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.