A Snow Day in May?

May 17-19, 2013

In mid-May 2013 an unused district snow day provided a three-day weekend one week before the end of the school year. I took the opportunity to flee to Arkansas for a break. After a nice lunch at El Chico in Tulsa, I drove east on 412 to start with a now-familiar hike at Devil’s Den State Park near Winslow, Arkansas.

Above Devil’s Den (click image for slideshow)

I hiked 4.3 miles along Lake Devil and up the Yellow Rock Trail, where I perched and stood on the edge of the high bluff, admiring the forest below. Back down at Lake Devil, the spillway had a good flow, although I was disappointed to find the paddle boats locked up and unavailable. The park was fairly empty compared to how it is on weekends. When I washed up at the restroom after the hot and humid hike, I glimpsed the spillway through the trees and noticed how the CCC worker statue appeared to be standing on a vehicle’s hood. Get down from there! You’re too heavy!

Friday evening I cleaned up at my room at the DoubleTree Club in Springdale and had a late dinner at the adjacent Denny’s.

War Eagle Mill

Saturday morning I arose to drive east to War Eagle Mill, where a found a Great Blue Heron posing by the large undershot paddle wheel. Walking out onto the narrow 1908 bridge across War Eagle Creek, I could look east back at the mill or spy animal life in the water along the western shore. Two large snakes were bobbing in the rushing water and along the western shore, below the natural dam, huge trout were lined up, feeding. I recrossed to the mill side and toured the three floors of the structure, but resisted making any purchases.

Then I drove northwest to downtown Bentonville for the fantastic four-cheese ravioli at Tavola Trattoria. Next was what has become a regular art stop for me, visiting the “Redneck Guggenheim”: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Several of the pieces in the main collection had been swapped out, which was welcome since the temporary Norman Rockwell exhibit had very long lines and was something I decided to put off for a later visit.

The museum was packed with people, so despite the heat and humidity I was glad to escape to the Tulip Trail, where a docent told me that the large bench I’d previously admired wasn’t built into a new berm but into the remains of an old railroad bed. The backers of the rail bed went bust before any rails were installed, but portions of it remain.

I made the rather warm and tiring decision to circumnavigate the museum’s north lawn on the Art Trail and Rock Ledge Trail, snapping a framed self-portrait along the latter. A delicious cupcake at the museum cafe did not stop me from having a hearty fried chicken dinner at the old AQ Chicken House in Springdale.

Natural Falls

Sunday morning I arose late to dine at the nearby MarketPlace Grill and drove west to stop and enjoy the waterfalls at Natural Falls State Park in Oklahoma, which was formerly called Dripping Springs. The falls were running strong and I soaked in the cool mist and calming sounds. It was a nice way to end this brief escape before I faced a week chock full of meetings and final exams, culminating in my 24th Commencement as a teacher at Bartlesville High School.

Click here for a slideshow from this trip

 

Tulsa Beauty

March 12, 2013

I spent a Sunday afternoon enjoying two types of beauty in Tulsa: hiking five miles on Turkey Mountain and then  admiring the blooms at the Tulsa Rose Garden.

Tulsa Rose Garden (click image for slideshow)

 

Lendonwood Gardens

April 28, 2013

Spring has been blooming not only at Gilcrease, but also at Lendonwood Gardens in Grove. I showed off the 100 cabins of antique artifacts at Har-Ber Village to a friend, but she enjoyed Lendonwood Gardens more. Dinner was at The Parrot Steakhouse & Grill.

Lendonwood Gardens (click image for slideshow)

 

Spring Blooms at Gilcrease

April 27, 2013

Spring has bloomed at Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum.

Spring Blooms at the Gilcrease Museum

 

Roaring River

April 24, 2013

Roaring River (click image for slideshow)

Last Saturday I returned to good old Roaring River for a couple of brief hikes along the Deer Leap and Devil’s Kitchen trails. I lost a filling in a front incisor while eating a PayDay peanut bar in Fairland; it would be four days until I could get into the dentist and make that incident his PayDay. But thankfully the tooth gave me no trouble, only spurring me to bite more carefully and eat more slowly.

I enjoyed a tasty lunch at the Emory Melton Inn at the park and then walked the hatchery area, finding that spring rains had swollen the spring’s outflow and had all of the basin falls going strong. The stream beside the lower ascending portion of the Devil’s Kitchen Trail was flowing, with water coming out of the cave at the far end of the ascent. I clambered atop the tumbled slabs at Devil’s Kitchen and got a self-portrait of myself in the kitchen along with distant and near shots of me beside a nearby spring.

The evening meal was at the Steak Inn at Shell Knob and was particularly tasty. I’ve only been making short hikes thus far this year, but at least I was back out on the trails!

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

 

San Antone

I spent most of the second week of April 2013 in San Antonio, Texas for the national conference of the National Science Teachers Association.

I’ll spare you photos from the physics workshops I attended, since the Riverwalk is so much more picturesque:

The Riverwalk (click image for slideshow)

Dinosaur Valley

I drove over 1,200 miles on this trip, but in fellow science teacher Betty Henderson’s car with her and our colleague Theresa Miller. A total of ten science teachers from Bartlesville attended the conference, with most of us meeting up for dinner on the Riverwalk each night. During the conference former Bartlesville High School science teachers Chris Bradley and Sandra Cloud, who were at the conference, joined us for dinner. It was nice to catch up with them.

We had great weather during our stay in San Antonio, and Theresa, Betty, and I had fun stopping by Dinosaur Valley State Park on our way back home.

I didn’t get any hikes in on this trip, but I traipsed so much about the convention center and Riverwalk that I did not lack exercise!

Enjoy the photos.

 

Original Sin

April 6, 2013

Original Sin by Pandora’s Box

For over a year I posted each month about a “new” song I particularly enjoyed. But I became preoccupied with other activities and my new discoveries dwindled. So at the start of this week I decided to suspend that monthly task. But today my 12,000+ song music collection was on shuffle and an old Jim Steinman song was dealt, prompting me to link and write. (You can always search for my song posts by clicking on the music tag in the cloud in the right sidebar of this website.)

Jim Steinman’s bombastic rock opera is a guilty pleasure of mine. His songs are typically quite long, linking together several motifs, with extensive lyrics. Most of his best songs are dark tales of sex and sin, and Original Sin, which originally was performed by Pandora’s Box, is a classic example.

Unfortunately, Original Sin lacks the humor and interweaved contrasting motifs of Steinman’s best songs, such as one finds in I’ll Kill You If You Don’t Come Back and You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth. The prior song’s “Bless all the girls” segment is a wonderful and welcome break from the driving main section, and those verses take me right back to my high school days, perfectly capturing the terrible wonders of teenage sexuality. The latter song is one of my all-time favorites with Steinman’s beautiful piano licks and Todd Rundgren’s tremendous production; the closing crescendo is wonderful, and I can’t help but clap along at the end.

The video I found for the Pandora’s box version of Original Sin features sensual art from Luis Royo, another form of guilty pleasure, and is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. His Fallen Angel is quite striking to me; you could build a tragic story around that pictured moment in time.

Taylor Dayne did a modified cover of the song, but it did not chart. Bonnie Tyler is another female artist who did great versions of Steinman songs, with him producing her album Faster Than the Speed of Night.

But of course the artist most closely associated with Steinman is the mighty Meat Loaf with the fantastic bombastic Bat Out of Hell, Dead Ringer, and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell albums. Meat did a cover of Original Sin on his Welcome to the Neighborhood album.

No one sings Steinman better than Meat Loaf, but I was sufficiently intrigued by the original Pandora’s Box version to order the album CD (it was not available on MP3 from Amazon or iTunes), which was made with Jim Steinman and has their original takes on several songs Meat Loaf would later cover on Bat Out of Hell II.

Some of Steinman’s lyrics are especially good, right up there with other choice bits which speak to me. The scrap of verse which hooked into my ears today and drew my full attention to the song, which had been playing in the background, was:

I’ve been looking for the ultimate crime
Infinite victims, infinitesimal time
And I’m so very guilty for no reason or rhyme

This and other Steinman songs supply plenty of reasons and rhymes for this sort of guilty pleasure.

Original Sin

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

You can dance forever
You got a fire in your feet
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough
You can fly and never land
And never need to sleep
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough

It’s not enough to make the nightmares go away
It’s not enough to make the tears run dry
It’s not enough to live a little better every day
Everything that they taught us
Was nothing but lies
Everything that they brought us
Was nothing but bribes

But it’ll all be over now
All I wanted was a piece of the night
I never got an equal share
When the stars are out of sight
And the moon is down
The natives are so restless tonight

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

You can lose yourself in pleasure
Till your body’s going numb
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it’ll never be enough
You can always take whatever
You conceivably could want
But will it ever be enough?
You know that it will never be enough

It’s not enough to make the nightmares go away
It’s not enough to make the tears run dry
It’s not enough to live a little better every day
Everything that they taught us
Was nothing but lies
Everything that they brought us
Was nothing but bribes

But the lies are over now
All I wanted was a piece of the night
It never had to get so dark
When the stars are out of sight
And the moon is down
The natives are so restless tonight

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
For an original sin

I’ve been looking for the ultimate crime
Infinite victims, infinitesimal time
And I’m so very guilty for no reason or rhyme
So now I’m just looking
And killing some time
Endlessly searching for the ultimate crime

I’ve been looking for an original sin
One with a twist and a bit of a spin
And since I’ve done all of the old ones
Till they’ve all been done in
Now I’m just looking
Then I’m gone with the wind
Endlessly searching for an original sin

I’m applying for a license to thrill
Going out on the edge
Moving in for the kill
There’ll be hell to pay someday
So put it all on the bill
Cause we’ll always be paying
And paying until
We’re beyond expiration
With a license to thrill

I’ve been looking for an original sin…