadays we don't shop with, worship with, or go to school with the people we share a subdivision with. Attending Halloween events away from home severs one of the few remaining ties to neighborhood, and reinforces our membership in geographically-scattered communities.

(Take a map and mark the places you visit on a regular basis -- your church, your job, where you shop, where your kids go to school. That's your true neighborhood.)

That said, we next got in the car and headed to First Baptist Church downtown for their fall festival, where we took the above photo. My parents are members there, and we go nearly every year. They have carnival games, a pony ride, face painting, and a bouncy castle. $3 buys a 20-punch pass, and each game or attraction takes one punch -- it's not expensive, but the kids have to think about how they want to spend their punches. Win or lose, you get candy just for playing the games.

Grandma got a balloon for the baby and tied it to his stroller. He had the best time pulling down the string hand over hand to bring the balloon closer.

(I know, I'm a rotten dad: I let my son read Harry Potter, let my kids go trick-or-treating, with my son dressed as Harry Potter, and I let my baby have a dangerous balloon.)

THE NATIONAL CHILDREN'S FORECAST CENTER HAS ISSUED A SEVERE BABY WARNING FOR PORTIONS OF NORTHWESTERN ARKANSAS AND SOUTHWESTERN MISSOURI UNTIL 6 AM TOMORROW MORNING. THIS BABY MAY BE ACCOMPANIED BY HEAVY DROOL, CUTE DIMPLES, AND HIGH-PITCHED SQUALLS. IF YOU ARE IN THE PATH OF THIS BABY, TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

THE BIG SISTER ADVISORY FOR CENTRAL OKLAHOMA REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 PM. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BALLERINA-LIKE ROTATION.

(A bit of fun with the green screen at the KJRH booth at the Tulsa State Fair last Saturday.)

I have a confession to make. For the last several years I have had trouble keeping my shoelaces tied.

I learned in kindergarten, same as most folks. (Mrs. Chambers had one of those wooden Playskool lacing toys to practice on.) For the next few decades, I had no problem tying my shoes and my shoes staying tied until I was ready to take them off.

But lately my shoelaces will not cooperate. Here's what I think happened: I started wearing shoes with round, waxed laces, which are more prone than flat laces to coming undone. When they did come undone, I started to second guess thirty years of muscle memory, and I tried different things to get my laces to stay put. I switched between right over left and left over right, did the two-loops method, did the normal method, and it got to the point I couldn't remember which was the way I had originally been taught.

Today I stumbled across a website that solves my problem: Ian Fieggen's Shoelace Site. In this amazingly comprehensive site, Fieggen illustrates 31 different ways to lace a pair of shoes, 16 ways to lace shoes with lugs, and 17 different ways to tie shoelaces. He explains what causes shoelaces to slip. There are tips for teaching your children how to tie their shoes, and pointers to tying and lacing methods more suited for different sports. There are even one-handed methods for tying your shoes. The illustrations are crystal clear, using different colors for left and right lace.

I tried Ian's secure shoelace knot tonight before heading off with the family to the Tulsa State Fair. We walked from our car, parked on the race track near Driller Stadium, to the Children's Building to see our kids' artwork on display. (The boy won a blue ribbon for his Lego car, and the girl entered two drawings and an acrylic painting.) Then it was off to hear Asleep at the Wheel at the Oklahoma Stage. After the show (during most of which the baby boy was happy-bouncing), we went on to Bell's to ride some rides, then walked all the way back across the fairgrounds to the gate. The parking trams were calling it a night just as the fair was closing, so we had to trudge all the way back to the car.

For all that walking, my laces stayed tied.

Ian's Shoelace Site is the sort of site that makes me love the Internet. Someone with a lot of passion on a narrow subject has put together a beautifully organized site full of useful information. It's not the sort of information you'll need every day, but it's awfully handy. And even if you don't need the information, it's so well done you could lose yourself for a while and end up saying to yourself, "I never knew there was so much to know about shoelaces."

I was curious about the sort of person who would create such a website. Ian Fieggen is an Australian, about my age, who works in both graphic design and computers.

Ian has a "long-time partner" named Inge, but they haven't yet tied the knot. If they ever do, I feel sure it will stay tied.

Last week we learned that our 10-year-old son has been awarded a scholarship for the Barthelmes Conservatory Music School. The school, based in 1st Presbyterian Church's Bernsen Center, takes students with an aptitude for music and provides them with lessons in music theory private instruction in an instrument, twice a week after school. Everyone accepted into the Music School program is granted a full scholarship. He plans to learn violin.

He's excited and so are we, but it's going to be a busy school year, as he'll continue two other nights a week with Tulsa Boy Singers rehearsals.

(By the way, Tulsa Boy Singers is still looking for more singers, and there's an added incentive to joining now -- a week-long performance tour of Britain planned for June 2007. If you'd like your son to audition, contact Jackie Boyd at 698-4029 or 585-BOYS. E-mail me at blog AT batesline DOT com if you have any questions from a parent's perspective about the program.)

Here's a Tulsa World story from last August about the Barthelmes Conservatory, the Music School, and director Aida Aydinyan.

Another random childhood memory inspired by a recent family event:

My son had a root canal on one of his upper incisors on Friday. (Back in the spring, a baseball glanced off the tip of his glove and hit the tooth.)

I was amazed: I expected him to have a swollen mouth, packed with cotton swabs, and to hear him moaning in pain when I came home. Instead he talked with excitement about the procedure, and how weird it was to have a numb nose and lips for a while, and how he was so nauseous on the ride home that he.... ("That's enough! Please don't talk about that at the dinner table!")

The worst oral surgery I've ever had was a surgical removal of a wisdom tooth, but when I was about my son's age, or younger, I had to get an "appliance" to correct a crossbite. (Didn't work -- I still had to have braces a few years later.) There was some metal thing that sat in the roof of my mouth and it was supposed to shift several crowded teeth around. They used novacaine on me and maybe laughing gas, too.

The office of Dr. Smith, the dentist, was in the Warren Building, along with several other doctors we saw. Often after a doctor's visit in that part of town, we'd stop by the little dairy stand / burger place on 61st just west of Sheridan. (The building is a Goldie's now; it had another name when I was a kid.) After my appliance was installed, Mom bought me a root beer float there as a treat. I tried to drink it, but with my mouth so numb it was just too strange.

After other doctor visits we would go to the playground at LaFortune Park. I remember my sister and me playing there wearing our post-eye-dilation paper sunglasses, following a visit to Dr. Carroll the ophthalmologist.

One other piece of mouth-related family news: The baby is now making motorboat noises. Not just a raspberry, this is a sustained and vocalized lip-flapping noise, with pitch rising and falling. When he pauses, big brother can start the motorboat up again by blowing in his face. He still doesn't have any teeth yet, but as much as he's drooling, it shouldn't be long now. Meanwhile, big sister is reporting that her two front teeth are very loose; she may not be able to withth uth Merry Chrithmath thith year.

Toddlers have these games and routines that they want to do over and over again -- "fly me like Superman," "hold me upside down," piggy back rides -- and the more you repeat them the more they giggle. Don Danz and his little son Drew have a game that is distinctly Tulsan. It's called "Heal me," and there's a very cute video of it on Don's site.

It reminds me of when my oldest was about two years old. We were looking at a shoe, and he was asking me the names of the parts of it. When I told him which part was the heel, he said, "Daddy heals it at church."

(On a completely different topic, Don also has some thoughts about former Judge Donald Thompson's conviction, along with a nice picture of the judge in an orange jumpsuit.)

As I said in the previous entry, this was our first ever visit to Oklahoma City's Frontier City theme park. It was just us guys, so we were going to ride as many rides as we wanted to, as often as we wanted to, without slowing down for anyone else. We ate before we went to the park, and it was hot enough (104, I think) that we weren't interested in eating during the day. We bought the big refillable drink cups and went through three fills each.

Because of the heat, the crowds were pretty thin, and we never had to wait in line for long. We rode the Wildcat (the wooden coaster) at least five times, the Silver Bullet (a steel coaster with a loop) three times, and the Prairie Schooner (like Pharoah's Fury at Bell's) at least six times. (My son rode it six times; I think I stopped at four.)

Neither of us are daredevils, but we both pushed our limits. Neither of us had been on a looped roller coaster before. The tallest and most noticeable ride in the park is Eruption, the slingshot ride that launches the six-person capsule 240 feet in the air. It's easy to spot from I-35. About mid-afternoon we had worked up the courage to try it, and we liked it so much that we did it again. It was a bit creepy to see ourselves rise above the tops of the supporting towers.

The park seemed shorthanded. A few rides were closed the entire day -- the train, the Terrible Twister, the Tomahawk. I overheard one ride operator say that they had closed several shops and food stands to try to keep as many rides open as possible. At another ride, I heard a couple of employees talking about the number of hours they'd worked the previous week: One was over 70, and the other was over 60. Despite that, everyone seemed to be polite and efficient.

We saw three shows. The gunfighters show had some impressive stunts and lots of silly humor. The World of Magic was excellent -- a real magic show with illusions involving swords, boxes, locked trunks, and attractive scantily-clad young women. There was a psychic segment, where the fakery was exaggerated to the point of being obvious. Good showmanship all around.

The third show -- Merlin's Magicademy -- was a waste of our time. It would have been helpful if the description had said, "Very small children will be delighted...." Despite the name, no genuine illusions (oxymoron?) were performed. It was all puppetry, lipsynched music, and some animatronic effects. I didn't even notice any little children actually being delighted with the performance, but it's hard to tell. Hot weather seems to make audiences less than responsive.

Most unexpectedly interesting ride: Casino, which looks like a roulette wheel that does some tilting and turning.

Most nauseating ride: As always, the Tilt-A-Whirl (known here as the Tornado) brings me closest to losing my lunch. The Rodeo Round-Up -- a kind of centrifuge -- was a close second.

Most relaxing ride: The ferris wheel.

Most boring ride: Treasure Mountain, the oldest ride in the park, would only be fun if you brought your own entertainment in the form of a date to make out with in the dark. A close second: The Swingin' Six Guns, a spinning swing ride, didn't spin fast enough to be fun. You could hardly feel the breeze.

Most interesting exhibit: In the waiting area for the Wildcat, there are photos and descriptions about the history of roller coasters, famous designers, and famous coasters. Wildcat was rescued from Kansas City's Fairyland amusement park.

Best ways to cool off: Renegade Rapids and the Mystery River log flume.

Rides we skipped: All the kiddie rides, the carousel, the Mindbender, the Hangman (a free-fall ride), the Diamondback, and the three that were closed.

Costs: We bought our tickets online and printed them at home, $26 each including tax, plus $3 "shipping", netting us about $7 total saved. Parking was $10. The refillable soda cups were $8 each, and $1 for each refill. We managed to steer clear of the games and the add-ons, except for the photo you see above, which was just too good to pass up as a memento of our day together.

My oldest son just turned ten, and to celebrate, I took him for an overnight trip to Oklahoma City.

Saturday morning, we drove most of the way down the old highway, 66, and part of the way down some very old highway. I got off the turnpike at Kellyville. Just west of the 66-33 junction you can see what's left of the native stone tourist cabins that Max Meyer built.

About seven miles east of Bristow, on a whim, I turned back on an older 66 alignment, which rejoined the main road from the southeast. Turned out that this was the dead end segment that has an impressive native stone tourist court -- a single building with multiple units. It's less than a mile from the main road.

As we drove my son was telling me all about the Pixar movie Cars and the old Route 66 town of Radiator Springs where most of the action takes place.

We stopped at the Rock Cafe in Stroud for a cold drink. The cafe's souvenir stand next door had an impressive array of merchandise from the movie Cars. My son picked up the issue of Route 66 Magazine that featured the movie (he pored over it while drinking his root beer at the cafe's counter), and I bought a guidebook to 66 in Oklahoma, showing all the alignments and the years they were part of the highway.

That book led us to an old '20s alignment which had originally been part of the Ozark Trail, a named auto route that predated the U. S. numbered highway system. There's a tall obelisk (20 feet perhaps?) a few miles west of Stroud; apparently it had been a marker for the route.

We drove down Davenport's brick Broadway, got turned around trying to get back to the main road, and found ourselves going through an interesting arch railway viaduct southwest of town.

In Arcadia we stopped at the Round Barn. I remember visiting when renovation was barely started back in 1990. The loft, which has amazing acoustics, is used for dances and other events, as it was back in the day. Downstairs is a museum about the Round Barn and the town of Arcadia. Butch, the curator, is a local native, and has posted birds' eye view sketches of the town as he remembers it from his childhood.

One of Butch's displays is from the diary of the original barn owner, about a trip in the 'teens from Arcadia to California. It took three hours to get as far as Oklahoma City. It took from Thursday morning to Monday night to make it to Amarillo, with occasional stops to pull the car out of a mud hole or to wait for a ferry.

In Oklahoma City, we headed for the 45th Infantry Museum. The Thunderbirds have an illustrious history, fighting their way from Sicily to Munich during WW II and on Pork Chop Hill and Heartbreak
Ridge in the Korean Conflict. My son has been reading a lot of books about World War II lately, and he drank it all in. A highlight of the museum is the collection of over 200 "Willie and Joe" cartoons from the war which Bill Mauldin donated to this museum dedicated to his old outfit. It was the 45th that liberated Dachau Concentration Camp, and there is a special exhibit about the horrors they found when they entered.

Outside there are land and air vehicles from WW II and Korea on display. We spent over two hours at the museum and didn't have time to explore the place fully.

We went to Bricktown. I gave my son a choice between a movie and a ballgame, and given the temperature at the time, he opted for a movie. We got a bite at the Bricktown Sonic, then saw Monster House, a Dreamworks SKG computer animation done using the same methods that were used to such impressive effect in The Polar Express. Monster House has its scary and thrilling moments, deserving of its PG rating. My son really enjoyed it, and I have to say that it kept my attention, too.

Today we went to Frontier City, after a hearty breakfast (him) / lunch (me) at Cracker Barrel. Despite driving past it for nearly four decades, I had never been to Frontier City. We had a great time. Great thrill rides, a terrific magic show, and bumper cars that I was allowed to ride. I'll save details for another entry.

We had planned to stay 'til closing, but my son wanted to eat at the Rock Cafe on the way back to Tulsa, so we left early enough to make it there by 8:20. He had nachos, I had a guacamole burger -- both quite good. He was amused by the glass bottle that his Coke came in. "Where can you get these?"

We were home at ten, about 36 hours after we left, both exhausted and hot. (My car's AC stopped working, and I hadn't had time to get it fixed.)

Wednesday night it was just my wife, the baby, and I -- big brother was at choir camp, big sister was staying with Grandma -- so we decided to try dinner at Desi Wok, the Indian/Chinese restaurant on Hudson just north of 41st.

The food was very good. We had the chicken tikka masala and the shrimp Thai pepper stir fry.

The service was friendly, too. The baby got restless after a while in his high chair, so I took him out and tried to hold him on my lap while I continued eating while not letting him within grabbing reach of my plate. One of the waitress/order-takers, who had been flirting with him earlier, asked if she could hold him for a while. We said sure, and for the next 10 minutes or so, she or one of her coworkers held him behind the cash register. It was like being at a big family dinner and a cousin offers to hold the baby while you finish eating.

We wouldn't ordinarily pass our baby off to a stranger, but we were at the nearest table to the register, so I could (and did) keep a close eye, and there were enough people around that there would have been plenty of witnesses if anything bad had happened. And I think we felt more comfortable because it seemed to be a restaurant that, like a number of Asian places around town, was owned and operated by an extended family. At this sort of restaurant, it's not unusual to see aunts and cousins, older folks and small children around the restaurant, sometimes helping, sometimes just visiting.

Friendly place, good food, reasonable prices, and, as far as I know, the only place you can get Indian food around town without going to south Tulsa.

In 1983, after my sophomore year in college, I went on a summer missions project to the Philippines with Campus Crusade for Christ. I spent two months living in Quezon City and working alongside staffers at Far Eastern University in Manila, evangelizing students with the Four Spiritual Laws and helping to train the students involved in the CCC chapter there.

The project involved about 25 American staff and students, who were split up in teams between Metro Manila, Baguio City, Iloilo, and Cebu. I spent all but a few days in Metro Manila; our team took an R&R break in Baguio City and Bauang, on the South China Sea in La Union province.

The project director was Greg Ganssle. Greg was campus director at Marshall then; he went on to get a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is now involved in something called the Rivendell Institute. I met Greg the previous summer, when he was assistant director of the 1982 Ocean City, New Jersey, summer project. I didn't see much of Greg that summer -- he spent it in Iloilo.

Instead our assigned male staffer was Jon Rittenhouse, then campus director at Michigan Tech. Years later, Jon became the inspiration for a comic strip character. (He was much tamer, although rather uptight, in 1983.) My fellow students were John Parker "Beach" Ward (Marshall), Eric Christiansen, Mary Jane Carlson, and Christina West (Miami of Ohio). There were two staff women from the states assigned to Manila: Norma Valencia from CCC headquarters and Sara (whose last name I forget). Beach Ward and I kept each other sane and laughing that summer.

Some time ago I scanned in some of the slides I took in the Philippines. Tonight I posted them on Flickr, mainly for the benefit of my friend Jenny, who was a psychology student at FEU in 1983. She found me again a couple of years ago, courtesy Google, and she keeps me up to date on Filipino political intrigue. (Helps to keep the Tulsa situation in perspective.)

As a whole, the photos aren't all that representative of the summer; the set is weighted heavily toward special events, like an R&R trip to Baguio City in the mountains, but there are some photos of staff and students at FEU and of the house where we stayed and the Crusade staff trainees that we shared it with.

Click the coconut warning sign below to see the photo set.

(And yes, I'm aware that the pictures are horribly underexposed.)

Our little one is now six and a half months old. At his six-month checkup back on July 11, he was 17 lbs. 6.5 oz., 26" long, and a 45 1/2 cm. head circumference.

It was about that time that we started him on some solid food: oatmeal and rice baby cereal, applesauce, squash, and today for the first time green beans. There has been the expected change in diaper contents. The baby is a good eater, and my wife is happy that she is no longer his sole source for calories.

He can roll now, too -- both directions and for quite a distance. Strings are very entertaining. He occasionally makes a "ba" sound, although the consonant is about halfway between a b and a v, a consonantal compromise made famous by Amy Grant in her hit single "Baby, Baby" (aka "Vavy, Vavy"). Mostly he utters these happy squawks, like a parrot or a grackle. (All three kids went through this squawking phase, and it always reminds me of a fraternity brother who would emit loud squawks to startle people.)

He loves drinking water. He will sip it out of a cup or a bottle. I opened a bottle of Ozarka the other day while I was holding him: He grabbed it with both hands and latched his mouth onto the opening.

Our oldest had his first violin lesson with his Mom today. He's been anxious to start learning.

The nearly-six-year-old has mixed up baby food and fed the baby several times, and she is deservedly proud of being such a helpful big sister.

A week ago, the whole family made our annual trek with friends to the Bartlesville Playground, aka the Kiddie Park. This little collection of two dozen rides, mainly for kids ages 1 to 10, has been around for over fifty years. It was there when my family lived in Bartlesville in the late '60s, and it is fun to see my kids on the same rides -- the train (and the tunnel that everyone screams in), the carousel, the biplanes that you can make go up and down, the little ferris wheel where everyone sits in a kind of painted cage, the little boats, the little cars.

Here's a picture of me (left foreground) and my sister (just behind me, looking directly at the camera), in the summer of 1968. I am not positive, but I think that is my Uncle Robert -- six years my senior -- in the background, just above my head. In the left background, I believe, is my grandmother, my Aunt Connie, and my Aunt Gerry (pregnant with my cousin Mandy). Mom must have been taking the picture.

This year was a little awkward. The baby can't sit up for long by himself, so he was too small for the rides, while my almost-10-year-old was too tall for all but about six rides. The almost-six-year-old was the right size for everything, including being big enough to reach the bumper car pedals and to steer without getting stuck in a corner or in a circle. We did take the baby on the carousel, and I held him on a horse for a few seconds, which he loved, before I handed him back to nervous Mommy.

To keep the big boy from getting too bored, I took him for a walk. I led him under the Highway 123 bridge to Delaware Street, the path my mom used to take me to walk to the playground at Johnstone Park. I showed him the vacant lot on the east side of Delaware between 1st and 2nd, where my first house in Bartlesville had been. We lived in that house from May '65 to sometime in the spring of '67, when we moved to Rogers St. near Jane Phillips Elementary. My earliest memories are in that house: Watching Ed Sullivan and space missions on TV, having a cut-out cake for my birthday (one I wouldn't let Mom cut), having my first dog, a beagle named Easy, and -- my very earliest memory -- on Easter Sunday looking out the kitchen window with my Grandma Bates at a rainbow.

From that house, we could walk to our church, the library, the grocery store, the park, the doctor's office (right across the street), the Sani-Pool, and all of the downtown shops, and Dad could walk to work. That was a good thing because our family's Ford -- the last one we ever owned -- wasn't a very reliable vehicle. This early experience obviously warped my impressionable mind into believing that getting around on foot was normal.

So I told my son all about this. I pointed out where the Thunderbird Cafe had been -- they had the jukebox buttons at each booth. (The building's still there at 2nd and Cherokee.) We walked down Frank Phillips toward the old Santa Fe depot. (It now houses the local Chamber of Commerce HQ.) I'm told that when my family lived in Lawrence, Kansas, Mom and I would take the AT&SF to visit her parents in Dewey, but I don't remember that at all. We did ride the train on my fifth birthday, just as far as Copan, just because I wanted to. (Dad met us in the car and brought us home.)

My son and I walked back to the Kiddie Park past Doenges Stadium, the 76-year-old ballpark that hosted Western Association and K-O-M League teams (Class D minor league) in the '30s and '40s, and is now home to American Legion baseball and national tournaments.

Back at Kiddie Park, we stayed until the place closed, as we always do. We always have a great time there.

(Here's an account of an earlier visit to Bartlesville. And OCPA pundit Brandon Dutcher, another former Bartian, took his family to the Kiddie Park earlier this summer, and has pictures.)

UPDATE: Tom Elmore writes in the comments on this entry:

Seems to me Bartlesville's reverent preservation of a tradition as gentle and wonderful as the Kiddie Park is worthy of the thanks and praise of anybody who still cares about what we used to call "civilization."

This draft was started a couple of days after Father's Day, but I never got around to finishing it. In lieu of something more substantive tonight, here it is:

We celebrated Father's Day by taking my dad and mom to lunch at Mexicali Border Café at Main and Brady downtown. It's one of our favorite Mexican places; Mom and Dad had never been there. Great salsa (sort of halfway in texture and heat between Chimi's salsa fresca and salsa picante) and some delicious non-traditional Mexican dishes.

My wife and I had the Stuffed Carne Asada. At $13.95, it's one of the most expensive things on the menu, and we always consider getting something else (the Shrimp Acapulco is very tasty too), but we can't stand not to have this: "Fajita Steak stuffed with Melted Jack Cheese, Mushrooms, and Onions. Topped with Sautéed Pico de Gallo, Bacon and Mushrooms. Served with Rice, Borracho Beans and Saut�ed Vegetables." It's big enough and rich enough we always have enough to bring home for another meal. The sautéed vegetables (carrots, yellow squash, and zucchini) were nicely spicy and just crisp enough.

The waitress, Heather, deserves special praise. She managed to be both attentive and inobtrusive. Instead of interrupting conversation every five minutes to ask, "Everything OK?" she passed by regularly, noticed if anything needed refilling, and just took care of it. When she noticed one of us dabbing at a bit of salsa that had landed on a shirt, she brought out some club soda and some extra napkins.

I gave my dad a new sports shirt and a Johnny Cash CD. My Mother's Hymnbook is a collection of traditional hymns and gospel songs, sung with only a guitar for accompaniment. Cash recorded it in the few months between his wife's death and his own. I had come across it in the CD return shelf in the library, checked it out, and loved it. These are songs that we sang in the little Southern Baptist church I grew up in, but don't hear much in our PCA congregation: I'm Bound For The Promised Land, Softly and Tenderly, Just As I Am, When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.

(I've found all sorts of gems on the library's CD return shelf, things I probably wouldn't have sought out on purpose: Spike Jones' Greatest Hits; Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul, a four-disc set; a two-disc set of everything Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded together.)

The kids gave me a Louis Armstrong CD, a Patsy Cline CD, and the original version of Asleep at the Wheel's first Bob Wills tribute CD, along with a new clock radio that synchronizes itself to the atomic clock via shortwave.

I already had a version of this disc -- the "dance remix", which has a black cover. I bought it as motivation/reward when I refinished the kids' wood floors last summer, and I liked it, but some of the tracks (five of them, to be precise) seemed unnecessarily tarted up -- as if some producer didn't think classic Western Swing was good enough to get people out on the dance floor. On "Big Ball's in Cowtown," the dance version is almost double the length of the original, padded out with backup singers singing "Cowtown, Cowtown, we're all goin' to Cowtown" over and over and over again. Then there's the bizarre addition of the same two measures of "Yearning," digitally transposed into three different keys for the intro to the song -- somehow that made it a dance version. Similar weirdness is inflicted upon "Hubbin' It," "Corrine, Corrina," and "Old Fashioned Love." At least they left 13 of the songs alone.

I had heard the unadulterated versions of a couple of the tracks from the white-covered original edition, and put it on my wish list, a wish my wife and kids were kind enough to fulfill.

The album features famous modern country artists (e.g., George Strait, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks -- Huey Lewis, too) singing or playing Bob Wills tunes alongside Asleep at the Wheel and some of the original Texas Playboys -- Eldon Shamblin, Johnny Gimble, and Herb Remington.

"Yearning," sung on this album by Vince Gill, has become a favorite of mine. It was a Tin Pan Alley tune, published in 1925 by Benny Davis and Joe Burke. (Davis and Burke also wrote "Carolina Moon." Burke also wrote "Tiptoe through the Tulips" and "Rambling Rose." Davis also wrote "Baby Face.") Somehow this sweet little tune found its way into both the standards and Western Swing repertoires -- Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey, and Frank Sinatra, Spade Cooley and Bob Wills all recorded it. Merle Haggard sang it on the final album with Bob Wills (For the Last Time), but I like Gill's version a little better, if only because it includes both verses.

The songbird yearns to sing a love song.
The roses yearn just for the dew.
The whole world's yearning for the sunshine.
I have a yearning too.

Yearning just for you,
That's all I do, my dear.
Learning why I'm blue,
I wish that you were here.
Smiles have turned to tears,
Days have turned to years.
Yearning just for you,
I hope that you yearn, too.

When shadows fall and stars are beaming,
'Tis then I miss you most of all.
I fall asleep and start a-dreaming.
It seems I hear you call:

Yearning just for you,
That's all I do, my dear.
Learning why I'm blue,
I wish that you were here.
Smiles have turned to tears,
Days have turned to years.
Yearning just for you,
I hope that you yearn, too.

I've enjoyed the gifts from my children, but the greatest Father's Day gifts of all are the children themselves.

Here's a photo of our almost-six-year-old, taken back on Easter Sunday.

This is one of the best photos yet of our nine-year-old, taken as his official baseball photo. (I cropped it to just his head for the website.) Kevin Bender, a dad at our school, took the team and individual photos this year.

Good looking kid, isn't he?

My five-month-old boy is very talkative, but until recently all the noises have been vowel sounds -- coos, creaks, squeals, and squawks, but not a single plosive or stop.

But yesterday, on Father's Day no less, he looked at me and uttered "da!" followed by a lot of other noises. I tried to get him to say it again, but instead he regaled us with the first consonant he mastered, the old bilabial fricative. I'll try not to take that as personal commentary.

It was a productive day, 'though you'd never know it by visiting here.

• Ate a polish sausage with sauerkraut in the parking lot of Lowe's after picking up supplies for the day's chores.
• Bought gifts and a card for my dad for father's Day.
• Installed new valve and supply line in the master bathroom's toilet tank.
• Installed new doorknob on the kitchen half-bath door.
• Installed new digital thermostat.
• Listened to five-year-old read the last of the second Dick and Jane compendium.
• Read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to the nine-year-old.
• Listened to the five-month-old blow raspberries.
• Took a nap listening to the rain and the rumbling of the late afternoon thunderstorms.
• Blogging. Still TBD.

There are a few new items on the linkblog. Be sure to check that out.

It has been a busy few weeks around our house, as school-related activities lingered on into the first couple of weeks after the end of classes, even as summer activities have already begun.

My nine-year-old son and I spent last night camping at Paradise Cove in Sequoyah State Park on Fort Gibson Lake with five of his classmates and their dads. My son got to ride with a couple of the other dads on Sea-Doo, and he spent a lot of time waist-deep in the lake, fishing.

At about 9:30 last night, I thought we were done for the day, ready for bed. My son wanted me to read another chapter of the second Harry Potter book to him, and we were getting ready to do that when someone starts a campfire. So we roast marshmallows. One of the other dads read a story from a missionary book and a chapter from Jim Stovall's book The Ultimate Gift.

So now we're done for the night, yes? No. It was time to set out the jugs. My son and I could either go out right then -- it was nearly 11 -- or we could wake up in the middle of the night to check and rebait the lines.

With jug-fishing, you take a heavy plastic bleach or detergent jug (well-rinsed and with the lid in place) and tie a length of string to the handle and a weight at the other end. For each weight we used half a brick, with a wire twisted through the holes to provide a handle for tying the string. A couple of shorter lengths of string are tied in between the jug and the weight, and a hook is tied to each of the shorter lengths. The string was just ordinary nylon string, like kite string, rather than fishing line.

We went out on that first run with two other dads and two other kids. We took the boat to the other side of the lake, then one of the other dads unwound each jug line, baited the hooks with perch and minnows and set it out. There was a full moon and it was nearly calm, so it was a nice night to be out on the water.

We were back in the tent at about midnight. I must have slept well, because I'm told there were some loud late night partiers nearby, and I never heard them.

This morning, we had a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and fried potatoes, cooked over a Coleman stove. Before breakfast, while I slept, my son did some more fishing along the shore. We packed up around 10 to head across the lake to Taylor Ferry Marina. A couple of the dads had Sea-Doos, and kids took turns going for a ride and fishing from the dock.

We all had lunch in Wagoner at Runt's BBQ. I had the pork tenderloin sandwich, which was much like the porkchop sandwiches you can get at the Tulsa State Fair. Someone had the catfish sandwich -- two enormous cornbread-coated filets on a bun. My son pronounced the chopped beef delicious.

After lunch we parted ways. My son and I headed to the town of Ft. Gibson to see the old stockade, which is a 1930s recreation of the 1820s frontier fort. (It would be fun to visit during one of their encampments, when re-enactors spend the weekend dressed in period uniforms.) The later fort buildings, which date from the 1840s, are still standing. I believe the town is the oldest continuously-settled place in the state.

In downtown Fort Gibson they were having their annual classic car show. My son said his feet were tired, and he didn't want to stop, but once we started looking around he was glad we did. We saw everything from a Model T to a Mazda Miata: a Dodge Dart Swinger, lots of Chevy Bel Airs, a 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood, a Willys Jeepster, Corvettes, Camaros, Mustangs. We both goggled at a T-Bird with an amazing sparkling golden-green paint finish. (I think I had a Hot Wheels car that was just that color.)

So that was our weekend, or the first part of it, at any rate.

It was the close to a busy week, which is partly why I haven't written much here.

I fielded a lot of phone calls during and right after the filing period from candidates and prospective candidates. I was happy to see Bob Dick stand down and to see State Rep. Fred Perry enter the District 3 County Commission race. Cliff Magee, who ran a strong race for City Council earlier this year, and would have been another excellent candidate for the seat, filed on Wednesday, but has withdrawn his name from the ballot and has endorsed Fred Perry.

I was also happy to see former Tulsa City Councilor Anna Falling enter the District 1 County Commission Race. I got to know Anna when she beat me in the 1998 District 4 Republican primary, and we worked together during her term of office. I'm told that Tracey Wilson, another competitor for that seat, is the leader of the homeowners' association in unincorporated north Tulsa County. I don't know Tracey, but I have a great deal of respect for the other folks I've met from that group, who worked to stop annexation of their rural area.

On Tuesday, our part of midtown, near the Fairgrounds, was hit by the early morning microburst. We were without power for about seven hours, and we lost a few tree limbs, but we were relatively unscathed. Two of our neighbors had oak trees just fall over. One of the trees fell onto grass, but the other fell into the house and the next door neighbor's house, and when the roots popped up, they pulled the water line up, too.

I'm a member of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, and this is our big week -- the Miss Oklahoma Pageant, which the club has sponsored since the 1960s, providing the manpower for the event and raising the scholarship money that will be awarded to the winners. On Monday, at our regular weekly luncheon, we hosted all 44 contestants, along with the contestants in the teen pageant. I sat at a table with Miss NSU, Miss Skiatook Area, and Miss Claremore -- it was the first time competing for Miss Oklahoma for all three, and for Miss NSU it was the first year she had competed in any pageant. (The other two had competed in Miss Oklahoma-affiliated local pageants before.)

Also at our table was Miss South Oklahoma City Outstanding Teen -- one of the teen pageant contestants. Every contestant has to adopt a "platform" -- a cause to promote, and hers was one of the more interesting. Miss South OKC's adopted cause was the Ophelia Project, an effort to deal with relational aggression, a kind of bullying that can be even harder to take than physical aggression.

Early Thursday morning I did my little bit for the pageant, delivering several dozen donuts and sausage rolls from the good folks at the 44th and Memorial Daylight Donuts store to the ORU dorm where the contestants were staying, delivering them before the ladies were up for breakfast. I guess when you're in the midst of the competition a few donuts aren't going to spontaneously add dimples to your thighs.

My kids had Vacation Bible School this week, and my wife helped watch the workers' babies in the nursery. The two big kids had swim lessons in the afternoons, too. My son had an end-of-school class swim party. My daughter spent Friday with Grandma, playing and baking. Both kids went with Grandma and the cousins on Tuesday to see "Over the Hedge", but the theatre's copy of the movie had broken!

The baby is smiling more and more, laughing and squealing, and even coughing for attention, a trick he picked up during a recent cold. If he's sitting on someone's knee, he will rock back and forth when he hears music he likes. At last Friday's Tulsa Boy Singer concert, he started rocking during several songs and every time people applauded. When he started getting a bit vocal himself, I took him outside and for a walk with his stroller. We walked up to 2nd and Cincinnati and watched the bicycle race. He finally dozed off as we arrived back at Trinity, and I watched the end of the concert from the narthex as he snoozed in the stroller.

By the way, even though I haven't been blogging much, I have been adding a link or two every day to the linkblog -- that's an easy way for me to call attention to something I found interesting, without making me feel like I need to write a novel about it.

At the end of last September, Tulsa's Casa Bonita closed its doors, but only because the space was to be leased to the founder of Casa Bonita, Bill Waugh, for a new Casa Viva restaurant. Same concept, same decor, and the original ownership.

The restaurant reopened this Monday, and tonight, as a belated end-of-the-school-year treat, our family had dinner there.

Everything had a bright new coat of paint, but otherwise it is the same place, with the same basic menu. The system is slightly different; you pay when order, as you come in, which makes putting a tip on a credit card, a bit awkward, and makes it impossible to add something later (e.g. deciding you want a soda in mid-meal).

They are still working out some kinks with the system. They forgot to put guacamole on my all-you-can-eat dinner. There was some confusion at the order pickup window. We got hold of some sticky silverware, which was promptly replaced. When there were problems the staff were prompt and polite in fixing them. Everyone enjoyed their food.

After dinner, we walked around to look at the other rooms. It looks like they may have reopened some eating areas that had been closed, including the old jail. Here are my two big kids in front of the Treasure Room.

We played some arcade games, then went back to the old cantina for the magic show. We finished up at the arcade. My five-year-old liked the alligator-slapping game and the dragon-stomping game. (I helped on the alligator game, and we set the high score.) The nine-year-old played the Star Wars podracer game a couple of times. I played Centipede, and my wife had a try at Skee-Ball.

All told, we were there about two-and-a-half hours, and it was a fun evening for the whole family.

So said the Lord through the prophet Amos, and although the context is about the nation of Israel's walk with God, the verse has often been applied to marriage and friendship, and even business partnerships.

New York City radio talk show host Kevin McCullough asks an interesting question on his blog: Would you marry, or have you married, someone who holds radically different views on politics and culture? Click through that link -- Kevin would like to know your answer to that question.

Here's my perspective:

I can see political opposites being attracted to one another, but I can't see someone who is passionate about his political values and committed to bringing them to fruition yoking himself to someone who is just as passionate about the opposite values. I think it would even be asking for trouble if someone passionate about politics married someone noncommittal on the subject.

Before I met my wife, I had a mental list of a few must-haves and show-stoppers in a potential mate. Among the must-haves: It was essential that she be an evangelical Christian and a political conservative. I had been active in pursuit of my political and spiritual values, I expected that to continue throughout my life, and I thought it would be important for my wife to be pulling in the same direction.

My wife wishes I were less busy than I am, but she is very accommodating and patient of my various civic involvements because she agrees that what I'm working for is important.

I'm not sure which would be worse for someone like me -- to be married to someone actively working to defeat what I'm trying to accomplish, or to be married to someone who thinks politics is just dumb.

It's been a busy but fun couple of days.

Friday was "Oklahoma Day" for my son's grade -- they spent the day at a little farm in the south part of town, reliving the days of early Oklahoma Territory. There was a re-enactment of the 1889 Land Run, complete with covered wagons.

When my 3rd grade class had a land run (34 years ago, on the football field at Holland Hall's 26th and Birmingham "Eight Acres" campus), it was every man for himself. Chip McElroy had a motorized covered wagon, which he built with his dad. I think I pulled my little red wagon.

My son's school was much better organized. They put the students together in "families" of three or four. My son's "family" staked one of the nicer claims in the territory, a shady spot for the picnic. The girl in the "family" was supposed to be his pretend wife, but she opted to be his pretend daughter instead, which was fine with him. (The opposite sex is still cootie-infested at that age.) The girl had an era-appropriate explanation for the lack of a mother in the family: "She died in childbirth."

After a dinner out with my in-laws, in honor of my wife's recent birthday, the in-laws headed back out of town, and our family headed up to the Osage Casino north of Sand Springs to hear Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, one of a series of free Friday night concerts. Even though kids aren't allowed in the casino, they were allowed at the concert, and I was happy that my kids got to see these legendary performers in person.

It was mainly the same line-up that played the Bob Wills' Birthday Bash at Cain's Ballroom back in March, headed up by vocalist Leon Rausch and guitarist Tommy Allsup. (Here's Leon Rausch's tour schedule for the rest of the year.)

The steel guitarist this time was Bobby Koefer, who played with Bob Wills in the '50s. (If you've seen some of Wills' musical short subjects from 1951, that's Koefer on steel. I googled and found this comment on Koefer's style: "The amazing Bobby Koefer plays bare fingered, with an odd shaped bar.")

It was a thrill to get to see and hear Koefer play. Because I was holding a baby, we were allowed to sit right on the front row. My wife was concerned about the speaker volume at that distance so before long she and the baby sat in back while the big kids and I sat up front. It was fun to watch my kids' smiles as they recognized the intros to familiar tunes (familiar in our house, anyway) like "Cherokee Maiden" and "San Antonio Rose".

As old as some of these fellows are, they still have a lot of energy to put into their music. It was a wonderful performance. It was a hoot to hear Bobby Koefer sing "Hawaiian War Chant" -- he really threw himself into it.

This morning I fulfilled my duties as one of about 400 members of the State Committee of the Oklahoma Republican Party, as we elected a new State Chairman to replace Gary Jones. Former State Auditor Tom Daxon won out over State Reps. Doug Miller and Forrest Claunch. The consensus seemed to be that there were no bad choices in the bunch.

The State Committee is made up of the chairman and vice chairman of each county party, plus a state committeeman and committeewoman from each county, and every elected Republican who serves at the State or Federal Capitol. Miller seemed to have the support of many legislators, but Daxon evidently had the support of the grassroots party officers.

Over the course of the meeting, we heard speeches from Sen. Jim Inhofe, the many candidates for the 5th Congressional District, and several candidates for the legislature. There was a gubernatorial debate at lunch between U. S. Rep. Ernest Istook, State Sen. Jim Williamson, and Tulsa businessman Bob Sullivan -- more about that tomorrow.

One of the pleasures of the meeting was getting to reconnect with fellow activists, including several folks I got to know through the 2004 Republican National Convention. (Today I wore my official 2004 delegation blazer -- navy blue with the Oklahoma Osage peace shield on the breast pocket.)

After the meeting I reconnected with Charles G. Hill of Dustbury fame, and we had a pleasant and wide-ranging conversation, as you would expect if you're a regular reader of his blog. (If you're not a regular reader of Dustbury, you're missing a treat.) Our chat made this week's Saturday Spottings, his regular roundup of observations around Oklahoma City.

As we were leaving Gilcrease after the inauguration, Christi Breedlove took this photo of the whole Bates family, just outside the museum entrance:

The little one was a bit upset. Just before the photo, former Tulsa County Democratic Party Chairman Elaine Dodd had been holding him. He seemed quite content with her until we took him away to take the picture. We will have to keep a close eye on him for any ideological deviationism. :)

Two nights ago our 10-week-old boy slept 7 hours straight. Last night he slept for 6 1/2 hours.

We used Gary Ezzo's scheduled feeding method with our first two kids: A minimum of three hours from the start of one feeding to the start of the next, and if the baby starts crying before it's time for another feeding, let him cry it out.

The Ezzo method seemed to work well with the first, who slept through the night at six weeks, and never had problems gaining weight or nursing. It didn't work as well with the second; my wife had supply problems, the baby had trouble nursing efficiently, and we had to supplement with formula, going to all formula after about six months.

Over the last few years, we had read enough about problems with Ezzo's method (and Ezzo's character) to decide we weren't going to do things the Ezzo way this time. What we saw as the method's success with our first child was really just that it happened to fit his natural cycle. It's like assuming that the "see-say" method of reading works because some children do very well with it, even if most would be better served to be taught phonics.

This baby has been nursed on demand. He has been rocked and swung and bounced to sleep. He has been allowed to fall asleep right after nursing. (The Ezzo method insists on awake time after eating and discourages letting your baby become "dependent" on assistance in getting to sleep.) I have some really sweet pictures of my wife snoozing in the nursing chair with the baby asleep in her arms.

Some friends from church lent us this amazing hammock-like device called an Amby Bed. The bed hangs from a spring and is attached to a frame with some flex to it. I put the baby in the bed, bounce and swing him gently for five minutes or so, and he is sound asleep. If he stirs, it creates enough movement to soothe him back to sleep. The idea, of course, is to mimic the motion he experienced in the womb.

We've been helped by the concept of the "fourth trimester," an idea put forth by UCLA pediatrics professor Harvey Karp:

Karp's premise is that infants need a "fourth trimester" to finish developing -- a luxury denied because of the biological imperative for babies to hurry up and be born before their heads grow too large for safe passage

That concept should relieve parents of the worry that by doing whatever helps to soothe our babies' crying or to help them sleep, we're somehow establishing negative patterns that will have to be unlearned later. Instead, we're helping our babies be comfortable, secure, and happy during a phase that they'll soon outgrow.

My wife and I saw a video by Karp that we borrowed from the library. He teaches five techniques, all starting with "S", to trigger what he calls the calming reflex in a baby: swaddling, hold baby on his side or stomach (not for sleeping), shooshing (white noise), swinging, and sucking. Swaddling hasn't worked well with our baby -- he manages to free his arms pretty easily -- but the other techniques have helped, particularly white noise and swinging.

UPDATE: My wife corrects my recollection re: swaddling:

One clarification should be added. After we saw the video and before the two month mark, I really worked on swaddling our baby, to stop those flailing arms, especially at night. Swaddling was very difficult with our big baby boy, but I believe it was quite important before our 2 month - 13 lb. mark.

I actually bought fabric that was larger than all of our swaddling blankets, before I could keep his hands tucked in well. This actually did gain me some extra precious sleep at night, perhaps by keeping his flailing arms from waking him up. After I began -successfully- tucking his arms in, I was able to get more than the 2 - 2 1/2 hour between the start each feeding many nights. (I tried to keep daddy from noticing some of those nighttime feedings, so I don't think he noticed the swaddling change that month as much as I did.)

Any new nursing mother can sing the glorious change in schedule when the baby shifts from needing a meal every 2 or 2 1/2 hours to the "increased freedom" of the 3 - 3 1/2 hours apart schedule. (Of course this is a general shift - sometimes he wants the shorter cycle, but I have encourage those in the daytime hours when possible. I would like to fill the majority of his calories before the wee hours of the morning when possible.)

The first shorter cycle may allow 45 minutes to an hour of "free" time between each feeding, round the clock. (Don't expect coherent conversation or an orderly household here. Real sleep is only imagined at this stage. I even forgot how to turn on my car headlights for a moment during this stage. May God continue to bless the mom's who drove my kids home at this stage - they kept you safe on the road as well.)

The 3 or 3 1/2 hour typical schedule might mean that a mom has 1 1/2 to 2 hours that are not directly involved in feeding before the next cycle. That is a glorious graduation. I would not be surprised to find the size as well as age of a newborn has a role in this transition, but when they start as large as ours have, we have a good head start.

Perhaps the snuggly Amby bed has made a difference for us as well. This exhausted mom was willing to try any safe recommendations for some sleep help.

We haven't needed to swaddle much, or desperately resort to a swing as often lately. I am still going to be grateful, rather than expect the 5 or 6 hour break at night. It is a little too recent for me to claim it as a habit, but I am hoping for it. His big brother was a champ in this arena. They look alike, perhaps they will sleep alike as well.

The best thing about being free from the Ezzo approach is that there's no guilt in doing what you'd do instinctively -- pick up and comfort a crying baby. And our little boy is growing and healthy, and he gives us some precious smiles.

... but no time to say it. We've been working with my son on his art report about Charles M. Russell and getting caught up on other household stuff.

(One of the things we love about our kids' school is that art education is a part of the curriculum from the youngest class on up -- learning about famous artists and their masterworks, not just names and dates.)

In the morning, I'll put up a link to my latest Urban Tulsa Weekly column. In the meantime, check out the linkblog above and the blogrolls over in the right-hand column.

The nine-year-old started, sometime not long before Christmas, rereading the first four books of The Chronicles of Narnia, which we had read together a year earlier, then finishing the last three, which he received for Christmas. He finished The Last Battle on Sunday, getting all the way through it in the course of the weekend. He wants me to get caught up, so now we'll read the last three volumes together for bedtime. We're thrilled that he's such a voracious reader.

Last week we finished reading the first Harry Potter book together -- first time through for both of us, and an incentive for him to get his homework done and ready for bed, so we might be able to get through two chapters before bedtime. It's a fun read, and yes, it has witches and wizards and poltergeists in it, but mostly it's about courage and loyalty and being a fish out of water. It's a great read, and we're looking forward to reading the next one together.

Finally, over the weekend I took the nine-year-old and the five-year-old to see "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." We all laughed ourselves silly. Like the best animated films, it can be enjoyed at several levels, and every scene is densely packed with funny details you might miss the first time around. The movie pays homage to monster movies -- a garden supply stand filled with hoes and pitchforks is quickly relabled "Angry Mob Supplies", and a vicar delivers the standard "this is what happens when we tamper with nature" speech.

If you're a British sitcom fan, you'll recognize some familiar voices. (I was not surprised but still disgusted to read that Dreamworks SKG wanted to replace Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace, with a recognizable American voice. They didn't get their way, I'm happy to say. Stupid Hollywood types have to Americanize everything.) You'll find a preview clip here. Here in Tulsa, it's in the dollar theatres, so you have no excuse. Go see it.

For friends and family just now stopping by, scroll down to see a photo of our beautiful baby boy, who turned a week old today!

He had his first well-baby visit today, and the doctor was quite pleased with what he saw. We've been blessed to have the same pediatrician since our first was born, and in this day of frequent insurance changes, it's nice to have doctors, nurses, and office staff who know our family. It was funny (a very nice sort of funny) to be told, "We heard you talking about the baby on the radio yesterday with Michael [DelGiorno], and we were so excited!"

Oh, yes, and I finally awarded the prizes in the Name Game. Click that link and scroll down.

... a big, beautiful, boy baby!

He was born at 7:41 a.m., weighing 10 lbs., 0.3 oz., 21" long, with a 15" head circumference. Apgars were 8 and 9. Absolutely perfect. Mother and baby are fine. (It was a scheduled repeat C-section.) Praise God!

He was raising his head shortly after he was born. His foot barely fit on the inkpad they used for footprints. He has been able to nurse, although he's still in that first-day drowsiness and more interested in snuggling than eating. Around 7 tonight, he opened his eyes long enough to give us a good look. It looks like, for now at least, he has blue eyes like both his siblings.

This afternoon he met his big brother and big sister (who is very happy to be a big sister) -- both got to hold him -- his grandpa and grandma and grandmother, his cousins and aunt, and some family friends.

We are blessed to have three beautiful, healthy children. Thanks for your prayers.

The baby has been very busy. He/she must know that the big day is close at hand. A comment from my wife: "Imagine what feels like to have your belly button scraped... and stretched... from the inside." Your prayers for a safe delivery -- and for some good sleep before then -- would be appreciated.

I will announce the winners of the baby naming contest sometime by the end of the week. In the meantime, I will leave you with my favorite Western Swing song about babies -- from 1953, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys performing Bottle Baby Boogie. (1 MB low quality audio, soon to be removed)

CHORUS:

(Bottle baby boogie)
I'm walkin' the floor.
(Bottle baby boogie)
Ain't gonna do it no more.
I told my wife, and I don't mean maybe,
This ain't gonna be no bottle baby.

Well, rock-a-bye baby, I'm still a-singin'.
When the baby starts cryin' my ears start ringin'.
My wife told me today,
"I got news for ya, honey, there's another on the way."

I fixed his bottles and I warmed his milk.
Things went along just as smooth as silk.
There'll be some changes made and not on the baby,
'Cause this 'un is yours and I don't mean maybe.

My fingers are sore from using safety pins,
While my wife just sits, looks, and grins.
And I'll hear those words 'til my dyin' day:
"I got news for ya, honey, there's another on the way."

That's Bob's baby brother Billy Jack Wills on the vocals, and on the solos you'll hear Billy Bowman and Vance Terry on steel guitar, Skeeter Elkin on piano, Eldon Shamblin on electric guitar, Jesse Ashlock on fiddle, and Jack Greenbach on drums. Billy Jack had his own successful western swing band based out of Sacramento in the early '50s -- even though this is Bob's band, this song gives you a good sense of Billy Jack's band's sound. (I just bought this album of songs from radio transcriptions -- his sound is a lot closer to rockabilly than the delta blues and Texas fiddle sound of his big brother. You can hear one song from the album, Caravan -- which isn't really very rockabilly -- played as bumper music for WFMU DJ Moshik Temkin. It's about 2 hours, 16 minutes into this archived broadcast.)

One last thing: There's potential for a parody of this song, if you substitute "Ezzo" for "Bottle" -- "told my wife, and I don't mean maybe, this ain't gonna be no Ezzo baby." Maybe Discoshaman and TulipGirl and the folks at ezzo.info can work up the rest of the lyrics.

Isn't modern technology amazing? Be amazed at this selection of boy names selected by the Baby Name Wizard at BabyZone.com:

Without knowing it, I must have selected the "name sounds like Grandpa clearing his throat" criterion.

Suddenly "Moe Tell" looks like a good alternative. (By the way, Jan, my wife said to tell you that she knows where you live.... :) )

(And, no, the baby isn't here yet -- just trying on the name for size.)

The website US Social Security Administration offers some fascinating statistics on baby names. Even if you aren't a parent or aren't likely to be anytime in the near future, you may find it interesting for what these lists reveal about the evolution of American culture over the last 120 years.

From the main page you can generate lists of popular names by birth year, going back to 1879; track the popularity of a particular name over a number of years; list the top 5 names for each state, for any year going back to 1980.

For any year from 1960 to the present, you can look up the top 100 names for each state.

My favorite is the top 1000 names by decade, from the 1880s to the present. It's striking that, in olden days, a much higher percentage of babies were given the most popular names. In the 1880s, 15% of boys were named either John or William, and 38% were given names in the top 10. For girls, 21% were given names in the top 10. So far in this decade, the numbers are 12% and 9% respectively. You can see the same trend in Scotland, although the percentages are almost double those of America both 100 years ago and today.

It would be interesting to combine the stats from different decades to see which names are the most timeless, which are tied most closely to their decades, and which display generational cycles. It would also be interesting to look at the top names for each state over the years to see how naming trends spread through the country.

Here's a question for you: In the top 100 girls names in Oklahoma for 2004, there's a name I've never seen before -- Cadence. Any idea where this name came from? Nationally, it was 958th in 2002, 474th in 2003, 218th in 2004. A cadence is something you sing when running or marching in a group, so why has it become a popular girl's name? Anyone?

Must be something in the air, or maybe it's just aftershocks from 2004, the Year of the Blogger. Bloggers are getting well-deserved recognition from old dead-tree media. I know of at least two bloggers who are under contract for books related to the content of their blogs.

That good news comes at a cost to the Blogosphere, however. With book deadlines swiftly approaching, one of those two book-writing bloggers has cut down to one blog post a week, and the other, who also writes a weekly newspaper column, has put her blog in hibernation until the manuscript is finished.

You're about to see something similar happen here. I've already cut back on blogging. My column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is taking up a lot of my creative energy, and anytime I start writing a long blog entry, I think, "That could be a column." (I could write 1,000 words for free... or I could get paid for them. What a dilemma.)

My volume and frequency is about to take another hit. Like other bloggers who have cut back on posting, here at BatesLine HQ we've got a major project in the works that's about to come to fruition.

It's not a book, although it is a bit like writing a book. It all starts as a concept (a word related to "concept", anyway) and there's a good deal of time and labor involved in the production.

In one respect, it's easier than writing a book. If you have a book in you (everyone does, they say), it may stay in there forever. If you have a baby in you, after nine months it's coming out, one way or another, even if they have to slice you open to get it. (As far as I'm aware, there is no procedure analogous to a Caesarean section to get a book out of an author. I'm sure there are some book editors out there who wish such a thing existed.)

On the other hand, once you've delivered a book manuscript most of the hard work is over. Once you've delivered a baby, the hard work has just begun.

Did I mention that we're having a baby?

I've dropped a few hints on the blog, and of course the people who know us in Real Life have known for quite some time, but I haven't come right out and said anything here about the major milestone just around the corner for our family. In a little over a week, my wife and I will have our third child. Despite the fact that we feel too old for this sort of thing, the pregnancy has gone well, the baby is vigorous and big, and my wife has been pretty healthy throughout.

This will be the first time I will have had a new baby and a blog at the same time. In a competition for attention between the blog and the baby, the baby is going to win. For one thing, the blog is not anywhere as cute as this baby is bound to be. (Those who have met my first two kids will know I'm telling the truth.) The frequency and length of my posting has already decreased, as job responsibilities, writing a column, and doing things around the house to get ready for the baby have taken more of my time.

I'm not going to put BatesLine into hibernation. (The word makes me think of HAL 9000, astronauts, and freezer burn.) We've got an important city election coming up, and I'm sure I'll have some things to say about it. Urban Tulsa Weekly will get dibs on my thoughts on the subject, and I'll continue to post a link here to each week's column.

(And speaking of that city election, there has been some speculation that I might run for office again in 2006, especially now that the incumbent councilor in my district, Tom Baker, is giving up his seat to run for Mayor. It's not going to happen, not this next year, and probably not for a decade or so.)

There will still be reasons to check in here every couple of days. Most of my blogging is likely to be more linking than thinking -- pointers to interesting items, but not much commentary -- and there will of course be a certain amount of baby blogging. I will probably expand the linkblog, and I'm working on ways to aggregate and present headlines from my favorite blogs -- a sort of extension of my blogroll, so you can see titles and easily get to the latest entries from a select group of the most interesting writers in the blogosphere.

Now, back to the baby, and the reason for the title of this post. Taking a page from meeciteewurkor's book, I'm having a contest, with two prizes, each a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

With our boy, I had had a name in mind for a few years in advance. With our girl, we went through a long process of elimination and finally settled on a name two days before delivery (over dinner at the Green Onion, as it happens).

With the first two, we knew in advance the sex of the child. This time, at my wife's request, it'll be a surprise. So we need to have two names picked out. My suggestions (Margaret Hilda for a girl, Winston Spencer for a boy) have been vetoed by She Who Must Be Obeyed, so I'm asking you, dear reader, for some ideas.

The prizes will go to the best suggestions for a girl's name and a boy's name (even if we ultimately choose something else).

Here are some guidelines to point you in the right direction:

1. The name ought to clearly indicate gender. Preferably, the common nickname for the name should be unambiguous as well.
2. That means, among other things, no last names as first names.
3. Euphony matters -- the name ought to roll easily off the tongue and be easily understood when spoken.
4. For euphony's sake, monosyllabic names ought to be avoided, because of our monosyllabic last name.
5. We'd prefer traditional names within our ethnic heritage, which is mainly Ulster Scots (Scotch-Irish), English, Irish, German, Swiss German, Dutch, and (very slightly and not officially) Cherokee. Hadassah, Luigi, Svetlana, and Fernando are fine names each representing a fine heritage, but they'd be misleading attached to someone in our family.
6. I won't rule out "M" names, but we've already got two MBs in the family and would prefer not to have a third.
7. Norman is right out.

Joke suggestions are welcome as long as they're within the bounds of good taste, as defined by the Arbiter of Good Taste (me).

Deadline is midnight Central Time on New Year's Eve or when the baby arrives, whichever happens first.

To balance out that last post, I should mention that my dad has been having a lot of fun as Santa's helper this month. He filled in at Philbrook a couple of weekends and has appeared at some Christmas parties. He's had kids from 9 weeks to 94 years on his lap. He was the first Santa a Tunisian visitor to Tulsa had ever met.

I gave him a free BlogAd, and he's had several leads from the ad. A reader in Conway, Arkansas, mentioned him to a Tulsa relative who needed a Santa for an event. A Santa who needed a last-minute substitute gave him a call.

As the blurb says, "A BatesLine ad is great value." For $10 a week, your ad appears on every page on the site, including all my archived entries. It averages out to less than 2/10ths of a cent per view. For a ridiculous $45, you can have an ad for three months -- that averages less than a tenth of a penny per view.

A big portion of the readership is in Tulsa or interested in Tulsa because they still have family and friends here and they visit once in a while, so it's a cheap way to attract local customers to your locally-owned business. You could even use a BlogAd to wish a friend a happy birthday -- it's cheaper than flowers.

Click the "Advertise on BatesLine" button to set up your own cheap ad. If you need help setting things up, drop me an e-mail at blog AT batesline DOT com.

My nine-year-old son started this fall with Tulsa Boy Singers, which he dearly loves. This weekend he will be singing in the TBS Christmas concert (this Friday and Saturday evening), and he'll also be singing a solo at the school's Christmas chapel and a solo in our church's Christmas program on Sunday night.

This evening, I had the privilege of listening as he rehearsed the piece for Sunday. He has a beautiful tone, clear and straight (i.e. no vibrato), and was right on pitch with a challenging melody. He seems very confident with the music.

Can you tell I'm proud of him?

"He's kicking," said of a child in utero, is somewhat misleading, because it suggests that the child is otherwise stationary. The reality, I am reliably told, feels more like someone doing Taebo in a gym that is barely bigger than the person exercising. Which is a rather odd sensation for the gym.

is when my no-longer-baby girl lost her first tooth. She was very concerned to remember the exact date and time of this momentous occasion. And she is very excited.

When someone has a metabolic disorder, their cells can't properly process certain building blocks of food -- a certain kind of protein, for example. Instead of being metabolized into other chemicals that are useful to the body, the substance builds up as a poison, potentially causing high blood acid levels, mental retardation, or even death. With medication and diet, a metabolic disorder can be managed and the damaging effects averted in most cases if the disorder is identified early enough.

Within the first day after a baby is born, a nurse will prick his heel, take a few drops of blood and put it on blotter paper, and send it off to a state lab to be tested for some relatively common metabolic disorders, like PKU. Every state mandates such a test. Most parents probably aren't aware it's even been done, much less why. (Here's a table in PDF format showing which states require newborn screening for which conditions.)

But there are dozens of other metabolic disorders for which screening isn't required. Oklahoma requires screening for only two of 20 "core" metabolic conditions, and only one of 25 secondary target conditions.

I know a boy who has a rare metabolic disorder that wasn't caught by the state-mandated screening. As a toddler, he could get a simple cold and wind up in the hospital with high blood acid levels and dehydration. It took a couple of years before his parents finally found a doctor who thought to check for a metabolic disorder. Today this boy is a bright, healthy, athletic teenager. Specialists were able to teach him and his parents how to control and monitor his condition with diet and medication. They could have been spared a few terrifying years if expanded metabolic screening had been available and if they'd known about it.

The March of Dimes website has information about newborn screening tests. The National Newborn Screening Research and Genetics Center has a list of commercial and non-profit labs that will screen for 30 or more additional conditions for as little as $25. You send off for the kit before the baby is due to arrive, you give it to your pediatrician, and they have the sample drawn shortly after your child is born. You drop the completed kit in the envelope with a check for processing and wait for the results.

(Before you send off for a kit, though, check with your hospital or pediatrician. They may already offer expanded newborn screening.)

I'm not a fan of state mandates, but this is such an inexpensive way to prevent serious mental and medical problems, I wish Oklahoma required expanded screening for all newborns, as many other states now do.

But don't wait for the state. If you're expecting, or know someone who is, get a kit and have the wee one screened.

Since retiring in January, my dad has been letting his beard, which is nearly all white, grow out to what is now an appropriately Santaesque length. He intends to put it to good use by making appearances around Tulsa on behalf of jolly old Saint Nick this Christmas season.

He wore a hat and a red turtleneck on Halloween and had fun inducing cognitive holiday dissonance in the neighbor children. ("Trick or treat.... Santa?!?") He now has the suit and boots, too. When shopping for the suit, one store clerk enthused, "You've already got the beard, and you won't need padding, either!" (She didn't get the sale.)

Dad is an affable, grandfatherly sort, which he comes by honestly, inasmuch as he is a grandfather of five.

He's already got one gig. We were at an event last Saturday at a major Tulsa cultural institution and he struck up a conversation with the Claus-in-residence. Dad learned that the gentleman would necessarily be away from his post the following weekend, so Dad gave him his business card, and a couple of days ago got the call to fill in on Saturday and Sunday.

If you need a right jolly old elf to grace your Tulsa-area Christmas event, give David Bates a call at 230-6258 or e-mail him at bateswd@yahoo.com.

I've added a couple of photos to the entry about Friday's lecture on the life and music of Bob Wills: my five-year-old, in her western skirt and boots, with Ray Benson and Jason Roberts of Asleep at the Wheel. She enjoyed the lecture, and that evening when we listened to my new Bob Wills CDs, she recognized the songs she had heard Ray and Jason play that morning.

Today our little chrysalis changed color from bright green to almost black, which means a newly minted monarch butterfly is about to emerge. I've set up my son's Digital Blue microscope to take a frame every 10 seconds, so that we can capture the emergence even if it happens when we're asleep.

That's the exciting news from here. That, and I am now the third member of my family to get the cold that's making the rounds.

UPDATE: Exclusive video! It's grainy, it's out of focus -- limitations of the camera -- but here is time-lapse video of the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis (5MB AVI file). The time-lapse was a frame every 10 seconds; the video plays back at 15 frames per second, so we slowed time down by a factor of 150. If I had to do it again, I'd use a much smaller delta t. The actual emergence took about five minutes -- only about 2 seconds of the time-lapse video.

I doubt too many of you read this blog to find out what's going on with my family. If you don't, click the TulsaBloggers link over on the top right. If you do, it's been a while since I've written anything family-related, so here's a little update:

The nature sanctuary that is our backyard currently features a small tribe of mourning doves, a couple of frisky squirrels, a cardinal couple, a blue jay couple, and a cottontail rabbit, who has dug his own entrance under one of the gates. We usually see the bunny along the back fence near the miniature rose bushes, but sometimes he hangs out by the front of the house.

A week and a half ago, my son found a monarch caterpillar and put him in the house in a critter keeper. A couple of days later, the caterpillar (which he named "Catty") took a notion to suspend himself from the roof of the cage and proceeded to turn into a chrysalis -- lime green with a band of black and sparkly gold. It will be exciting to watch it unfold, so to speak.

The boy (9) is finishing up his assignment for nature studies -- a collection of 15 bugs -- insects or arachnids -- with common and scientific names. In September and early October, he and his classmates would be out on the playground after school with nets, capturing moths and butterflies.

This fall he joined Tulsa Boy Singers. He opted to do that over any other extracurricular, and he really enjoys it. They're preparing for an evensong service and a Christmas concert.

The girl (5) is in her first year of real school, although it's still pre-K, and she likes it. She even likes the little bit of homework they do.

We went to the HallowMarine event at the Oklahoma Aquarium on Saturday. Local businesses and organizations had tables around the exhibits where they gave out candy. The boy went as the Grim Reaper; the girl as a fairy princess with butterfly wings.

I've been redoing the floors in the kids' rooms, with help from my dad and my father-in-law. We're taking out the carpet to help with allergies. The wood was in good shape, just needed cleaning and sealing. I did the second of the two rooms this weekend, and the rest of the family escaped to my parents' house to avoid the fumes from the polyurethane.

So we were all over there this evening as trick-or-treaters came by. My dad was wearing a red shirt and a red hat. Since retiring in January he has grown a full white beard and is letting it grow out as much as possible so that he can be St. Nick for various events. It was fun to hear the children come to door and exclaim, "Trick or treat, uh, um -- Santa?"

Before it got too late, we got the girl ready, and I took her up and down the block so she could collect candy along with compliments on her costume. Real old-school trick-or-treating -- door-to-door, after dark, in the neighborhood. (Before we left, she objected loudly to wearing a fleece jacket under her wings and over her leotard, but she asked for it about halfway down the block.) The boy had a low-grade fever, so he stayed in and played a computer game. He seemed quite content with the situation.

That's all for now.

Written August 6, 2005

I'm quite proud of myself and my nine-year-old boy. We went out today on a boat from John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Florida, to White Bank Reef, and snorkeled for the first time.

Joe is quite comfortable swimming underwater with a snorkel mask on his face. He does it in the neighborhood pool back home, and he did it a lot at the beach in Fort Lauderdale earlier in the week. I, on the other hand, don't like water on my face at all, and I certainly don't like being in water that's deeper than my neck. But because I try to be a good dad, and I knew Joe would love to see a coral reef first hand, I suggested that we go, while my wife and four-year-old went on a glass-bottom boat tour.

We slathered on sunscreen, I rented a mask and flippers (he had his already), and we rode out with about thirty others on the El Capitan to a spot five miles out. Joe struck up a conversation with a family from Las Vegas that had been snorkeling many times before. I wasn't sure what to expect on the boat, but we were able to stay dry and in the shade for the ride to and from.

The water was pretty calm. Getting into the water was no big deal -- we didn't have to fall off backwards like scuba divers. Joe quickly spotted a barracuda beneath us -- we were told they enjoy the shade of the boat.

We followed the other divers out to the reef, maybe thirty yards from the boat, a mountain of hard and soft corals, brain corals and fan corals. We saw plenty of sergeant major fish -- so called for their yellow and black stripes -- and saw several more barracuda, including one that seemed to come quite close. Joe saw a yellow stingray.

We had to go back to the boat twice. The first time I had trouble with sea water getting into my mask, and to tell the truth, I noticed myself getting slightly panicked. Back at the boat, I put more Vaseline on my mustache (to make for a better seal with the mask there) and tightened it, and added some air to my snorkel vest. I did a better job at keeping calm and taking deep breaths and started to relax and enjoy what I was seeing beneath the waves. The second trip back was because Joe's life vest was riding up on him and he was having a little trouble staying afloat. He wanted to ride back on my back, but I couldn't hold him and me both up. We made it back all right, the guide adjusted his vest and we went back in, but stayed a bit closer to the boat this time.

At length, I found myself more comfortable with my face in the water and breathing through the snorkel than trying to hold my head above the surface. I started to take my time going from place to place. The only thing I allowed myself to be paranoid about was knowing Joe's location at all times.

We just beat a thundershower as we returned to the dock. We met up with Mom and little sister and Joe announced that snorkeling was "Awe. Some."

We queued up for dinner at the famed Fish House, but there was a long wait, so we bailed and headed for Ballyhoo's, near mile marker 97. AAA Tourbook said it was where the locals ate. The food was great, although not as inexpensive as the AAA Tourbook had led us to believe.

We drove a little ways further down US 1, just for the heck of it, listening to some Beach Boys tunes. Joe spotted an enormous lobster statue next to a tourist trap. The store was closed, but we stopped to get a photo of the lobster.

As I say, I'm very proud of Joe and for myself. There was a time when trying something this new would have been avoided at all costs. There was a time when we would have given up at the first sign of trouble. Instead, we stayed with it, and when something didn't seem quite right, we kept our heads, made adjustments and kept going. We lived out the immortal words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't panic. Also, always know where your towel is.

It's been way, way too long since I posted kid photos. Click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized image:

Here's the eight-year-old getting gang tackled by the German Shepherd puppies at Robinwood Farms.

(More after the jump.)

My four-year-old daughter is a fount of ideas and plans.

She would like to see our church's pews equipped with a drink delivery device. You press a button and up pops a tasty beverage.

Her other idea would help if you've had too many tasty beverages. Walls would rise around you and the pew would open to reveal a commode, so you wouldn't have to leave the sanctuary if you needed to go.

And some people think that cushions on the pew are excessively luxurious.

Don't you imagine that they're already working on this sort of thing in Japan?

The kids' latest amusement: Changing their Windows XP profile names to unpronouncable strings of symbols and letters. The scary thing is that the four-year-old was the first to figure out how to do this. Scarier still: Daddy, the computer professional, hasn't yet figured out how to do this.

Just got back from four very pleasant days in Arkansas' capital city visiting family and friends. My wife's uncle and aunt raise German Shepherds on a farm north of town -- while I worked Monday, she and the kids spent most of the day there, being gang-tackled by about a dozen 10-week old pups. (There are some great photos, which I hope to get posted soon.) In Little Rock, the family restores historic homes in the Quapaw Quarter district, and we stayed with them in their latest project, a lovely and spacious home built in 1913. It was interesting to hear about some of the obstacles they and other homeowners faced over the last 25 years, often facing indifference and hostility from City Hall. Nowadays, Little Rock seems quite committed to preserving and appreciating its historic neighborhoods.

We also got to spend time with our friends Jeff and Jan and their daughter Olivia. We got to know them through our church when they lived in Tulsa. We and several other couples were part of a wonderful small group Bible study -- the rare kind that actually stay together beyond the short term. Most of us married relatively late, and we all started having kids about the same time. We've scattered to the four winds, but we still keep in touch. The wonderful thing about long-time friends is being able to pick up the conversation as if you'd just left off. They were kind enough to have us over to dinner one evening and to keep the kids the next evening.

And the reason we needed someone to watch the kids last night was the official reason we were in town. My mother-in-law was being honored as one of several recipients of a Community Service Award for her work in establishing, administering, and raising funds for the Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Benton County. (In 2002, she received a Presidential Point of Light award.)

During our visit, we went to the local children's museum (fun, but terribly PC in places), had lunch and looked around the River Market and downtown, drove past the Clinton Library, and admired the beautiful homes in our family's neighborhood. Mikki got to join her mom at a luncheon at the Governor's Mansion, hosted by Arkansas' First Lady, Janet Huckabee. (Mikki overheard a local media personality say how nice it was that folks with real class were living in the mansion, unlike the '80s.) I maintained a fairly normal work schedule on Monday and Tuesday, taking advantage of local eateries with Wi-Fi to do so. More about all that over the course of rest of the week, I hope.

Tulsa Christian therapist Bowden McElroy mentions that he's off to Dallas for the Smart Marriages conference. One of the conference speakers is Bill Doherty, who was featured in a story in Wednesday's USA Today. This week Doherty is launching the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists. The purpose of the registry is so that couples who are seeking help to save their marriages can find a counselor who shares their commitment to the sanctity of marriage and who actually has the skills and training to help them.

"The registry is about training and competence and about values, because most couples assume the therapist is pro-marriage, but many therapists feel they have to be neutral," he says. "The values thing comes into play when there seems to be a discrepancy between somebody's personal happiness and their commitment to the marriage."

A Christian couple in trouble knows that it would be wrong, however tempting, to abandon their vows and just walk away, but they may need help so that staying together isn't just a matter of grim endurance. They may need help clearing away years of accumulated grievances so that something resembling joy can return to the relationship. They need encouragement, suggestions for getting around obstacles, and the occasional kick in the seat of the pants. Such a couple isn't going to be helped if the therapist they hire turns out to be open to divorce as a possible solution, or if the therapist believes personal happiness and individual autonomy are the highest aims in life. I suspect some couples delay seeking help for fear of getting a therapist who will lead them down the wrong path.

In any kind of therapy, for that matter, you'd want a therapist who shares your values and world-view, not someone who will work to undermine it. You'd also like to know something about the therapist's credentials and experience.

Doherty's registry seems like a very sensible and helpful idea, but of course there are objectors who seem to feel that the name of the registry is too judgmental:

Some therapists question the need for an additional service. The fact that Doherty is calling his list "marriage-friendly" irks others, who say it suggests some therapists are biased in favor of divorce. Still others are concerned about what they see as an underlying conservative message with the name and the values statement.

"I don't know of any body of research that suggests therapists who sign a values statement are going to be better at keeping couples together than those who don't sign a values statement," says Alan Hovestadt, a professor of family therapy at Western Michigan University and AAMFT president.

And David Schnarch, who directs the Marriage & Family Health Center in Evergreen, Colo., disagrees with Doherty's assessment of his peers. "Certainly, there was a period in the '60s and '70s where there was tremendous focus on individual growth at the expense of relationships," he says. "But to position marital therapists as doing that is completely inaccurate."

We're still dealing with the fallout of that "tremendous focus on individual growth."

The registry will be available for free to prospective clients looking for a therapist. There probably aren't many listings yet, but the website has some articles that look interesting:

• What to Look For in a Marriage Therapist
• Divided Loyalties: The Challenge of Stepfamily Life
• How Therapists Harm Marriages and What We Can Do About It

A tip of the hat and best wishes to Bill Doherty and the National Registry of Marriage Friendly Therapists.

It's the end of a busy and unusual Father's Day, in the midst of a busy summer.

The eight-year-old has had two weeks of camp away from home, back-to-back -- not only camp, but time with the extended family. The first week was in Oklahoma City with my sister and his cousins -- boys just a bit older than he is. My sister teaches art at an elementary school and does an annual "art camp" -- a week of half-days working on some unusual and creative projects. Early in the week he made a papier mache light saber, but at the end of the week he found that tulle wrapped around wooden dowels created a more realistic effect. This is the second year she's invited him down to participate, and he's really enjoyed it, but he also enjoyed late nights playing Game Cube with the cousins.

This last week was spent with the grandparents in Arkansas and going to a day camp at Bella Vista. He said it wasn't as fun this year. Last year on the nature hike they climbed up behind and over a waterfall and caught crawdads in a creek. I guess a parent complained, or maybe the insurance company threw a fit -- too dangerous to do it again this year. He still had a good time. Grandmother remarked that he'd matured a lot in a year's time -- much quicker to comply and not so much fussing when things don't go his way. Last year she was alarmed that he was self-centered and demanding in the way that seven-year-old boys are and seemed certain that it was because we were too strict or too lenient.

The house was quieter without the two kids pestering and teasing each other. The four-year-old has enjoyed the exclusive attention. She had eight swim lessons over the two weeks and really enjoyed them. She's now confident enough to be in the water without five different flotation devices strapped to her. She's especially proud that she can now touch the bottom of the neighborhood pool -- if she's on the very edge of the shallow end and on her tiptoes.

At home, she has been spending a lot of time playing with the keyboard, picking out tunes of her own invention. She always seems to be working on a plan. When preschool was in session, she had a plan to get the boys to stop picking on the girls. More recently, she had a plan to make a delicious dessert with whipped cream and strawberries.

I'm very blessed to have two beautiful, loving, smart, funny, and affectionate children. I'm proud to be their dad, and I'm very thankful for their mom -- my wife -- the lovely woman who brought them into this world and devotes her life to caring for them.

I should add that the longer I'm in this dad business the better I understand the joys and frustrations (especially the latter) that my dad experienced. Thanks, Dad.

From our little wildlife sanctuary:

So far we've had two batches of baby birds -- four robins back in May, in a nest in the bend of a downspout, just outside our back door; this month, a batch of baby sparrows in a nest box mounted on the outside of our shed.

A male cardinal who lost his crest -- fight with a blue jay? -- has been making regular visits to our deck. We call him Flattop.

We've been seeing a rabbit around the neighborhood, and a couple of days ago I saw it loping across the backyard.

The toads have been singing merrily most nights, and a couple of voices have been singing harmony -- green tree frogs. Not many of them yet, but they are there. Last year was the first time we found one in our yard. This year we've seen and heard them several nights.

Speaking of toads, I spotted a new string of eggs in the pond yesterday. A few days ago, my four-year-old saw the first couple of baby toads on dry ground -- each just about the size of her thumbnail.

The goldfish are doing well, but we miss the Big Kahuna -- a big orange, black, and white koi -- haven't seen him in months, and haven't seen any sign of his demise either. I've wondered if some predator fished him out for dinner. A few years ago I walked out on the deck one morning, heard a couple of big fwoomps, and looked up to see a great blue heron flying away from the pond.

The little one is with her grandparents, so this evening my wife, my eight-year-old son, and I went to see "Revenge of the Sith" -- the second time for him, first time for us.

So we were in the van, leaving the movie theatre parking lot. I asked him if he noticed anything he missed the first time.

"No."

Did he notice any Biblical parallels, anything that reminded him of things in the Bible?

"Well, it's kind of like Tulsa."

(Not the path I was trying to go down, but all right....) How so?

"Bill LaFortune is like Senator Palpatine."

(A moment to suppress convulsive laughter....) He is? What do you mean?

"Everyone thought he'd be good at first, but then he made some bad choices, and then they finally found out he was on the wrong side."

A bit later: "And he's also like Senator Palpatine because he tells each person what they want to hear."

After assuring our lad that we weren't laughing at him -- we were laughing at the notion of Bill LaFortune as a shrewd, cunning Dark Lord of the Sith -- we did think of another parallel. In Episode II, there is a conversation between Anakin and Padme where he praises dictatorship as a way to bring order out of the chaos of democracy. The same theme recurs in Episode III. Here in Tulsa, we have a newspaper editorial board that consistently complains about the disorder of our City Council debates and seeks stability and order. They oppose every effort to give more power to the citizens to determine how we will be governed, and most recently one of their members has called for at-large members of the Council as a way of disconnecting the councilors from the citizens they were elected to represent. The stability and order the Whirled seeks is the stability of central control, a Council of Clones marching in lockstep to the drumbeat of their master.

Democracy and representative government can be a messy thing. Debate, dissent, and disagreement aren't pretty, but a government that is perfectly ordered and perfectly in agreement is one that has been turned to the Dark Side.

I don't think anyone ever took a picture of this, but I can still see it vividly in my mind.

It's morning in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and my grandfather is sitting in a metal lawn chair in the backyard at 529 East 6th Street, a cup of coffee beside him on the table. He's bent over, his elbows resting just above his knees, hands loosely clasped, a cigarette in one hand, looking intently at... what? A blade of grass? A point in mid-air?

I caught myself in just that position (sans cigarette) today.

I used to wonder what that was all about.

I'm pretty sure I understand now.

"He has the most eclectic taste in bedtime music," my wife just said. My eight-year-old son is drifting off to sleep to cries of "sit down, John!" from the original Broadway cast album of "1776". For the previous couple of weeks, it was the best of the Chieftains, which Rocky and Rainbow, the hermit crabs, seemed to enjoy. The beating of the bodhrán gets their claws a-clicking. A performance album by the Texas Boy Singers was a favorite for a while. Over the years he's cycled through several albums by Riders in the Sky and Trout Fishing in America, "No!" by They Might Be Giants (also the official soundtrack of last summer's family vacation), and John Rutter's "Three Musical Fables."

My daughter went through a long stretch falling asleep listening to Leonard Bernstein narrating and conducting "Peter and the Wolf" and "Carnival of the Animals." She often goes for more kid-oriented bedtime listening -- there's a CD about Elmo and the orchestra, a collection of Raffi songs performed by country singers, a couple of Wiggles CDs. There's a CD of an orchestra performing Irish tunes, and she asks me to sing "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral" along with the music, which always gets me a little choked up -- my mom used to sing that to me at bedtime, along with "Don't Fence Me In" and "South of the Border."

A long-time favorite CD of both kids -- both have been listening to it since they were babies -- is called "Love A Byes". They still request it from time to time. (It's out of print, sorry to say.)

There's almost always a sung lullabye, too. The boy always wants Mom to sing "Stay Awake," from Disney's "Mary Poppins." Dad is not allowed to substitute. The girl seems to prefer Dad's singing of late, and for a while she wanted songs about dreams, so I would sing "A Kiss to Build a Dream on," or that Everly Brothers tune.

Writing about this is making me a little drowsy....

This time of year our backyard goldfish pond is teeming with tadpoles. It's also overgrown with stringy algae, so much so that the pond filter has to be rinsed out on a daily basis. I have a pool net I can use to scoop out the goop, but if my eight-year-old son is watching, he insists that I make sure that any tadpoles that are scooped up are released back into the pond.

This rather slows down the process of dealgifying the pond, and I find, as I carefully rescue the tads from the net and watch them swim away, each one like a plump watermelon seed with a whip-like tail, that I keep humming that song from "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life."

Friday night was Joe's first baseball game of the season, and he had a great game. Joe went two for three -- the one time he didn't get a base hit, he was out at first, but a runner scored on a fielder's choice. On his final at bat he smacked it into right field, driving in two runs. He crossed the plate a couple of batters later.

He played in left-center field part of the game and for the final inning was "pitcher." In 8-year-old coach-pitch ball, the batting team's coach is the pitcher, but there's a defensive player who stands in the center of the field -- to borrow a term from cricket, let's call this non-pitching pitcher a silly mid off. Anyway, as silly mid off, Joe got the assist on the final out of the game, scooping up the grounder and tossing it to first.

This afternoon's game was windy and dusty. Joe got one hit, grounded out once, and struck out once when the wind was especially gusty. He played a few innings in left center field and two innings as catcher, making a play at the plate to put out the runner, who knocked him over. This is the fourth year of organized ball for Joe and most of his teammates, and it's amazing to think back to his T-ball days. A good defensive play is not the stunning feat that it once was, and more often than not, the batter at least makes contact with the ball.

Joe's team is made up of his fellow students at Regent Preparatory School, and the coaches are all Regent dads. Every coach Joe has had has been an exemplar of patience and good sportsmanship, and it's reflected in the attitude of the boys. The coaches do a great job of challenging the boys to do better without making them feel small.

It's not whether you win or lose, blah-blah-blah, but for the record, the Regent Rams are 2-0.

After last night's game, our family went over to Riverwalk Crossing, just north of the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks. Landscaping and bricklaying is still in progress, but a few shops and restaurants are open. We had supper at Gary's Grill. The owner, Gary Hahn, is the nephew of the owner of Brownie's, the venerable burger joint and root beer stand in midtown Tulsa. Gary's menu is nearly identical to Brownie's, complete with homemade root beer served in frosted mugs. Katherine had a wienie burger -- they make tiny cross cuts along one side of a hot dog, and as it cooks it curls into a ring, which they serve on a hamburger bun. (The night before, Mikki and I had heard Glenn Beck talking about his mom doing this.) The service was friendly, and we had a nice meal. As a bonus, we saw Joe's very first teacher, Mrs. James, and her husband and their new baby.

Today after the game, Joe and I spent a couple of hours at the aquarium. Joe got to feed and pet the stingrays and bamboo sharks, and we were fascinated watching the octopus, who was much more active than normal. There wasn't a docent in the shark exhibit, so Joe started explaining to the other visitors how to tell the difference between the bull sharks and the lemon sharks.

After dinner tonight, we all played Apples to Apples (the junior edition). Each player has a hand of five cards, each with a noun on it -- e.g., George Washington, Dumbo, under my bed, spaghetti, spit, cowboys. One player, the judge for the hand, draws a card with an adjective -- e.g., tiny, heavy, yucky, helpful, hairy. Each of the other players plays a noun card from his hand, and the judge chooses among the cards played for the noun that best matches the adjective. The fun of the game is that you often don't have a noun card anywhere near the adjective, and you're forced to decide, for example, which among George Washington, trains, ice cream, or Big Bird is the hairiest. The kids really love it, and it's quick enough (20-30 minutes) that it's easy to fit in a game.

Jan, the Happy Homemaker, a fellow Okie blogger, has posted a wonderful response to a visitor who came to her blog via the Google search "how to be happy as a homemaker":

No matter your situation in life, it is a temporary season. Why not make the best of it? Homemaking (and motherhood) are really fleeting, but they are important. It is as if each task you undertake is a stitch in the great quilt of comfort that covers our nation. Your family may not realize all that you do, but they benefit nonetheless... just as you benefit from the works of countless others whose work goes unnoticed by you. Take pride in your own work, not seeking praise from others.

She links to a Homeliving Helper entry on combating depression, with questions and points to ponder (for everyone, not just for homemakers -- go read it), and has a couple more tips of her own.

In her Blogger profile, Jan writes, "At one time I was deep, but currently I'm just enjoying life and spouting out fluff. Maybe I'll be deep some other day. Maybe not." Jan is too modest. There's plenty of fun fluff (more motel postcards!), but she's deep, too, more days than not.

"Katherine, tell Daddy what we were talking about today."

"I can't tell him the same things, but they'll mean the same things."

"If we drove our car to the bottom of the earth, we'd be upside down, but it wouldn't feel like it. Grabity would push us up a little bit."

"Hayden is my best friend, but he doesn't know what 'kidnapping' means. He's my best friend, but he doesn't even know what it means."

"What does 'kidnapping' mean, Katherine?"

"It means taking a little nap."

I hear singing in the backyard! The toads have returned, a bit later than last year.

Some kid blog-bragging for a Sunday afternoon:

While we waited for our lunch at Delta Cafe, this is what my four-year old daughter drew, unprompted and unassisted:

Everyone had the day off, so Grandma picked up the kids early, and Mikki and I had some time on our own. We had lunch at the Bangkok Restaurant, a very good Thai buffet near 31st and Harvard -- only $8 each, not including beverage, and plenty of spicy dishes, which we both enjoy. They had a lot of variety for a relatively small restaurant.

The weather was lovely. We drove up to Cherry Street, parked the van, and walked along, window-shopping. There's a specialty food store, LaDonna's Fancy Foods, at the northwest corner of 15th and St. Louis that had an amazing variety of pastas and cheeses. Have you ever seen sombrerini pasta? Me neither. Can you guess what they look like from the name? We walked from Troost to Peoria on the north side of 15th, back to St. Louis on the south side, then down to Swan Lake and back.

Katherine spotted our first two daffodils in bloom on Sunday, and a bunch more are close to popping. The pear trees have already put out their fuzzy buds, and the phlox is starting to bloom.

We'll have a few more cold nights, and probably in a couple of weeks, we'll get a freak 12-inch snow storm which will all melt the next day. But spring is really here.

UPDATE: A reader mailed in the name of the specialty food shop, LaDonna's Fancy Foods, which I've added above, and linked it to LaDonna's very fine website.

The kids have been listening to a CD from the library: "Yes, M'am: Respect for the Elders" by storyteller Diane Ferlatte. It's a collection of fables and tall tales, all with some sort of moral about showing respect in word and deed, but told memorably with vivid and humorous detail. In one story, "The Talking Eggs," two sisters were confronted with bizarre situations and nonsensical commands -- an old woman who took her head off to braid her own hair, talking eggs, a two-headed cow that needed milking. The sister who complied with respect was rewarded; the sister who insisted on her own way was left empty-handed. Last night at dinner, the kids wanted to listen to the story with me, but instead my wife had them tell as much of the story as they could remember. This evening at dinner we actually listened to it, and I remember thinking, "We listened to this last night," because the children had hardly forgotten a single detail. That's a mark of great storytelling. Time will tell if the stories' lessons will make their mark as well.

and Katherine says hooray!

We were having Joseph tell us about the Bhil people of India -- he learned about them in missions class at church.

Katherine, our four-year old, spoke up:

"Dad, someday I'd like to visit the outside world."

"The outside world?"

"Yeah, the outside world. Someday I'd like to go there."

Mom: "Katherine, where do you think the outside world is?"

"It's in Oklahoma City!"

Lightbulb goes off -- I took Joseph with me to OKC when I went for the Republican State Committee meeting on Saturday. We went around Bricktown with my sister and her boys, who live in town, and my parents, who were down for the weekend. I guess her big brother had been talking about the shooting gallery and the fish tank at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World.

By the way, even though it was an interesting place to visit and browse -- camo onesies for your toddler! -- the only money we spent was about $1 each on the shooting gallery, although we were mightily tempted by this little beauty, especially now that the assault weapon ban has expired. (I'm pretty sure it would be considered an assault weapon.)

Today was Joseph's eighth birthday. He woke up excited and ready to go -- Grandma (my mom) was taking him to Petco to buy a couple of hermit crabs and all their accessories. He has studied and enjoyed the toads and the tadpoles and the goldfish in the backyard, but he has never before had a real pet. Now Rocky and Rainbow are in an aquarium in his room. He is determined to know everything about them and the right way to take care of them.

Next Grandma took him and a friend he made in her neighborhood to the Oklahoma Aquarium. We have a membership, and he loves going there. The highlight of the visit was the new stingray touch tank. Joseph loved feeding the stingrays at SeaWorld Orlando and was a little disappointed that there weren't any at the park in San Antonio, so it's exciting to have these gentle and graceful creatures so close to home. Grandma let him pick a small item from the gift shop. He thought about getting a box of shark's teeth, but thought he might lose them one by one, so instead he picked out a shark's tooth necklace, reasoning he'll be able to keep track of it better.

Grandma brought him home, and his other Grandmother and his Great Aunt Mildred took him and his little sister swimming at the neighborhood pool. After a rough start last summer (early morning swim class outdoors in early June -- not a pleasant experience), he has become confident in the water, especially with his new goggles and flippers, but even without.

Back at home, Joe took his crabs out of the cage and watched them walk around. They're quicker than you might think.

For his birthday dinner, Joe asked for Grandmother to broil orange roughy. He also wanted some plain spaghetti with butter on it -- a favorite. There was also corn on the cob and fresh green beans. Joe's spaghetti-eating style is not elegant -- using a fork to scoop the ends of a dozen noodles into his mouth then working the rest of the noodles in with his lips and teeth -- didn't bother me, but I could see it was getting on Grandmother's nerves a bit. If I don't correct him, Grandmother will be upset -- we're spoiling him. If I do correct him, Grandma will be upset -- too much criticism about trivial things. Granddaddy (Grandmother's husband) solved the problem by saying, "It's his birthday." Leave him be.

Blowing out the candles (all eight in one blow), "Happy Birthday", and cake -- a chocolate cake with black Spiderman webs traced in the icing, and a Spiderman figurine perched in the center -- and ice cream followed.

Then the gifts. He remembered to thank everyone without being prompted. One of his favorites -- a K'Nex building set. He has loved to build since he started working with Duplos before his second birthday. I gave him David Macaulay's book, Building Big, which he seemed quite pleased with. I also gave him The Magician's Nephew, the first book in the Narnia series, which we'll read together, both of us for the first time. Over the last year, Joseph has gone from reading most things aloud to reading silently most of the time. One of his summer reading books was a biography of John Glenn -- nearly 200 pages, and he finished it and enjoyed it. He was excited about getting a little Intel video/digital camera -- takes lower-res images and a few seconds of video, which you can download via USB. Grandpa gave him, and installed, a headlight and a taillight for his bicycle.

It's been a busy summer for Joe, a sign of things to come if we aren't careful. This week is Vacation Bible School at our church. He spent a week at a day camp at Bella Vista, spending the nights with his Grandmother and Granddaddy. He spent another week here in town at Camp Invention's session at the University School. He spent a week with his cousins in OKC -- the mornings they were in his aunt's summer art camp -- she teaches elementary art in one of the public school district's there. Then we had our week as a family in Texas. It's been a lot of fun, but there hasn't been much ordinary time.

At 50" and 52 pounds, Joe is right at median height for his age, but a bit on the skinny side. His blond hair has darkened a bit, but it's still golden. He is still affectionate -- loves to sit in our laps and snuggle, loves to get and give hugs. I am awfully proud of him, and I'm blessed to get to be his dad.

Apropos of ASL, our three-year-old is interested in the notion of different languages and is aware of two -- Spanish and sign language, which she calls English. Any spoken language that isn't what we speak around the house she considers Spanish. We have a few bilingual and foreign-language children's books around the house. I don't speak Spanish, but I pronounce it well, and it's fun to read a Dr. Suess book as if I'm the announcer on Univision. Katherine does not appreciate it when I read in another language and she scolds me.

But sometimes she likes to show off the bit of Spanish she knows, like she did on Mother's Day, for the Peruvian lady who joined us for lunch at my Mom's house, telling her the Spanish names for the colors of her crayons.

And sometimes she will tell us what some word is in Spanish -- which is often a random selection of sounds, including a flipped 'r' and ending in a vowel -- followed by the word in "English" -- which is some sort of hand signal, sometimes accompanied by a cluster of foreign-sounding syllables.

As the nation pays special tribute to those who served in World War II, here's an account of the ocean crossing of a troop convoy. My great Uncle Floyd Bates would have been a part of this convey. He was with the 127th Infantry in New Guinea. The convoy left San Francisco on April 22, 1942, headed for Port Adelaide, Australia.

What followed was almost six weeks at sea. One of the ships could only make 9 knots, consequently the convoy could only go that speed. Because of sea sickness, I could not go on deck for about the first week, and the heavy swells stayed with us until at least Hawaii (we never made land).

One day out, we were joined by the cruiser Indianapolis, which would act as escort. Aboard the Scott, the destination was not known (although it was rumored to be Melbourne or Brisbane, Australia).

En route, the troops were miserable. The orders of the day included three meals down promptly followed by three meals back up. The deck had salt water showers and the heads of the ship sloshed with vomit. The crew of the ship also occasionally played pranks on us.

One that stands out occurred on May 6, 1942, when the crew announced that there would be fishing the next day and a sign-up sheet was posted. The next day, on May 8, it was announced that "suckers" were caught and the list was of signees posted. As it turned out, the ship had crossed the International Date Line and there was no "next day" to go fishing.

Uncle Floyd, who received two Purple Hearts, passed away at the end of last year, one of the many WWII vets that didn't live to see the completion of a national memorial honoring their fallen comrades. You can read my account of his funeral here.

Perhaps the longest-distance link to this website comes from TulipGirl, who writes from Kyiv, Ukraine. I've recently added her to my blogroll, along with the blog of her husband. His blog is called Le Sabot Post-Moderne.

In real life they are John and Alexandra Bush, who also are church planters with Mission to the World (almost typed "Whirled" there, out of habit) in Kyiv, Ukraine. They both write about culture, politics, theology, and family issues. TulipGirl's earlier site Me and the Boys has some material you shouldn't miss, as well.

The Bushes have some strong opinions, learned in the School of Hard Knocks, about Gary Ezzo's not-so-wise "Babywise" approach to infant feeding and childrearing. TulipGirl has a whole category devoted to the topic, and she wrote an article called "Confessions of a Failed Babywiser". Upon learning that Ezzo's books were available in Russian, she had her article translated and posted it on the blog (start here and work backwards).

She also mentions that Tulsa's own TulsaKids magazine won an award for investigative journalism for their July 2003 articles about Ezzo and "Babywise".

When we were expecting our first child, we were encouraged by testimonials from several friends -- intelligent, devoted Christians all -- to make use of the Ezzo approach to infant feeding and discipline. Without getting into details, I regret that we followed their advice, and I would warn parents away from it. It is overly rigid, and encourages an adversarial relationship between parents and children. While Ezzo is right to encourage firmness, he discourages natural parental tenderness. There are lots of good links on tulipgirl.com that will expose you to alternative approaches (and here and here), advocated by equally intelligent, devoted Christians who believe that Christian parenting should reflect the gracious example of our Heavenly Father.

(And here's a link to what Focus on the Family has to say about Ezzo's material.)

This was a lovely day that deserves a quick recap.

Actually, it began last night, when I caught a toad for Joe to take and display with his project. There weren't any out earlier last night, and we wondered if we would have one at all. But there he (or she) was, and I put him in a small critter keeper. Before I gave him a bit of foliage and some water, I dropped in some crickets and watched him pick them off in rapid succession. Wow!

This morning, Mikki's mom fixed some breakfast for us. Joe and I caught some baby toads and Mikki collected some tadpoles from the pond. We got it all loaded up and into the classroom. We swapped the toad and the tree frog. We thought they both might fit in the big critter keeper, but the toad was quite upset about being held against his will, and we were afraid he'd inadvertently hurt the frog with all the leaping about. The frog, by contrast, was quite calm, clinging to a branch or the plastic side of the keeper with his sticky toes. Between the display, the big keeper with the toad, the medium keeper with the tree frog, and the little special cricket keeper, which also held the three baby toads we caught, and the mason jar full of tadpoles and pond water, Joe's desk was rather full. There was a near disaster when one of Joe's classmates tried to turn the big keeper to see the toad, and it nearly sent the small one to the floor.

So Mikki and I and Grandma settled into the auditorium, while the students got ready to present the musical "Oliver!"

Just before the program is to start, Joe rushed in, teary eyed. Some of the baby toads had died and the crickets were eating them. I head with him to the classroom, rescued the surviving baby and put him in with the tree frog. It is unclear whether the crickets killed the baby toads or were just enjoying a stroke of luck. Joe settled down and seemed OK as I headed back to the auditorium.

The first graders were in the chorus for "Where Is Love?" and "Food, Glorious Food!" Students from the upper grades (mainly 5th & 6th) had the lead roles, with some amazing singing, particularly from the girls who played Rose and Nancy. Even the 1st graders sang with strong voices and were mostly on pitch.

Joe enjoyed preparing for the role, singing the songs -- his ability to stay on tune is developing nicely -- and tearing up and mucking up some too-small pants for his orphan costume.

After the two-hour long play, there was a slideshow saluting the school's faculty and founding parents. Then we filed out to view student artwork and semester projects and have cookies and punch. It was interesting to see the variety. Here are some of the projects Joe's classmates did: Soaking human teeth in Dr Pepper for up to ten days to see how DP affects a tooth. (Note: Be sure not to remove your gums before drinking soda pop. Also, be sure not to let soda pop soak on your teeth overnight.) Going on a fossil hunt with dad. Planting a garden. Observing and photographing backyard wildlife. Assembling a complicated Star Wars Lego kit. Building wooden dinosaur skeletons. Writing a book imagining visits to different countries. Building a wooden toy car.

Patriotism was on display. A Lego Statue of Liberty. One boy's project consisted of a videotape of him, in an Uncle Sam-like costume singing a mnemonic song about all 50 state capitals. Another student wrote about a great heroic uncle who had been a WW II combat pilot in the Pacific, then went MIA, evidently shot down, giving his life for his country about a month before the end of the war.

One student's semester project involved visiting a Shriner's Hospital. For treatment. Puts it all into perspective, doesn't it.

Mikki and Joe returned the critters to the house, then they and Katherine and Mikki's mom headed to Casa Bonita for lunch. I went to the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club luncheon to hear candidates for local State Senate seats -- two candidates in Senate 33, five in Senate 25 (formerly 51), and one running in Senate 39. In all three cases, the incumbent is term limited. No actual legislators at lunch -- they're all down at the State Capitol for the end of session rush.

We turned the critters loose this evening after taking some photos. Spur of the moment, I suggested that we take the kids to the Admiral Twin Drive-In to see "Shrek 2". We weighed the likely sleepiness and crankiness tomorrow against the fun of doing something spontaneous. It was a great time -- the evening was cool, with a nice breeze, we all enjoyed the movie, and it was fun to pull a happy surprise on the kids. Joe didn't figure it out until we were in line to get in.

I remember seeing my first PG movie at the Admiral Twin. It was "Young Frankenstein", on the east screen. I got a big, big 7-Up and nearly drank myself sick. I laughed at all the silliness, but I remember overhearing some remark from mom about jokes going over my head.

And so to bed.

A happy providence tonight: We bought some "critter keepers" from the pet store so Joe could capture a toad and display it as part of his semester project. When we began to get the biggest keeper ready for use, Joe noticed a crack in the bottom corner. It was too late to return it, and Joe refused to put a toad in the smaller container -- not enough room to hop, he said; it would slam into the side. So we would wait to capture a toad until tomorrow night.

After family prayers, Mikki put Katherine to bed, and then she, Joe, and I went into the kitchen to get Joe his medicine. Mikki spotted it first -- a tree frog on the door to the porch. We had never seen a tree frog at our house before. I took the smaller keeper out the front door and around the house and caught him. So assuming Joe can catch a toad tomorrow night, he will be able to illustrate vividly the similiarities and differences between frogs and toads.

And speaking of crawly things, The Rough Woodsman has a link to a fascinating photo blog about insects and pond life in Stephens County, Oklahoma. Check out Insect Journal.

Yesterday was the first game for my son's Little League team. He's starting "coach-pitch" -- the next step up from T-ball -- in which the batter is pitched to by his own coach. Joseph got a hit in each of his three at-bats, scored two runs, three RBIs. Two of his hits were rockets down the left field line. In his first time up, he made it to second but didn't see the signal to hold up (the runner in front of him was holding at third) and he got tagged out. On his third at-bat the ball scooted all the way to the left field corner -- and he made it all the way around, driving in two runners. He was thrilled, and I was very proud.

I am even more pleased that he is enjoying the game. So far in his time playing sports, he has had great coaches who have done a great job of balancing learning, playing hard, and having fun.

My own Little League experience, in third grade, was no fun. The team (the Holland Hall Hawks) was no good, and I was so bad I had to play right field on a lousy team, if I got to play at all. I wanted to quit, but my folks made me stick with it, as they should have done. I remember being really hungry most games and chewing on the leather strings on my mitt. My grandmother enjoyed the games -- we were funnier than the '62 Mets. We almost won a game against Paul Revere School, a school on the northeast corner of 51st & Lewis that had no playing fields. The game was played at Heller Park, if I recall correctly. The coach promised us a soda if we won. They came back to beat us in the last inning. The experience soured me on competitive sports for a long time and had me believing I'd never be any good at sports.

Anyway, I'm glad Joseph is off to a much better start. Who knows what the future will have in store for him?

We have a scrap paper drawer, a place where our two kids can freely grab paper to draw on or cut up. Leftover handouts, computer printouts that we no longer need, flyers, computer source code listings -- as long as it's blank on one side, it's fair game for artwork.

Sometime ago I added to the drawer leftover flyers from my unopposed run for Republican State Committeeman last year. Today, Katherine, my three-and-a-half year old, grabbed one of those sheets, which displayed my photo and logo (adapted from my council campaign yard signs) at the top of the page.

When she saw my picture, she grinned at my wife and said, "I didn't think Daddy would be on a piece of paper!" Make the Whirled, the TV, or the web, no big deal, but get your face on a piece of drawing paper and you're a star in a three year old's eyes. It's almost like having my own coloring book. A bit later, when I was in the room, my wife asked her, "Why are you happy?" She looked over at me and said, "There are two of him, over there and on the piece of paper."

In other family news, Joseph had his first coach-pitch baseball practice today. He has been looking forward to graduating from T-ball since last season ended. And Katherine climbed the big "mountain" on the play equipment at Joe's school all by herself. Over the weekend, Joe, my wife, and I worked on a poster for the church missions conference about our friends the Gateleys, who are church planters in Japan. And Wednesday Joe will be in a class play, as one of the narrators of "The Little Red Hen".

Yesterday afternoon we laid to rest my Grandfather's next youngest brother, who died early Sunday morning in Nowata. Floyd Estes Bates was born on October 3, 1920, in Welch, Oklahoma. He joined the Army when he turned 18, served with the 127th Infantry in New Guinea, and left the service in 1946 as a Staff Sergeant. He was a Purple Heart recipient -- twice wounded in combat. He married Susie L. Smith in 1947 -- she passed away this October. After the Army, Floyd was an oilfield worker and a member of the Pipefitters' and Welders' Union.

Floyd was sent off with a graveside service at Ball Cemetery near Childers, east of Nowata. The service reflected his life and loves. It began with a banjo and harmonica version of "Under the Double Eagle", followed by the Texas Playboys "Faded Love", played on a portable CD player.

The car problem ate into our last day of fall break. We decided to replace the transmission, rather than consider buying a new car right now. That was where things stood when I left to run an errand Wednesday morning. Before I returned, Mikki called to say she found a five-year old low-mileage minivan on sale at a dealership for less than $7,000. It sounded too good to be true, but I agreed to check it out before we left to visit Woolaroc for the afternoon. The minivan seemed in decent shape, handled well on the road. Joe was ready for us to buy then and there -- he liked the separate air conditioner controls for the back.

We left the dealership, got on the road, stopped at Tastee Freez in Skiatook for lunch, and finally made it to Woolaroc about 3. We spent much of the remaining two hours in the museum, with the kids marveling at all the hunting trophies. I enjoyed the historical stuff about Frank Phillips and his company. In that gallery, next to the Woolaroc aircraft, they have on display Phillips related ephemera, including currency issued by the First National Bank of Bartlesville in the years just before the Federal Reserve was established. We had a few minutes to walk around the lodge and peek inside, then walk one of the trails down toward the lake. It was a beautiful day, and over too soon.

Woolaroc was closing, so we drove into Bartlesville to Johnstone Park to give the kids some more outside play time. Joe had fun chasing around with an older boy, while Katherine climbed and went down the slides over and over again. When I was Katherine's age and younger, we lived just three blocks away, and Mom and I would walk to Johnstone Park. Mom would do "underdogs" -- push my swing and run underneath it (beside it, really) as the swing went forward. The same old swings are there, and a couple of them had been wrapped around the crossbar a couple of times to put them higher off the ground -- perfect for underdogs, so I did one for Joe, who laughed but told me he didn't want to do that again. Katherine wouldn't let me put her in a higher swing to try one with her.

I remembered an odd phrase about swinging we used growing up. "Let the cat die" -- which means stop pumping your legs and let the swing stop, and then we'll go home. Listening to these swings, the phrase made sense -- these swings sounded like a cat, creaking with high-pitched mews, short and separated, rather than the usual long, continuous, low creaks.

I said that we lived within walking distance of Johnstone Park. We moved from Lawrence, Kansas, to Bartlesville when I was 18 months old, so all my earliest memories are from our first Bartlesville house, downtown on Delaware Street, which we rented from Cities Service Oil Co., my Dad's employer. His office was within walking distance, as was the grocery store, our church (First Baptist), and the "Sani-Pool", a nearby public swimming pool. So at an early age, I had the idea that it was normal to live downtown and to be able to walk most everywhere.

Of course, the Kiddie Park (Bartlesville Playground) was also nearby, and I have happy memories of visits there. For the last five years, we've made it a point to bring the kids at least once each summer. You can't beat a park full of rides designed for small children, just 25 or 50 cents each.

We had supper at Mr. Limey's Fish and Chips, not far away off of Frank Phillips Blvd. If can overlook the ethnic slur and stereotypes (the logo is supposed to be an upper-class Brit in a bowler, monocle, and handlebar mustache), you'll enjoy the food. The fish is cod, with a light breading that Mikki compared to tempura. There was malt vinegar on the table, as there should be, and the "chips" were the proper size (although not quite greasy enough to be authentic). Both the kids ate everything on their plates. The owner said she had been a cashier for Cities Service, but opted to stay in Bartlesville when Cities moved to Tulsa around '69. She started working for this then-new restaurant called Mr. Limey's and has been around ever since.

The New York Times had an article about Bartlesville last week, and its use of world-famous architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright and Bruce Goff to draw visitors. Here's a link, but you will probably need to be a registered Times user to access the article.

About that van: The price was below blue-book, and we were inclined to go for it, but we had our mechanics check it out, and there was some serious rust damage underneath the car -- had either been in water or an area where they use a lot of salt on the roads. So now we know why the price was so amazing. We took a pass.

The beginning of this week was fall break at Joe's school. We had considered a trip to Silver Dollar City, but we learned it wasn't open on Monday and Tuesday this time of year, so we decided to make day trips and visit places around Oklahoma.

The failure of our Mitusbishi Expo's transmission on Saturday changed everything. We borrowed a car from Mikki's folks for her choir reunion events. Monday we arranged to have the Mitsubishi towed back to Tulsa, and we lost nearly all of the day we had planned to spend sightseeing somewhere. Katherine got very upset as she saw the car being pulled up on the back of the flatbed tow truck.

Tuesday morning we went to the Oklahoma Aquarium -- my first time there, the sixth or seventh visit for my son. It's not Sea World, but there are a lot of interesting and exotic sea creatures on display, with a lot of useful interpretive information. The octopus was fascinating to watch. The shark tank is Joe's favorite, and it is amazing to watch these big creatures swim overhead. The triggerfish at the coral flat exhibit was another favorite. If you wiggle your finger around a few inches over the surface of the water, the triggerfish will think it's an insect, and the fish will skim along at the surface following your finger, almost on its side, then spit at the presumed bug to try to knock it into the water.

We only had a couple of hours there, as we wanted to see Apollo 13 at the IMAX theatre. Mikki and I had seen it back in 1995, and we wanted Joe to see it too. The first time I saw it, I was impressed at how faithful it was to Jim Lovell's book "Lost Moon". The film didn't make the astronauts the lone heroes, but showed the heroic efforts of the team on the ground -- hundreds of engineers working to solve the problems.

Another reason I love this film: Name another movie where flight simulators play a significant role. At the beginning of the film, we see the astronauts train, practice reacting to surprises, and learn to work as a team in perfect sync with each other. At the end, the simulator is used to test scenarios for restarting the command module within very narrow power constraints.

Watching Apollo 13 again, I paid more attention to the challenges of making a film about a situation where the tension and conflict come from the laws of physics, and where the people involved are trained to react calmly. How do you convey the urgency to a general audience? Dramatic music, of course, and closeups of gauges and indicator lights. Often a technical explanation would sneak into the dialogue. In the real mission control, for example, one controller might tell another that the projected reentry angle is 5.9, which might cause the other controller's brow to furrow with concern, as he begins to think of approaches to solving this new problem. No one would need to say, as in the movie, that the angle would cause the spacecraft to skip off the atmosphere and back into space -- everyone would know the significance of the number without being told. In a book, the significance of an event would be explained in the narrative. For a movie, I suppose you could have interruptions where Bill Nye the Science Guy explains each point in the drama, or use subtitles. Building the explanation into the dialogue is less obtrusive.

After the movie, we went to Joe's first flag football game of the year at Maxwell Park. He played last fall with a team from his school in a YMCA league. This year the school team -- the Raiders -- is part of a Tulsa Parks league. Joe scored the first touchdown for the Raiders and had a great "tackle" a few plays later. He's really catching on to the game -- now if he can just leave his mouthguard in his mouth between plays....

When Weird Al Yankovic performs tomorrow night at the River Parks Amphitheatre -- the postponement of Friday's storm-cancelled performance -- it would be appropriate to lead off with "Amish Paradise". We were among tens of thousands of Tulsans to get a generous taste of life disconnected from the grid. Amish, yes. Paradise, well....

The power went off about 5:30 Friday afternoon. I was working late, Mikki and the kids were about to leave to go over to my folks' house for a visit. Earlier in the day, they had finished baking a football-shaped cake for Joseph's birthday party the next day. When I got home, just ahead of them about 9, the power was still out, all over the neighborhood. No storm damage to the house, a tree lost a limb, but no apparent damage to the lines leading to our home. We've had our problems with power -- a sequence of squirrels who committed suicide attacks on the transformer, a lightning strike on a transformer which started a small and brief grass fire in a neighbor's yard -- but never a long outage.

The rest of the family returned soon after, and we worked on getting everyone ready for bed in the dark. We opened some windows to get air moving through the house. The temperature had dropped and there was a good breeze, so it was fairly comfortable. We had some battery-powered lanterns we could scatter around the house, so we didn't have to deal with the heat or danger of candles. Everyone slept well except me. I kept imagining that the flashes of lightning were the lights from a PSO truck come to fix things, and I kept thinking about all the food in the deep freeze.

We slept later than we should have. The other side of the street had power; we were still out. I took the kids with me to verify that Whiteside Park Recreation Center -- where we were having the party -- had power, and then to get some lunch. I could hear the AC unit humming, so all is well. The kids wanted to eat at a Sonic with a picnic table so we went to 16th & Lewis -- no power there.

The party was a great success. Although renting the center included having a staffer set up and run games, the boys just had fun with the run of the gym. Nothing organized -- just whacking tennis balls with padded T-ball bats, shooting baskets, and tossing Nerf footballs. No worries about anything getting broken, and we were out of the heat. The rec center staff were very helpful. The ice cream cups had turned kind of soupy, but otherwise everything went well. Joe was pleased with his gifts and was as gracious as you can expect a seven-year-old boy to be. He got a pair of Star Wars light sabers -- one from Grandpa and Grandma, one from a school friend. Who would have guessed in 1978 that light sabers would still be a hot toy in 2003?

A brief stop back home to drop off gifts and balloons -- still no power, and sweltering -- then out to dinner with family. Some discussion about whether some or all of us should go to my folks' to spend the night -- deciding factor was that we did all right the night before and it would be a hassle to pack things for one night away. So we got home and got ready for bed before it got too dark.

Saturday night there was no breeze and no relief from the heat. The last time I remember being that uncomfortable sleeping was 20 years ago, when I spent a summer in the Philippines. No air conditioning there, but at least we had an oscillating fan to move the air around. During a winter power outage we could turn on the gas log to heat part of the house, but we had no options last night.

I couldn't sleep and neither could Katherine, so I got ready to take her for a drive. We could hear fireworks at Driller Stadium, so we hurriedly changed her diaper and got her shoes on. I wasn't moving fast enough for her. She said, let's go see the fireworks, and she rolled off the changing table and landed three feet below on the floor. Nothing injured but pride, thankfully.

We went to the side of the house, saw the finale, which she pronounced awesome, then got in the car. A quick tour of the neighborhood revealed we were part of powerless island of only about 30 houses. We stopped at Sonic for a limeade for me and a grilled cheese for her. She only wanted a quarter of the sandwich to hold -- if she held half, she explained, she needed two hands and so she couldn't clutch her blanket. It was about 10:30, and I started to drive toward downtown, curious to see how many other neighborhoods were still without power.

She was asleep by the time I reached 11th & Elgin, but I wanted to give her time to get deep asleep, so I drove past all the night spots. Things seemed busier and livelier at 11 than they had the previous Saturday night at 10, and I did hear music as I drove by. There was a concert in the street at Main and Brady with a good-sized crowd enjoying it. I drove past the site of the proposed new arena, and drove the routes that people would take to get from that site to the Brady District or the Blue Dome District. I made some observations about arenas, downtowns, and synergy, but I'll save that for a separate post.

Back at home, and no one except Joe was able to sleep. Katherine was uncomfortable, and when she's uncomfortable she wants to cover up in her big crocheted blanket, which was only making her more uncomfortable. By midnight she was hysterical and couldn't be comforted. We began making plans to find a motel, putting together clothes and the portable crib. PSO would make no promises about when we'd see a truck. The recording said that there were about 10,000 households without power scattered around the city, and it could be Monday before everyone was back on line.

Meanwhile, the transformer on the side of the street with power started putting on an amazing fireworks show -- three or four big surges that lit up the night. Everyone called the fire department, and I called PSO, too, and managed to connect to a live human being. (Hint: Hazardous conditions get you a live human to talk to.) The fire department came and went -- the transformer finally blew completely, and there was nothing for them to do. We loaded up and left. As we headed to the hotel, I noticed a PSO truck on the next street, presumably to fix the blown transformer. I thought about stopping to plead with them to fix our power too, as long as they were in the area.

We got to the hotel about 1 am. The Quality Suites is in the relatively new cluster of hotels at 31st & Memorial. With AAA discount, it was only $62 for a very nice room, including microwave, fridge, two cable TVs, two double beds and a hide-a-bed, and high speed internet access. Should have thought of the hotel option hours earlier -- could have used the indoor pool -- but we were sure that the power would be back up by then.

In the nice cool room, with the "Love-A-Byes" CD playing, we all dropped off to sleep. Next morning we learned that the power had come back on about 2:30 a.m. I guess the PSO crew did take care of us while they were in the neighborhood.

(If you're looking for Vision stuff, scroll down. I haven't written about the kids in a while, so indulge me.)

Katherine, my nearly-three-year-old, is worried about my nose.

For the last week and a half, I've been wearing glasses rather than contacts, because of allergies. My glasses are over 10 years old, and they rub against my nose, and I haven't bothered replacing them because I rarely wear them. I've looked for new glasses, but I don't care for the new tiny lenses. I like to be able to look in different directions by moving my eyes, not my whole head.

So after a week and a half of abusing the bridge of my nose with these glasses, I've got an owie. Katherine noticed it.

"You need a bandaid. I will get you a bandaid." Katherine is convinced that a bandaid will fix anything.

She came back from the bathroom with the box of bandages.

"Bring the box here, sweetie, and I'll pick one out."

"No, I will pick one. Here!" she said, as she pulled out a fairly big one.

"That's too big. It will tape daddy's eyes shut," my wife said.

"Give it to me and I will put it on myself."

"No, daddy, I will do it."

And she carefully put the padded bit over the hurt spot and taped it down the sides of my nose.

"See, I didn't get your eyes!"

She walked over and leaned against my wife, looking up with her cutest face.

"I took care of daddy. I like taking care of mans."

Every Friday, a set of five personal questions are posted at the Friday Five website, as a sort of conversation starter for bloggers. I'll give it a try -- maybe I'll do it most weeks.

1. How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]?

Working on a couple of high-priority projects at my job. Playing with the kids. Swimming with the family at the neighborhood pool. Keeping nature from utterly reclaiming our yard. And for the next week or so, trying to influence Tulsa's Dialog / Visioning leadership team to come up with a plan that I won't feel compelled to oppose.

2. What was your first summer job?

A programmer for Valuation Systems Company, writing depreciation software in BASIC for Wang and TRS-80 computers. The office was on the 30th floor of University Club Tower, south of downtown Tulsa, with great views of the entire city. I was making $6 an hour without having to sweat, and the fridge had all the free pop I could drink. That job spoiled me for life. It certainly spoiled the expectations I had of life in the software business.

3. If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go?

Paris, not withstanding the French. My son, nearly 7, has been hearing about Paris from his art teacher, and he wants to see the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and most of all, the Louvre, to see all the art works he's been studying at school. It would be a thrill to take him there and to see it for myself for the first time.

4. What was your worst vacation ever?

Hard to say, because any vacation that involved traveling to new places had something to commend it to me.

5. What was your best vacation ever?

Another tough one.

The "Rest and Be Thankful Tour" -- our June 1994 trip to Scotland and Ulster -- has to be near the top of the list, along with our return to Ulster in September 1995. We stayed at this B&B on both trips, hosted by some of the nicest people we've ever met.

Those were both before kids. A favorite family vacation was our trip to Florida last fall, which included Sea World, Kennedy Space Center, a week on the beach at Siesta Key, and a visit to friends in Fort Lauderdale.

Blogger Rachel Lucas has posted a touching tribute to her grandpa, a WWII vet who passed away last week. She tells of a remarkable gift he gave his grandchildren:

You see, Grandpa had a camcorder in the 1990s, and at family gatherings, he was always there in the background, silent, recording little snippets of our lives. What I didn't know was that he also used to have an 8 mm movie camera (sans sound) in the 1960s and 70s. Unbeknownst to me, he'd taken reels and reels of footage of my siblings and me when we were infants and toddlers.

So, late in his life, he decided to put all the footage he'd ever taken onto one VHS tape. He sat down one day and set up his 8 mm projector to play the movies on a white wall. Then he put his modern-day camcorder on a tripod and aimed it at that wall. While he played the old movies, he recorded with the camcorder. The best part is that as the silent 8 mm movies played on the wall, he narrated into the camcorder.

Read the whole thing, and have a look at Rachel's more recent entries, too.

Just back from a weekend trip to Lawrence, Kansas, to see my cousin graduate from high school. We made some stops on the way there and back to give Dad a break and let the kids run around.

On the way home tonight, we stopped for nearly two hours at Riverside Park in Independence, Kansas. Independence is a little city of about 10,000, county seat of Montgomery County. Like most Kansas county seats, it is a beautiful town, with tree-lined streets of tidy Late Victorian and Craftsman homes, a stately courthouse, and a downtown of beautifully restored commercial buildings which appear to be fully occupied.

Riverside Park sits on the north side of town, 124 acres above the banks of the Caney River, and features a small zoo, two playgrounds, an antique carousel, a lighted fountain, miniature golf, a miniature train ride, and tennis courts.

Our first stop on entering the park was the big playground near the Carousel. This is where Joe (nearly 7) wanted to spend his time. Visiting the playground is like traveling through time, starting with big metal behemoths probably built in the '50s, through '60s fiberglass bouncy horses, earth-toned climbing equipment from the '70s, up through a plastic play complex from the late '90s.

The behemoths to which I refer are old but very well maintained pieces of equipment which were designed with the assumption of a level of acceptable risk in child play which exceeds that of our safety-conscious age:

• A 12 foot high platform, providing access to five slides -- two straight and flat, two straight but wavy, and a curly slide -- reached by two steep metal ladders. The platform has a "guard rail" about 18 inches high, just high enough to catch a grownup's feet as he falls off and ensure that he hits the ground head first. The steps of these ladders are wrought iron manifestations of the the words "FUN FUL", which I take to be the manufacturer's name. I only found one reference to such a company on the web, a photo of a merry-go-round ride called an "Ocean Wave", circa 1920. I remember something very much like that in the playground in front of Catoosa Elementary School, and I think I saw one in Seiling Park in Broken Arrow within the last 10 years (no longer there).
• A twelve-foot high "fire tower" featuring a big hole in the floor (for a fire pole) as well as a straight slide.
• A six-foot slide platform with metal sheets extending down either side -- the kind that will fry you like bacon on a hot summer day.
• An antique ladder truck. A real one. Not something wooden and small with rubber bumpers over the sharp edges, not a relic fenced in and out of reach, but a real old fire truck that kids can climb all over. The steering wheel actually turns the wheels, which have real (mostly flat) tires. You can climb all the way back on the ladder. Sadly, the controls to raise, extend, and swivel the ladder have been disabled, probably by order of some safety-obsessed killjoys.
• A spinning circle -- the kind with the raised elongated bumps at right angles for traction, and bars radiating and rising from the center, then forking out and connecting to the edge. Joe was riding it, having me spin him faster and faster. As he was spinning, and as I was pondering whether, out of appreciation for the City of Independence having the guts to keep this classic play equipment available, I would refrain from filing suit if one of my kids were injured -- as if he could read my mind, Joe launched himself off the circle. His foot was caught by one of the handholds and it seemed he might be dragged around, but the circle stopped quickly. Joe was fine, grinning. He got up, brushed off the sand (that's what they use around all the play equipment -- not hard, splintery wood chips, but nice soft sand). "I intended to do that. I thought it would be cool to jump off!"
• Big heavy seesaws, the kind that will perform reverse traction on your spine if your partner suddenly scrams.

Katherine (nearly 3) was not all that interested in the playground. She wanted to ride the carousel with Mommy. And she did, probably about 15 times. When it's only a nickel a ride, you can ride 15 times. The carousel is beautifully restored, protected from the elements by a recently constructed canopy.

The train wasn't running -- it's only 25 cents -- and we didn't take time for the mini-golf course which illustrates the history of Independence (only $1 a game). We did stock up on sodas from the vending machines for the ride home -- only 50 cents a can.

The extra carousel rides and time on the playground was in lieu of a stroll through the park's Ralph Mitchell Zoo. The zoo mainly features small animals, and the centerpiece is a WPA-built monkey island, which was once home to astro-monkey Miss Abel. As recently as our last visit, three years ago, the zoo was just part of the park, accessible whenever the park was open. Now there was a tall wire fence surrounding the zoo, and they close the zoo at 8 p.m. My wife asked the lady at the carousel ticket booth what had changed. She said federal zoo regulators required the fence and the 24-hour presence of a zookeeper.

As we loaded up the car for the trip home we could hear the wild cries of the peafowl which roam the zoo grounds.

First baby toad of the season! The toads return to our backyard goldfish pond every year near the vernal equinox with a raucous party by the light of the full moon. Within a few days, strings of toad eggs decorate the water, and shortly thereafter, thousands of tadpoles.

It's two months later, almost a full moon, and tonight we caught this little fella. I would tell you whether it's a boy or a girl, but such activity was prohibited by my alma mater.

Meanwhile, the grown-up toads (at least 11 by Mikki's count) are having another noisy full moon party, uninhibited by MIT regulations. More cute babies will be on their way soon, it seems....

Joe reminded me of another cute baby picture I intended to post. We saw this armored little bundle of joy near his T-ball field, scuttling off the road into the tallgrass. Couldn't be more than five or six inches long, excluding the tail.

This morning was Fine Arts Day for the "Enrichment" classes (pre-K and kindergarten) at Regent Prep School. There was a wonderful program: The pre-K children recited the Beatitudes and recited and acted out nursery rhymes. (Since it's a private school, Old King Cole was allowed to have his pipe, and seemed reluctant to give it up after his bit was done.) Both classes sang hymns, including "The Old Rugged Cross". Then the kindergarten class -- my son's class -- recited Ephesians 6:10-20 (the armor of God), recited a poem about the months of the year, interspersed with seasonal songs. Joe, our son, even got to play xylophone for one of the songs.

After the program, the parents and grandparents went to the classroom to view the children's art work. Regent has a wonderful art teacher, Mrs. Cathy Ambrose, who has a great rapport with her students and has really inspired Joe. He is ready to go to Paris and Rome tomorrow to see the Louvre and the Sistine Chapel. Art at Regent includes some free creation, but focuses on learning about the great artists and their art. They learn to notice details by doing reproductions of famous works.

Joseph was proudest of his seascape diorama, which featured a wobbegong, a kind of carpet shark found off the coast of Australia. Alas, a friend accidentally damaged one of the "sea fans" in the diorama and knocked down the fish, which had been suspended as if swimming. Joe was crushed, understandably, but what really bothered him was that the damage occurred before the other parents got to see what a great job he had done. He recovered and enjoyed the rest of the day, but we got an interesting glimpse into what motivates our boy.

Pat McGuigan visited Regent a few weeks ago; you can find his article at Tulsa Today. The school is in the midst of a capital campaign to purchase the old Children's Medical Center on I-44 for its campus. Regent is part of a national movement for classical Christian education, endowing the student with the wealth of our Western Civilization, and grounding him in a Biblical worldview. We've had to tighten our belts, but I'm thankful that God has blessed us with the means to send Joe there. Perhaps someday, a state school choice program in Oklahoma will give more children the opportunity to enjoy the advantages of a classical education.

Son Joe's T-ball team won 28-14, an impressive feat in a league that plays four innings, with a max of seven runs per inning. His team managed to shut the other team out in two innings by getting three putouts before they scored a run, a very rare feat in this league, where players cannot play the same infield position more than once a game. Joe, as second baseman, got an assist on one of those six putouts, scooping up the ball and tossing it to first just in the nick of time.

I guess Major League Baseball can be more exciting in some ways, but there's nothing like seeing six-year olds unexpectedly convert a ground ball into a "routine" out at first.