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"Twilight in Tar Creek" | The Oklahoman | 10.15.06
ORVAL “Hoppy” Ray gingerly places his bass guitar back on its stand, welcoming a chance to rest his frail fingers. On this, his favorite song, he will sing — if only his troupe of scrappy musicians can agree on a key ...
Full Text | Page ImageOklahoma Panhandle Drought | The Oklahoman | 6.22.08
BOISE CITY — Memories of the Dust Bowl hit Millard Fowler, 95, when he sees the wind whipping up small dust storms near his wheat fields in Cimarron County.
"It just looks like the old dirty '30s every time I go by there,” he said.
He remembers years when the trees just across the street were choked up to their necks in powdery dust, and when he would wake up in the morning to find his silhouette traced in dirt on his pillow ...
"After the Tornado: Monday morning" | newsok.com | 5.12.08 - web update
... In the rubble of the homes, you'll find a Polaroid picture album, a plaid blazer, an empty gold picture frame, a lone bedpost, a lace table runner, a gray shawl, a cowboy boot, a blue rocking chair, a ceiling fan turned upside down, a broken coffee mug, a deck of playing cards and a broken VHS tape with a case labeled "Matt & Julie's Wedding."
After being blocked most of yesterday, residents will be let into town today to survey the damage ...
"Preserving stream's pristine waters" | The Oklahoman | 7.20.08
ON SPRING CREEK — To leap into the cool blue waters of this hidden northeast Oklahoma creek is to jump back to a time when water was clean and life was simple, locals say.
"It's very spiritual,” said Jennifer Owen, who swims here almost every day. "It's been life-changing for me.”
Spring Creek — with its deep channels and pure blue waters — is one of only five water bodies in Oklahoma known to meet all of the state's water quality standards, according to a draft report recently released by the state Department of Environmental Quality ...
"Oklahoma switchgrass could fuel the future" | newsok.com | 4.28.08
As experts turn against corn ethanol, Oklahoma is continuing to elbow for a spot in the so-called second generation of the biofuels movement — a generation that won't use food for fuel.
In recent months, turning corn into fuel has met criticism on two fronts: It's been blamed as a factor in sky-high food prices that have led to riots in Asia, Africa and Haiti; and it's been cast as an environmental villain, since studies say corn ethanol, on the whole, creates more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline.
But Oklahoma's biofuels industry is growing down a different path ...
"Water tests raise questions in E. coli outbreak" | The Oklahoman | 8.30.08
The state Health Department says its inquiry into a deadly E. coli outbreak in northeast Oklahoma remains focused on food from a buffet restaurant in Locust Grove, even though tests of the restaurant's well water show possible bacterial contamination ...
"Family survived, but Picher may not" | The Oklahoman | 5.12.08
... As families in Picher pieced through the wreckage of their homes on Sunday, they talked not just about the tragic night of storms that killed six people here and left Tressie's mom hospitalized with a broken rib and bruised lung. They talked also about their town — Picher — a town that several residents say gasped its last breath just before Saturday's tornado hit.
"It's the finishing blow to a dying town, in my estimation," said John Hutchison, Tressie's stepfather ...
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"The future" | The Oklahoman | 5.13.08
PICHER - Bruised and battered, with her feet bandaged like cocoons and her ankles looking like they'd been splattered with ink, Kim Johnson returned Monday to her home in Picher for the first time since tornadoes tore through her town.
Some walls were standing, but most everything else was flattened. Now she's one of 12 family members staying in a two-bedroom trailer. She doesn't know what she'll do in the long term, but she knows she won't rebuild here ...
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"It took a town to find help for Tar Creek" | The Oklahoman | 7.13.08
... Behind the politics of that plan and many others, local advocacy has been present. A local nurse was the first to suggest mine waste near the town of Picher might be poisoning kids. A nuclear scientist returned to his hometown and pushed for a look at massive cave-ins caused by extensive subterranean mine workings. And a guidance counselor has been drawing attention to poisoned waters at the site for more than a decade.
Meanwhile, in a campaign ad, Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe claims to be responsible for the environmental cleanup and buyout program ...
"Mining for Picher" | The Oklahoman | 12.26.06
PICHER — Before all of this, the site of one of the nation's oldest and most severe environmental tragedies was just a swath of fertile prairie with a deep-hidden secret.
More than 300 million years ago — before the dinosaurs walked the earth and long before the government pledged to pay residents to flee — cracks made room for the zinc and lead to arrive ..."Picher girl still a Gorilla" | The Oklahoman | 8.20.06
PICHER — Driving her father’s mid-90s Ford Thunderbird to the first day of her senior year, Tracy Carder, 17, anxiously flipped between radio stations and wondered whether she could find any normalcy in what may be the last year of her school and her hometown ...
"Choking on the past" | The Oklahoman | 8.13.06
PICHER — Their names are traced in the dust of a dying town.
Jeremy. Josh. Myles. Ryan.In Picher, an old and environmentally troubled ore-mining boomtown in far northeastern Oklahoma, young men have written their names in the toxic zinc- and lead-based dust that settled on the windowpanes of a long abandoned storefront ...
"Tattoo artists needle state" | The Oklahoman |
2.26.06“TATTOO” is outlined in ink-red letters on the entrance to the First Amendment Tattoo Co. The word — a bold-faced reference to an act that’s illegal in Oklahoma — is printed from floor to ceiling two more times on the tattoo parlor’s glass-panel storefront in Bricktown.
Out on the street, neon-colored signs point patrons — and police — to the shop.
And inside, as Oklahoma City tattoo artist Bobby Deneen colors the words “DADDY’S GIRL” on a bubbly 19-year-old’s back, he breaks an Oklahoma law — and her skin — about 3,000 times per minute. ..."Droughts to linger" | The Oklahoman | 2.3.07
NORMAN — A major international report released Friday says human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are "very likely" the cause of observed global climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report — intended to be the world's most comprehensive analysis of climate change to date — states temperatures are expected to rise between about 3 and 7 degrees by the end of the century.
That could mean disastrous consequences for Oklahoma, according to the state's leading climatologist. ..."Who's looking at your Wi-Fi?" | The Oklahoman | 5.14.06
Jayson E. Street, a sort of altruist with computer hacker capabilities, drives around the city in his gray PT Cruiser with a tablet sized computer bolted to his dashboard. It surveys and instantly lists the wireless Internet connections that float like clouds of information all around his car, and all around the city.
If the connections are scrambled or password-protected, a tiny lock appears on his screen.But many appear as flashing green dots. They’re unlocked, unprotected. Vulnerable to attack ...
"Probe sought for campaign contributions" | The Oklahoman | 2.7.06
City and county officials called Monday for an investigation into whether Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart or his campaign manager broke election laws ...
[note: story led to federal investigation and court action ]
"Air quality becoming unhealthy" | The Oklahoman | 9.29.06
The Oklahoma City metro area is on its way to breaking federal air quality standards for unhealthy levels of smog — perhaps as soon as summer ...
"Extra Innings" | poynter.org | 6.20.05
Before stepping up to bat, players in St. Petersburg's 75-and-older softball league usually stop by the chainlink fence.
"You gonna hit me a home run today?" Kenny Marsh, 87, asks one of the players. He peers through the links from his usual stakeout, a lawn chair in the shadows ...
"The Great Coffee Debate" | poynter.org | 7.1.05
Arthur James "A.J." Wilkerson Jr. sits at his table on a recent Sunday decked out in flowered swim trunks and a wrinkled, unbuttoned shirt, his sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail.
His family is with him, but there's always room for extra company.
"Pull up a chair," he says to a friend. "Pretend you know somebody."
A.J.'s not on the 1967 sailboat he calls home.
He's at Starbucks ...
"Power in paint, pencils" | poynter.org | 7.9.05
Linda R. glances over her painting, a splash of ruddy hues on canvas. It hangs against a white gallery wall ...
"Fixing a tyred environment" | Die Burger | 4.6.03
Cape Town - Nearly 800 million scrap tyres dot the Western Cape landscape. These tyres are often burnt or retreaded, but rarely recycled ...
