First Monday Spoken Word Open Mic Night is a monthly gathering of writers, poets, essayists and creatives. We meet at the Ada Public Library at 6 p.m. on the first Monday of each month. JoJoe and the Stick by Richard R. Barron Joe and Sarah Jo life the quiet life of retirees on the east…
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Who Are You by Richard R. Barron Are you a photographer, or a shopper? Are you an artist, or a dilettante? Do you really want to make pictures, or are you following the crowd? Are you into photography for the right reasons? I’m going to go down a rabbit hole here – or possibly open…
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For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in radio. My earliest experiences were nighttime AM radio adventures, listening to far-off stations like WLS in Chicago. WLS was a 50,000-watt “clear channel” station Many nights I listened to WLS or WHO in Des Moines, hearing programs like the CBS Radio Mystery Theater,…
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Open Mic Night is a spoken word event on the first Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Ada, Oklahoma Public Library. Who might find this notebook in 100 years and toss it aside as garbage? Who might dig up this book in a cave in 50,000 years and build a faith from…
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Updated April 2026 As some of you might know, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My FCC-assigned call sign is kc5tfz, which is also the custom license tag on my Nissan Juke. I have several friends who are licensed “ham” radio operators. Almost universally, we use our amateur radio privileges less and less. I…
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Something I have observed since the death of my wife in March 2022: women who lead our interactions with a sentence that refers to me as “friend.” “Leena” did that to me recently, and I’m sure it was because she knew I was single and might be interested in scoping her out, so she closed…
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Open Mic Night is a spoken word event on the first Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Ada, Oklahoma Public Library. This Cloak of Darkness by Richard R. Barron “And in this cloak of darkness the world I will embrace…” I listened to the Kansas song The Pinnacle for the first time…
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Trigger warning: if real things that happen in the world and are depicted on a website trigger you, perhaps the internet is the wrong place for you. So, cover your eyes, snowflake. We are calling this thing The Oklahoma Chainsaw Massacre, The Great Botched Tree Caper, or The Stoppable Force Connects with the Movable Object….
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Ada’s First Mondays Open Mic Night celebrated two years of poetry, short stories, journal entries, notes, thoughts, essays, and abundant talent Monday, February 2, 2026 at the Ada Public Library. “Richard will always read something from his journal.” ~Open Mic regular Samuel Baker Cold Night by Richard R. Barron It’s a cold night. Rain. Wind…
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In the age of rabid social media ghosting, hating and canceling, I have an opinion about something that will likely be unpopular to many because the webscape has become so eager to feel self-righteous, particularly when they can call you cruel and unfeeling about the dead. My opinion is this: Jenny Blalock, who ran the…
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A Story of Gravity, Miscalculation, and Consequences Last July, a severe thunderstorm roared through Byng. Damage was light to moderate. On my patch, the only damage was confined to the north side of the huge, 150-year-old black walnut tree, a third of which fell away from tree. Since the downed trunk and branches fell into…
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Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic event held on the third Sunday of each month at the Lost Street Brewing Company in Durant, Oklahoma. The featured poet for this session was David Thornburgh. I wrote this about someone who once said I was “the one that got away,” but really I was the…
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Is it possible to stop one of the most pernicious habits of the last 10 years: “doomscrolling?” This activity is the result of many factors, including being surrounded by too many screens, being manipulated by the curators of the content of those screens, and these screens showing us too much bad news. I know we…
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Here are a few snapshots of me from the late 1990s and early 2000s. They were made by a longtime friend of mine Michael.
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I want to weigh in on an awkward truth that has been brewing the last few years: the perception that most people, especially younger people, can’t afford to buy a house. Consider this: my parents’ first house had four rooms, one bathroom, no air conditioning, and no garage. They had one phone, which was a…
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First Monday Open Mic Night has found a new home, the Ada Public Library. The two pieces I read were Ashes to Dust, and Praying to the Thanksgiving Duck, both published on this blog Monday afternoon. The lenses I used for this event were the AF-D 85mm f/1.4 and the Altura Photo 8mm f/3.0 Fisheye.
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My friend Courtney has told me in the last few years that her favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, and recently, it has become mine as well. But it wasn’t always this way. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a feast holiday, featuring the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I have no problem with a nice meal, but it seldom works out…
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A popular joke on the Interwebs right now goes like this: “One of my favorite hobbies as a child was making sand castles with my grandfather, until my mom took the urn away.” The reason I thought about this recently is that a friend of mine asked me if she could spread the ashes from…
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Our open mic band of poets is searching for a new home. On Monday, October 6, we met as we had the previous month, in Ada’s Wintersmith Park. The Night Always Seems to Win by Richard R. Barron Memories of being a sick child, laying on a couch made up with sheets and blankets, the…
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Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic event at Lost Street Brewing Company in Durant, Oklahoma. The event includes a featured poet. September’s featured poet was Molly Sizer.
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A last-minute issue moved us to Ada’s Wintersmith Park, but it was a beautiful evening, and it felt like we all read well. Chapter 11: Moral Bankruptcy by Richard R. Barron Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. I need to be more chaotic, so I think, “You can dance on my…
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Poetry on Lost Street is an open mic gathering at Lost Street Brewery in Durant, Oklahoma on the third Sunday afternoon of each month. This was the first time I attended, but it has interested me for a while. I am very glad I went. First Monday Spoken Word Open Mic Night organizer Cody Baggerly…
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First Monday Open Mic Night at Kind Origin Dispensary remains popular and successful. Summoning the End by Richard R. Barron What exactly am I trying to accomplish, sitting pretentiously on my front deck, sipping my pretentious coffee, writing in my pretentious notebooks with my pretentious pen? Everything around me is more genuine that I am…
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A Rotary International custom for the history of the organization is the “classification speech.” Most of the time, new members are asked to deliver the speech in their first year of Rotary membership, but I was recruited during the pandemic, so we never got around to scheduling my speech. The purpose of this activity is…
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First Monday Open Mic Night at Kind Origin Dispensary remains popular and successful. Working titles for this poem include Song, America, Light as a Leaf, and Song for America. The last one is the title of a Kansas song I really like. by Richard R. Barron Do you have a favorite song? A Farewell to…
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This week, I had to have my Irish wolfhound, Hawken Rifle Trail, euthanized. He was a great dog and a great friend. Very large breeds don’t live as long as smaller dogs, and he was very old, almost nine.
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Over the past several months, I’ve made a point to ghost (meaning to erase the internet and communications footprint) certain people from my life. Some of these people get ghosted because they live in an us-vs-them paradigm, especially politically. Other people I’ve ghosted were rude to me and my work. Still others are gone because…
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My sister Nicole and her husband Tracey timed their June vacation road trip to start with an appearance at First Monday Spoken Word Open Mic Night. My good friend and fellow photographer Danielle O’Daniel made the photos of Nicole and me.
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Critical Thinking and Our Duty to the Truth by Richard R. Barron (Rewritten from a 2019 blog entry) Did we go to the moon? Do flu shots give you the flu? Was 9/11 an inside job? Are chemtrails poisoning us? I thought about these and questions like these as I reread and reshared a 2016…
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