Oklahoma - where the corn is as high as an elephants eye...

Here you will notice the theme for the post headings. We 'did' Oklahoma the musical when I was at school, my sister played Aunt Ella. So since I knew I was going to Tulsa I've been singing Oh-Oklahoma quietly in my head every so often. Today we visited the tall grass prairie so I switched theme song to "Oh what a beautiful morning" and this line; "The corn is as high as an elephants eye and it looks like it's climbing right up to the sky"...

We were headed for the tall grass prairie 'owned' by the nature conservancy. These people maintain this large area of grass land where buffalo (technically bison, but I like buffalo) are allowed to roam. They keep it in it's 'natural' state by controlled burning and the grazing for the buffalo. The grassland began two hours drive from Tulsa, there were a surprising number of trees; apparently pecans (or 'pecons' as they pronounce it) are one of the products Oklahoma is known for.

They say of the prairie that 'the sky is half the world', it's hard to get a sense of natural openness and magnitude when surrounded by 70 people and two coaches but it was still beautiful. The 'grass' is about hip height because the buffalo browsing keep it from getting really tall.

 

'open' space 

Pandas live in the prairie too - as you can see!

There are a few bits of the area that are still owned by private
individuals like the are these long horned cattle are grazing on.

This is the actual long grass when the Bison aren't grazing an area

Bison or as I have re-christened them 'Fluffalos' - not that we could touch them,
they are 'wild' except for a little bit of treat association training which means they
respond to a sound alarm when the ranchers have to gather them in. 

I call this video 'run buffalo run'
Apparently they didn't appreciate us standing there staring at them and instead of giving them some space people kept getting closer, and closer!

After scaring all the Buffalo away from their water source we debunked to the bunk house. We had fajitas out of a food van (an all america experience) and whilst we ate had a talk about music in the west. Probably my all time most memorable moment from the trip was learning that in some of the earlier Christian congregations they had songs that encompassed the three cultures that made them up. The verses were Anglo hymns, the choruses were from African American spirituals and they were sung in some of the American Indian languages. Some of the churches still use these songs today. The church signs are also in Indian languages the literal translation for Baptist was something like 'man half in water'. We heard a lot about the tensions between these three cultures in our time in Tulsa, but what a wonderful image (or sound bite) of how we can integrate cultures whilst keeping them distinct.

The bunk house

 They have ranchers on site all the time to look after the bison but they also have this facility for day visitors and visiting scientist to stay and study the prairie.

Sculpture!

Oklahoma - where the Indians were moved and stayed.

Or I should say 'some' Indians were moved and stayed. As if the tall grass prairie wasn't enough we also stopped of at the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska. We were an hour late arriving but these lovely people welcomed us in. The Osage is a county in Oklahoma but it's also one of the Indian American Tribes that found themselves forceably moved around what is now the USA whilst the States were still forming. They got fed up of being moved so decided to actually purchase themselves land. As it happens they were very lucky (or preternaturally perceptive) because the land they held turned out to be rich in mineral wealth. Their ownership of the land was recognized by the federal government in 1906 and the land was divided equally between over 2000 Osage tribe members - all those alive at the time (June 1906), this included babies! Many individuals sold off their land but the mineral rights were owned collectively and so couldn't be sold. Which, as can be imagined, led to a large amount of wealth for the tribe. Strangely it also means that places like the Tall Grass Prairie 'owned' by the Nature Conservancy have to allow the Osage people to extract the oil/gas from the area which leads to oil pumps around the place. The gas is extracted through fracking, and businesses in the area have invested a lot in figuring out how most efficiently and 'environmentally friendly' ways to extract the gas. I found it particularly interesting as my home village in the UK is close  (it's 'within the Parish boundries' close) to shale sites that are supposedly the right type for fracking and there are plans afoot to make use of that resource as well as protests afoot to scupper those plans.

Anyway I think we learned lots from the Osage Nation Museum, most of which I can't remember in specifics, but they have a website!

Some of the lovely voluteers at the museum who dressed up for us  and let us take their photos!

Oklahoma - where the sky is half the world

The sky is half the world - this is more a reference to the tall grass prairie (see next post) but given that today was a flying day this seems an appropriate title.

Day 1 of my Oklahoma adventure started at 4:45am when I woke up in the (slightly seedy) airport hotel that I stayed in. By 6:30am I was on a plane which couldn't start it's engines (independently) so had to have some help from the ground crew. I wasn't thinking about what would happen if the engines stalled in midair and couldn't restart... This was my first experiance with SouthWest airlines that have open seating but an assigned boarding number, so you queue in the order you checked in but sit where you like. I sat by the window in the plane and I saw... (thinking this could be a new traveling game)...

...the wing of the plane...

Mount St. Helens

the hazy sunrise

Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, and South Sister

...undetermined... 

...mountain ranges...

...the grand canyon... (like you do)....

Lake Pleasant

Phoenix Airport where I got to sit on the plane while they boarded the new passengers

 After 7hrs sat on the plane I finally got off... we had a little reception at the hotel then went to the Gilcrease museum (more on that in later blogs) to have a keynote speech about the American West and listen to a swing band whilst we munched 'heavy' hors d'œuvres...  

Oklahoma - where the questions are as long as the answers

This week I went to Tulsa in Oklahoma (OK) for a Fulbright Enrichment Seminar entitled 'Old to New West: The Role of Land in Shaping the American Story'. This was sponsored by the state department of Educational and Cultural Affairs and hosted by a partnership of the Tulsa Global Alliance, the University of Tulsa, and the Gilcrease Museum. They had clearly put a lot of thought into the program and assembled a number of more than impressive guest speakers. It was a well thought out program, and trying to organise 70 Fulbright Scholars representing 42 countries is like herding cats. Unfortuately it turns out that large Fulbright events have a unique ability to leave me feeling frustrated with the rest of the world and myself. They just bring out the worst type of impatience in me.

Sunrise over Tulsa, from the Holiday Inn window

I have discovered that despite my happiness to dawdle my own life in group situations I am quite a task orientated person. The question asks for TWO POINTS you have now come up with SIX please for the love of my sanity just share TWO points. In this I think I am starting to show my true colours as a student of science where we delight to distill three years of impressive research into 6 sides of A4. We value single words that encapsulate entire sentences of thought, it's how we roll. We don't write books, or if we do they are filled with diagrams and graphs; for us a picture tells a thousand stories and does not necessitate an entire essay to describe it over again in words. Alas, and yet hurrah, that the humanities are not so; Alas for me who has to exercise patience and understanding, but hurrah for the diversity of human experience that brings about so many ways of answering, or asking, the same question. Hurrah for people who think out loud in public as oppose to my own (slightly unnerving) preference for thinking out loud in private, or the many people who have the miraculous ability to internalize one's thoughts.

On Saturday morning there was a race to which added some entertainment to breakfast.
For a second I really did think someone had been shot when the starting gun went off,
shortly followed by police siren!

Thankfully I am now back in Seattle in my own cosy basement with my own plan for the weekend. I will now put on a happy face and share the amazing experience we had.