Maps and More Maps

If you know me at all, you know that I love paper maps. For me, they have a soul of their own. I love paper road maps, paper trail maps, and, of course, paper sectional aeronautical charts. When I am feeling the itch to travel, hike, fly, or just explore the world, I dig out…

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Journey of Hope

File cabinets, carpeting, office furniture and building material are all visible in the demolished northern facade of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City April 19, 1995.

This is the story we published about my experience speaking to Byng, Oklahoma School students about the day I covered the bombing in Oklahoma City. Journey of Hope visits Byng School The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum’s “Journey of Hope,” an effort to share the experience of the 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Building Federal…

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The First Draft of History

In some ways, nothing is more important than the weather. The weather dictates how we live, where we live, what we buy, what we use, what will probably be plentiful, and what might become scarce. In Ada, we got a refresher course on this important truism when, in the predawn hours Tuesday, March 4, 2025,…

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The Room

This is the same corner of the same room in 2012.

My readers know me well enough to know that I am a very well-organized person, particularly when it comes to photography. Part of that is my devotion to keeping things neat (not, as some charmingly unwelcome critics have suggested, “OCD”), and part of it is my fairly sharp memory. I thought of this as I…

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The Pen

I have often said and written that putting pen to paper is one of the best ways to learn, one of the best ways to express yourself, and one of the best ways to keep track of our very complicated lives. You can see some clinical analysis at Psychiatrist.com. and Pens.com. I’ve been writing in…

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Is Bluesky an Answer?

Oklahoma City's Skydance Bridge spans Interstate 40 near downtown. The steel sculpture above it represents the state bird, the Scissortail Flycatcher.

We’ve all been watching the Internet in the last few years. The disappointing trend has been accelerating away from the fun, promising Internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, toward an almost Vaudevillian collection of ads, misleading and untrue facts and ideas, and grotesque incivility. For a little while after Twitter became X, I…

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My Favorite Alan Parsons Project Songs

Two of my long-time photographer friends and fellow Alan Parsons Project fans attended an AP² concert recently, so it got me thinking about what songs I loved and hated from this long-lived band. Most of the instrumentals are robotic and pointless: Hawkeye, Cloudbreak, Breakaway, Urbania, Pipeline, Nucleus, etc. On the other hand, instrumentals like Voyager…

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Sticking the Landings

Leanring to fly, to overcome fear, challenges, and uncertainty, marked a new chapter in my life, a chapter filled with confidence and success.

Journal, April 1, 1994: I got checked out on the Piper PA28 Cherokee 160 this afternoon. I flew it just great, start to finish. The instructor said he “really enjoyed” flying with me. It wasn’t a perfect day. The wind was at 220 at 20, and it was quite squirrelly on final, all cross-controlled. It…

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August 21, 1990, in My Journal

Although this image was made some years later by Abby, the view is similar to the one I had landing a spritely Cessna 150 named Old Gomer on that cold morning in December of 1992.

Please note: this entry contains descriptions of violence and death that some readers might find upsetting. I read this at Open Mic Night Monday, October 7, 2024… There’s something about seeing freshly-dead, burned-up bodies that puts an air of frivolity around the day’s business. The lives of four people, on a business trip, were rather…

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Task and Purpose

I made this view a couple of nights ago while walking back to the house after bringing some garden fruits and vegetables to the next door neighbors, the Nipps.

This fall has been cool and dry, so I’ve been taking every opportunity to work outside. One of my oddest chores has been efforts to remove chicken wire from the back yard fence. Abby had originally installed it to keep in her Chihuahua Gabby, but we reinforced it when we had goats. The problem with…

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My Life in Two-Way Radio

Area public safety communications are a mix of conventional FM two-way radio, digital signaling, and mobile data sharing via mobile applications.

Updated November 2024 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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One of These Days

The fire goes to coals and the sky catches fire last night near the garden.

Yesterday was “one of these days,” as in, “One of these days I’m going to get around to burning that brush pile.” My north brush pile began 13 months ago when a severe thunderstorm tore down some large limbs in two of my maple trees and Abby’s 100+year-old walnut. I had built this pile in…

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A Day of Planes

A Boeing 737 Classic makes a touch-and-go-landing at Ada Regional Airport recently.

Ever since my late wife’s daughter Chele and her family moved to Anna, Texas, I’ve wanted to visit Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza, which is about 45 minutes from Chele’s home. My readers know that I have always been a big fan of aviation in all forms, and I became a pilot in 1993….

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Out the Door, Off the Rails

I recently had the opportunity to fly in the camera plane to photograph a Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast medium bomber of late World War II. The aircraft was fueled with Ada-based General Aviation Modifications, Inc.’s new aviation gasoline, G100UL, the first-ever 100-octane unleaded aviation gasoline. I sat on the floor in the back of…

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