October 2019 Archives

Brent Isaacs, a native Tulsan and city planner active for many years in advocating for a better Tulsa, has has written a piece below about why you should to vote against the first item on the November 12, 2019, Tulsa ballot. Labeled on the first sheet of the ballot as "PROPOSITION IMPROVE OUR TULSA (Streets and Transportation Systems Construction and Repair Bonds)," it is a $427,000,000 general obligation bond issue "for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, improving, repairing and/or purchasing streets and transportation systems," which will be paid for by an increase in property tax rates within the City of Tulsa.

When Brent posted an earlier version of this essay on Facebook, I commented that the Engineering Services Department is like a computer, and it's running a program that it was given to run 50 years ago. The neighborhood-destroying zombie project that is the Elm Creek West Pond is another case in point. It's time that Tulsans, through our vote on November 12 and through our support for candidates for mayor and city council in 2020, terminated the current, outdated program and launched a newer, better program that takes these economic realities into account. He has kindly granted permission to publish an updated version of his essay here at BatesLine.

Why I am Voting No on Improve our Tulsa 2's Streets and Transportation Package

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, 10/29/19

Tulsa is trapped in a structural infrastructure deficit- and that's why I am voting no on Improve our Tulsa 2, item one on November 12. Item one is a general obligation bond for mostly street projects. Say what? Why would I vote no? Wouldn't that make the problem worse?

I get that there are legitimate capital improvement needs for our city, the third penny sales tax is up for renewal and there will be no tax increase required. I wanted to vote yes, and will do so on item three that would create a standing "Rainy Day" fund for the City, and leaning toward voting yes on item two, for all the non-street projects that will be funded by extending the third penny sales tax. Normally, I am in favor of all propositions funding capital improvement projects but this time I have decided to vote no on the streets package. Here's why.

1. When it comes to streets, Improve our Tulsa 2 is doing the same thing we have been doing for over 40 years and it hasn't worked. Yes, streets have been widened and improved but we are still are no closer to ending our structural infrastructure deficit.

The land area in Tulsa grew dramatically in 1966 when the number of square miles in the city limits more than doubled nearly overnight. While that allowed for a population increase and allowed the City to capture sales tax revenue from the booming growth to the south and east, it also created demand, particularly for new street infrastructure, that has yet to be met. For a while, as the growth periphery continued to largely be in Tulsa's city limits, sales tax dollars continued to increase. However, over the last 20 years, as the growth periphery has moved beyond the Tulsa city limits to places like Jenks, Bixby and Broken Arrow, the growth in sales tax revenue has slowed dramatically and City operating costs just to maintain the same level of service have outpaced available tax revenue. The population of the city of Tulsa has been around 400,000 for nearly the same time frame.

Now we are faced with not only having to add infrastructure just to catch up with all the sprawling growth for neighborhoods developed long ago, but also having to rehabilitate infrastructure that was built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s that is largely worn out. Item one, the general obligation bond for $427,000,000, includes $64,000,000 for additional street widening with $295,800,000 for existing street repairs. But, this is just a portion of what's reported to be needed. The current capital improvement needs list is estimated to be in the billions. This is occurring as the city is no longer growing in population, sales tax revenues are flat and operating costs for the City of Tulsa are increasing faster than tax revenue.

2. The current growth patterns that have been fueled by our street infrastructure investments aren't sustainable.

The reality is that we cannot continue to invest in street infrastructure that does not more than pay for itself and fund its replacement with regular sales tax revenue. Otherwise, we will never get caught up. By continuing the cycle of investing in more of the same infrastructure, we are facilitating low density sprawling development that will not adequately pay for the cost of this infrastructure.

Joe Minicozzi, Principal and Founder of fiscal, development and tax analysis firm Urban 3 (http://www.urban-three.com/), stated in a 2012 Atlantic Cities article, now Citylab (https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/simple-math-can-save-cities-bankruptcy/1629/) "Low-density development isn't just a poor way to make...tax revenue. It's extremely expensive to maintain. In fact, it's only feasible if we're expanding development at the periphery into eternity, forever bringing in revenue from new construction that can help pay for the existing subdivisions we've already built."

This describes the situation in Tulsa accurately. The only way to fund all this street infrastructure and even possibly get caught up is to dramatically increase sales and property taxes. This is largely viewed as being politically unfeasible and, as I argue below, is economically unwise.

3. Infrastructure should generate additional wealth for a city, not create additional tax burdens.

Minicozzi and Chuck Marohn, Founder and President of Strong Towns (https://www.strongtowns.org/), an organization promoting smart, incremental development that is financially sustainable for cities, have created models showing the amount of property tax created per acre for different types of development. They have showed that while everyone thinks a big Walmart on a suburban site will generate an enormous amount of tax revenue, because of the infrastructure required to service such a large site, the amount of property tax revenue per acre is much lower than traditional denser development found in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods. While the City of Tulsa is dependent on sales tax, not property tax, revenue to fund operations, locally the Urban Data Pioneers civic group attempted to do a similar analysis of Tulsa development patterns based on sales tax revenue in 2017. The picture was largely similar.

Thus, for example, when considering street improvements, we need to look at more than just traffic counts or the pavement condition index. We need to consider what type of development will this facilitate and will it generate additional tax revenue that more than covers the cost of the improvement and provides replacement cost funding.

4. The list of street projects included in a proposal needs to be subjected to more than just the analysis from Engineering Services. The economic value created and whether the improvement facilitates the type of city Tulsans desire should be part of the selection criteria.

As I currently understand it, Engineering Services maintains the list of needed capital improvement projects. Street projects are reviewed and ranked to determine which have the greatest need based on traffic counts, age, pavement condition index, etc. However, nowhere in these is the level of economic activity, tax revenue likely to be generated and whether the type of development helps create Tulsans' desired city, considered. With a few exceptions, Engineering Services largely controls the capital improvement process.

The most recent gauge of what Tulsans would like for our city is the Tulsa Comprehensive Plan, that came out of PlaniTulsa. It represents the views what thousands of Tulsans said they wanted our city to look like. Currently, the plan is administered by the Tulsa Planning Office at INCOG. They should have a formal role in reviewing and determining which capital improvement projects are needed to achieve this vision.

Besides opening the process up to the Tulsa Planning Office, there should be an independent economic analysis done for projects to determine whether they generate additional tax revenue or economic activity that exceeds their original and replacement costs. Ultimately, a project selection committee should be formed that makes the final recommendations on projects based on these criteria to the Mayor.

5. The City has done a poor job managing and completing construction on existing capital improvement projects that have already been funded.

You don't have to look far to see projects, particularly projects impacting our streets, that have taken a really long time or have been redone multiple times in Tulsa in recent years. As I speak, there has been a large hole on Denver right in front of 5th Street by Central Library and the Tulsa County Courthouse that has been there for weeks and weeks. Nothing seems to really be happening but it is causing back ups regularly for people going to court, the library or the BOK Center. I don't understand why there hasn't been more a sense of urgency in getting this inconvenient construction completed. Or, outside of downtown, Lewis between 11th and 21st Streets has been in different stages of construction for years. First, it was redoing the intersection at 15th and Lewis, then multiple projects from 15th to 21st Streets, then work from the Broken Arrow to 11th Street to narrow the street creating on street parking. Now, with the work on the Broken Arrow Expressway bridges over 15th and Lewis, the area is torn up again. I don't understand why these projects, along with countless others, couldn't have been better coordinated and completed in a much shorter timeframe.

Tulsans have expressed frustration with continual street construction. Bumper stickers have been spotted that say "Tulsa...finish something!" or "Welcome to the City of Road Construction". I realize that construction is often the price of progress but can't we figure out a way to do it better? Other cities don't seem to have as much constant construction as Tulsa does.

While some people will say voting no on the street improvements will halt progress in our city, I disagree. There are plenty of capital improvement projects, including streets, that have been approved by the voters but have yet to be completed. In the meantime, can't we rethink our street capital improvements approach and come back with a new proposal that considers these options above? Tulsans deserve better and we should start now.

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, is a local urban planner in Tulsa.

A 1988 episode of the BBC political sitcom Yes, Prime Minister provides an humor-laden insight into the motivations and methods of the forces that seek to squelch educational reform. Last December, EdChoice CEO Robert Enlow and Director of Policy Jason Bedrick commented on key clips from the episode and how the same motivations and methods are in use today to get between children and educational opportunity.

A full transcript of the podcast, including the Yes, Prime Minister excerpts, is available on the EdChoice website.

One of the treasures I brought home from a recent trip to England was the DVD box set of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and we have been watching the episodes as a family. This show ought to be part of everyone's civics education, and ought to be mandatory viewing for newly elected or appointed public officials.

Antony Jay, who wrote the program with Jonathan Lynn, said that the long production schedule for each episode meant that they couldn't use topical humor as a crutch, so they opted instead for timeless themes of the inner workings of government.

"I'll tell you why it still works," says Jay. "The BBC paid us so little we couldn't afford to take an expanse of time to write the episodes. We had to fit writing in when we weren't too busy. That meant we often had to write months ahead of transmission. If you're doing that, it means you can't put in little topical jokes, like Drop the Dead Donkey did, jokes that will be funny tomorrow but meaningless months later. It meant that all our jokes were about the permanent things rather than the temporary things and they stayed relevant."

The show is centered on the relationship between Minister Jim Hacker, the elected representative of the people and nominally in charge, and Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, the chief bureaucrat, who sees his job as placating the minister while ensuring that the experts in the civil service, insulated from the meddling of the politicians, are really running the show.

Some highlights from the episode as excerpted by EdChoice. In this scene, Prime Minister Hacker, with the help of his political adviser, Dorothy, is pitching the idea of school choice to Sir Humphrey.

Prime Minister: I've realized how to reform the education system.

Humphrey: Excellent, Prime Minister.

Prime Minister: I'm going to let parents take their children away from school, and move them to any school they want.

Humphrey: Well you mean, after application, scrutiny, tribunal hearing and appeals procedures ...

Prime Minister: No, Humphrey, just move them. Whenever they want to.

Humphrey: I'm sorry, I don't quite follow.

Dorothy: This government is going to let parents decide which schools to send their children to.

Humphrey: Prime Minister, you can't be serious.

Dorothy: Why?

Humphrey: Well, you can't expect parents to make these choices. I mean how on earth would parents know which schools are best?

Prime Minister: Which school did you go to Humphrey?

Humphrey: Winchester.

Prime Minister: Was it good?

Humphrey: Oh, excellent, of course.

Prime Minister: Who chose it?

Humphrey: My parents, naturally. Now that's different, Prime Minister. My parents were discerning people. You can't expect ordinary people to know where to send their children.

Dorothy: Why not?

Humphrey: Well, how could they tell?

Dorothy: Well, they could tell if their kids could read, write and do sums, they could tell if their neighbors were happy with the school, and they could tell if the exam results were good.

Humphrey: Exam results aren't everything, Prime Minister.

Dorothy: That's true. And those parents who don't want an academic education for their children can choose progressive schools.

Humphrey: But ... parents have no qualifications to make these choices. I mean, teachers are the professionals. Parents are the worst people to bring up children. They have no qualifications, no training. You don't expect untrained teachers to teach. The same should apply to parents....

Later Sir Humphrey, in a discussion with a fellow high-ranking bureaucrat, concludes that the school choice needs to be blocked, and they discuss the tactics they'll use.

Humphrey: But it's hard to get the Prime Minister to see that it's a bad idea.

Civil Servant: Of course. It's actually a very good idea, it just mustn't happen.

Humphrey: I wonder whether we oughtn't to play along with it. In the interests of the nation's children.

Civil Servant: Nevermind the nation's children. What about our colleagues at the Department of Education?

Humphrey: Yes of course. Sorry.

Civil Servant: Humphrey, let's be clear about this. The only people who will like this idea are the parents and the children. Everyone who counts will be against it.

Humphrey: Teacher's unions ...

Civil Servant: The local authorities ...

Humphrey: Educational press ...

Civil Servant: And of course, the DES [Department of Educational Services]. So ... what's the strategy?

Humphrey: Well the unions can be counted on to disrupt the schools ...

Civil Servant: And go on television saying it's the government who are causing the disruption.

Humphrey: Good, yes ... And the local councils will threaten to turn the constituency parties against the government.

Civil Servant: Fine ... or the Department of Education will delay every stage of the process, and leak anything that embarrasses the government.

Yes, Minister communicates public choice economics in an intuitive way that no op-ed or textbook ever can:

The fallacy that public choice economics took on was the fallacy that government is working entirely for the benefit of the citizen; and this was reflected by showing that in any [episode] in the programme, in Yes Minister, we showed that almost everything that the government has to decide is a conflict between two lots of private interest - that of the politicians and that of the civil servants trying to advance their own careers and improve their own lives. And that's why public choice economics, which explains why all this was going on, was at the root of almost every episode of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

MORE:

The Telegraph offers the ten funniest ever Yes, Minister moments.

In 1972, Antony Jay wrote The Householder's Guide to Community Defence Against Bureaucratic Aggression. The Reason Magazine review at that link calls it "a practical well written little handbook which suggests an organizational structure and the tactics to use against planners and their projects.... Jay's brief is studded with sound advice. For example: 'hit first and hit hard,' because, he explains, you have your best chance at the very beginning of a project. Jay states the first rule of protest as: 'know precisely who your true enemies are.' While the organization charts are overly complex, this is a manual for protesters who mean business. Jay suggests 'cells' for grass roots action, funds, legal, influential allies, experts (for the attack on the concept), publicity and campaign headquarters. There is an excellent section called the 'attack on the facts'; inaccurate facts--the author claims--are the weak point of all planners' documents."

Twenty-five years later, Antony Jay updated and rebranded his advice in the book How to Beat Sir Humphrey: Every Citizen's Guide to Fighting Officialdom. The audio book is read by Derek Fowlds, who played Bernard Woolley in the series, the civil servant usually caught in the middle between the minister and Sir Humphrey.

Greenwood Ave., north of Easton St., looking north along Sand Springs Railroad interurban tracks toward intersection with Greenwood Pl. and the Del Rio Hotel, which was listed in the 1954-1956 editions of the Green Book.

Mike McUsic, a historical researcher on the topic of the Green Book, the segregation-era travel guide for African-American tourists, will be leading walking tours of the Green Book locations in Tulsa's Greenwood District on November 16 and 23 at 11:00 am. The tour is free (donation requested), with tickets available via Eventbrite.

Mr. McUsic has developed the Green Book Travelers HistoryPin site, locating 1,900 Green Book locations across the country, with names, descriptions, and historic and present-day photos. This link will take you to locations specific to Greenwood.

MORE: Here's a collection of links to BatesLine articles and other resources about Greenwood and Black Wall Street. Earlier this year, I wrote about the Green Book as additional evidence of Greenwood's post-1921 rebuilding and listed the Tulsa Green Book sites still standing.

From Charles's daughter Becky: "The Last Hurrah, aka Dad's Memorial Service will be held, in his home, Sunday, October, 20, from noon till 4ish. Please feel free to stop in, listen to some music and tell stories of the good old days. While we may shed tears, I'm sure there will be laughter to follow." Dan Lovejoy has the address of the palatial Surlywood estate.

Charles G. Hill, a prolific writer who commented on matters ranging from pop music to urban planning to women's shoes to state politics to NBA basketball at his blog Dustbury for over 23 years, died Sunday, September 8, 2019, of injuries suffered in a car accident.

Charles began a weekly online column, "The Vent," on April 9, 1996, and continued it without interruption, four columns a month, until his final column on September 1, 2019. His site in early days featured a variety of pages on various subjects, updated irregularly, but he began daily blogging on June 23, 2000; his final entry was published early on the morning of September 3, 2019. While he joined the rest of the world on social media, he never left behind his own platform, typically adding several new entries every day.

Way back in 2003, Geitner Simmons, an editorial writer for the Omaha World-Herald, wrote:

When I heard about Johnny Cash's death, I knew the first blog I wanted to go to for reaction: Dustbury. His post didn't disappoint. C.G. Hill does send-off posts for pop culture figures better than any other blogger I know.

It was true then, and it continued to be true for the sixteen years subsequent. In a few short paragraphs, he could get to the significance of someone's life -- for example, this brief tribute to legendary record producer Sam Phillips.

If Charles wrote his own send-off post, it hasn't surfaced yet, and I wouldn't expect it to. Charles was not one to toot his own horn, as the Oklahoman's Steve Lackmeyer notes in a moving tribute to the Oklahoma City blogger:

Prepare to read the sort of column that absolutely would not have any approval from Charles Hill.

To be sure, he was always duly appreciative of the kind words others spoke in his honor, maintaining a collection of them (along with a few backhanded compliments) on his backdrop page.

As I wrote in honor of his site's 15th anniversary:

Charles's interests are wide-ranging -- pop culture and pop music (ancient and modern), politics (local, state, and national), Thunder basketball, urban planning, cars, exotic female footwear, to name but a few. The combination of interests produces enough strange search engine queries to justify a weekly feature highlighting the select strangest. Somehow he manages to write intelligently and amusingly about each topic he takes up. (I envy his brevity; as faithful BatesLine readers are no doubt aware, concision is not my gift.)

On his 20th anniversary, he explained the origins of his site:

In the spring of 1996, I got the ridiculous idea that I ought to have a Web site of my very own. I'm not entirely sure what the tipping point was. My workplace had sent me and the corporate IT guy to an HTML class for no reason I could determine, and I came away from the experience wondering why anyone would bother. But hey, I was in my early forties, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have one more skill in case I had to move on; all else being equal, I reasoned, employers would rather have someone younger, or at least with lower expectations. I was a member of Prodigy in those days, and Prodigy was pleased to offer me a full megabyte of Web space at no extra cost. In a couple of hours, I had hacked up seven pages of stuff, installed links across the lot, and uploaded them through something that only vaguely resembled FTP. "Chez Chaz," the least-lame name I could think up on short notice, was hung on top.

The web, then in its infancy, was not his first venture online. In 2011, he wrote, "I was doing BBS stuff in '85, FidoNet shortly thereafter, and CompuServe on the side. (I even had an MCI Mail account. Well, two of them, actually.) And I ran chat rooms on QuantumLink before its transmogrification into AOL." He spoke in more detail about BBS stuff on this pre-blog page, recounting a Commodore 64-based system called Midnight at the Oasis, run by a certain non-existent Jessica Stults, and on his Occassionally-Asked Questions page, he provided a few more details about his non-blog online activity and the evolution of his website. The Chaz Index, his personal version of the Harper's Magazine feature and last updated in 2014, hints that his online involvement wasn't the best thing for his personal life:

Years since I discovered the modem: 30
Years since I discovered divorce lawyers: 27

Charles found me before I found him. Charles, along with Kevin Latham, who created the Blog Oklahoma webring, and Mike Hermes of Okiedoke, who hosted the Okie Blogger awards, together built a community of Oklahoma bloggers back in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Charles's contribution to building the blogospheric community was deceptively simple but crucial -- he provided his own inimitable insights into a linked story while providing just a taste of what the linked writer had to say, but leaving you hungry to click the link to read more. At one point, he provided a template for his blog entries, a syntax that I labeled "Dustbury Normal Form." He was as pithy as I am logorrheic.

My first trackback from Charles was four months after I began writing, in September 2003, right after the passage of Vision 2025, linking to my election-eve post about "no" voters who felt compelled to remain silent. I first linked to Dustbury later the same month, to his comments about a freelance writer living in his truck; Charles recounted his own brief experience living out of his car in California in the mid-80s before doing "a reverse Tom Joad, rationalizing that if I'm gonna be broke, it's less painful, or at least less expensive, to be broke in Oklahoma."

I'm honored to have received a few testimonials from Charles over the years, back when I put a great deal more energy and time into this blog. In 2004, he noted my election night liveblogging for The Command Post, calling BatesLine "arguably -- at least I've so argued -- the best (mostly) political blog in Oklahoma.... We are indeed fortunate to have coverage of this quality for our little red territory." In July 2005, Charles congratulated me for making the cover of Urban Tulsa Weekly, referring to BatesLine as "the state's most influential blog." In 2006, he included BatesLine in his list of "Four Blogs You Visit Daily," alongside James Lileks' Bleat, The Dawn Patrol, and Donnaville. On the fifth anniversary of BatesLine in May 2008, Charles wrote, "you know where he stands, and he has a pretty good idea where the bodies are buried." I note these compliments here not to toot my own horn, but to give you a sample of the sort of highly motivating encouragement he regularly offered to nouveaux members of the blogeoisie (a term he coined).

Charles, of course, did not limit his linkage to Oklahoma bloggers. He made connections with bloggers across the country and around the world, and his sidebar blogroll grew long enough that he moved it off to its own page. He met many of his blogpals in person as he drove thousands of miles across the country for eight annual "World Tours", the last in 2008.

It was through one of Charles's items that I found Dawn Eden's blog in March 2004, which led to meeting her in real life when I went to New York City for the Republican National Convention that summer, where she introduced me to a number of center-right New York bloggers and media folks. Dawn had gotten to know Charles in early online days (via Prodigy, if I recall correctly) over their shared love for '60s pop music, and she had become acquainted with a number of other faith-friendly Oklahoma bloggers whom, I suspect, she had found through Dustbury, and that led to her visit in January 2005, which prompted the first Okie Blogger Bash at the Will Rogers Theater in Oklahoma City, and ultimately led to a couple of more Okie Blogger Round-Ups in 2006 and 2007. All those connections traced back to Charles G. Hill.

The photo pool from the 2006 Okie Blogger Round-Up has several good photos of Charles, some of which I've used to illustrate this entry. Many thanks to Don Danz for permission to use his photos.

I could have filled BatesLine with nothing but links to all the interesting content Charles produced; this blog entry from September 2004 was my feeble attempt to present some highlights as a reminder to my readers to make dustbury.com a regular read.

A Dustbury highlight reel is impossible to compile, but here are just a handful of articles I enjoyed again as I put together this article:

• "A Sunday drive," 18 May 2003" Notes from a ramble around northeastern Oklahoma County (this link and the two following were greatest hits nominated by Steve Lackmeyer)
• "A remembrance," 10 September 2003: A visit to the memorial fence at the Oklahoma City National Memorial
• "The changing face of Capitol Hill, 15 January 2005: The history of the neighborhood, once a city in its own right, south of the North Canadian River.
• "Alas, poor bloggers," 6 September 2004: A brilliant parody of Hamlet's soliloquy, in toto, as blogger's lament.
• "Taking the wrinkles out of the robe," 21 January 2005: His double-entendre-filled take on the arraignment of former Creek County judge Donald Thompson.
• "The roads not taken," 26 January 2005: A meditation on regrets. I was haunted then, and still am, by his phrase, "A rut is a grave that extends to the horizon."
• "Stranger on the shore sleepwalks through wonderland by night", 8 August 2007: This is a BatesLine entry linking to three compilation CDs of instrumental hits from the late 1950s and early 1960s on Charles's Wendex site, a separate blog for posting the themed playlists he burned for his personal use. Charles described Wendex as a non-distributed custom CD imprint.
• Vent #718, 24 March 2011: Charles reveals the tragedy hidden in the lyrics of the 1968 Bobby Goldsboro hit, "Honey."
• "What have I done?", 20 August 2013: A meditation on life's accomplishments, or lack thereof. "I suspect there are people who could do what I do just as well, once we figured out what the hell it is that I do."
• "Strange search engine queries (709)," 2 September 2019: The last edition of his long-running weekly series, highlighting the odd quests that brought readers to his site. (That link is broken as of 2022/12/07, and Internet Archive inexplicably missed it, but you can see it on the archive of the homepage by scrolling down.)
• His "Legalese" page, addressing matters of copyright and FTC disclosure, is comprehensive.

Charles had numerous medical problems in recent years, which he occasionally discussed in his Ease and Disease category or, more often, in his Vent columns, often with a slighting reference to his company's insurance provider under the pseudonym CFI Care. In 2009, he reported increasing trouble with peripheral neuropathy. In 2017, a blogpal organized a fundraiser to help him with bills related to spinal stenosis.

His final "Vent" column ("One hundred hours of despair") recounted a miserable week without power, following a storm that left over 100,000 OG+E customers in the dark. In his usual dry tone, Charles relays the extreme physical and emotional distress he experienced, displaying the light hand with which he would address heavy subjects, the kind of subtlety that prompts a delayed "wait, what?!?" as the full weight hits the reader. The column also displays his admirable willingness to reach out to friends, of whom he had many. (Appalingly, the Internet Archive failed to capture this vent and Vent 1016, linked above.)

That inaugural blog post, from June 2000, concluded:

I am quite aware that most people who happen onto this site aren't here because they're fans of my particular brand of bilge. They've come by way of your favorite portal in search of links to their favorite tunes, or to find out if there's anything to that World Currency Cartel stuff, or to catch a glimpse of that which can't be seen. Fair enough. I never believed for more than a New York minute that my own story was any different from, or any more enlightening than, the 7,999,999 others in the Naked City. But dammit, this is my site, and my X number of dollars a year; it ought to reflect at least as much of me as it does Lesley Gore or Sue Storm. And if this means I have to move my heart farther along my sleeve, so be it.

As Charles moved his heart very far along his sleeve indeed, he created a legion of fans of his "particular brand of bilge," many of whom became dear friends. I was privileged to have connected with Charles back in my early days of blogging, when he'd been writing online for nearly a decade already and to have spent time with him person on several occasions. He was kind to call wider attention to my work and offered many encouraging words over the years. May his 23 years of writing continue to stand as a monument to his creativity and insight. Requiescat in pace.

Other tributes on the web:

• Roger O. Green: "Charles was the person most likely to comment on a piece I wrote about music. He would add an anecdote or an obscure detail. Or write about it himself."
• Rob O'Hara, who was a member of that Midnight at the Oasis BBS: "The guy was prolific, tireless, and smart as a whip..., transparent as a pane of glass."
• Andrea, one of the bloggers he visited on one of his World Tours.
• Bob Belvedere, another blogger who received encouragement and early linkage from Charles.
• Jake Fisher downloaded the entirety of Dustbury.com and reports, "The site is 2.43GB in size. Keeping in mind that the site isn't graphics or video-heavy, he wrote a lot.
• Matt Drachenberg: "This is heartbreaking. Charles was one of the first to befriend me when I started blogging in 2001. He'd been in poor health for years, but never stopped working, or writing. A good man I'm glad to have shared a few meals with."
• Shannon Poe: "He added a well versed quirkiness to my Twitter feed, and it can never be duplicated.... There are many who can write; but do you enjoy their words, their style, their ability to command your attention? That was @dustbury. A comfortable read. To know these words are silenced stings."
• Phil Bacharach: "@dustbury was a phenomenal writer-- funny, insightful, warm &, above all, kind. He will be deeply missed."
• John Salmon: "He was the smartest, most interesting person on the Internet."

Updated December 7, 2022, with Internet Archive Wayback Machine links. A cybersquatter has grabbed the domain name. Dustbury was well-organized for search engine crawling, with static links, but incredibly, the Wayback Machine missed two of the vents I linked (even though I had a direct link here!) and one of the blog entries.

Just two weeks ahead of the October 31, 2019, date of the UK's departure from the European Union, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come back from Brussels with a new treaty that removes indefinite EU control over UK regulations and customs, eliminates fears of a hard border between the UK province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and, he believes, can win a majority in the House of Commons, unlike the treaty negotiated by his predecessor, Theresa May. The vote will occur in an extraordinary Saturday sitting of the House of Commons on October 19, 2019.

As an Anglospherophile, I look forward to the day when the close cooperation between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand on foreign policy and defense can be extended to include trade and travel between nations that share a common heritage of language, culture, law, and values. The first step to a closer US-UK economic relationship is the UK withdrawal from the protectionist empire known as the European Union. Here are a few links with the latest on this story, which I've been following with great interest.

The editorial board of the Spectator, a center-right political magazine, has high praise for the deal and Johnson's strategy:

The Brexit deal agreed with the EU is a spectacular vindication of the Prime Minister's approach: to go back to Brussels with the genuine prospect that Britain would leave with no deal on 31 October. The EU started off by saying it would never reopen the withdrawal agreement, but with a no-deal Brexit back in prospect, compromise -- and thus a deal -- has been possible. And yes, parliament has said it would force the Prime Minister to ask for an extension of EU membership; but No. 10 said it would find a way to not do so. It seems that this was enough to focus minds in Brussels.

Boris Johnson's deal is the opposite to that struck by Theresa May in that the more you look at it, the better it seems.

Columnist "Steerpike" lists "Five Reasons Why Boris Johnson's Brexit Deal Is Better Than Theresa May's". Those reasons include that the Northern Ireland assembly, not the EU, will decide when the special customs arrangement with Ireland would end. Other provisions, less discussed, but just as objectionable to those wanting a genuine exit from the authority of EU institutions, have been moved from the binding Withdrawal Agreement treaty, but are still present in the Political Declaration, which is claimed to be non-binding (although this is disputed). For example, there is in the Political Declaration a commitment to a "level playing field," which nominally would require the UK not to use its independence to reduce taxes and regulations and thus gain a competitive edge over the EU.

In Annex 4 of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol to May's Withdrawal Agreement, you find language like this (emphasis added):

With the aim of ensuring the proper functioning of the single customs territory, the Union and the United Kingdom shall ensure that the level of environmental protection provided by law, regulations and practices is not reduced below the level provided by the common standards applicable within the Union and the United Kingdom at the end of the transition period in relation to: access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters; environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment; industrial emissions; air emissions and air quality targets and ceilings; nature and biodiversity conservation; waste management; the protection and preservation of the aquatic environment; the protection and preservation of the marine environment; the prevention, reduction and elimination of risks to human health or the environment arising from the production, use, release and disposal of chemical substances; and climate change.

Channeling his inner John Wayne, cabinet member Michael Gove says that "there ain't gonna be no second referendum," no re-vote that could cancel the decision made in the 2016 referendum.

Blogging at the Spectator, Open Europe policy analyst Dominic Walsh summarizes eight major changes between Teresa May's deal and the deal Boris Johnson has just concluded with the EU. He has produced a "track changes" version of the proposed Brexit treaty, showing text removed, moved, and added between the two versions.

The Spectator is also counting heads. At this writing, they've identified eight opposition and DUP MPs who have announced support for the new deal (32 non-Tories are needed if all Tories vote in favor), and they are watching 28 Tory pro-Brexit MPs who voted against the Theresa May deal on the third try (when Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and other Brexit-backing Conservatives caved in to pressure). The Democratic Unionist Party has announced that it cannot support the deal.

The Bruges Group, an organization founded by Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago in opposition to the EU's push for ever-closer union, has announced its opposition to the deal. They list 15 objectionable aspects of the Political Declaration.

Douglas Carswell, co-founder of Vote Leave and the only MP to win in a general election under the UKIP banner, has tweeted, "if I was in the House of Commons this Saturday, I'd vote for Boris' deal. Maximum respect for Brexit Party, but it's time to take this win."

Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, considers Johnson's revised Working Agreement as a slight improvement, but still a failure to extract the UK from control by the institutions of the EU. In a panel discussion with some of his fellow Brexit Party MEPs, Farage said, "This is probably the darkest day in this whole journey to becoming an independent nation once again."

Writing in the Spectator, Rod Liddle predicts the Brexit Party and many Conservative MPs will still consider Boris's deal BrINO -- Brexit in Name Only.

If Boris somehow succeeds in getting his deal through, it will meet with the implacable opposition of Nigel Farage's Brexit party and probably a large handful of Conservative MPs. This is because the deal is scarcely any better -- and in some ways worse -- than the one that Theresa May failed to get through the House of Commons. In which case the prime minister will have to rely on the hope that the entire Leaver vote becomes so sick of the whole corrosive process that they swing behind the deal and thus the Conservative party. Some undoubtedly will think precisely that, following Tom Harris's dictum that 'I've got about half of what I voted for in the referendum, so I'll be happy with that.' However, many will not and Boris, remember, needs to gain more than 40 seats. The Brexit party in this scenario will field candidates in pretty much every constituency, sapping -- largely -- the Tory vote.

Liddle isn't encouraged by the polls showing the Tories ahead of Labour going into the next election, and he maps out electoral forecasts for the deal passing or failing, both of which end in doom for the Tories.

LINKS:

Here is the official Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration negotiated by Theresa May, released in November 2018, and subsequently defeated three times in the House of Commons. The Withdrawal Agreement is a binding treaty between the UK and the EU. The Political Declaration is a document "setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom."

Here is the New Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland and Political Declaration negotiated by Boris Johnson, released today. There is not a completely new Withdrawal Agreement; rather, there is a 63-page protocol that replaces the 174-page protocol in the original Withdrawal Agreement; the other 425 pages of Theresa May's treaty are unchanged.

Prior to yesterday's meeting concerning the Elm Creek West Pond in Paul Harvey's old neighborhood, the Institute for Justice issued a media advisory:

HEARING: Tulsa Residents Protest City's Attempt To Take Their Homes Using Eminent Domain For Redevelopment Project

Today, the city of Tulsa has scheduled a public meeting with residents of Tulsa's Pearl District to explain why the city will use eminent domain to take residents' homes if they refuse to sell. Tulsa residents attending today's meeting plan to protest the city's attempt to forcibly take their homes against their will. Tulsa, in partnership with the Tulsa Development Authority and Universal Field Services, have targeted approximately 45 homes in phase one, near VFW Post 577 and the Indian Health Care Center Resource Center on Sixth Street, to pave the way for a mixed-use development where the neighborhood currently sits. The city's plans call for taking almost every residence in this subdivision.

"The city's claims that it needs a stormwater pond are a thinly veiled attempt to do an end run around the Oklahoma Constitution's prohibition on the use of eminent domain for economic development," said Arif Panju, a managing attorney with the Institute for Justice. "Eminent domain should be reserved for public use--such as roads--not for redevelopment projects that involve the use of public power for private gain."

The city's claim of using eminent domain for a public use due to needing stormwater drainage has raised eyebrows in the neighborhood, both due to the existence of stormwater drainage immediately next door in Centennial Park, and because developers have purchased homes and land in and around their neighborhood.

John Dawson, whose home Tulsa plans to take through eminent domain, calls his home in the Pearl District "his family's little slice of paradise. He added, "I can see how it might not be appealing on the surface to some people, but it wouldn't take long for most people to realize it's pretty awesome."

The Institute for Justice is a pro-bono legal-aid organization that helps citizens fighting unconstitutional government overreach. The abuse of the government's power of eminent domain abuse is a principal focus of the group.

The IJ's statement seems to allude both to the concept sketches from Alaback Design which shows new condos and mixed-use development surrounding the pond and to the acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center (IHCRC) of nearly all the remaining property in the neighborhood (outlined in blue in the map below), including the entire block between Owasso and Peoria Avenues, 5th Street and 5th Place, which would have a view toward the downtown skyline over the new pond.

This will be brief, as I'm worn out. Over 100 people turned out for tonight's meeting between city officials and contractors and neighborhood residents to discuss the Elm Creek West Pond, a stormwater detention facility which would wipe out Paul Harvey's childhood home and his neighborhood, using eminent domain to displace families who moved into the area because of the neighborhood's well-built but affordable homes near downtown, parks, and entertainment.

I live-tweeted the meeting as a Twitter thread; the unrolled version is here. Councilor Kara Joy McKee livestreamed the meeting on Facebook.

Councilor McKee did a fair job of running the meeting. She started with a recitation of her "communication norms" -- ten practices to keep the meeting focused and civil -- then collected questions from the audience. There was a presentation from members of the project team, including the project manager, the hydrologist, and the real estate acquisition manager. The presentation was supposed to have been tailored toward answering questions, but that didn't quite happen, and the final session, which was supposed to have allowed for comments from the community, instead went back to ensure that a portion of the questions had been answered.

One of the key unanswered questions is how the City intends to pay for construction of the pond. We were told that acquisition is funded and that there's money, from stormwater management fees, to cover maintenance of the acquired properties. There was a vague slide about funding from stormwater revenue bonds, but the question "how much?" went unanswered. We also need to know who would authorize the issuance of these revenue bonds.

Because so many questions went unanswered and the building was due to close, Councilor McKee said she would abbreviate a meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Central Center and would devote another 90 minutes to this topic, beginning at 6 pm.

There was a passing mention by City Engineer Paul Zachary about the urgency to acquire a boundary of properties to block acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center. More about the IHCRC's recent purchases later.

Councilor McKee mentioned she would be contacting the City Attorney's office to see what options the council has. I would caution any elected or appointed official to take advice from city attorneys and bureaucrats with a grain of salt, to listen as much for what they don't say as what they do. I've seen citizens elected or appointed to boards, and then they are trained and tamed by the bureaucracy. I told this to my thirteen-year-old son, who was at the meeting, and immediately he said, "Just like Yes, Minister!" We've been watching the timeless British sitcom about the struggle between a government department's permanent bureaucrats and the politicians who are in charge in name only. It ought to be mandatory viewing as part of civics education and for new elected officials.

More tomorrow.

VIDEOS:

October 14, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee
October 15, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee

DOCUMENTS:

Here are documents mentioned or handed out at the October 14 meeting and its continuation on October 15. In response to my request, Mayo Baugher, Councilor McKee's aide, emailed me these documents on November 20, 2019. I have run optical character recognition on the Pearl District Small Area Plan PDF to make it more accessible to search engines:

• West Pond Concept Report - March 2018: Presented by Guy Engineering, Swift Water Resources Engineering, Alaback Design Associates to the City of Tulsa. The report notes that the $22 million needed for completion of design and construction has not been secured, but the city will continue to acquire properties until the money they have runs out. The report also shows potential private residential redevelopment around the ponds.


• Parcel Right-of-Way map with pond overlay: Detailed map, as of 1 October 2019, showing parcels in Central Park Place to be acquired for the proposed Elm Creek West Pond. Three parcels are shown as in the process of acquisition. Note that 48 lots are going to be permanently under water in order to remove 50 other lots from getting wet once in 100 years.


• Properties Removed From Floodplain: Map and list of 50 properties that are claimed to be removed from the City of Tulsa 100-year regulatory floodplain by the Elm Creek West Pond. It looks like the biggest claimed hazard -- flooding of the Inner Dispersal Loop -- could be handled with detention ponds in vacant state-owned land south of 13th Street.


• Powerpoint for City Engineering Services Q&A presentation on October 14, 2019: Answers seem responsive on the surface, but many sidestep what's really at stake.


• "Alternative Pond Sites": The title is misleading. In fact, this shows alternative pond configurations for the west pond, east pond, and a potential third pond northeast of the MKT tracks. Only one truly alternative site is shown: Using open space between the ramps of the 7th Street/8th Street interchange with the east leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop. This document is only maps -- no information about capacity, advantages, disadvantages.


• 2797-1004 (CPA-81) Pearl District Small Area Plan: Includes adoption documents from the TMAPC and the City Council.

In March 1994, national radio commentator Paul Harvey, whose thrice-daily broadcasts were carried on over 1400 stations nationwide on the ABC radio network, reaching an audience in the tens of millions, returned to Tulsa to speak at a Salvation Army benefit. After his visit, he spoke on the air about his bittersweet memories of his hometown and his neighborhood and how Tulsa had changed since. I first came across a transcript of his comments back in 2011.

Recently, I dug through old Tulsa Central High School yearbooks to find photos of some of the people he mentioned. With the demolition of his childhood home and what's left of his childhood neighborhood a topic of discussion at a public meeting tomorrow night, it seemed like a good time to revisit Paul's memories of his old stomping grounds.

Over my shoulder a backward glance.

The world began for Paul Harvey in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ever since I have made tomorrow my favorite day, I've been uncomfortable looking back.

My recent revisit reminded me why. The Tulsa I knew isn't there anymore. And the memories of once-upon-a time are more bitter than sweet.

Of the lawman father I barely knew.

The widowed mother who worked too hard and died too soon. And my sister Frances.

Tulsa was three graves side-by-side.

Recently I came face-to-face with the place where a small Paul Harvey's mother buttoned his britches to his shirt to keep them up and it down.

Tulsa is a copper penny which a small boy from East Fifth Place placed on a trolley track to see it mashed flat.

It's a slingshot made from a forked branch aimed at a living bird, and the bird died, and he cried, and he is still crying.

That little lad was seven when he snapped a rubber band against the neck of the neighbor girl, and pretty Ethel Mae Hazelton ran home crying, and he, lonely, had wanted only to get her to notice him.

Somehow he blamed Tulsa for the war which took his best friend, Harold Collis...

And classmate Fred Markgraf...

And never gave them back.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, he learned the wages of sin smoking grapevine behind the garage and getting a mouthful of ants.

Longfellow Elementary school is closed now; dark.

Tulsa High is a business building.

The old house at 1014 is in mourning for the Tulsa that isn't there anymore.

It was in that house that a well-meaning mother arranged a surprise birthday party when he was sixteen; invited his school friends, including delicate Mary Betty French without whom he was sure he could not live.

He hated that party for revealing to her and to them his house, so much more modest than theirs.

Tulsa is where the true love of his life waved goodbye to the uniform that climbed aboard a troop train.

She was there waiting when he got back but they could not wait to say goodbye to Tulsa.

Tulsa was watermelon picnics in the backyard and a small Paul blowing taps on his Boy Scout bugle over the fresh grave of a dead kitten.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, used to be the fragrance of honeysuckle on the trellis behind the porch swing.

Mowing for a quarter neighbors' lawns that seemed then so enormous.

Only Tulsa's delicious tap water is as it was.

That and the schoolteachers...

Miss Harp and Miss Smith and Isabelle Ronan. These I am assured are still there somewhere--reincarnated.

In a sleek jet departing Tulsa's vast Spartan Airport at midnight, I closed my eyes and remembered...

When Spartan was a sod strip...

And a crowd gathered...

And a great tin goose landed...

And Slim Lindbergh got out...

And a boy, age nine, was pressing against the restraining ropes daring to foretaste fame--and falling in love with the sky.

No...

The Tulsa I knew isn't there anymore. But it's all right.

A new Tulsa is.

I'll not be afraid to go home again.

I have made friends with the ghosts.

A recording of this commentary hasn't turned up, but his famous speech, "So God Made a Farmer," delivered to a Future Farmers of America conference in 1978 and made into a celebrated Dodge Ram Trucks Super Bowl ad in 2013, will give you a good idea of his pacing and delivery. Those of us who listened to him every day for decades will have no trouble hearing his voice as they read the words above.

Some notes about the people and places Paul Harvey mentioned:

The photos are senior portraits from the Tulsa Central High School Tom-Tom -- the school's yearbook. Ethel Mae Mazelton, Harold Collis, and Mary Betty French were Class of 1935. Ethel Mae lived two doors east of the Aurandts at 1024 E. 5th Place, and went on to be named Miss Kendallabrum at the University of Tulsa in 1936. Fred Markgraf and Paul Harvey Aurandt were both Class of 1936; Markgraf was senior class president. The photo of long-time speech and English teacher Isabelle Ronan (credited by both Paul Harvey and Tony Randall for starting them in their careers) was from the 1934 yearbook.

When Paul was three, on December 18, 1921, his policeman father was shot by criminals attempting to rob him and a colleague; Officer Harry Harrison Aurandt died two days later. Paul's mother, Anna Dagmar Aurandt, lived the rest of her life in that house, renting out some of the rooms to pay the bills. Here she is on that porch swing with Paul in the late '50s, and you'll notice the vine-covered trellis behind them.

The tracks of the Tulsa Street Railway ran east out of downtown on 3rd Street, forked north and south on Madison Avenue; the southern branch turned east on 5th Place, past the Aurandts' house at 1014 E. 5th Place, and south on Quincy, terminating at 15th Street. In 1922, the Bellview-Owen Park line, as it was called, ran every 10 minutes from 6 am to 11 pm, so there would have been plenty of opportunities for a mischievous kid to put a penny on the track. I imagine the screech of the trolley making the 90 degree turn at Madison would have been a familiar sound in the Aurandt home.

Longfellow School was on the northwest corner of 6th and Peoria. Built to H. O. McClure's "Unit Plan," the school consisted of a series of connected two-classroom buildings surrounding a courtyard. I can't find a photo of it, but Jack Frank of Tulsa Films has a clip of a 1960s news story about a Longfellow School crossing guard, which provides a good look all around the 6th and Peoria intersection. Longfellow was still there, but closed, when Paul Harvey returned home in 1994. It was sold to IHCRC Realty Corp in 1996, and the school was demolished and replaced with the Indian Health Care Resource Center. The shell of the old Central High School building still stands downtown, converted in 1985 to offices for Public Service Company of Oklahoma.

Paul Harvey was slightly mistaken about the location of Lindbergh's Tulsa landing. On September 30, 1927, during that year's International Petroleum Exposition, Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis into McIntyre Airport, southeast of Admiral and Sheridan, a private airport founded by New Zealand World War I veteran Duncan McIntyre. The aviator's arrow atop Reservoir Hill originally pointed to McIntyre Field. In 1927, Tulsa didn't yet have a municipal airport, but Lindbergh's visit, part of the Guggenheim Tour, provided the inspiration for Tulsa leaders to get one built. It was alongside the new municipal airport that W. G. Skelly built the Spartan Aircraft factory and Spartan School of Aeronautics, about a year later. It's understandable that Harvey would conflate the two.

McIntyre Airport, September 30, 1927. (L to R) Lt. A.C. Strickland (Lindbergh's trainer), Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, Mayor Herman F. Newblock, and Lt. Arthur Goebel. McIntyre Airport was Tulsa's first commercial airport, located at the southeast corner of Admiral Place (aka Hwy 66) and Sheridan Street. Lindbergh always carried his leather flight helmet with him (left hand in photo). The medal on Mayor Newblock's lapel was given to him by Charles Lindbergh. The medal says Lucky Lindy, New York to Paris. Accession #A0045. The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.

While looking for something else in the Oklahoma Historical Society's online newspaper database, I came across this startling headline atop the April 17, 1921, edition of the Tulsa Sunday World:

PRICELESS PAINTING RECOVERED HERE
Beligum Reclaims Ancient Million-Dollar Work of Old Master

---

Bristow Tool Dresser
Had Ruebens' Work,
'Descent From Cross'

The story states that R. L. Bolin was with the American Expeditionary Forces mounted police in Europe. He bought the Rubens painting in the town of Baute, Germany: "... the canvas in an obscure and dingy art shop attracted Bolin's eye, and he bought it for a mere song." He cut the canvas from the frame, rolled it up with other paintings, and after the armistice he returned to Tulsa. He took this painting (with two others) to Lester W. Wetzel of the Tulsa Art Store at 620 S. Boston, who restored and reframed it and hung it on the north wall of the store. There it stayed for eight months. No one suspected it was anything but a high quality reproduction.

Bolin left Tulsa to become a tool dresser's apprentice near Bristow. He needed some cash, so he asked Wetzel to sell the three paintings he had left with him, but no one was interested. At some point, he began to think they might have been among those works of art stolen by the Kaiser's forces. Through his stepmother, a magazine writer, Bolin got in touch with Charles W. Thurmond, whom the story describes as a finder of lost art works, including the painting, "Head of Peter," which he recovered from an express office and returned to the Vatican.

The story says that Thurmond had been hired by the Belgian government to find this painting. When he received the letter, he caught the next train from New York, examined the painting, declared it genuine, stayed in the store overnight to guard it, then returned to New York the next day with Bolin and the painting.

The story was picked up by United News wire service, and it appeared three days later, on April 20, 1921, in The Dalles (Oregon) Daily Chronicle, with some changed details. The Tulsa World story gave the date of the painting as 1412; the Daily Chronicle story said 1692, and corrected the spelling of the painter's name, which the World misspelled as Reubens.

The New York Times had the story in the Monday, April 18, 1921, edition, datelined Tulsa, April 16 -- the day that Bolin, Thurmond, and the painting set out for New York. The Times asked an art dealer about the chances that the painting was genuine:

Sir Joseph Duveen of Duveen Brothers, 720 Fifth Avenue, said that the masterpiece of the famous painter, Peter Paul Rubens, was still in the Antwerp Museum when he was in Belgium a few months ago. The report that the painting had disappeared has no foundation, Sir Joseph said. "The Descent from the Cross" was painted in 1612 and not in 1412, Sir Joseph remarked, and added that just as the date of the painting was incorrect in the Tulsa dispatch, so were other statements in it.

It was remarked by one authority on paintings that frequent reports have been received of the existince in different parts of this country of the originals of famous paintings, when as a matter of fact they were only reproductions.

I haven't yet found any follow-up stories that would indicate what happened with Bolin, Thurmond, and the painting. There was a long-time Bolin Ford dealership in Bristow, with the catchy slogan, "Rollin' with Bolin," but I don't know whether there is a connection with the tool dresser's apprentice.

In hindsight, it seems like a story that was "too good to check." A story about an ordinary Oklahoma doughboy, an art connoisseur from New York City, and a stolen masterpiece would sell papers in a booming oil metropolis with pretensions of sophistication. To be honest, I started to write this up as if a Rubens painting really had taken a holiday in Tulsa, but it occurred to me that if that had been the case, it would have made the papers elsewhere.

According to Wikipedia, Napoleon stole "Descent from the Cross" from the cathedral in Antwerp and had it installed in the Louvre, but it was returned after Napoleon's final defeat. There's a possible discrepancy in the New York Times report as well: Sir Joseph Duveen says he saw the painting in the Antwerp Museum, but "Descent from the Cross" was installed in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, part of a triptych. According to the cathedral's website, the central panel is 421 cm x 311 cm, or about 13 feet tall by 10 feet wide, with two side panels that are each the same height and half the width. Like most triptychs, it was painted on a wooden panel, which would have been awkward for Mr. Bolin to roll up for easy carrying. (Even if it had been canvas, it would have been like toting around a roll of carpet.)

According to the website of the Cathedral

How might World reporter Faith Hieronymus have fact-checked Thurmond's story? For a start, the public library or the college library likely had an art encyclopedia that would have the dates of Rubens' career -- as well as the correct spelling of the artist's name. No internet back then, and long-distance phone calls were a challenge, but a telegram to a known art dealer in New York might have confirmed Mr. Thurmond's identity as an art detective. A telegram to a wire service correspondent in Belgium could have been used to confirm that the painting was actually missing. But deadlines are deadlines, and I imagine there was a great deal of buzz around town about the painting, and an editor anxious to exploit the public's curiosity.

It's a good reminder, when mining newspapers for history, to separate the facts of which the reporter had direct knowledge from the claims made by the people she interviewed and from her own speculation and wishful thinking.

NOTE: I will be on KFAQ 1170 with Pat Campbell at 8:05 am on Wednesday, October 8, 2019, to discuss this issue, which was mentioned by Minneapolis police union president Lt. Bob Kroll in his interview with Pat Campbell this morning, as well as the City of Tulsa's plan to scrape Paul Harvey's childhood neighborhood to build a stormwater detention pond.

In December 2018, the Minneapolis city council (consisting of 12 Democrats and a Green) adopted a comprehensive land-use plan that called for eliminating single-family residential zones and allowing triplex homes to be built on any residential lot. Stories about the change claimed that this measure was necessary not for the usual zoning reasons -- making more efficient use of public infrastructure, improving the quality of life, ensuring new development is orderly, protecting residents and business owners from sudden disruption of the character of their neighborhoods -- but in order to combat systemic racism.

Slate's Henry Grabar wrote in December 2018:

Single-family home zoning was devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods, and it still functions as an effective barrier today. Abolishing restrictive zoning, [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey] said, was part of a general consensus that the city ought to begin to mend the damage wrought in pursuit of segregation.

The idea that Minneapolis, which has welcomed large numbers of Somali refugees in recent years, is systematically racist is ridiculous. Perhaps this was the only way urban planners could convince homeowners to embrace high-density urban development, after years of warnings about peak oil and climate change failed to persuade voters to approve the radical transformation they sought.

CityLab interviewed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in December 2018:

I believe strongly that housing is a right. I believe that everyone should have a safe place to go home to at the end of the night, to rest their heads on a pillow and rejuvenate for the next day. Clearly that right is not afforded to everyone.

Moreover, I believe that affordable housing should be in every neighborhood. There's a right to live in a great city. We should have a beautiful diversity of people, of socioeconomic background, in every neighborhood.

Last week in Architectural Record, architect James S. Russell summarized the plan adopted by Minneapolis and its progress toward implementation:

The Minneapolis 2040 plan intends to enhance housing supply by allowing denser development in much of the city. It will permit duplexes, triplexes, and small backyard houses (accessory dwelling units, or ADUs) in once exclusively single-family zones, and it promotes large residential buildings and towers near the downtown core, as well as a variety of smaller-scaled apartment buildings along arterials and transit routes.

Though the city council approved the plan last December, it can go into effect as soon as this November, having received an OK from the regional Metro Planning Council in late September with a final city council vote scheduled for this month.

Russell notes that good design can mitigate higher density, but MInneapolis's change doesn't account for design.

In fact, Minneapolis already has "neighborhoods that mix single-family, duplexes, triplexes, and small apartments," points out David Graham, a founding principal of ESG Architecture and Design, "and they work." The key to reducing resistance to greater density in single-family areas, he adds, "is design that's sensitive to neighborhood fabric, context, and materiality." Yet while the plan limits the number of units in such neighborhoods, it does not include design guidelines.

Russell doesn't expect the change to accomplish what proponents desire.

While developers are already eyeing single-family houses to convert to duplexes and triplexes, many experts believe there is little evidence that adding market-rate units will have a trickle-down effect in thriving cities. After upzoning led to the construction of tens of thousands of new units, at market-rate and higher, in New York and Seattle, for example, there has been some price softening for luxury housing, but low-rent units continue to vanish.

Neighborhood planner Rick Harrison says Minneapolis land is too valuable to be feasible for low-rise multi-family development:

Minneapolis' problem is not that there are too many single family homes - it's that the real estate prices are too high to justify low density redevelopment. Allow me to explain. If a developer wanted to re-develop a 10 acre area in Detroit, they would pay almost nothing for the land. Not so in Minneapolis. Because there is no such blight, even the land under the worst existing homes would cost at least $100,000 to buyout each existing home - possibly more. Assuming that the 10 acres in Detroit or Minneapolis would be in a tight 'urban grid' layout, about 40% of that 10 acres would be in the form of street and right-of-ways as well as easements. Assuming that in both cases, the right-of-ways and easements could be abandoned - much of that area could in theory be recaptured to create a more cohesive 'neighborhood'. e can also assume the city grid would be at a density about 5 homes to the acre. So, 10 acres X 5 = 50 homes x $100,000 = 5 million dollars for the Minneapolis site vs. $5 for the blighted Detroit land....

In Minneapolis the $5 million land cost is increased by demolition of the existing structures, all passed onto the next buyers or renters. So, at 5 homes per acre, that acre of land at best will be somewhere north of ½ million dollars per acre. Put another way, to maintain single family validity, if you are buying a $100,000 home (that would be in the worst neighborhoods), and 1/4th of a new home is typically a finished lot, at minimum you would need to replace that home with a $400,000 home. That would make no sense - not in downtrodden areas at least. These Minneapolis lots are small to begin with, so replacing single family with duplex won't make much of a dent financially. Building code in Minneapolis won't allow attached housing of the past where a thin common wall separated the adjacent unit. Today, the builder must construct what is essentially two exterior walls with airspace between adjacent units for duplex and townhomes, so why not separate the units and build somewhat high density single family instead? The only way to economically justify redevelopment in an area of high raw land cost would be high density vertical growth.

Back in January, urban analyst Joel Kotkin noted that just as Democrats are beginning to win the suburban vote, they're out to destroy suburbia:

The assault on single-family homes grows, at least in part, out of the identity politics that now dominate progressive politics. From Roosevelt through Clinton, progressives had pushed programs and incentives that made it possible for more working- and middle-class people to purchase a home. "A nation of homeowners," President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed, "of people who own a real share in their land, is unconquerable." Homeownership, he saw, was critical, not only to the economy but to democracy and the very idea of self-government.

This focus began to shift under President Obama, whose HUD Secretary, Julian Castro, sought to socially reengineer suburbs deemed insufficiently diverse--even without any proof of discrimination. In California, San Francisco State Sen. Scott Wiener, backed by the tech oligarchs and operating on the notion that more high-rise projects would dramatically reduce car usership and lower real-estate prices, has sought to strip zoning authority from local jurisdictions that protect their existing single-family houses.

A few quick notes about Tulsa's situation. I don't have time to footnote everything.

As of the 2010 census, there wasn't a single "lily-white" census block group in the City of Tulsa; every block group had some African-American residents. A census block group is a subdivision of a census tract, typically containing about a thousand people. In central Tulsa, there are typically three or four census block groups in each square mile. That said, the square mile that includes Utica Square, Woodward Park, and Cascia Hall only had two black residents in 2010.

The highest concentration of African Americans in Tulsa is found in single-family neighborhoods in north Tulsa. The highest concentration of Hispanic residents is found in single-family neighborhoods in east Tulsa.

Tulsa has a few neighborhoods that developed with a mixture of uses and housing types. For example, Swan Lake neighborhood has small bungalows, big mansions, and numerous three- or four-story walk-up apartment buildings, all coexisting nicely with pedestrian-friendly commercial development along its northern and eastern edges.

Tulsa also has experience with upzoning an established single-family neighborhood. In the 1960s, city leaders thought it would be a good idea to upzone the area west of the TU campus to provide for more student housing. Perhaps they imagined that developers would put up handsome brick apartment buildings of the sort that were built in the 1920s. Instead, opportunists tore down craftsman bungalows and built ugly, single-story, four-plex apartment buildings that fit in a single house lot. A few ugly '60s apartment complexes were built. As these apartments deteriorated, they weren't deemed worthy of renovation, and they gave the city an excuse to condemn the neighborhood as blighted and use eminent domain to acquire much of the neighborhood and flip the land to TU. Upzoning to multi-family, commercial high-intensity, and industrial damaged residential neighborhoods south and east of downtown.

INTERACTIVE MAP RESOURCES:

• Tulsa zoning map (INCOG)
• Justice Map: Interactive map that plots 2010 population by race and income for census blocks, block groups, tracts, and counties.
• The Racial Dot Map displays each individual in the 2010 census as a dot on the map, color-coded by race, a different way to visualize distribution of population.
• US Census Bureau TIGERweb interactive map shows boundaries of 2010 census divisions, but does not display demographic information.

Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Kara Joy McKee is hosting a public meeting on Monday, October 14, 2019, at the Central Center at Centennial Park, 1028 E 6th St, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120, from 6 pm to 8 pm, to discuss the planned Elm Creek West stormwater detention pond. The City Council has begun condemning homes in the neighborhood where legendary radio newsman Paul Harvey spent his childhood, and his childhood home is itself in the footprint of the pond and threatened with demolition for the sake of a pond of questionable utility and funding.

The Dawson home at 1111 E. 5th Place is one of the homes that Councilor McKee and her colleagues have voted to condemn, with the approval of Mayor G. T. Bynum IV. The Dawsons purchased the home last summer, moved in, and have done extensive renovations to the century-old home. The homes of other urban pioneers in the neighborhood have not yet been condemned, but unless the City Council votes to halt the acquisition process, it's only a matter of time. Other owners would gladly begin renovation work but have been deterred by the city's pond plans.

Here is Councilor McKee's note about the event:

This letter below was sent to affected residents earlier this week. If you know residents in this area, please help me remind them to attend. Many have questions about the use of eminent domain and what houses may or may not be taken by the city and why. I am hopeful that we'll get more clarity at this meeting.

Dear Property Owner/Resident in the Elm Creek Basin- north of Central Park:

You are invited to a public meeting with the City of Tulsa's engineering staff and consulting engineers to discuss a project in your neighborhood.

The meeting will be held Oct. 14, 2019, at 6 p.m. in the auditorium of Central Center at Centennial Park, 1028 E. Sixth St.

PROJECT AREA: Elm Creek Basin - north of Centennial Park

PROPOSED WORK: Pearl District Flood Control
(Elm Creek West Pond)

FUNDING SOURCE: 2014 Improve Our Tulsa sales tax

CONSULTING ENGINEER: Guy Engineering Services, Inc.

CONTACT:
Chris Gimmel
Stormwater Design Project Manager
City of Tulsa
(918) 596-9498
cgimmel@cityoftulsa.org

This meeting will give area residents and property owners the opportunity to ask questions and learn about the scope and duration of the project.

Anyone wishing to attend and needing accommodation for a disability can contact Compliance Officer, LaKendra Carter, in the Mayor's Office of Resilience and Equity, (918) 576-5208, at least 48 hours before the meeting.

The public is welcome to attend to attend to watch, listen, and hold us accountable as we work out what has happened so far and what should be happening going forward.

I hope that the councilor and the other city officials who plan to attend will come a little early and then walk a block north to see the Dawsons' home and the other renovated homes threatened by this pond. A City Council vote set condemnation in motion, and a City Council vote could rescind it.

Tulsa has a bad habit of condemning property and then not using it. Maple Park sits on land where homes once stood, cleared for a Riverside Expressway interchange that was killed by neighborhood protests. The near northside neighborhood still sits empty, 15 years after the city finished clearing it for college buildings that will never be needed. When the "Model Cities" urban renewal program bought and cleared most of Deep Greenwood, the promised redevelopment never took place, and the land sat empty until it was repurposed decades later for what are now the OSU-Tulsa and Langston-Tulsa campuses.

Property acquisition should stop and condemnation actions should be rescinded until the necessity of the Elm Creek Basin ponds are re-evaluated and, if the ponds are still deemed necessary, full funding for construction has been secured.

MORE -- A few examples of public officials rescinding an eminent domain taking:

Johnstown, New York, June 2019 (Leader-Herald): Council unanimously votes to rescind condemnation vote a month earlier. (Recorder News coverage)

Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, September 2018 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel): Village rescinds farmland taking because they don't need the land yet.

Carolina Beach, NC, August 2018 (PortCity Daily): City rescinds eminent domain for purchasing entire properties, opts for easements for beach replenishment.

West Vincent Township, Pennsylvania, January 2012 (Fox Rothschild law firm): Township rescinds taking of 33 acres belonging to Ludwig's Corner Horse Show Association, in response to public outcry. "I have seen governmental entities far too often become entrenched in their actions and irrationally refuse to reconsider their decisions. Fortunately, the Township was an exception."