When Autumn starts to feel like it’s run its’ course, I get a little giddy for the possibilities of Winter. Not for winter sports and all that, but I dream of hibernation and the preparation for Spring that I never get to have. When the first snowflakes fly, I secretly yearn to hunker down in…
When the floor refinishers came and took up the carpet and brought our upstairs hardwood floors back to life, they accidentally burned out my old 1990s alarm system. But I wasn’t mad — I’d been thinking about replacing it anyway. We haven’t had it monitored in awhile, but I liked having one. Even just to…
August 23, 2020 Make no mistake; the COVID-19 pandemic is expensive. In a macroeconomic sense: world economies sputter along in low speed, needing fewer of this and that means fewer people employed, making fewer dollars, and national and world GDP not nearly as robust as before. No doubt the world we go back to will…
I can’t begin to tell you when I became a Craftsman. I can tell you that it’s been a long road. I think it started when we bought our first house, built in 1922. In no time, you find yourself presented with things that need fixing, and in no time you learn that most current-day…
One of the things I harp on is that creativity and invention are, contrary to popular opinion, hardly ever the result of bolts out of the blue. Instead, they are a result of synthesis — reading, studying, or seeing things that later come back to you in new and different ways. Stand by for an…
September 26, 2017 In his talks, Tom Peters used to ask his audiences “What is the oldest continually operating organization you can think of?” The answers were (a) the Catholic Church, and (b) Medieval Universities, like the University of Oxford. Which begs the Question: Why do no businesses have that kind of longevity? One could…
September 21, 2017 It’s nothing new to report that the state of Oklahoma is 48th in education outcomes. As our legislature continues to dither and waffle about whether they want to out-Brownback Kansas by being the new example of a failed state economy, Oklahoma educators vote with their feet — teachers move just across the…
April 7, 2017 Tonight at Midnight, the City of Tulsa will close an online web design competition for a new pedestrian bridge at basically 34th & Riverside. The old Midland railroad bridge is structurally unsound, and is needs to be replaced with something that will match the new look of the area, courtesy of A Gathering…
February 21, 2017 Trust me: it’s pretty hard being me. The weight of the world is upon me, and there’s not enough of me and my wisdom to go around. Lost opportunities for civilization abound, when I’m indisposed elsewhere… Now that everyone has lost their lunches, I just HAVE to tell you about a missed…
Last week we completed (mostly) our move from our house of 15+ years to a new rental in South Tulsa. Too many reasons to go into detail as to why — the thing I’m talking about now is DESIGN and how when it’s absent, you notice it. Background: our house in Midtown Tulsa was built…