The Tulsa Voice | Vol. 5 No. 9

SCOTT PRUITT’S SCHEMING P8

HUNTING: NOT JUST FOR HILLBILLIES P24

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, NOW AND THEN P12

LOCAL ATHEIST SCIENTIST RUNS FOR OFFICE! P28

paradise never sounded So Good.

Tickets On Sale Now

foreigner apr 26 eli young band apr 28 Lyle lovett & his large band may 2

huey lewis & the news may 10 zz top may 17 tom jones may 19 Dr. ken jeong may 31 reo speedwagon june 1

Live Music

Friday & Saturday Nights Starting at 9PM in 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar and at 10 PM in Margaritaville!

Visit margaritavilletulsa.com for a complete schedule.

81ST & RIVERSIDE 888-748-3731 RIVERSPIRITTULSA.COM

2 // CONTENTS

April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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PIZZ A, HOUSE-BRE WED BEER, WINGS, 60 + T VS ELGIN & M.B. BR A DY

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

CONTENTS // 3

WE

HOPS

CHINCHILLAS HOP WHEN THEY ARE HAPPY. 100% of proceeds raised at Conservation On Tap goes to Save the Wild Chinchillas, Inc. 21+ event.

APRIL 27 TULSA ZOO

TULSAZOO.ORG/TAP LANYARD SPONSOR: RANCH ACRES WINE & SPIRITS

Special thanks to these zoo partners for building a better zoo through their continued support.

4 // CONTENTS

The Helmerich Trust

The H.A. and Mary K. Chapman Charitable Trust

April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

EARTH ELEMENTS P20 April 18 – May 1, 2018 // Vol. 5, No. 9 ©2018. All rights reserved.

BY KARA BELLAVIA, TRENT GIBBONS, FRASER KASTNER, MARY NOBLE, MASON WHITEHORN POWELL

PUBLISHER Jim Langdon

Join the sustainability effort with these local environmental causes and organizations

EDITOR Liz Blood ASSISTANT EDITOR Cassidy McCants DIGITAL EDITOR John Langdon ART DIRECTOR Madeline Crawford GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Georgia Brooks, Morgan Welch PHOTOGRAPHER Greg Bollinger

MEAT IS JUST THE BONUS P24

AD SALES MANAGER Josh Kampf

BY STERLIN HARJO

Hunting is about spirituality, solace, heritage— and challenging new-age vegans from LA

EDITORIAL INTERN Trent Gibbons CONTRIBUTORS Beau Adams, Kara Bellavia, Greg Brown, Barry Friedman, Valerie Grant, Sterlin Harjo, Jeff Huston, Clay Jones, Fraser Kastner, Mary Noble, Timantha Norman, Gene Perry, Mason Whitehorn Powell, Zack Reeves, Paul Rosenberg, Joseph Rushmore, Andrew Saliga, Damion Shade, John Tranchina, Brady Whisenhunt

POLARIZING POLAR BEARS P25

BY PAUL ROSENBERG

The Tulsa Voice’s distribution is audited annually by

Unmasking a proxy war strategy of climate change denialists

Member of

RUN, FORREST, RUN! P28

The Tulsa Voice is published bi-monthly by

BY BEAU ADAMS

Day drinking with a scientist, teacher, and State House of Representatives District 76 hopeful

1603 S. Boulder Ave. Tulsa, OK 74119 P: 918.585.9924 F: 918.585.9926 PUBLISHER Jim Langdon PRESIDENT Juley Roffers VP COMMUNICATIONS Susie Miller CONTROLLER Mary McKisick DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Amanda Hall RECEPTION Gloria Brooks

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD Send all letters, complaints, compliments & haikus to: voices@langdonpublishing.com FOLLOW US @THETULSAVOICE ON:

MORGAN WELCH

NEWS & COMMENTARY 7 THE QUEST FOR A FIRMER FOUNDATION

B Y GENE PERRY Oklahoma has options to reform costly capital gains deduction

8

THE LAIR AND LIES OF SCOTT PRUITT

Kakistocracy’s new gold standard

BY BARRY FRIEDMAN

10 ACCIDENTAL ACTIVISTS

BY DAMION SHADE Teachers, parents, and students say walkout was only step one SCOTT PRUITT’S SCHEMING P8

HUNTING: NOT JUST FOR HILLBILLIES P24

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, NOW AND THEN P12

LOCAL ATHEIST SCIENTIST RUNS FOR OFFICE! P28

12 POLLUTION POLITICS

BY TIMANTHA NORMAN A brief history of environmental racism and injustice in America

MUSIC 40 TO THE POINT

BY LIZ BLOOD

ON THE COVER For this issue’s engraved cardboard nameplate, we enlisted the help of Fab Lab Tulsa.

Read about them on pg. 21.

PHOTO BY MORGAN WELCH THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

Calexico’s newest album pleads the poetic path

42 WEEPING RAINBOWS

B Y DAMION SHADE

FOOD & DRINK 16 SACRED CONSUMPTION

B Y ANDREW SALIGA

Agave activism is necessity

18 FORAGER’S DELIGHTS

B Y CASSIDY MCCANTS Spring showers bring Oklahoma fungal delicacies

TV & FILM 45 TWO-STATE DISSOLUTION

B Y JEFF HUSTON Family tragedy cuts to the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

45 BEST IN SHOW

B Y JEFF HUSTON

Wes Anderson adds to his oeuvre with ‘Isle of Dogs’

46 SPACE BINGING

BY JEFF HUSTON Netflix is go-for-launch with its ‘Lost In Space’ reboot

ARTS & CULTURE 30 SKETCHY POLITICS

B Y BRADY WHISENHUNT The Museum Broken Arrow exhibits the power of editorial cartoons

32 A DELICATE ACT

B Y ZACK REEVES Tulsa Artist Fellows present ‘Variations on the Theme of Loss’

33 AFTER THE STORM

B Y GREG BROWN

A poem

34 LINEWOMEN

B Y JOHN TRANCHINA Tulsa Threat women’s tackle football team opens its season

ETC. 6 EDITOR’SLETTER 9 CARTOONS 36 THEHAPS 44 MUSICLISTINGS 46 FULLCIRCLE 47 THEFUZZ + CROSSWORD

Acid Queen frontman Jack VanBaton aims for happiness with a new EP CONTENTS // 5

editor’sletter

A

few weeks ago, The Tulsa Voice editorial and design staff toured Fab Lab Tulsa at East 7th Street and South Lewis Avenue. During the tour, we all felt a bit like kids in a science museum—wide-eyed and attentive, ready to play with the gadgets. Those gadgets included 3-D printers—one named the MakerBot—laser cutters and engravers, an electric sewing machine, 2-D and 3-D design software, and a digitally-controlled three-axis mill. (One of us did end up getting to play: TTV Graphic Designer Georgia Brooks made our cover’s nameplate at Fab Lab using cardboard and the laser engraver.)

TTV Digital Editor John Langdon and I became particularly excited about the possibilities Fab Lab houses when we spied a life-

6 // NEWS & COMMENTARY

size Operation board game. There were actual kids in the lab, too—a middle school class on a spring break field trip. They made small, battery-powered LED lamps with acrylic they had laser-etched using the lab’s software and machines.

As well as encouraging the local community to build more things here in Tulsa, Pritchett emphasized their organization’s goal to enhance Tulsa students’ STEM education. He said it’s important for young people to learn how to envision an idea, then design, troubleshoot, and build it. The tactile experience of building something, he suggested, isn’t one many kids get in this age of screen time.

From an April 17 Politico article on how “digital fabrication is revolutionizing everything”: “All over the world, people are already using a range of computer-con-

trolled tools to make everything from food, furniture, and crafts to computers, houses, and cars … moving toward community self-sufficiency.” TTV Editorial Intern Trent Gibbons hits on this very thing in his write-up of Fab Lab Tulsa, which appears in our feature about local sustainability efforts (pg. 21).

I used to live at 7th Street and Lewis Avenue, just a few doors down from Fab Lab. Artists and makers often parked in front of my house to get to the lab. With the large garage door open there, I could see them working on projects so big I was amazed at their capacity for imagination and creation.

Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo once lived in that house, too. Harjo appears in this issue (pg. 24) to tell us what hunting means to him—

beyond its conservation benefits (and the prize of meat), it’s simply spiritual, he says. Speaking of spiritual experiences, have you eaten the mushrooms around here lately (pg. 18)?

Elsewhere, Barry Friedman exposes Scott Pruitt’s potential plans for earth domination (pg. 8), Damion Shade checks in on Oklahoma teachers as their walkouts come to a close (pg. 10), and Paul Rosenberg of Random Lengths News talks polar bears, fake news, and the reality of climate change— and its deniers (pg. 25).

Happy Earth Day! a

LIZ BLOOD EDITOR

April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

okpolicy

THE QUEST FOR A FIRMER FOUNDATION Oklahoma has options to reform costly capital gains deduction

by GENE PERRY

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

O

klahoma’s capital gains deduction is one of the most expensive tax incentives in the state—more than $100 million each year. Two-thirds of the tax break is taken by just over 800 households with annual incomes above $1 million. The average tax break for these households was nearly $80,000 each.

Meanwhile, only 6 percent of the deduction went to the large majority of households making less than $100,000.

Despite this massive cost, economic development consultants working with the state’s Incentive Evaluation Commission found little to no evidence that the incentive is working to boost the economy.

All of that is true, and yet it may substantially understate the cost of the capital gains deduction. The Tax Commission does not report the cost of capital gains deductions taken by corporations.

This means the total lost revenues from this tax break could be significantly higher than we know.

Oklahoma is giving out hundreds of millions through this tax break, with little oversight of who gets the money, how recipients use the money, or whether the tax break is creating any benefit for the majority of Oklahomans. If lawmakers genuinely want to reduce waste in Oklahoma’s budget, they must acknowledge that the capital gains deduction is the single most expensive, wasteful policy anyone has found.

Only ten other states have any kind of tax preference for capital gains, and all those states have more safeguards or limitations on their deduction than Oklahoma.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Lawmakers have good options to reform the deduction, cap its costs, and make sure that it works to boost economic growth.

For example, some have argued in defense of the capital gains deduction for the sale of cattle or farm property. Oklahoma could de-

sign a tax incentive to favor those groups by following the model of Iowa, where income from the sale of livestock that has been held for at least two years can be deducted, as well as real property that has been used in a farm business for at least 10 years. Both deductions also require that the person benefiting gets most of their income from farming and ranching.

Another option would be to allow a capital gains deduction only for investment in a small business or in a specific sector we want to develop. In Virginia, the capital gains deduction is allowed only for investments in small technology businesses (annual gross revenues of no more than $3 million).

Requirements can be added after taxpayers receive the deduction, too. In Utah, at least 70 percent of the benefit received from the capital gains deduction must be reinvested in small business in the state within 12 months.

To limit the overall cost of the capital gains deduction and prevent individuals from taking a massive windfall, Oklahoma could cap the deduction—Colorado limits their capital gains deduction to no more than $100,000.

Considering that most of the current deduction is going to those with incomes of more than $1 million, Oklahoma could reduce the cost substantially with this cap while protecting any middle-income taxpayers who benefit from the deduction.

By reforming the capital gains deduction, lawmakers can protect farmers, middle-income Oklahomans, and other groups while still eliminating most of the cost of this expensive tax break. Capital gains reform would put the whole state budget on a much firmer foundation going forward. a

Gene Perry is Director of Strategy and Communications with Oklahoma Policy Institute (www.okpolicy.org).

NEWS & COMMENTARY // 7

viewsfrom theplains

B

y the time you read this, Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt may have been fired, could be flying to Hilton Head on a private jet owned by an industry lobbyist, or might have just been named the chief law enforcement officer in the country.

It’s how Donald Trump rolls.

But I digress. I think.

Considering Pruitt’s almost paranoid need for secrecy, his motorcades, his sense of entitlement, and his relentless arrogance, there are precisely 2,459 things that stink about his reign at EPA—not including the actual stench of the air and water that he and his agency are no longer protecting.

But let’s begin at my father’s retirement center here in Tulsa.

Stay with me.

Recently my dad went to New York for six weeks, and when I notified his resident manager, she said, “We won’t be able to prorate his rent.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Who would expect such a thing?”

For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show.1

Let’s stop for a moment to underscore that Scott Pruitt, if not literally in bed with a lobbyist, was in the bed of a lobbyist.

Under that arrangement, Pruitt paid for a room in the condo a block from the Capitol but onl y paid for the nights he stayed.2

He only paid for the nights he stayed? How the hell? My dad should get such deal.

And how much did Pruitt pay for this Washington D.C. condo a block from the Capitol? Fifty bucks a night.

For comparison, the Motel 6 in Catoosa is $70/night.

Who owns the condo?

8 // NEWS & COMMENTARY

in coach,8 to shoveling associates raises,9 to firing agency officials who refuse to cover for him,10 Pruitt is a tin-eared, Bible-thumping, vindictive, climate-denying, industry-controlled zealot and snowflake. When he was Oklahoma’s attorney general, you could always find him with his hands out.

The lair and lies of Scott Pruitt KAKISTOCRACY’S NEW GOLD STANDARD

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has repeatedl y sued the Environmental Protection Agency to try to block Obama administration rules intended to protect the nation’s air and water. In all but one of these 14 cases, regulated industry players also were parties. 11

by BARRY FRIEDMAN

Former Okla. Attorney General and current EPA Chief Scott Pruitt | GAGE SKIDMORE

The New York Times reported … that a client of [Vicki] Hart’s firm, Williams & Jensen, received EPA approval for an oil pipeline project while Pruitt rented a room in Hart’s home.3

For the love of a campaign contribution, why doesn’t Pruitt just wrap himself in a string of lights and an “Open for Business” necklace and jump up and down on K Street?

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt was at times slow to pay the rent on his $50-pernight lease in a Capitol Hill condo, according to two people with knowledge of the situation—forcing his lobbyist landlord to pester him for payment.4

Pruitt is nothing, however, if not selectively indignant.

As part of his directive, Pruitt said he will bar appointees who currentl y are in receipt of EPA grants or who are in a position to benefit from such grants. He exempted people who work at state, local, or tribal agencies,

saying he wants to introduce more “geographic diversity” to the panels.5

He’ll bar scientists who work with EPA grants because of potential conflicts of interest, but he has no problem using the shower and coffeemaker of an EPA lobbyist.

How does the man sleep?

Very well, apparently.

The Harts’ first apparent contribution to Pruitt was a $500 donation in October of 2010, about two weeks before Pruitt was first elected [Oklahoma] attorney general. They donated $1,000 the following year and $250 the year after. When Pruitt ran for reelection in 2014, Steven Hart footed the bill for a fundraising reception benefiting his campaign. After he was reelected, Pruitt set up a federal political committee that made contributions to allied Republicans. Hart donated to that group in 2015.6

From insisting on a “cone of silence” to conduct agency business,7 to his insistence on first class air travel to avoid the riffraff

It’s that last part that makes it art, for he was (and is) a girl Friday for the very industries he regulates, including, when the masters require it, taking simple dictation.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government rel ations at the comp any, said in a nice note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon [Energy]’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with onl y a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.” 12

In 2012, he sold out Oklahomans on a $25 billion mortgage settlement because a) President Obama favored it, and b) he felt the terms were too tough on … the bankers.

“We had concerns that what started as an effort to correct specific practices harmful to consumers morphed into an attempt

by President Barack Obama to establish an overarching regulatory scheme, which Congress had previousl y rejected, to fundamentall y restructure the mortgage industry in the United States,” Pruitt April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

said. It started “being co-opted by Washington to turn into something to fix the housing market.

That’s not the role of the attorney general.” 13

He’s a states’ rights advocate, too, except when he’s not, once comparing Colorado to a drug cartel because some of its recently-legalized marijuana found its way to Oklahoma.

“If this entity were based south of our border, the federal government would prosecute it as a drug cartel,” the attorneys general wrote.” 14

He was in favor of the Ten Commandments monument,15 defended Sharia Law legislation,16 and mucked around with Oklahoma’s own marijuana initiative.17 With Pruitt, come for the sycophancy; stay for the incompetence, greed, and sanctimony.

“If you can tell me what gun, type of gun, I can possess, then I didn’t reall y get that right to keep and bear arms from God,” [Pruitt] said. “It was not bequeathed to me, it was not unalienable, right?” 18

To Pruitt, guns come from god, global warming is a myth, the extraction industry should be unfettered, Islam “is not so much a religion as it is a terrorist organization, in many instances,” and political hacks and cronies always deserve a second chance.

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

At EPA, Pruitt gave a friend, Albert Kelly, who the FDIC sued for $125,000 and who was banned from the banking industry for life, a job to help clean up Superfund programs.19 Even the White House has noticed.

gorging himself on the public teat, Scott Pruitt should have been fired … yesterday. He is the corruption and incompetence in government he and his boss rail against.

And the absolute horror of it all is not this:

Pruitt’s challenges appeared to deepen when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—asked why Trump is “OK” with the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency renting a condo from a lobbyist for $50 a night— responded that “the president’s not.” 20

President Donald Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt … even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list of negative headlines, according to people close to the President.

Do you know how tough it is to offend Donald Trump’s sensibilities?

But this is what happens in an administration where people like Pruitt (Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, Jeff Sessions can take a bow, as well), appointed to run agencies and departments, hate government and those who depend on it. The Vicki Harts of the world don’t get Black Lung Disease, the Albert Kellys of the world don’t drink water infused with lead and fecal coliform bacteria from Flint, and the William Whitsitts of the world don’t live downwind from the Koch plant in Crossett, Ark., which has one of the highest rates of exposure to cancer-causing toxins in the nation.21 Unless you think the job of the EPA director is to enrich the already rich and destroy the environment, all while

“He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions,” one source familiar with Trump’s thinking told CNN.22

… It’s this: But few seemed to notice that Scott Pruitt’s behavior changed as well. While Trump’s Republican support was solid in the first half of the year, Pruitt’s travel was overwhelmingl y to Oklahoma. But in the second half of the year, he began traveling more nationall y. Politico reported that he has now visited “25 mostl y Republican-led states … spending time with GOP leaders and influential industries and packing in as many media hits as possible.”23

Scott Pruitt wants to be president. a

1)

abcnews.go.com: Exclusive: More Cabinet trouble for Trump? EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’ 2) washingtonpost.com: After leaving $50-a-night rental, EPA’s Scott Pruitt had no fixed D.C. address for a month 3) nytimes.com: Pruitt Had a $50-a-Day Condo Linked to Lobbyists. Their Client’s Project Got Approved.

4) politico.com: Pruitt fell behind on payments for his $50-a-night condo rental 5) apnews.com: Pruitt guts EPA science panels, will appoint new members 6) dailybeast.com: Scott Pruitt’s D.C. Lobbyist Landlord Also Funded His Oklahoma Attorney General Campaign 7) washingtonpost.com: EPA spending almost $25,000 to install a secure phone booth for Scott Pruitt 8) politico.com: EPA changes its story on Pruitt’s first-class travel 9) politicalwire.com: Pruitt Bypassed White House to Give Raises to Top Aides 10) newyorktimes.com: E.P.A. Officials Sidelined After Questioning Scott Pruitt 11) newyorktimes.com: Pruitt v. EPA: 14 Challenges of EPA Rules by the Oklahoma Attorney General 12) greenpeace.com: Scott Pruitt’s Emails Reveal Oil Lobbyists Have Been Ghostwriting His Official Letters 13) newsok.com: Oklahoma is lone maverick in national mortgage settlement signed by 49 states 14) newsok.com: Scott Pruitt wanted to sue Colorado over its pot policy. The Supreme Court said no.

15) newsok.com: Pruitt fighting decision to remove Ten Commandments monument 16) newsok.com: Appeals court upholds injunction on Oklahoma Sharia law measure 17) readfrontier.com: Does AG’s blunt language harm pot state question?

18) politico.com: Pruitt tapes revealed: Evolution’s a ‘theory,’ ‘ma jority’ religions under attack 19) intercept.com: Banned from the banking industry for life, a Scott Pruitt friend finds a new home at the EPA 20) politico.com: Pruitt and allies launch campaign to save his job 21) washingtonpost.com: Trump EPA moves to roll back more clean air and water rules 22) cnn.com: Trump floated replacing Sessions with Pruitt this week despite scandals 23) huffingtonpost.com: Is Scott Pruitt Running For President?

NEWS & COMMENTARY // 9

statewide

ACCIDENTAL ACTIVISTS Teachers, parents, and students say walkout was only step one

by DAMION SHADE About 1,000 teachers gathered inside the Oklahoma State Capitol on April 12, the tenth day of the teacher walkout, to organize a path forward. | JOSEPH RUSHMORE

W

hen an army of angry parents, Harley-riding evangelicals, marching bands, moderates, and rural and suburban Trump voters surrounded the Oklahoma State Capitol (and stayed for nearly the first two weeks of April), no one knew exactly how their story would end.

The cynic in me wants to focus on the final days of the protest, including its anticlimactic conclusion at a tepid press conference on April 12, which many teachers rage-watched on Facebook Live, or the ugly personal fight brewing inside the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA). But American political movements are bicameral (like our legislature)—they are composed of two parts—and I’ll focus there.

There are protesters, and there are activists. Both are essential, but lasting political change in Oklahoma will likely come only from the latter.

Morgan Brown’s Instagram handle begins with the military title “general.” Brown (@generalmorgana) is a short, freckled student teacher interning at Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City. She was one of those screaming faces outside the State Senate chambers last week.

“I was kind of thrust into the spotlight by accident, just like thousands of other teachers. I’m just another person in Oklahoma 10 // NEWS & COMMENTARY

who really cares about education,” she said.

Brown became a vocal leader during the walkout, but the marching and chants quickly led to more direct action, like visiting representatives’ offices to try to make headway.

“We started to make vote counts of who was for or against funding bills, and we tried to help teachers target officials whose votes we thought we could swing,” Brown said.

Without even realizing it, Brown and many others became lobbyists. Lori Crawford, who has taught for 20 years, was also thrust into leadership during the walkout.

“On the first day, teachers showed up in force. We heard there were about 40,000 people onsite, which was great, but we were unfocused. We’re not used to being activists. We’re used to keeping things calm.”

For the next nine days Crawford and her colleagues worked the outside protest and helped keep focus on the legislative agenda on the fourth floor.

“We had someone sitting at the monitor listening to the senate at all times,” Crawford said. “If they’re going to vote down funding, then we know those legislators aren’t with us. Then we can move our activism to the ballot box … to push candidates that are fighting against them. There’s a teacher in Moore running for the Senate

seat. It’s pretty clear she’s been motivated by frustration at what we’ve seen here.”

The Facebook video of Representative Kevin McDugle (R-District 12) expressing anger at the “way teachers behaved” at the walkout went viral, but it was just one of many slights that seem to have inspired an unprecedented wave of Oklahoma educators to run for office this year.

Laura Steele, who teaches eighth grade social studies at Jenks Middle School, is running for her district seat, House District 98.

Steele became a teacher during the middle of Oklahoma’s last major funding crisis. That was in 1995, when the education funding ran out from House Bill 1017 and most public schools stopped hiring.

“It’s crazy how little seems to have changed,” Steele said. “When the person you’re electing is more concerned with party politics than the will of the people, then it’s the duty of people to take that power back into their own hands.”

Many teachers in Oklahoma felt betrayed by their legislators this year. According to an April 14 report by the Oklahoma Policy Institute, the state has cut $250 million from common education in the last decade, and recent legislative action has restored only about 20 percent of those cuts. On April 13, as thousands marched on the Oklahoma State

Capitol, the legislature spent the morning voting for a measure that declares the Christian rock ballad “I Can Only Imagine” the official state inspirational song. It’s behavior like this that has riled activists like Crawford, Steele, and Amy Vargus. Vargus leads the Jenks Parent Legislative Action Committee, an advocacy group that helps parents understand which bills are positive for public education.

“We need [legislators] to at least discuss the bills,” Vargus said.

“They’ve tabled every revenue bill to prevent [them] from coming to floor this week. They won’t even debate the bills. I was a high school French teacher, and as teachers we get really good at managing whatever’s thrown at us and coping and evolving and figuring it out. I got really tired of figuring it out. When my son was in the neonatal intensive care unit I had to advocate for him a lot.

That’s when I found my voice. It was required, because there were multiple times when my son was in danger of dying. Later I started seeing what was happening in education and the agency cuts, and I just found my voice and wanted to help.”

Vargus made it clear the fight is far from over.

“I feel like legislators are starting to understand that this is going to be part of a continuing process and that we’re not going to leave.” a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

May 4 | Mayo Hotel, 115 W. Fifth St.

Great Plains Journalism Conference and Awards distinguished lecturer

OMAR VILLAFRANCA CBS News National Correspondent

Workshops throughout the day | 11:30 a.m. luncheon. $50, general admission | $45, media/students

greatplainsawards.org hosted by the tulsa press club

sponsors : Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma, Cherokee Nation Businesses,

ONEOK, ONE Gas, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Hillcrest HealthCare System, Langdon Publishing, Mayo Hotel, Trust Company of Oklahoma, Tulsa Community College

www.TraversMahanApparel.com South Lewis at 81st • The Plaza • 918-296-4100

KIESE LAYMON, WRITER & EDUCATOR

MARY KATHRYN NAGLE, PLAYWRIGHT

Tulsa LitFest brings together diverse literary artists and writers to collaborate and inspire, enriching the Tulsa community.

JEANETTA CALHOUN MISH, OK POET LAUREATE

KEVINYOUNG YOUNG, NEW KEVIN YORKER POETRY EDITOR

STERLIN HARJO, FILMMAKER

All events are free and open to the public.

Find a full schedule at www.tulsalitfest.org.

MICHAEL CHAIKEN, BOB DYLAN ARCHIVE CURATOR

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

FRANCES MAYES, WRITER & POET

NEWS & COMMENTARY // 11

community

F

rom vast oceans reclaiming isolated island nations to varied natural disasters of intensifying magnitude, the effects of climate change are undeniable.

In the midst of everyday conversation about the climate change debate, there has been very little mainstream media coverage of a decades-long, insidious trend: environmental racism and injustice.

Environmental racism refers to the placement of low-income or minority communities in close proximity of environmentally hazardous situations, such as toxic waste and pollution. In turn, environmental injustice operates much in the same way institutionalized racism functions, except it focuses on the infrastructure of the communities in direct relation to environmental racism.

Environmental injustice was an overlooked (or, more accurately, forgotten) aspect of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike of 1968 was largely a fight for economic empowerment for black men working for low wages in dangerous conditions. It was also an early inspiration for the environmental justice movement of the 1980s. The main event of that movement took place in a predominantly African-American community in Warren County, N.C., in 1982. It centered on the “community [being] designated to host a hazardous waste landfill … [that] would accept PCB-contaminated soil that resulted from illegal dumping of toxic waste along roadways,” according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management page. It resulted in a protest involving hundreds of environmentalists and community activists.

Although the protest was ultimately unsuccessful, the momentum was contagious, and multiple scientific studies investigated possible connections between toxic dump sites and the racial and socioeconomic makeup of neighborhoods. The vast majority of these studies concluded that

12 // NEWS & COMMENTARY

POLLUTION POLITICS Diorama of Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike at National Civil Rights Museum | ADAM JONES, PH.D.

A brief history of environmental racism and injustice in America

by TIMANTHA NORMAN low-income communities of color were significantly more affected by hazardous waste sites and the resulting pollution because of the communities’ proximity to these sites. On the heels of this revelation, environmental rights organizations in communities of color, like the Indigenous Environmental Network and the West Harlem Environmental Action coalition, began to form.

In the ‘90s, federal initiatives and programs (including the EPA’s Office of Environmental Equity and President Clinton’s Executive Order 12898) were crafted to minimize these racial disparities.

According to a 2012 American Bar Association study by senior attorney Albert Huang, environmental justice communities in the early ‘90s “turned to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … as a means to address racial discrimination in the permitting and siting of facilities that release hazardous pollutants and cause environmental health risks.”

Now the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is leaving communities of color behind through their lack of urgency in addressing complaints. Huang notes

that the EPA “has failed to take meaningful action on Title VI complaints, leaving a long list of unresolved complaints reaching back to 1993.” Even when the OCR investigates a complaint, underserved communities of color often still continue to languish.

In a 2015 study, the Center for Public Integrity found that “in its 22-year history of processing environmental discrimination complaints, the office has never once made a formal finding of a Title VI violation.”

The detrimental health outcomes for low-income communities of color in our nation, state, and city are staggering. According to a study published in March 2018 in the American Journal of Public Health: “Non-Whites were exposed to 1.28 times more pollution.

Blacks faced the greatest amount of such pollution, being exposed to 1.54 times more particulate matter than the overall population.

In another study from the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, it was found that “hydraulic-fracturing oil wells are more likely to be sited in those neighborhoods ... the presence

of benzene and other dangerous aromatic chemicals [are] linked to race … [and] strong racial disparities are suspected in the prevalence of lead poisoning.”

It should come as no surprise then that black, Latino, and Native American communities in Tulsa and Oklahoma experience the worst health outcomes.

The Center for Climate Change & Health states: “As the impacts of climate change become more frequent and extreme, Oklahoma is likely to see warming temperatures and increased variability of precipitation events and storms, which will significantly impact the … respiratory health, food security, and the local agricultural economy of Oklahomans.”

For low-income communities of color in Tulsa—which already contend with substandard housing conditions, higher air pollution rates due to polluting facilities near neighborhoods, and lack of healthy food options—the situation is even more dire.

According to a 2016 Community Health Needs Assessment study by St. John Medical Center, “in Tulsa County, black/ African-American, Hispanic/ Latino families, and older adults are more likely to live in poverty and experience poorer health outcomes than their white neighbors… [and] two north and south Tulsa ZIP codes (74126 and 74137) less than 25 miles apart had a 10 year difference in life expectancy in 2015.”

In addition to the Trump administration’s attacks on the environment, EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s ongoing work to dismantle the agency he leads, and our local officials’ indebtedness to industry—racist ideologies often support the convictions behind these efforts. Concrete progress won’t occur until we elect officials who aren’t beholden to the industries that create these problems and who will address the underlying racism tied to anti-environmental practices. a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

Ta b i t h a L i t t l e f i e l d

T r av i s F i t e

DID YOU MISS WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN TULSA L AST WEEKEND? DON’T MISS OUT THIS WEEKEND! Join over 20,000 subscribers who receive the weekly Insider e-newsletter to find out what the editors of The Tulsa Voice recommend for their weekend!

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NANYEHI the story of nancy ward

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MAY 4 & 5 • 7:30 PM

TICKET S: 918.384.ROCK © 2018 Cherokee Nation Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

NEWS & COMMENTARY // 13

Tulsa patios are perfect for warm days ahead

ELGIN PARK

SOUL CITY

ANDOLINI’S PIZZERIA 1525 E 15th St | 918.728.6111 andopizza.com

Full service dining al fresco. Full bar service outside so enjoy any of our beers, wines or cocktails. We do patios like we do pizza: all in. Come experience it for yourself! Outdoor dining is also available at the BA Rose District Andolini’s, in Jenks at our Riverwalk location, in downtown Tulsa at Andolini’s Sliced, and at our STG locations in Tulsa and BA.

COSMO CAFE

FASSLER HALL

LAFFA MEDI-EASTERN RESTAURANT & BAR 111 N. Main St. | 918.728.3147 laffatulsa.com

Located in the heart of the Tulsa Arts District in Tulsa, Laffa is Tulsa’s premier venue for fabulous Middle Eastern/ Mediterranean food, spectacular bar drinks and chill atmosphere. Voted Best Middle Eastern/Mediterranean Restaurant!

EL GUAPO’S CANTINA SOUTH

MCNELLIE’S SOUTH

COSMO CAFE & BAR

3334 S. Peoria Ave. | 918.933.4848 cosmo-cafe.com Located at 33rd & Peoria in Tulsa, Cosmo offers a wide array of sophisticated sandwiches, salads, hot food and gourmet coffees, as well as a full bar.

Come hang with us on the patio and enjoy an award wining cocktail!

QUEENIE’S CAFE AND BAKERY 14 // FOOD & DRINK

PRAIRIE BREWPUB April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

SOUL CITY, COSMO, FASSLER HALL, PRAIRIE BREWPUB: GREG BOLLINGER; ELGIN PARK, EL GUAPO’S, MCNELLIE’S, QUEENIE’S: VALERIE GRANT\

O DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE •

FRESH AIR

FASSLER HALL

Welcome to Elgin Park! Enjoy our pizza, wings, burgers and brews on the patio.

Pizza, brewery & sports conveniently located across from Drillers Stadium.

Welcome to Fassler Hall Tulsa. This German gem in the heart of downtown Tulsa is known for its German beer and live entertainment. Join us for the Thunder Games and Happy hour in the biergarten! Also, don’t miss the expansive whiskey and cocktail menu.

PRAIRIE BREWPUB

MCNELLIE’S SOUTH CITY

Patio? Beer? We have both! The Prairie Brewpub is all about food & locally brewed; Oklahoma made craft beer.

Prairie Artisanal Ales also brews many of their unique beers right here at the Brewpub. Full Lunch and Dinner Menus are served daily. Our patio is huge and families are always welcome. Located downtown in the heart of the Historic Tulsa Arts District. See you soon!

Sure our beer selection is immense, but the food’s pretty good too! McNellie’s menu is filled with fresh, reasonably priced food. Every day, our dedicated kitchen staff works hard to make a variety of items from scratch, using the best ingredients available. Enjoy brunch on the patio every Saturday and Sunday, which features a great bloody mary bar.

QUEENIE’S

DILLY DINER

Proudly serving Tulsa since 1983. We make the freshest, tastiest food using local meat and veggies. Enjoy our Famous Chicken Salad or Grilled Cheese Sandwiches or come in and check our chalkboard for daily specials. We hope to see you soon!

Downtown Tulsa’s favorite diner. Serving up breakfast all day, housemade bread, pastries, pies & cakes, homemade soft serve, house cured meats, local produce and so much more! Come soak up the sun on our patio with a fat stack of pancakes and mimosa service. Open till 1am on weekends.

SOUL CITY

EL GUAPO’S CANTINA SOUTHSIDE

325 East M.B. Brady | 918.986.9910 elginparkbrewery.com

223 N. Main St. | 918.936. 4395 prairiepub.com

1834 Utica Square | 918.749. 3481 queeniesoftulsa.com

1621 E. 11th St. | 918.582.SOUL tulsasoul.com Soul City offers the patio experience coupled with a full backyard experience.

Live music every night of the week and during Gospel Brunch on Sunday, the tasty food & drinks are the perfect compliment to the Louisiana/Caribbean flare found only at Soul City. Home to an extensive collection of art & memorabilia from around the country as well as a deep appreciation & love for the local art & music scene in Tulsa. Step in, kick back and relax with us…

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

304 S Elgin Ave | 918.576.7898 fasslerhall.com

409 E 1st St | 918.382.7468 mcnelliessouthcity.com

402 E 2nd St | 918.938.6382 dillydiner.com

8161 S Harvard Ave | 918.728.7482 elguaposcantina.com Our newest El Guapo’s is located in the Walnut Creek shopping center at 81st and Harvard. Here you’ll find the largest selection of tequila and mezcal in Tulsa, a beautiful garden patio, and the same great food and service as the original.

FOOD & DRINK // 15

O DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE • PATIO DINING GUIDE •

ELGIN PARK

W E

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S AT U R D AY , M AY T H E VA U LT 9 wP M - 1 A M ww.whitepartyok.com

SACRED CONSUMPTION Agave activism is necessity

by ANDREW SALIGA

N

20 18

1 2

Mezcal served in traditional clay copitas with oranges and sal de gusano | ANDREW SALIGA

WP Eleven (White Party) will kick off its second decade on The Vault’s rooftop with dancing and signature craft cocktails by Tulsa’s top mixologists.

INDIVIDUAL TICKETS

$75

V IP PACKAGES

$300

2 tickets, access to VIP Lounge, 1 bottle of champagne, 4 drink tickets and 2 cigars

Sponsorships for exclusive patron dinner served on Cincinnati Avenue still available. www.whitepartyok.com

“TAKE A SHOT WITH ME!” HE EXCLAIMS. I grit my teeth, muster a smile, and oblige.

Shots aren’t my preference, but I can’t bring myself to say no to the owner of the bar. I take the shot, and it burns like fire as the flavor of smoke lingers on my palate.

This was my hasty introduction to mezcal roughly four years ago. The current and sudden rise of the spirit’s popularity is not unlike the onset of flavors I experienced that night—unexpected and beyond the point of return. But sudden popularity is not without its pitfalls.

Mezcal is a broad category of agave spirits that includes tequila. The primary distinction between mezcal and tequila is that tequila must be made of 100 percent blue agave, whereas mezcal can contain any of the dozens of agaves, predominantly those grown near Oaxaca, Mexico.

The secondary difference is in the processing methods—mexcalmetl (the Aztec word for “oven-roasted agave”) is the method to which mezcal attributes its namesake.

The process involves harvesting mature agave plants by cutting off their succulent leaves to reveal the inner heart, known as the piña. The piñas are roasted, crushed, fermented, and then distilled.

Craft cocktail culture has boosted interest in once esoteric spirits, and mezcal is the latest to hit the mainstream. It was only a matter of time before big alcohol brands descended upon small village farmers, seeking to increase production and maximize profits. But agave plants take anywhere from seven to 15 years to reach maturity and do not regrow once harvested.

16 // FOOD & DRINK WP AD_April 12_TulsaVoice.indd 1

One shortcut has been to take advantage of Blue Weber and Espadín agaves’ abilities to reproduce from cuttings. The downside to this method is that it decreases biodiversity, meaning that a single strain of blight could potentially wipe out massive amounts of agave.

Additionally, allowing the agave plants to reach maturity and sprout their quiote (the flowering stem) is not only critical to the plant’s reproduction, it’s necessary to feed the migratory bats that pass through Oaxaca. As these bats feed, they cross-pollinate the agave, thus increasing biodiversity.

Agave’s piña is the heart of a delicately balanced ecosystem.

Many producers have recognized the urgency of implementing sustainable practices in order to preserve the future of all agave spirits. The producers of Mezcal Vago are tackling these issues by planting three new plants for every one plant they harvest. They even recycle the leftover agave fiber into the naturally-dyed paper used for their labels.

For mezcal, sustainability is not a buzzword injected into conversation by the marketing department. It’s the only hope that agave will endure for generations to come. Ultimately, the future of agave is in the hands of the consumer, who has the ability to choose brands invested in sustainability. As for me, I’ve learned that mezcal is to be savored, not shot—and I have adopted a phrase from the wellknown mezcaleria, Insitu: “Para consumo sacro, todo exceso es profane.” For sacred consumption, all excess is profane. a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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osagecasino.com THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

RAIN OR SHINE

All ages welcome. Bring your own chairs.

No outside coolers, food or drinks allowed. ©2018 Osage Casino. Management reserves all rights.

FOOD & DRINK // 17

foodfile

M

arty Lee has been morel mushroom hunting since he was a child.

“As soon as I could walk my dad had me out in the woods,” he said. “I grew up in a great habitat in Northeast Oklahoma. [Morels] were everywhere.”

Lee is the owner and admin of the Facebook group Oklahoma Morel Report, and he recently lent his advice to Outdoor Oklahoma magazine for a morel hunting how-to video.

“It’s something typically passed down in families. The great hunting spots are also passed down, particularly if they’re on private property. In Oklahoma, about 95 percent of the land is private, and if you don’t have your own land with morels, it can be challenging to go out and find them.”

Morels thrive in the spring and are hunted in the Midwest between late March and early May. Hunters love these edible fungi for their flavor and fleeting nature—and they savor the foraging process (morels aren’t farmed like other edible mushrooms). Morel size, shape, and color vary tremendously, but the mushroom’s exterior always looks like an alien honeycomb, and the bottom of the cap connects to a white or off-white stem.

It’s technically illegal to remove mushrooms from places like state parks and wildlife management areas. “With a lot of areas we consider public … the rule enforcers like to place mushrooms under the same type of regulations [that deal with] the molesting of plants, cutting of firewood, removing of archaeological artifacts,” Lee said.

If you’re an experienced morel hunter, you might have had success, say, in the creek behind your neighborhood. This land most likely belongs to the city, though it’s probably not carefully monitored.

“Even if it’s not technically legal, a lot of people use those areas to hunt,” Lee said. “The cops probably aren’t going to be watching you hunt at the creek.”

Lee said the areas around lakes are also popular hunting spots— 18 // FOOD & DRINK

Spring 2018 morel haul | WILL EAGLETON

FORAGER’S DELIGHTS Spring showers bring fungal delicacies

by CASSIDY MCCANTS but while these floodplains and the spaces along many hiking trails might not be designated state park territory, there’s a good chance they’re private property.

Still, the land in our state abounds with these treats this time of year. (Just don’t get caught if you’re snipping fungi on land that’s not yours—and get permission when you can.) Morels can appear in or near almost any woodland in Oklahoma. Local mushroom hunter/banjo player Cody Brewer said he typically finds three to four morels when he forages, but this year he managed to haul home somewhere between 30 and 40.

“It’s a blast just wandering the woods, searching for this mysterious creature,” said Brewer.

Most morel hunters find success by identifying specific trees in the forest. The mushrooms prefer dead and dying trees—once a tree begins decomposing, the roots decay underground, inviting morels to emerge under what once was the canopy of the tree. The mycelium feed on the dying roots, then fruit to produce the mushroom, “just like the vegetables in your garden,” Lee said.

In the central part of the state, the majority of morels are found around elm or cottonwood trees.

Here in Eastern Oklahoma, the fungi tend to grow near sycamore trees, which can be found all over—especially near drainages, river bottoms, and creeks—and often have an identifiable white bark.

“When the leaves are off,” Lee

said, “you can scan the woods and see that white trunk sticking up like a flag. Typically when you see one you’ll see more in the periphery.”

If morel foraging strikes your fancy, don’t hunt unprepared— those without some tolerance for the outdoors need not apply.

“You’re going to have to be willing to get dirty, scratched up.

No short pants. You have to crawl in the big briars,” Lee said.

And beware of false morels.

Gyromitra caroliniana—also known as “big red” or the Carolina false morel—is the most common imposter here. Though some folks eat them, Lee avoids them in fear of harsh—though slow—effects on the body.

“I was fed them as a kid, but I will not feed them to my kids. They contain a substance very similar to rocket fuel that is potentially carcinogenic and can cause organ failure—these things can accumulate in body over time, though they won’t kill you when you eat them.”

Verpas (Verpa conica and Verpa bohemica) also look very similar to morels, but they’re not often found here.

A sure way to tell a false morel is to cut it in half. Morels are hollow inside, while lookalikes are filled with cottony fibers. Morels’ caps connect directly to the stems—in some of the fakes the corrugated veil comes down but does not meet the stalk.

Lee likes his morels cooked “the traditional hillbilly way”— wash them (to remove small insects), cut them in half or thirds, dunk them in egg and milk wash, roll them in crushed saltine cracker crumbs, and fry them like you would a chicken fried steak. (Flour in place of crackers works well, too.) Many foragers simply sauté them in butter. They’re delectable either way—rich and meaty, a little nutty, perfect with some salt, and not too chewy. If you’re unsure about how to cook morels, remember they are “just mushrooms,” Lee said. “Use them like any mushroom.” a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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Authentic Gelato Espresso Work, Meet, Enjoy Italian gelato handmade daily in microbatches.

Topeca Coffee and espresso drinks. Free WiFi. STGItalian.com THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

FOOD & DRINK // 19

CITY OF TULSA RECYCLING Since launching a new recycling program in 2012, the City of Tulsa is attempting to reverse non-recyclable contamination in residential blue carts. The current rate of contamination is nearly 22 percent; the long-term goal is to reduce it to 15 percent. The four recyclable materials—empty and clean steel and aluminum cans, cardboard and paper, rigid plastics (#1–#7 only), and glass jars and bottles—are easy to remember. Contamination items like plastic bags, paper towels, Styrofoam, ceramics, and aluminum foil are easy for residents to overlook. Those go in the trash, but you can recycle plastic bags at Reasor’s.

The City recommends that aluminum cans not be crushed, and shredded paper must be placed in a sealed clear plastic bag (paper shreds are the only items that can be bagged and placed in the cart). A full list of non-recyclable materials can be found at cityoftulsa.org. A high contamination rate costs the city and residents money, since every non-recyclable has to be manually sorted out and cannot be processed at the recycling center. Their recommendation: “When in doubt, throw it out.”

According to the City, up to 80 percent of a household’s waste is recyclable. By reducing the amount of trash that goes into the gray trash cart, you can request a smaller cart and pay less for waste removal. Unfortunately, curbside recycling is not offered at most apartment complexes, but residents can haul their recyclable materials to one of the Metropolitan Environmental Trust’s 12 dropoff facilities. The M.e.t. also accepts electronics, batteries, and compost. For locations, visit metrecycle.com.

The City of Tulsa Household Pollutant Collection Facility (4502 S. Galveston Ave.) accepts drop-offs by appointment only (918591-4325). They process fluorescent and CFL lightbulbs, oil-based paints and paint thinner, flammable liquids, lawn chemicals, automotive fluids, cooking oil and grease, aerosols, household and car batteries, household cleaners, pool chemicals, electronics, and mercury thermometers. It’s important that pollutants and chemicals be disposed of in a proper way to protect Tulsa’s environment, residents, and City workers.

Everyone can improve their recycling practices by sticking to the four materials and making sure their recyclables are clean.

Unclean recyclables count as contamination too; for example, the only part of a pizza box that can be recycled is clean cardboard— any other inserts or food waste should be thrown out. —MASON WHITEHORN POWELL 20 // FEATURED

J OI N THE SUSTA I NABI L I TY E FFORT W IT H T H ES E LO C AL E NVI RONME NTAL CAUSE S AN D O RGANIZ AT IO NS

LAURA KOVAL

great speakers come in. It’s an excellent educational experience for anyone who enjoys gardening.

The classes are from September through about mid-December, and then you do an internship for a year. During that year they have different requirements and classes that they want you to fulfill and some events they want you to participate in to learn the ins and outs of the program. Then you just do your 70 volunteer hours, and you’re official after that.

KASTNER: What do you do as a Master Gardener?

LAURA KOVAL

MASTER GARDENER Laura Koval is a lifelong horticulturalist. As a certified Master Gardener, she works to educate Tulsans about urban gardening. You can find more information at tulsamastergardeners.org.

FRASER KASTNER: How long have you been gardening?

LAURA KOVAL: For as long as I can remember. I grew up in a family of gardeners, so it’s just been something I’ve always done. As I got older I always stuck with it and always had something growing.

KASTNER: How did you become an official Master Gardener?

KOVAL: They hold interviews in August of each year.

You go into the OSU Tulsa County Extension Center and listen to a quick overview of the services a Master Gardener provides. Once you get into the program you take weekly classes. You learn about the most common things: flowers, vegetables, trees. You also learn about different types of soils and composting, and they have

KOVAL: They have all kinds of programs. They do school groups, they have the Senior Living Outreach Program, which worked with Habitat for Humanity. And you’ll see [Master Gardeners] at events, answering questions. My favorite thing to do is with the Tulsa Master Gardeners Speakers Bureau. I’ve been teaching some of their urban gardener classes. Anyone can go on the Master Gardener website and request a certain [event] topic.

KASTNER: What might people be surprised to learn about being a Master Gardener?

KOVAL: I think people would be surprised at how active the program really is in the community. I was shocked at the number of people who commit so much time to helping out. They do Tulsa Blooms!, which [places] flower pots in Brookside and the Blue Dome District. I think it’s a lot more impactful than people recognize.

KASTNER: What grows well in Oklahoma?

KOVAL: I think it’s a great climate to vegetable garden in—that’s mostly what I do now. You get a really long season, from February through December.

KASTNER: Where would you point someone who wanted to get more involved in the Master Gardener program?

KOVAL: You can get all the information on the website.

If you want to brush up on your gardening skills or get more involved in a certain topic, all of our classes are listed there. —FRASER KASTNER April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

FAB L AB TULSA

GARY ALLISON

GARY ALLISON AND READY FOR 100 Law professor Gary Allison has been a tireless advocate for clean energy and environmental protection in Oklahoma since the mid ‘70s. He began his teaching career at The University of Tulsa in 1974, one year after Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) announced its plans to build the Black Fox nuclear power plant three miles from downtown Inola. The project gained the support of initially reluctant residents through promises of thousands of jobs and significant economic growth. Not everyone was convinced.

Inola farmer and teacher Carrie Dickerson heard about the plans to build the facility just a few miles from her family farm and began researching the potential environmental impacts. What she learned about potential radiation leaks and contaminated water disturbed her so much she formed the political action group Citizen Action for Safe Energy. Dickerson enlisted Allison as an invaluable advisor in their ensuing legal battle. Eventually the group halted the construction of the plant.

Allison, however, downplayed his role in the group’s success.

“I’m not the big hero in this; the big hero was Carrie Dickerson,” Allison said. “Carrie and her husband mortgaged their farm to pay for some really great lawyers who

fought this tooth-and-nail in front of the nuclear regulatory commission.”

Knowing they wouldn’t win on environmental implications alone, Allison helped the group to write a report on the financial feasibility of nuclear power plants. They pointed out that nuclear power was not only environmentally unsustainable—it was also too expensive.

“I had come to the belief that we probably weren’t going to win in a state like this [unless] people thought it would drive up their utility bills. In the end that’s what [won] it [for us],” Allison said.

In 1986, at a time when Oklahoma was struggling with a deep downturn in oil prices, Allison ran against Jim Inhofe in the 1st Congressional District. A banner issue in Allison’s campaign was the need to provide working solutions to broaden the state’s economy so it wouldn’t be completely dependent on the oil and gas industry. Allison lost the election, earning 43 percent (to Inhofe’s 55) of the votes.

But Allison continued to fight for economically viable clean energy and continues to this day through his leadership in the Ready for 100 campaign, an initiative that aims to transition from coal and gas resources to 100 percent clean energy, like solar and wind.

“We’re about fifth in the nation for wind production, within the top ten,” Allison said. “If it weren’t for some negative state laws, we could be one of the top five in solar.

We have really good wind and solar resources here. There’s no reason why we can’t be in the top five of both of them.”

Tulsa, Edmond, and Norman are three of 164 U.S. cities with Ready for 100 campaigns. Five of the 164 have achieved the goal of 100 percent clean energy.

“Right now [our goal] is to build our organization and our campaign structure. We’ll soon be involved in conducting interviews in each of the council districts in order to have an understanding of where people are in their lives [with energy use] and their knowledge of renewable energy,” said Allison.

Allison is currently the director of the sustainable energy and resources law program at TU but will soon retire so he can commit his time to Ready for 100.

“I vowed when I retired that I would do all I could to help make sure that climate change would not affect the people coming after me,” he said.

For more information on Ready for 100, visit sierraclub. org/ready-for-100. —MARY NOBLE

BLUE THUMB

BLUE THUMB VOLUNTEERS COLLECTING BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES AT MORRIS PARK | CANDICE MILLER THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

Fab Lab Tulsa is helping Tulsans rethink the way they consume and use products by giving them a chance to construct their own. Fabrication labs were first thought up by a professor at MIT who found that when he supplied his students the tools and instruction to create freely, they were capable of producing impressive and practical items. Since then, fab labs have gone global, and Tulsans have the chance to fabricate according to their own diverse interests. Commercial products, prototypes, artistic works, educational projects, and items of personal interest (like small battery-powered LED lamps or 3-D-printed poop emojis) are all creations they’ve seen at Fab Lab Tulsa. Members can reserve machines online, use free Computer Aided Design software, and attend software and hardware instruction classes hosted by Fab Lab staff members. Nonmembers can also register for classes, like the Make & Take course, in which students are led through a digital fabrication project-building exercise. Courses are novice-friendly, so don’t worry about getting in over your head. Once you are familiar with the machinery and software, invention is only limited by your own imagination. Makers at Fab Lab are making more and buying less—some of the most impressive designs made at Fab Lab Tulsa include 3-D-printed surgical tools, a prosthetic hand, and a 15’ canoe. Whether you have the mind to make custom furniture, architectural models, or even cosplay garb, you can do it at Fab Lab Tulsa—and they hope you will.

The lab is designed to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and change-making. Fab Lab’s leaders hope to someday see large 3-D printers widely available in communities, diminishing the need for shipping products—ideally, no product would exist until it is ordered. This would change consumer and shipping industries, alter the way we think about supply and demand, and ensure that very little is built only to go to waste. But until that far-flung future, Fab Lab Tulsa is here to satisfy your more innovative desires. Visit fablabtulsa.org for more information. —TRENT GIBBONS

Blue Thumb is a citizen science program that trains Oklahomans to monitor creeks and streams and to share their knowledge of water quality with the public. The ultimate goal of Blue Thumb, which is funded by the EPA Section 319 Program, is to protect Oklahoma’s water from nonpoint source pollution. This type of pollution results from land runoff, precipitation, atmospheric deposition, drainage, seepage, or hydrologic modification. Blue Thumb is working in partnership with the Oklahoma Conservation Commission on several creek and stream recovery projects.

Over 300 volunteers work to oversee 100 Oklahoma streams, checking the effects of stormwater runoff on water quality. Monitoring is a 4-step process, involving biological, chemical, and physical monitoring and quality assurance/data interpretation. Volunteer-written data interpretations of many creeks and streams are accessible on an interactive map on their website, bluethumbok.com.

Anyone can become a Blue Thumb volunteer by attending the organization’s volunteer training course.

Several are held throughout the year across the state, and a group of ten or more interested people can request a scheduled special training session.

Blue Thumb also offers Project WET, a water education program for K–12 teachers. The WET sessions not only promote awareness but also provide teaching materials and a certificate for six professional development or continuing education hours.

On July 10, Blue Thumb is partnering with Grand River Dam Authority, OSU 4-H, Ag in the Classroom, and OU’s Oklahoma Water Survey for an open three-day educators’ workshop, Riverology 101, in Langley. Online registration is open now.

Volunteering with Blue Thumb is a great way for Oklahomans to be directly involved in protecting their local environment. Citizens can take something as important as water quality monitoring into their own hands rather than relying on institutions to do the work for them. —MASON WHITEHORN POWELL FEATURED // 21

FARMING CREW AT A NEW LEAF’S BLOOMING ACRES

TCCL SEED LIBRARY

TCCL SEED LIBRARY Tulsa City-County Library’s Seed Library is diversifying the city’s ecology by expanding access to and offering free garden seeds.

Any inspired gardener is welcome to check out seeds from the robust collections at any one of 10 locations. After growing their garden, participants are highly encouraged—but not quite required—to return to the library with seeds of their choice. This creates a nostress system for seed checkout; seeds are “due” within six months of rental, but gardeners will never actually be fined for overdue seeds. The Seed Library also hosts events to help cultivate an enthusiasm for planting.

Upcoming programs include the annual Plant Swap at Kendall-Whittier Library on April 28, where attendees are invited to exchange bulbs, cuttings, and other items too large to fit in seed packets, as well as share advice with other gardeners. Look out also for the Seed Library’s presence at events like Herb Day in Brookside or Cherry Street Farmers’ Market.

The library accepts donations of home-saved, open-pollinated heirloom seeds, but they ask that the seeds be sealed in a container labeled with as much information about them as possible. Visit guides.tulsalibrary.org/ tulsaseedlibrary for more. —TRENT GIBBONS

You should be composting. Never heard of it? It’s the process by which organic material decomposes, right in your backyard.

Why? It has many benefits: It’s a great way to cut down on food waste, it can improve the quality of your soil, and it can reduce your reliance on storebought fertilizers. It’s also simple, requiring only a few things to get started.

While pre-made compost bins are available at home and garden stores, you can make your own at home with a few materials. Start with an old plastic trash bin (or something similar). Drill a few holes in the sides, lid, and bottom.

This will create a healthy amount of airflow and will allow helpful microbes and bugs in to help break down your 22 // FEATURED

In Broken Arrow, A New Leaf is another kind of green nonprofit. There, they serve individuals with developmental disabilities by providing horticultural therapy, job training, and life-skills coaching. With six greenhouses and a two-acre production garden, A New Leaf’s clients and employees are in high gear this time of year. Kevin Harper, the organization’s director of marketing and business development, says that teaching their clients their values is as high-priority as teaching them job skills.

“We only sell half of what we grow; the rest is going to a food desert or to the food bank,” Harper said. “We like to teach our clients a holistic view about what we’re doing, that we earn a wage but we give back, too.”

This includes a can-do approach to sustainable horticulture. A New Leaf seeks grants and financial support for growing methods that are more sustainable than traditional soil systems. They have utilized a rainwater collection system and are also petitioning for the use of the creek near their Broken Arrow property for irrigation.

The future at A New Leaf includes the installation of an aquaponics system in one of six greenhouses. They are hopeful that the system, which grows fish and plants together, will increase their food production. They are also working on becoming more equipped to teach clients progressively efficient growing methods, like An Acre in a Box, a hydroponics system with customizable growing stations enclosed in a shipping container.

material. If this sounds like too much work, an open-air compost pile is also feasible but will not provide the same protection from pests as a covered bin.

There are two kinds of compostable materials: brown and green. Brown materials are things like dried leaves, sawdust, hay, or even shredded papers.

Who wouldn’t want to dispose of their incriminating documents in an environmentally friendly way? These materials are dry and are a good source of carbon for your compost. Green materials include vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, fruit peels, lawn clippings, bad cooking, or any other organic material containing lots of water. These are sources of nitrogen, another key ingredient.

But there are some things you

“The first thing is to make sure it’s good for our clients,” Harper said. “The Acre in a Box is perfect because we can make [the aisles and growing stations] the exact size for wheelchairs, so it increases the job opportunities for those clients.”

A New Leaf is also home to Blooming Acres, a two-acre farm dedicated to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares. The vocational employees are involved in all steps from planning to packaging, including weekly delivery to the doorsteps of shareholders. The farm is not organic—certification is the main challenge—but their growing practices are very similar to organic farming procedures.

“Some of our clients have very sensitive allergies, so we’re very careful what we use, and we are very natural in how we do things,” Harper said.

A New Leaf’s greenhouses in Broken Arrow are open to the public for plant purchases. You can also find them throughout the growing season at their pop-up location in the parking lot at the northwest corner of 51st Street and Sheridan Road. Visit anewleaf.org for more information about purchasing CSA shares. —KARA BELLAVIA A NEW LEAF RETAIL GARDEN CENTER 2405 S. Elm St., Broken Arrow Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. | Sunday 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

A NEW LEAF POP-UP SHOP N.W. corner of 51st St. and Sheridan Rd. Monday–Friday 9.am.–6 p.m.

Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. | Sunday 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

should not add to compost. Wood can take years to decompose, slowing down the composting process significantly.

Meat, milk, oil, and animal products can make your compost smell terrible and attract unwanted pests like rats.

Human and animal waste are off the table, as well. (No shit? No shit.)

A ratio of two-thirds brown, onethird green material in your compost is recommended. It is not necessary to maintain this ratio exactly, but it is better to be heavier on brown materials, as these will keep your compost from becoming too dense, which slows down decomposition. After collecting your materials, add them to the bin and make sure they are mixed well.

Once you have everything together

in one place, nature will begin its disgusting, miraculous work. You can help this process along by making sure the compost stays fairly moist. (It should be about as wet as a wrung-out sponge.)

Additionally, you should turn and stir the compost every one to two weeks.

This will ensure that everything is evenly mixed and will help build an emotional bond between you and the compost.

In reasonably warm weather it should take you four to six months to create usable compost. Fully composted materials will be dark brown and will not generate heat. They can be added to garden soil to improve fertility, allow drainage in dense earth, and help with water retention in sandy soil.

—FRASER KASTNER April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

GLOBAL GARDENS

Tulsa-based Global Gardens is a youth gardening program that teaches kids about nutrition and science through the creation of on-site school and community gardens. Global Gardens was founded in 2007 by Heather Oakley, who came up with the idea while she was teaching at a school in Harlem and earning two master’s degrees in Urban Science Education and International Development/Peace Education at Columbia University.

“Global Gardens’ mission is to empower low-income students to be agents of change in their lives and communities through inquiry-based science and peace education,” said executive director Maryann Donahue in an interview with Tulsa World. “Essentially, we use the garden to teach kids how to solve problems—scientific, social, and intrapersonal. We are unique in that we blend science, peace, and empowerment in the garden setting. Another unusual aspect of our work is that we emphasize student-led inquiry.”

Global Gardens began at Eugene Field Elementary School in West Tulsa and has since expanded into three additional sites, Rosa Parks Elementary School, Union Middle School, and McAuliffe Elementary School. Global Gardens consists of during-school programs for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, after-school programs for third–sixth graders, family food farms for engaging the entire family, and summer programming like weeklong summer camps.

Global Gardens hopes to expand into every low-income Tulsa school. Visit global-gardens.org for more information.

—MARY NOBLE

OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION:

F I S H

H A B I T A T S

The polyethylene pipe used in the oil and gas industry has an expiration date. While most companies send their unused, out-of-date poly pipe to landfills, ONE Gas collaborated with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) Northeast Region Fisheries Division on a project that put much of the pipe to positive use. Made to resemble trees, 125 fish habitat structures were constructed out of the pipe by securing short sections into buckets and concrete purchased by ONE Gas. Last year, habitats were placed at Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees. In March of this year, they were placed northeast of Tulsa in Spavinaw Lake. Much of the underwater brush that functions as fish habitat is deteriorating.

“When habitat is lacking, anything is good,” said Northeast Region Fisheries Supervisor John Johnston. Johnston described how periphyton and other single-cell organisms like algae collect on the pipe over time, providing food for smaller fish. These smaller fish attract bigger ones, augmenting the purpose of habitats so they’re not only aids in conservation but also tools for anglers.

Johnston described a new Geographic Information System program in development by the Fisheries Division that will eventually map all the aquatic habitats. Though it’s still being updated, the program is already live under “Where to Fish” and “Fish Attractor Locations Map” at wildlifedepartment.com.

The ODWC regulates and protects the fish population in Oklahoma by conducting surveys, selling fishing licenses and permits, and managing public fishing areas. Such efforts as the habitat construction with ONE Gas help the environment by reusing waste material in addition to serving the Oklahoma angling community. —MASON WHITEHORN POWELL REPURPOSED POLY PIPE FISH HABITAT STRUCTURES

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

UP WITH TREES

Up With Trees’ origin sounds a bit like a folk tale. The organization has its roots in the early 1970s, when city commissioner Ted Patterson received a call from a high school boy who was concerned about trees that had been removed due to street construction. He wanted to know when those trees would be replaced. To see that they actually were, Patterson started Up With Trees, which has grown from an organization that primarily planted trees around the highway to one that has planted at least 32,000 trees around Tulsa, having expanded to city neighborhoods and parks.

Up With Trees partners with various groups in the Tulsa community and focuses on improving Tulsa’s treeline. Their efforts include ReGreen Tulsa, a program to plant 20,000 trees in response to the 2007 ice storm and, more recently, a targeted effort to improve the foliage of the Osage Prairie Trail. Up With Trees also hosts Farmer’s Market events and Herb Day in Brookside and distributes thousands of seedlings to help better Tulsa’s urban canopy coverage. The organization often hosts classes in schools, with course material varying depending on the age of the students— but all courses invariably culminate in a planting on school grounds. Some of their big events include the Green Leaf Gala, which raises funds for year-round initiatives, and an annual two- or three-day tree trip in October, for which participants drive to a regional destination (they’re going to Nebraska City this year), observing and discussing the tree life there and on the way. Tulsans can join the Citizen Forester program, Up With Trees’ primary avenue for adult education in Tulsa. Visit upwithtrees.org for more information.

—TRENT GIBBONS a

FEATURED // 23

MEAT IS JUST THE BONUS Hunting is about spirituality, solace, heritage—and challenging new-age vegans from LA

by STERLIN HARJO

WHEN I FIRST PUT MY HANDS INTO A deer’s body just under the ribcage, dipping into the unexpectedly warm pool of blood to get a better angle as I maneuvered the guts out, I knew it was something I would do forever. “Spiritual” is the only way to describe it. There was some sort of exchange, some sort of ancient calling I couldn’t have anticipated, and finally, like Pavlov’s dogs, I heard the call. I was salivating.

I grew up hunting with my dad, but most of those years I killed only small animals—rabbits, maybe the occasional squirrel. When we were deer hunting I was my dad’s sidekick, and always—it never failed—just when I’d be ready to leave the woods and watch cartoons, we’d see a deer. I helped him track wounded ones past dark; I helped him drag some out of the woods. But it wasn’t until I killed one myself that I caught the fever. Since then I’ve killed one almost every year, and my interest in hunting only grows stronger. I look forward to it all year. My dad and I still hunt together, and he’s taught me that you don’t hunt to kill a deer—you hunt to enjoy the solace of the woods. Bringing home meat is just the bonus.

Up until a few years ago the only representation of hunters on TV were the likes of Elmer Fudd (shotgun-toting simpleton), Ted Nugent (ultra-right-wing know-it-all), and the killers in “Bambi” (cold-blooded evildoers). After I left my hometown I kept quiet about hunting. But not today. Now I try to tell everyone.

The truth: There are aware, relatable hunters out there, and they’re now becoming more visible. But like my dad, they’ve always been there. On the small screen, shows like Steven Rinella’s “Meat Eater" and Remi Warren’s “Solo Hunter” have brought like-minded hunters together.

Podcasts and Instagram have pulled back the veil to show what real hunters look like, proving hunters aren’t necessarily backwoods hillbillies with hard-ons for killing things; they are your friends and co-workers, they sometimes look like me (brown) or are female. It’s an exciting time to be a hunter, and yet, I still find myself 24 // FEATURED

Sterlin Harjo hunting deer with a compound bow near Holdenville | COURTESY

defending it. It’s a strange thing to have to defend something that, for most of the history of human beings, has been as essential as breathing.

Cut to a spring night two years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I was at a swank Santa Fean restaurant with a group of producers. It was our day off from shooting a pilot (which never saw the light of day). This restaurant wasn’t the usual green chili, down-to-earth spot the city is known for—its patrons wore enough turquoise to sink a small ship and expected warm, damp towels at the end of

the meal. One of the producers suggested the place—it was somewhere his wife would like, and he wanted us to meet her.

We sucked down red wine and cracked open our menus. That’s when it jumped out from the menu at me, that rare delicacy I always spring for when a restaurant serves it—elk. I’m sure it was farmraised, but when I order it I pretend I dropped the animal in the mountains out West with a compound bow. I announced my decision to the table. Our friend who recommended the place replied, “Oh, elk is delicious.” His wife, looking at me,

responded, “I’m vegan. I wouldn’t know.”

I told her I was a hunter and promised it tasted good. She put her fingers in the shape of a cross, hissed at me, then shivered in disgust and returned to the menu as though nothing had happened.

Just like that I had been reduced to a vampire, a barbarian, the enemy—because I said I was a hunter. The table was quiet. I realized I’d been offered a chance to engage a new-age vegan from LA about hunting. Would I take the opportunity? Hell to the yeah.

“Why did you hiss at me?” I asked.

“I don’t understand how anyone could murder defenseless animals,” she said.

I rattled off my limited knowledge about conservation, about how the wildlife conservation system in our country was funded by hunters. She muttered something about animals being precious and how hunters were eliminating them. I pointed out that those precious beings are managed by the money gained from hunting and that many once-endangered species had been saved due to this self-funding method. We went back and forth for a few, as the rest of the group listened. Most people in our world, I said, do not have a first-hand relationship with the one inevitable part of the equation in consuming meat: death. I explained my belief that anyone who eats meat should kill their food at least once so they can appreciate what goes into feeding a family.

Having grown tired of it, I opted to kill the argument—but I had one ace in my pocket, one that no new-ager can withstand.

“It’s a part of my heritage,” I said. “My people have hunted deer since they first walked upright on this land.”

She thought this was “beautiful.” My case was closed.

Our server placed my elk in front of me. I cut into it with my steak knife. Blood leaked out onto my plate. I hadn’t dropped it with a compound bow in some Western mountain range, but conjuring images of freezing my ass off in a deer stand back home made the experience spiritual nonetheless. a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

STEVEN AMSTRUP WITH A POLAR BEAR CUB | COURTESY

POLARIZING POLAR BEARS Unmasking a proxy war strategy of climate change denialists

BY PAUL ROSENBERG

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

E

DITOR’S NOTE: Stick with us, Tulsa. You may be wondering why we’re running a piece about polar bears in the pages of TTV. As a member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, we often receive article offers from other alt papers around the country. This one caught our eye because in Oklahoma you can hardly throw a snowball without hitting a climate change denier. We just hope they’re not reading the denier blogs cited here.

Last December, a video of an emaciated polar bear, foraging for food on iceless land, went viral on social media. The video garnered millions of views. For most, it was a vivid signal of the future in store for us due to human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming—rising temperatures due to increased carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. For those who deny or minimize the existence of anthropogenic global warming, it wasn’t a polar bear but a red herring (“Propaganda,” one YouTube viewer called it)—no one knows why it was dying, much less if it can be connected to global warming.

That’s true—but also a bit beside the point.

“The problem is that an ever-warmer future means polar bears will have less and less access to their seal prey, so the rate at which bears die from malnutrition/ starvation will increase,” said Dr. Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for the nonprofit Polar Bears International. “So, regardless of the proximate cause of this bear’s condition, this heart-wrenching footage provides us with a warning about the future.”

Just days before the video went viral, a paper Amstrup co-authored presented the polar bear as something else as well: a “keystone domino,” a proxy used to attack global warming. The paper stated: “Because this evidence [for global warming] is so overwhelming, it would be virtually impossible to debunk; the main strategy of denier blogs is therefore to focus on topics that are showy and in which it is therefore easy to generate public interest. These topics are used as “proxies” for [anthropogenic global warming] in general; in other words, they represent keystone dominoes that are strategically placed in front of many hundreds of others, each representing a separate line of evidence for anthropogenic global warming. By appearing to knock over the keystone domino, audiences targeted by the communication may assume all other dominoes are toppled in a form of “dismissal by association.”

The paper, “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy,” by Jeffrey Harvey, a senior scientist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, and 13 co-authors, looked at 90 blogs and 92 peer-reviewed papers. They analyzed them in terms of what they said about sea ice (declining rapidly or not, or varying unpredictably over the long run) and polar

bears (threatened with extinction or not, or capable of adapting to threats).

Another co-author, Bart Verheggen, a climate scientist at Amsterdam University College, starkly described their findings: “There is a clear separation amongst blogs, where approximately half of the 90 blogs investigated agree with the majority of the scientific literature, whereas other blogs took a position that is diametrically opposed to the scientific conclusions. Most of the blogs in the latter group [about 80 percent] based their opinions on one and the same source: Susan Crockford.”

Crockford is an unpaid adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

“Our paper was clearly a direct hit because the response from the denial blogs was immediate,” Harvey told Random Lengths News. “As is their modus operandi, they studiously avoid the core messages, which are that they use a tiny set of topics (proxies) to dismiss anthropogenic global warming ... In attacking the evidence that [anthropogenic global warming] is driving a rapid reduction in seasonal arctic ice extent, [which] threatens polar bears, they almost completely avoid the published scientific literature.”

It’s worth noting that two of Harvey’s co-authors, Amstrup and Ian Stirling, both co-authored more than 20 of the 92 papers in that scientific literature, an indication of their depth of knowledge that denialists held against them.

The paper also concluded with an unusual call to action: “We believe that it is imperative for more scientists to venture beyond the confines of their labs and lecture halls to directly engage with the public and policymakers, as well as more strongly confronting and resisting the well-funded and organized network of [anthropogenic global warming] denial.”

But global warming denialism is so pervasive it can now be considered a contributing factor to global warming itself— something to be studied and mitigated.

This paper is part of a growing field of scientific studies of global warming science and denialist response that’s increasingly causing denialists to squirm.

STUDYING CLIMATE DENIALISM: A GROWING SUBFIELD This began in 2004, when science historian Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, produced the first of several studies establishing the existence of a solid 97 percent consensus of scientists that humans are responsible for ongoing global warming. It’s also been shown that increasing awareness of this consensus increases public acceptance. In 2015, Norwegian climate scientist Rasmus Benestad pioneered the study of patterns of mistakes across dissenting papers in the remaining 3 percent. These were discovered by trying to replicate their results.

FEATURED // 25

IAN STIRLING REMOVING SATELLITE RADIO FROM FEMALE WITH CUB | COURTESY

In 2012, Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, another of Harvey’s co-authors, initiated another line of research. He explored patterns of reasoning in the public at large. He first discovered that belief in a cluster of conspiracy theories was associated with global warming denial. Then he studied the online response of denialists to that study in a paper called “Recursive Fury,” in which he reported that many denialists exhibited at least one of six previously identified characteristics of conspiracist ideation.

The denialists reacted furiously again and the journal that published the paper withdrew it, not because there was anything scientifically wrong with it, but for fear of being sued. This was widely condemned for encouraging scientifically unfounded attacks.

Finally, in 2016, Yale sociologist Justin Farrell initiated another line of research, using network science and text analysis to investigate the overall structure and organizational power of the contrarian network, including the role of elite corporate benefactors.

The first two lines of research establish why there’s no credible scientific support for rejecting global warming, while the second two broadly explain the consensus gap between scientists and the public in terms of a combination of individual psychology and socio-political influence. Harvey’s paper provides a much sharper focus for that broad explanation, leaving little wiggle room for a denialist response short of throwing up their hands in surrender.

26 // FEATURED

“They clearly did not want to respond through the peer-reviewed literature, but instead resorted to three main tactics,” Harvey said. “The first was to accuse us of ganging up on Susan Crockford, even though she does not appear until page three of the article and is not the primary focus.

“They also launched all-out attacks on the two most prominent authors, Mike Mann and Stephan Lewandowsky, finally coming around to me after some days,” Harvey said.

Mann was principally responsible for the "hockey stick" graph, the first widely-accepted reconstruction of the past 1,000 years of Northern Hemisphere temperatures, showing dramatic temperature increases in the past few decades, which has made him a prime target for denialist attacks. “Recursive Fury” in particular made Lewandowsky a prime target.

“They have tried to discredit the paper by criticizing the statistical analyses,” Harvey said.

This was an effort spearheaded by economist Richard Tol, who floundered badly in a similar 2014 attempt to discredit the existence of the 97 percent consensus on global warming.

On the last point, Lewandowsky highlighted what he called their “Monty-Pythonesque” attempts to invalidate their data.

“The only way to achieve that would be if their blogs didn’t make the claims they clearly insist on making—namely that the Arctic isn’t melting and polar bears are just fine,” Lewandowsky said.

A NEW PROXY FIGHT What they lacked in substance they made up for in sound and fury, with Crockford herself leading the way. After pointing out the denier blogs’ heavy reliance on her, the paper read: “Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.”

Crockford, a zoologist who’s been paid by the denialist Heartland Institute, seemingly proved their point by responding with a series of heated blog posts rather than a comment letter to the journal. One post claimed the paper was a conspiratorial response getting back at her for a nonpeer-reviewed paper she’d published on the web.

On one of the blog posts, she stated: “BioScience article is academic rape: an assertion of power and intimidation. ...

Characterizing a professional, respected scientist as an unqualified vengeful opinion writer is the same kind of power attack as rape. It’s meant to humiliate and intimidate.”

“Crockford’s claim of academic rape is, in my opinion, really appalling,” Harvey said.

“Our team has no agenda against a specific blogger,” said Meena Balgopal, associate professor of biology at Colorado State University,�another co-author. “We simply found that the majority (80 percent) of the blogs that were identified as ‘climate denying’ referenced Crockford’s blog.

Our goal was to use objective methods to better understand how blogs that describe climate change and polar bears present

and frame information. Discussions of ‘#MeToo’ or ‘rape’ are, therefore, irrelevant to our study.”

COMPETING CONSPIRACY THEORIES There’s a second element in Crockford’s persecution narrative: her entry into the half-baked conspiracy theories about the origins of Harvey's story.

“It’s interesting to see the different conspiracy theories being touted about our paper [on different denialist blogs],” Verheggen said.

The following are a few of the claims Verheggen refutes: • Mann and Lewandowsky are behind it all, and they dragged others in with them (WUWT [a blog], others) • Amstrup and Stirling wanted to get back at Crockford, who criticized them and got others to help them (Tom Fuller at Cliscep and elsewhere) • A clique around Bart Verheggen and Amsterdam Academia got others to join them in their crusade against “skeptics” (the Dutch deniosphere at climategate.nl) WUWT—What’s Up With That?—is the most viewed denialist website worldwide.

It actually promoted both of the first two conspiracies. Conspiracy theorists often embrace multiple, different, and even contradictory conspiracy narratives. This is one of the six characteristics of conspiracist thought mentioned above, known as “must be wrong,” a pervasive belief that a conspiracy exists despite specific disproofs. Another corollary of this conspirApril 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

AN EMACIATED POLAR BEAR, SPOTTED BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER PAUL NICKLEN ON SOMERSET ISLAND. THE VIDEO OF THE STARVING BEAR FORAGING FOR FOOD WENT VIRAL IN DECEMBER 2017. | COURTESY

acy-thought characteristic is the belief in mutually contradictory theories. The conspiracies listed above aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do illustrate another characteristic of conspiracist thought, “persecution-victimization,” the tendency to see themselves as persecuted victims of the conspiracy, as well as potential heroes. Thus, Crockford and her fans prefer the conspiracy theory revolving around her, and the Dutch denialists prefer the conspiracy centered on Dutch soil.

A PEEK INTO PEER-REVIEW CONFUSIONS “Amstrup is pissed off because I criticized his work,” Crockford wrote in a comment at WUWT. “He and Stirling are not used to being challenged.”

She touted her theory of the paper's origins and purpose, based on a paper she published online at PeerJ, which is not in a peer-reviewed journal.

Ignoring that fact, she wrote, “Colleagues have read my paper and found it to be fully acceptable as a piece of academic scientific work,” adding, “If that were not true, this desperately ridiculous BioScience paper would never have been published.”

But that’s not how science works. A paper generally has to be peer-reviewed and published before other scientists feel a need to respond.

“It was peer-reviewed by several well-qualified colleagues before publication (and revised accordingly),”—which is not what “peer-reviewed” means—“but was not peer-reviewed again by the PeerJ organization, as is their policy,” Crockford wrote elsewhere.

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

So, she knows full well it wasn’t peer-reviewed but wants to confuse non-scientist readers. That was from a blog post containing her “letter to the editors of the journal BioScience requesting retraction of the shoddy and malicious paper by Harvey, et al.” The editors surely saw through this amateurish deception.

She was playing to her base.

That’s hardly her only deception. Elsewhere on her blog, Crockford let her real feelings about BioScience show—feelings so strong they seemed to impair her basic math: “BioScience is an interesting choice for this ‘Forum’ paper: I counted only 4 polar bear research papers in this journal since 2004 but 11 papers on “climate change denial” since 2010 (not including this one). In other words, few polar bear scientists would usually read this journal, but many people interested in the ‘problem’ of ‘climate change denial’ would seek it out.”

Yet it only takes a moment, clicking on the links Crockford provides in the text, to discover she’s wrong. There are 88 journal articles listed on polar bears, 72 classified as research articles. For “climate change denial” the numbers are 19 and 16, respectively. So she's wrong, both about the journal's content and what people read it for. It is not, as she pretends, a comfy conspiratorial den for her enemies, but a well-respected journal of bioscience.

“This kind of harassment, intimidation, and threats are typical, in my opinion, of climate change deniers when they are criticized,” Harvey concluded. “They rarely pursue the normal professional response

STEVEN AMSTRUP WITH CUBS | COURTESY

of writing a rebuttal to a journal until all other options have been exhausted.”

BACK TO THE SCIENCE If the point of such proxy controversies is to distract, it’s good to refocus on what it’s distracting from.

“In addition to the badgering and nitpicking, we’ve been getting more conflation of the present and the future, more about how it has been warm in the past, and more suggestions polar bears will be fine on land,” Amstrup said.

These are all topics well-settled in the scientific literature. In the context of a heated proxy fight they are ripe for confusion. The paper explains these confusions, but denier blogs don’t pay attention to scientific literature. That’s the study’s main finding, remember? So Amstrup ticked off what was being obscured.

“Deniers have criticized polar bear scientists because things we projected for later this century have not yet happened,” he said. That’s the main point of Crockford’s non-peer-reviewed paper. So, “there are no future threats.”

This ignores the known long-term trends and the point Amstrup made about the dying bear video.

“Lowered polar bear survival means more bears are starving to death, so regardless of what happened to cause this particular bear’s problems, we know a future with less ice means higher rates of this kind of event in the future—a future we can avoid by mitigating greenhouse gas rise,” Amstrup said.

He also commented on past warm periods.

“The best evidence suggests we will be far warmer by mid-century than any time in the polar bear’s evolutionary history,” Amstrup said. “The current warming occurring over the top of gradually declining insolation is caused by humans and is not at all analogous to past warming events.”

As for polar bears surviving on land, studies show there just isn’t enough nutritious food for them to survive without access to sea ice, where they can hunt seals.

Sure, bears have been known to catch geese, for example, but there “simply are not enough geese to feed all the polar bears if we ultimately let the ice disappear,” Amstrup said.

Of course, the point of the paper is that all the above is well-known to scientists and is deliberately obscured on the denier blogs. The response to the paper helps to prove its point.

“Our paper is hardly surprising, but deniers are angry simply because they have been formally exposed,” Harvey summed up. “It is patently obvious that denier blogs are master cherry-pickers of quite dubious sources. They know it, too, but they just don't want to admit it.”

Which is why the paper’s call for scientists to become more engaged on social media is so crucial. The more of them there are, the harder it will be for the cherrypickers to win when the next viral video comes around. a Paul Rosenberg is the senior editor for Random Lengths News in Los Angeles and a contributing columnist for Salon.com.

This article is a © 2018 Random lengths news special reprint for AAN papers.

FEATURED // 27

FORREST MAYER | GREG BOLLINGER

RUN, FORREST, RUN! Day drinking with a scientist, teacher, and State House of Representatives District 76 hopeful

by BEAU ADAMS

LOCATION: Starbucks (West Kenosha Street and South 145th East Avenue, Broken Arrow) The return of “Day Drinking” to these pages is off to an inauspicious reboot. First of all, it’s 5:30 p.m. (my fault), and secondly, we’re not drinking (my guest would rather not). Add to this false start that we’re at a Starbucks in Broken Arrow. But it turns out that Forrest Mayer is worth the change of format. In fact, he’s everything you want in an aspiring politician: young, full of energy, idealistic, and hoping to make change in his community.

BEAU ADAMS: So, tell me about your background. What’s your day job?

FORREST MAYER: I am an informal science teacher. My job for the past six years has been to go into every public school, private school, daycare center, summer camp, library, college—wherever there are students between the ages of eight and 18—and perform cool, flashy science demonstrations and not just teach science but give students a “taste for science.”

ADAMS: Do you teach evolution?

MAYER: My primary field of research is in integrative organism biology, so I study evolution every day.

ADAMS: You ever get kicked out of a place of learning for teaching evolution?

MAYER: Not so much kicked out, but there have been places where I certainly have 28 // FEATURED

April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

not been asked to return because of my teaching. To give you an idea of how bad it is, a public school teacher in Oklahoma is not supposed to use the word “evolution.”

You can use “adaptation.” Adaptation can be divinely driven. But since I’m usually showing up in a capacity where I am outside of the administration, I can bring up and have conversations about evolution.

ADAMS: Are there really children that don’t believe in evolution? It seems almost criminal that their parents and churches would do that to them.

MAYER: The worst of it is that there are children that don’t even have a basic understanding of science. They have been taught that science is a matter of opinion, and they choose not to believe in it. What I teach them is that science isn’t a matter of belief, science isn’t a matter of opinion, science doesn’t have anything to do with your political party—science is a matter of facts and evidence.

ADAMS: Can science and religion live together?

MAYER: In my opinion, no, they are not compatible. Because the point of science is to use deductive reasoning to learn more about the universe, regardless of your level of comfort in what you learn. The universe is under no obligation to make us feel good about what we discover. We follow facts and only facts. Religion, on the other hand, is based on the idea of accepting things without evidence.

ADAMS: I believe “faith” is the operative concept.

MAYER: Exactly. The whole point is that you need to be okay with this set of ideas for no reason other than “because I told you so.” It’s based on authority, it’s based on dogma, and it’s based on doctrine—all things that science vehemently opposes because those things can obstruct the truth. There is no authority in science.

Lawrence Krauss is one of the greatest physicists and cosmologists in the world, in my opinion. If I find evidence to disprove his theories and that evidence is tested and scientifically proven, then my theories are now the prevailing theories. There is no hierarchy that will hold his work above mine. Science just wants facts.

All that being said, I believe on a personal level that a person can be a scientist and also be a person of faith. It doesn’t work for me, but I have seen it work for others.

ADAMS: So, you’re running as an atheist Democrat from Broken Arrow? Are you crazy?

MAYER: Look, as a kid I grew up very poor. My family relied on food stamps and other social safety nets. I’ve seen since very early on that this state isn’t built for THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

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me—it doesn’t have my best interests or its people’s best interests at heart. I grew up like most people, with other people saying, “Somebody’s got to do something about this. Somebody needs to get in there and change the way all of this works.” I finally hit the age where I was like, “You know what—I’m somebody.” I’m idealistic. I want to be the person that makes the world a better place.

ADAMS: Well, let’s talk about that. Given your background and beliefs, what can you do in one of the reddest states in the country?

MAYER: Last year when I would knock on doors and tell people about myself, all they wanted to know was my political affiliation. Once I told them I was a Democrat, the conversation was over. This year I’m seeing something different. Fewer people want to know who I am and more people want to know what I’m going to do. That’s good news. That tells me that people are waking up and realizing that the promises made to them by their party on the local and national levels have not come true.

Now people are interested in who can fix it.

ADAMS: I’m going to read a quote of yours I found because I think it’s interesting: “I am a science educator who believes that Oklahoma is long overdue for an update. Our laws are outdated, our technology is obsolete, and our legislature’s priorities are petty and narrow-minded. Our grand state is quickly falling behind. In many places, it already has.

“I see the lessons of science as guides to effective public policy. When making decisions, I rely on evidence and reason rather than emotion and tradition in order to ensure that issues are solved fairly, rationally, and in an innovative manner. My goal is to bring Oklahoma into the 21st century and put us on the cutting edge of industry, education, and technology.”

I don’t think I can remember someone running here on a science platform. Explain what that means to you.

MAYER: Well, first and foremost, it means let’s take emotion, religion, and speculation out of the debate, and let’s apply scientific theory. I see these things at the state capitol and the embarrassment our lawmakers bring upon the good people of our state, and a lot of it is because we are not being scientific. There are facts. For every bill that is introduced, there are mountains of data to be scrutinized and there are examples of how other states have handled issues that need to be looked at and dealt with rationally. Using facts and data and best practices and common sense, we can get this state operating the way it needs to in order to serve its people. But we need to be scientific about it. We need to leave emotion and religion and other non-provable factors out of the process. That type of politics is what has gotten us into the mess we are currently in. a

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artspot

Sketchy politics The Museum Broken Arrow exhibits the power of editorial cartoons

by BRADY WHISENHUNT

A

giant, ink-black octopus monster seizes downtown Oklahoma City. It drapes its tentacles over the skyscrapers. “ORGANIZED CRIME” is written in white letters on the sea creature’s head, just above its wide, gleaming eyes and fearsome scowl. The cityscape is a busy patch of geometrical forms.

Tall buildings jut out of a thicket of vertical lines. Numerous white tufts of smoke hover just above the buildings.

The caption reads, “Well! What Are You Going To Do About It?” A cartoonist known simply as “Army” drew this piece in 1940. In the white space of the upper-right corner, hand-written in non-repro blue pencil, are editor’s notes. The notes tell Army that the smoke above the buildings is confusing to the viewer. They also advise: “Be careful with detail—Allow more highlights on the octopus.”

The cartoon casts the problem of organized crime as a slippery, multi-limbed menace that has woven its sinister reach into the arterial network of Oklahoma City. In one still image the work conveys a complex message with a sense of drama, using the recognizable visual language of the editorial cartoon.

This piece is on display at The Museum Broken Arrow as part of the special exhibition “Lines with Power and Purpose: Editorial Cartoons,” along with 50 other original editorial cartoons from around the country, primarily from the ‘20s–‘40s. The Museum is the first to showcase this traveling exhibition, which is curated by the Melton Gallery at the University of Central Oklahoma and organized by ExhibitsUSA, a program within Mid-America Arts Alliance.

The pieces have been housed at the Melton Gallery for over three decades.

30 // ARTS & CULTURE

Army, “Organized Crime—Oklahoma City,” 1940 UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA GALLERIES AND COLLECTIONS

Former Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett also loaned several pieces from his personal collection of over 300 political cartoons. These pieces, unique to The Museum Broken Arrow showcase, take on Oklahoma politicians and social and political issues.

In “An Embarrassing Position For a Jockey” by Cyrus “Cy” Cotton Hungerford, a stars-andstripes-clad racing jockey struggles to lift the rear end of a seated horse from the ground. The horse’s hind thighs are labeled “Labor.” The horse’s neck is labeled “Capital.” The horse is not budging, but the thought bubble above the jockey’s head reads “Business is picking up!” The caption below: “PROSPERITY’S HOME STRETCH.” The cartoonist illustrates the relationships between labor and capital as the engine and steering wheel, respectively, of a prosperous economy. He represents the American government’s efforts

to stimulate the economy as both optimistic and naive.

The cartoon—undated but presumably drawn during FDR’s presidency—expresses a statement about FDR’s response to the Great Depression and addresses a cynicism common to American citizens at the time. The caricatured faces of the jockey and the horse, along with their exaggerated expressions, serve to lampoon the situation, allowing for a light-hearted but compelling reading of a relatively dry subject.

Symbols, object labeling, and humor are exploited in both “An Embarrassing Position For a Jockey” as well as 2017’s viral “Distracted Boyfriend” internet memes. Both use similar techniques to describe current events and topics and to comment on the relationships between different points of view. They spoof humorous absurdities in daily life but can also call attention to acts of social injustice. Memes, which

in many cases function as homemade editorial cartoons employing found images instead of original artwork, borrow tropes from the editorial cartoon form. “Lines with Power and Purpose” offers a valuable historical perspective on the role of the cartoonist, especially given the rise of internet memes as a force in current political battles and in shaping public opinion.

“It’s interesting—some of these issues we’ve been struggling with throughout our entire history,” said Lori Lewis, executive director of The Museum Broken Arrow.

The pieces in the exhibition, on display through April 28, showcase a range of topics—from political battles to daily life in America— and they hit on weighty social issues like race relations, distrust of government, and xenophobia.

Perspectives from all over the political spectrum are shown.

Luther Daniels Bradley’s use of the donkey symbol in “The Noble Animal” (1903) represents the Democratic Party’s dubious role in Chicago politics, while the elephant figure in Charles Werner’s “Hope At Last” (c. 1935-1941) represents the desperation felt by the Republican Party during FDR’s presidency.

“No matter what side of the political divide you’re on or what issues are important to you … there is a piece in this exhibit that almost anybody can relate to,” Lewis said. a

“LINES WITH POWER AND PURPOSE: EDITORIAL CARTOONS” Through Saturday, April 28 The Museum Broken Arrow 400 S. Main St., Broken Arrow Tues.–Fri., 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; Sat.10 a.m.–2 p.m. $5 adults, 18 and under free brokenarrowmuseum.org April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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ARTS & CULTURE // 31

artspot

“Variations on the Theme of Loss” at 108 Contemporary | COURTESY

A delicate act Tulsa Artist Fellows present ‘Variations on the Theme of Loss’

by ZACK REEVES

E

very morning I walk from the River Parks 41st Street Plaza down to the long bridge spanning the Arkansas River at 51st Street. It’s a peaceful way to start my day. Often I’ll stand underneath the bridge, staring up at the automobiles zooming east and west, admiring its stability.

Wondering how, exactly, it carries all that weight.

I’ve thought about bridges each time I’ve visited “Variations on the Theme of Loss,” a new show at 108 Contemporary featuring the work of Tulsa Artist Fellows Tali Weinberg and Emily Chase.

The show accomplishes a tactful balancing act.

Weinberg’s weavings, made on a loom the size of an adult human, render climate change data tangible. “Fractures,” a series of 54” by 54” weavings, translates 137 years of average globe temperatures into hand-woven cotton.

As you read the piece left to right, the colors change from tans and browns to pinks and reds: the heating of our land and sea.

For Weinberg, it’s all about asking questions.

“Why materialize and interpret data in this way?” she asked, thinking about the questions viewers

32 // ARTS & CULTURE

might ask when they see her work.

“What aren’t we seeing? What do we not yet understand? What and who is missing? What constitutes knowledge? What is being hidden?

How can we trace relationships, bind together, and interweave our struggles?”

She weaves to bring this information, which can be overwhelming (and perhaps earth-shattering), down to a human level. Textiles are, after all, intimate: We wear them on our skin every day. In this way, Weinberg’s work condenses a large planetary crisis into a personal one.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘existential,’” she said. “It’s too abstract. But we can certainly feel that we’re losing things. We’re losing public land. We’re losing whole species. We’re losing the ability to live in certain places.”

Emily Chase’s sense and expression of loss are also personal—and therapeutic.

“I think I started making art as self-portraiture,” she said, looking over the paper dresses, shirts, and light-boxes that inhabit her studio.

“I use them to say that I have had these experiences. They’re very intense; I know other people have these experiences too, and I don’t

know how to talk about them, but I need some place to talk about them.”

Chase’s pieces in “Variations” include life-size paper clothes worn by no one: a thin dress with thorns poking through the fabric, a red hoodie stuffed full of flowers, a shirt held together with pins rather than stitches.

It’s hard not to take her art personally. “Boys Don’t Cry,” a white paper shirt with pearl-snap buttons, is something I would have worn to a two-stepping hall while attending college in Texas, right before my parents split up. I digress, but that’s how Chase’s pieces work on you; they’re so familiar that they seem almost pointed.

“Clothes are useful to me as a subject matter, because they’re highly personal,” she said. “We express ourselves with them, but also they can stand in for a person without a body being present.”

“Variations on the Theme of Loss,” on the other hand, makes one feel intensely present. Somewhere between the emptiness inside Chase’s paper garments and the slowly-heating planet depicted in Weinberg’s weavings, we—we humans, all of us—are precipitously strung, a few billion odd beings,

pulled between our interior and exterior lives. “Variations” manages the feat of depicting and making felt both extremes at the same time.

Bridges—like the one spanning the Arkansas—work by balancing compression (the force that pushes inward) and tension (the force that pulls outward). When those two forces are balanced correctly, I’m able to drive my truck across without even considering the water currents raging beneath me.

If Weinberg’s weavings are the tension, forcing us to look beyond ourselves, then Chase’s garments are the compression, forcing us to look within. On some level, “Variations” seems to ask, “Which is more important, the looking-out or the looking-in?” The show presents, blessedly, no clear answers, but suggests there is more work to be done, both for the planet and for ourselves. Chase and Weinberg hold us up while we drive toward wherever it is we’re headed. a

“VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF LOSS” Through Friday, May 20 TALI WEINBERG ARTIST’S TALK Saturday, April 21, 1:30–3:00 p.m.

108 Contemporary | 108 E. M.B. Brady St. April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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Split branches and a tossed deck of hackberry leaves dot our neighborhood street. Raindrops sprinkle city windshields and rest on hairspray-covered heads, fresh out of musty bedrooms.

Lights out at the corner coffee shop where you left your yellow envelope on the community bulletin board and I bought a drink with cash to dump down the storm drain on my way out the door.

Sirens moan over cellphones as we cuddle close under the bathroom door jamb. a

Our poetry page is curated by Nimrod International Journal, The University of Tulsa’s literary magazine. For more information about Nimrod, visit utulsa.edu/nimrod.

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

ARTS & CULTURE // 33

sportsreport

Linewomen Tulsa Threat women’s tackle football team opens its season

by JOHN TRANCHINA

T

he Tulsa Threat may have lost their season-opening game 40–7 to the Houston Energy last Saturday, April 14, but this didn’t dampen the enthusiasm the women have for football.

The Threat is a tackle football team that competes in the Independent Women’s Football League (IWFL), which features 16 teams west of the Mississippi River and follows NCAA rules. Many of the players, who range in age from their 20s to late 40s, were athletes in other sports when they were younger.

Threat home games are at LaFortune Stadium, next to Memorial High School on Hudson Avenue between 51st and 61st Streets. In 40-degree windy weather in front of about 150 supporters, they had a difficult time matching Houston’s dynamic athletes.

The Energy gained 260 yards total rushing, with their quarterback running for 77 yards and two touchdowns on 16 carries, while also completing six of 11 passes for 102 yards and another touchdown.

Houston’s defense was stifling, limiting the Threat to just 32 yards of total offense. Tulsa fumbled three times in the second quarter, including on back-to-back possessions, which gave the Energy the ball inside the 40-yard line each time. Houston scored four straight times to take a 26–0 lead into halftime.

The Threat scored their only touchdown late in the third quarter, when quarterback Terri Gilbert connected with Rebecca Buirrea for a 17-yard pass and Miranda Munson successfully kicked the extra point.

“We’ll go look at film and find 34 // ARTS & CULTURE

Tulsa Threat’s season opener against Houston Energy at LaFortune Stadium, April 4 | CHRIS WILLIAMS

out what areas we need to get better in,” Gilbert said afterwards.

“Obviously, our offense struggled, especially with the turnovers. With a good team like that, you just can’t do that.”

Yes, the Threat’s players, who are not paid, do look at game film.

They also practice twice a week during the season.

“There’s a lot of time and commitment that goes into it,” said Threat head coach Shanon Mayfield, who has been coaching football for about 16 years, eight of which for East Central High School and several more with the Oklahoma Defenders semi-pro men’s squad. “And they’re moms, they have their own kids … We do two nights a week and we keep them pretty hooked up. Every one of these girls has a passion to play.”

Just like with any football team, there is an ever-present risk of injury. Munson, the team’s kicker since last season, originally played

defensive end and outside linebacker but made a switch after recovering from a major injury in 2016.

“I tore my labrum and they had to reattach my bicep on my right arm,” said Munson, 39, who played soccer growing up and at Union High School. “I can’t get hurt like that again. I work for the sheriff ’s office, and they were like, ‘You can’t miss that much work again.’ But I still wanted to play, so I asked, ‘Can I kick?’ and they said yes. So I taught myself how to do that, because it’s not anything like kicking a soccer ball. Kicking a field goal or an extra point is a completely different animal.”

Gilbert, 46, has been on the Threat since 2013 and missed half a season due to knee surgery.

The possibility of another injury doesn’t diminish her drive to play.

“It’s just the competitive nature,” said Gilbert, who played multiple sports at Sapulpa High School and softball at Connors

State College in Muskogee. “It’s definitely not a soft sport, I’ll tell you that. They come at you hard and they tackle hard. Always a risk for injury. I’ve said I was going to quit I don’t know how many times—but it just draws you back.

It’s just a fun sport to play.”

Since none of the women played football growing up, they all needed to learn basic fundamentals (and in many cases even just the rules) upon joining the Threat.

“There’s a lot of teaching,” Mayfield said. “I have a 10-yearold son who has more experience than these women, so it’s like coaching a youth football program. I’m about to go on record on this, but women are much smarter than men, and they retain all that knowledge—but you’ve got to be more intricate with the way you [explain] things. It takes a coach with detail.”

Gilbert, the quarterback, has the difficult task of learning all the offensive plays.

“My first year I played defense, and defense is more just reading and reacting to which way the play is going. Offense is a lot more thinking,” she said. “There are so many plays that can be run.

Memorizing plays when you don’t have a playbook, that’s the biggest challenge. Plus they’re calling signals in that go with the play.

That’s a lot.”

After going on the road to play the Iowa Crush on April 21, the Threat return to LaFortune Stadium to take on the Texas Elite Spartans on Saturday, April 28, at 5 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door or $5 in advance.

Visit facebook.com/TulsaWTF for more information. a April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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ARTS & CULTURE // 35

WOODY GUTHRIE CENTER FIFTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION Saturday, April 21 through Sunday, April 29 Various locations, woodyguthriecenter.org

WGC’s annual blowout spans nine days this year, beginning with Tulsa LitFest events (at left) and culminating in a series of free, genre-jumping concerts at Guthrie Green

TULSA LITFEST

Thursday, April 19 through Sunday, April 22 Various locations, tulsalitfest.org There are more literary events (all free and open to the public) during the inaugural LitFest than we have space to print.

See a shortlist below and find the full schedule at tulsalitfest.org.

Find interviews with several of the fest’s guests, at thetulsavoice.com.

4/19 You’ve Got Mail: Celebrating Nora Ephron, 7 P.M. 4/20 Seven Minutes in Heaven: A Reading of Short Prose, 5–6:30 P.M. An Evening with Kevin Young, Poetry Editor, The New Yorker, 7 P.M. 4/21 Small Press Book Fair, 11 A.M.–4 P.M. An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon, 12 P.M. Native Writing and Theater Workshop: Sterlin Harjo and Mary Kathryn Nagle, 2 P.M. The Naughty Nineties: David Friend of Vanity Fair, 4 P.M. Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Oklahoma Poet Laureate, & Woody Guthrie Celebration, feat. Poetic Justice, 7 P.M. 4/22 Nimrod Journal’s Green Writing: Celebrating the Earth with Poetry, 1 P.M. Bob Dylan’s “Tarantula”: A Chat with Michael Chaiken, Curator of the Bob Dylan Archive, 4 P.M. Literary After Party - Conversation, music, and fun with hosts Grant Jenkins and Tony B. Bring a poem for the open mic! LIVING ARTS OF TULSA, 9 P.M. 36 // ARTS & CULTURE

4/23 Douglas Brinkley: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woody Guthrie, and the Dust Bowl, WGC, 7 P.M. Opening of VR Dust Bowl Experience 4/24 Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives CAIN’S BALLROOM, 8 P.M. 4/25 “Free to Rock” screening and Q&A w/ Doug Yeager, producer, CIRCLE CINEMA, 6 P.M. 4/26 Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight: Remembering Oklahoma’s Green Corn Rebellion a Century Later – Panel discussion WGC, 6 P.M. 4/27 Count Tutu, Red Dirt Rangers, The Harmaleighs, WGC After-school music students GUTHRIE GREEN, 5–10 P.M. 4/28 Special Screening: “A Discussion with Jimmy LaFave,” filmed at WGC’s 4th Anniversary WGC, 10 A.M. Eric Taylor, Larry Long, Phetote Mshairi WGC, 11 A.M.–2:30 P.M. Rev. Sekou, Lance Canales, Tim Easton, Steve Poltz, Cole Quest and the City Pickers 2:30–9 P.M. 4/29 Stephen Petrus: Bob Dylan and the Promise of the Newport Folk Festival, 1963–1965 WGC, 11 A.M. Barry Ollman: Collecting Woody WGC, 12:15 P.M. Mitch Blank: Collecting Dylan WGC, 1:30 P.M. John Fullbright, The Accidentals, Ramy Essam, Ellis Paul, David Amram, and Radoslav Lorkovic 2:30–9 P.M. April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

GILCREASE After Hours Seasons of the Desert April 27 • 7-9 P.M. • FREE

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www.guthriegreen.com THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

ARTS & CULTURE // 37

BEST OF THE REST SPECIAL EVENTS Chefs: A Sizzling Kitchen Showdown // This show is somewhere between “Magic Mike” and “Iron Chef.” // 4/19, 7 p.m., Cox Business Center, coxcentertulsa.com Spring Home & Outdoor Living Expo // Find all kinds of resources for your next DIY project. // 4/20-22, Expo Square, springhomeexpo.com Sand Springs Herbal Affair & Festival // This market and festival will feature more than 100 vendors, plus live music and food. // 4/21, 8 a.m., downtown Sand Springs, sandspringsok.org Tulsa Garden Club 68th Annual Garden Tour // This self-guided tour includes stops at five South Tulsa gardens and two interiors. The tour benefits Tulsa Garden Center’s mansion restoration.// 4/21, 10 a.m., various locations, tulsagardenclub.org Trooper Leon Bench Blue Run // 4/21, 7 p.m., VFW Post 1320, trooperleonbenchfoundation.org Earth Day Festival // Celebrate Earth Day with live music by Randy Crouch, Oceanaut, Brujo Roots, Steve Liddell, Sistas In Rhythm, and more, as well as speeches by experts on environmental issues. There will also be activities, quilt-making, food, and more.

Presented by Tulsa Earth Coalition.// 4/22, 12 p.m., Guthrie Green, facebook.com/tulsaearthcoalition Green Writing: Celebrating the Earth with Poetry // Nimrod International Journal and Tulsa Botanic Garden will explore the connections of poetry and nature with readings and the opportunity to add an original haiku to the Garden’s haiku tree.// 4/22, 1 p.m., Tulsa Botanic Garden, tulsabotanic.org The Great Outdoor Recreation Expo // 4/27-29, Expo Square, kvoo.com/homepage-showcase/ the-great-outdoor-recreation-expo-2018 Philbrook Grand Wine Tasting // Taste wine from 50 acclaimed vintners from around the world and culinary delights from 20 regional restaurants. Proceeds benefit Philbrook’s educational programming and museum operations.// 4/27, 6p.m., Philbrook Museum of Art, wine.philbrook.org Oklahoma Renaissance Festival // Step back to the days of yore and experience Renaissance England right here in Oklahoma. The Festival is open every weekend from April 28 through June 3.// 4/286/3, The Castle of Muskogee, okcastle.com

PERFORMING ARTS Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella // 4/19, Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center, brokenarrowpac.com Happy Days // Richie Cunningham, Potsie, Ralph Malph, and the Fonz are back to help save Arnold’s Drive In from demolition by hosting a dance contest and wrestling match. // 4/20-27, Broken Arrow Community Playhouse, bacptheatre.com

Great Drinks • Live Music • Comedy Nights

The Irish Curse // Size matters to the members of an Irish-American self-help group who share a similar shortcoming. This bawdy comedy presented

by Tulsa Project Theatre is a revealing portrait of how society defines masculinity. // 4/20-29, Tulsa PAC Liddy Doenges Theatre, tulsapac.com Mahler & Faingold // Noam Faingold, director of the bART Conservatory, presents the world premiere of his piece Others, followed by a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony by Signature Symphony. // 4/21, VanTrease PACE, signaturesymphony.org Takács Quartet // The Grammy-winning Quartet performs Mozrt’s Quartet in G Major, K.387, Dohnányi’s Quartet No. 2, and Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.// 4/22, Tulsa PAC - John H. Williams Theatre, tulsapac.com The Sunshine Boys // An aging vaudevillian comedy duo reunites for a TV special. // 4/27-5/6, Sapulpa Community Theatre, sapulpatheatre.org

38 // ARTS & CULTURE

Turandot // 4/27-29, Tulsa PAC - Chapman Music Hall, tulsapac.com Trixie Mattel - Now With Moving Parts // Fresh off her win on season three of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” Trixie Mattell embarks on her first solo tour, performing music from her new album One Stone. // 4/27, Tulsa PAC - John H. Williams Theatre, dragfans.com Shen Yun // The Chinese dance company, inspired by hundreds of years of tradition, returns to Tulsa. // 5/1-2, Tulsa PAC - Chapman Music Hall, tulsapac.com

COMEDY Landry, Barry Laminack // 4/18-21, Loony Bin, tulsa.loonybincomedy.com Comedy Night // 4/18, VFW Post 577’s Centennial Lounge, facebook.com/centennilLoungeTulsa Cloud Cuckoo Land Improv // 4/20, 8 p.m., Rabbit Hole Improv, rabbitholeimprov.com Comedy Clinic // 4/21, 8 p.m., Rabbit Hole Improv, rabbitholeimprov.com The Nicks // 4/22, 9 p.m., Blackbird on Pearl, facebook.com/bazarentertainment Soundpony Comedy Hour w/ Mat Alano-Martin, Andrew Deacon // 4/23, 7:30 p.m., Soundpony, thesoundpony.com Paul Hooper // 4/25-28, Loony Bin, tulsa. loonybincomedy.com Comedy Night // 4/25, VFW Post 577’s Centennial Lounge, facebook.com/centennilLoungeTulsa Comfort Creatures // 4/27, 8 p.m., Rabbit Hole Improv, rabbitholeimprov.com Razor Laughs Improv // 4/28, 8 p.m., Rabbit Hole Improv, rabbitholeimprov.com T.J. Green, Jeremy Beck, Anna Rouw, Nicole Miller, Hynece Brown, Byron Trimble // 4/29, 9 p.m., Venue Shrine, facebook.com/bazarentertainment

SPORTS Smoke & Guns MMA & Boxing Night // 4/21, 7 p.m., BOK Center, bokcenter.com Tulsa Drillers vs Nortwest Arkansas Naturals // 4/21, 7 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com Roughneck Roller Derby vs Oklahoma Victory Dolls’ Rornado Alley Roller Girls // 4/21, 6 p.m., Rhema Ninowski Rec Center, roughneckrollerderby.com Tulsa Rugby Club Men vs Dallas Rugby D2 // 4/21, 2 p.m., Tulsa Rugby Pitch, tulsarugbyclub.com Tulsa Drillers vs Nortwest Arkansas Naturals // 4/22, 1 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com Tulsa Drillers vs Nortwest Arkansas Naturals // 4/27, 7 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com Tulsa Threat vs Texas Elite // 4/28, 5 p.m., LaFortune Stadium, facebook.com/tulsawtf OU vs OSU: Bedlam Baseball // 4/28, 7 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com OU vs OSU: Bedlam Baseball // 4/29, 2 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com Tulsa Drillers vs Nortwest Arkansas Naturals // 4/30, 11 a.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com Tulsa Drillers vs Arkansas Travelers // 5/1, 7 p.m., ONEOK Field, tulsadrillers.com April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

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ARTS & CULTURE // 39

musicnotes

TO THE POINT Calexico’s newest album pleads the poetic path

by LIZ BLOOD

John Canvertino and Joey Burns of Calexico | JAIRO ZAVALA RUIZ

S

ince 1996, Calexico has released ten albums; their newest of which is this year’s The Thread That Keeps Us. Their music feels very much of the frontera, the U.S./Mexico border, with mariachi, conjunto, Tejano, indie rock, Americana, Latin rock, and alternative influences (plus, as singer/multiinstrumentalist Joey Burns points out in this interview, singer-songwriter styles). The band’s 20-plusyears-in-the-making sound is both timeless and evolving, much like the land from which they hail.

Their shows flaunt a medley of instruments—Calexico is like a small orchestra with trumpets, guitars, keyboards, an accordion, glockenspiel, vibraphone, Theremin, cello, and so forth. Calexico returns to Tulsa to play The Vanguard on Saturday, April 21.

LIZ BLOOD: The Thread That Keeps Us has been called the most explicitly political album Calexico has ever put out. Did you make it with that intention, or did it just evolve that way as you wrote?

JOEY BURNS: Well, you know, every record has got a dose of the head-and-the-heart blues. It definitely felt like our hearts sank 40 // MUSIC

and our heads hurt after the last presidential election. But there’s a lot of material on there, and ours is a more poetic path, as far as dealing with frustrations or topics that delve into social and political concerns. One of the feelings that John [Convertino] and I had was that we wanted to get into the studio as soon as possible to map out some of this frustration. We went to northern California, and that sparked some similar feelings that I had when I grew up in California—like the cycle of a return to a conservative mentality and perspective. I imagined characters and followed them, and they helped me to write and talk about things both big and small. And it helped [me] get into the process.

Music comes naturally and quickly, and the writing takes more time.

But in northern California it all fell into place—being in this natural, secluded safe haven. It’s incredible how much nature is present north of San Francisco—like in the John Muir Woods and some of the towns there that are staving off development. That was really inspiring. So, I imagined the characters of these kids and what they’d think growing up there today.

BLOOD: Your song “Girl in the Forest” asks “What part of nature can

you honestly say / is beyond your explanations for short-term gain?”

Elsewhere you’ve said the chaos and noise on Thread is meant to reflect “where we are as a planet.”

Can you explain what you mean?

BURNS: I grew up in southern California, and being near the coast I saw the horizon over the Pacific with a thin layer of brown smog.

We had smog alert days where we couldn’t go out. It affected me physically and emotionally. It worried me then, and it worries me now. A lot of the Western world—especially the U.S.—has been leading the charge for being concerned mostly about profit and not thinking about a bigger picture, which includes the planet, animals, wildlife, ecosystems, ourselves, future generations.

That song is also inspired by my [twin] daughters, who are six going on seven. As repetitive as it sounds, I want them to have some semblance of nature that is untouched. I was thinking about painting the scene of protest, corporations and machines against protester and environmental concerns. My daughters responded to me with the simple question, “Why can’t the song just be about a girl who talks with the forest and the animals

herself ?” I thought, well, that’s so simple and beautiful and to the point. I worked on it with them— we talked about ideas and themes at the kitchen table. Talking about and then finishing something is important to show your kids and your community.

“Dead in the Water” is another song that isn’t overtly political, but it is inspired by people and corporations. It’s about the outlook, the attitude driving some of this economic conservatism. I wanted to touch on that in the way writers and musicians do, which is through story and song. There are enough blogs and Twitter feeds out there. We’re interested in bringing people together and showing an open-minded approach to stories with music that evokes mood and character.

There’s definitely more noisy guitar on this album, too. There’s some electronic noise and it matches the theme and direction of this record. It gives a sense of tension.

Tension, for musicians, used in the right way can help bring more mood into the areas that you’re trying to convey. Distortion is good, you know? That reminds me of the use of analog recording style versus digital. Digital is more clean but analog has more grit, which sounds and feels really good. Even April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

though this record was recorded digitally, we mixed it using analog outboard gear.

BLOOD: You mention the artist James Turrell in “The End of the World with You.” (“Turn up the microphone on the national parks / You gotta switch something off if you wanna get it right / A crater full of wisdom in James Turrell’s eyes”) Is his work significant to Calexico or this album?

BURNS: Yeah, I’ve always been intrigued with his work. And here in Arizona [where I live], he’s got a project—“Roden Crater”—that he’s been working on. I like the idea behind it. You’re focusing on framing light. It seems almost ridiculous in one sense, but then it provokes and engages the viewer to think further than just looking at a one-dimensional painting or sculpture. It brings you in. And then where does it take you? How does it affect your life? His work is the kind that has a profound effect on people. And that he is still going strong is amazing. I liked that line, “Crater full of wisdom in James Turrell’s eyes”—just putting things together and enjoying words and associations.

BURNS: We live in southern Arizona, which used to be part of Mexico, so historically there’s a lot of collaboration here. A lot of accumulation of culture and people in this area. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s what attracted me to this place. When we were looking for a band name we thought the town name [Calexico] was really intriguing because it’s a hybrid— and on the other side of the border is Mexicali. When people ask about our band, I say it’s like

singer-songwriter with a lot of instrumentals and instruments, a mix of orchestra that highlights this region. The thing about a place like Arizona or southern California is that it’s a universal place. You can see in other areas of the world where cultures come together and celebrate differences.

It’s what made the U.S. great—the open-minded and open-hearted quality. That’s what has propelled us in our band and led us to explore traditions and technologies

and genres through various times and around the globe. It’s a celebration of people coming together and finding ways in which we can make music. a

CALEXICO WITH RYLEY WALKER Sat., April 21, 7 p.m.

The Vanguard | 222 N. Main St. $20–$50 thevanguardtulsa.com

BLOOD: Your previous album, Edge of the Sun, featured many guest artists. What guests, if any, do you have on Thread?

BURNS: Rather than repeating ourselves, like, “Oh, now who can we bring in?”—because on Edge every song had a guest—this record I wanted to get done as soon as possible. I didn’t want to spend time asking and inviting and communicating and waiting for parts. And I wanted to feature our band. The members we’ve been playing with for 10 and 20 years are remarkable. They make us shine. And it made sense because this album is more about home.

There is a quest for finding what home is—and preserving or maintaining it. What is it? What does it mean to us? What is the thread that keeps us?

BLOOD: Calexico is a city on the U.S./Mexico border and also a portmanteau of California and Mexico. How does the geography, or place, inform your sound?

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

MUSIC // 41

musicnotes

Weeping rainbows Acid Queen frontman Jack VanBaton aims for happiness with a new EP

by DAMION SHADE

W

hen Jack VanBaton was 17 he walked from New Orleans to Tulsa. It was 2010, and he’d been living in a tent city under an overpass with survivors from Hurricane Katrina.

“Before I got out of high school I went homeless.” VanBaton said. “So, I did the whole hitchhiking thing and went all over the place. I walked all over Louisiana. I was obsessed with that whole Beat thing, you know? Like “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac. I wanted to experience it for myself.

Back then I was trying eat a meal a day and playing music on the side of the road. I walked to Tulsa and got with my girl Jamie. I just kind of went from there.”

VanBaton, who is originally from Henryetta, began playing music in earnest after his long trek to Tulsa. After years of wandering, he’s releasing a new EP under the moniker Acid Queen with a live performance at The Beehive Lounge on April 27.

The cover of the self-titled EP was designed by former bandmate, guitarist Billy Reeves, and features a technicolor woman in sunglasses weeping psychedelic rainbow tears and smoking a cigarette. It’s disorienting but appropriate—this record is rife with emotional contradictions. These are polished rowdy rock anthems swarming with infectious guitar riffs and vocal hooks— but also with ambivalence. Just a few years after walking to Tulsa, VanBaton left everything behind again. He moved back to Henryetta to care for his ailing grandmother and still lives there today. It was an emotional low point, but the period got him back to writing and inspired most of the songs on the new EP. “I lost a lot of stuff … I lost my job. I lost my house, and I was trying to have fun just by 42 // MUSIC

Acid Queen: Kris Penrod, Jack VanBaton, Wesley Barnett | GREG BOLLINGER

myself because it was just me and [my grandmother] back home,” VanBaton said. “I was just trying to have fun and trying to not take things too seriously. But some of these songs were also about the relationship I had in Tulsa before I went back home. It kind of went south. So, I was also pretty sad and angry, you know? Back then I was writing a lot of songs.

They were kind of like sad Beatles.

Instead of [songs] about holding hands, they were all about death and debauchery.”

A chance encounter with a local producer pried VanBaton from his doldrums, and he started working on another record.

“I was planning on moving to Mexico. Then [producer] CM

Rodriguez hit me up. He’d found some rough recordings I did.

I made a bunch of shit on my iPhone. He was like, ‘Hit me up when you get back from Mexico and we’ll start cutting some stuff.’

He did the Planet What album recently, as well. This album’s just the two of us. CM played drums and keys and guitar on one song.

He’d start laying down drums and ask if the feel was right, and then I’d lay down a guitar track and we’d go from there.”

Rodriguez channeled VanBaton’s raucous ambivalence into an energetic, accessible rock record.

These songs sound fun even when the subject matter is not.

VanBaton’s voice varies between the wry, insouciant deadpan

of the early Strokes albums and the raw-tape, saturated sound of classic ‘70s rock. Acid Queen embraces VanBaton’s emotional contrasts and plays them into memorable choruses. On the opening track, “You Bought It,” he laments, “I thought my mind could contain all the words been left unsaid / Girl, it burns like a flame, my heart can’t get no rest.”

Then—with what sounds like abandon—he sings, “You know if you break it you bought it / You know if you break a heart it might be something you regret.”

Like the Beat poets he grew up admiring, VanBaton contemplates impermanence. Love is boobytrap on this album. It’s a fascinating object to be celebrated but never completely trusted.

For years VanBaton struggled to find bandmates. His constant travels combined with early failures left him hurt and isolated for a time. He even tried the El Paso Hot Button route, playing electric guitar and kick drum alone, but with the release of Acid Queen he’s built a three-piece, which he hopes to take on the road in the next year.

Wesley Barnett, who played for the Dirty Creek Bandits, plays bass.

Kris Penrod plays drums.

“We’re doing the EP release, and then we want to integrate a full set to take to the studio,” VanBaton said. “Hopefully we take that and do some touring. I just want people to have fun and not take life too seriously. Nothing lasts. Might as well enjoy it while you can.” a

ACID QUEEN EP RELEASE WITH SPECIAL GUESTS CARLTON HESSTON AND HUGG Friday, April 27, 9 p.m.

The Beehive Lounge | 2405 E. Admiral Blvd. facebook.com/acidqueenband April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

MUSIC // 43

musiclistings Wed // Apr 18 Los Cabos - Jenks – Nick Whitaker Mercury Lounge – Jared Tyler & Seth Lee Jones Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame – Shelby & Nathan Eicher – ($10) Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Rivers Edge Soul City – Don & Stephen White Soundpony – Joseph Huber, Sage Flower, Jacob McCoy The Colony – Tom Skinner Science Project Wyld Hawgz – Open Mic

Thurs // Apr 19 Blackbird On Pearl – The Hooten Hallers, Chicago Farmer – ($8-$10) Brady Theater – *Tedeschi Trucks Band – ($39.50$79.50) Flying Monkey Tavern – Ronnie Eaton Hard Rock Casino - Riffs – Scott Eastman, 90lb Wrench Hard Rock Casino - The Joint – 38 Special – ($38) Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Laron Simpson Los Cabos - Jenks – Brent Giddens Duo Los Cabos - Owasso – Caleb Fellenstein Mercury Lounge – Paul Benjaman River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – DJ Johnny Bananas River Spirit Casino - Paradise Cove – *Three Dog Night – ($20-$25) Soul City – The Begonias Soundpony – Ring Down, Dopamine Dreams The Colony – Tovar’s Western Night The Hunt Club – James Robert Webb The Venue Shrine – Govinda, Kaminanda, Templo – ($18-$23) Yeti – *Pre-4/20 Get Down w/ Rich Maserati, Adam The God, Mr. Burns, Discord, Dismonj, Gutter Villain, The Neighbors

Fri // Apr 20 14 North – *4/20 After Party w/ Dismondj, Kudos, K5, Thrill, David Puffin, Damion Shade – ($10) American Legion Post 308 – Double “00” Buck Bad Ass Renee’s – DJ MO Blackbird On Pearl – Machine in the Mountain, Malus Dextra, Let Slip the Dogs, Mudd Flux, Blackthorne-Elite – ($5) Cain’s Ballroom – ALARM58, Scott Musick, Tom Ferrier, Bria & Joey Guns Dusty Dog Pub – James Groves Band Fassler Hall – *Verse & The Vapors, Sigeppi, The Dull Drums, DJ Spencer LG – ($5) Hard Rock Casino - Riffs – Barrett Lewis, Jumpsuit Love Lefty’s on Greenwood – The Percolaters Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Echelon Los Cabos - Jenks – Stix N Stones Los Cabos - Owasso – Rockwell Duo Mercury Lounge – Redwitch Johnny, Crobone Osage Casino - NINE18 Bar – Deuces Wild pH Community House – Echoes & Copycats, Sleeping Cranes, Blue Snider, Drew Hale – ($5) River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Travis Kidd River Spirit Casino - Volcano Stage – Jacob Dement & Co Soul City – Pilgrim – ($10) Soundpony – Lyrical Smoke The Colony – Stylees – ($5) The Hunt Club – Straight Shot The Max Retropub – Boo Ya w/ DJ Moody The Run – 5E The Vanguard – The Classless, CO$M, The Neighbor$, The Dischord, The Beaten Daylights – ($10) 44 // MUSIC

The Venue Shrine – Ian Moore w/ Paul Benjaman, Andy Brewer – ($10-$15) Whiskey 918 & The Fur Shop – *JaneFest w/ Howie Day, Mobley, Levi Parham, JB & The Moonshine Band, Danny Baker, Grind & More – ($25-$150) Wyld Hawgz – RPM Yeti – Spaded & Jaded Anniversary Party w/ DJ Afistaface & More – ($5) Yeti – Cucumber Mike’s Happy Hour

Sat // Apr 21 Bad Ass Renee’s – Spook, Follow The Buzzards, Lights-Out On Sheridan, Forbidden Serenity Hard Rock Casino - Riffs – Empire, Hook Lefty’s on Greenwood – Faye Moffett Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Speakeasy Los Cabos - Jenks – Doctors of Replay Los Cabos - Owasso – Maveric N Goose Mercury Lounge – Drawing Blanks, Acid Queen Osage Casino - NINE18 Bar – RPM Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – The Get Down Band River Spirit Casino - Paradise Cove – The Doobie Brothers – ($55-$70) River Spirit Casino - Volcano Stage – Brent Giddens Soul City – Dustin Arbuckle & Damn Nations – ($10) Soundpony – Afistaface The Beehive Lounge – *The Mules, Smoochie Wallus ft. John Paul Ratliff, Peter Bedgood – ($5) The Colony – Stephen White Group – ($5) The Hunt Club – JT and the Dirtbox Wailers The Max Retropub – DJ Aaron Bernard The Run – RockFisch The Vanguard – *Calexico, Ryley Walker – ($20-$50) The Venue Shrine – Chris Duarte Group – ($10-$15) VFW Post 577 – *Route 66 Harmonica Club 2018 Summit – ($25) Whiskey 918 & The Fur Shop – *JaneFest w/ Augustana, BC and the Big Rig, My So Called Band, Dalton Domino, Trett Charles Band, & More – ($25-$150) Wyld Hawgz – 5th Element

Sun // Apr 22 Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Daniel Jordan Los Cabos - Jenks – The Fabulous Two Man Band Mercury Lounge – Brandon Clark Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Jake Flint Soul City – Bruner & Eicher Soundpony – Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides, Caregiver for a Monster, The Beaten Daylights The Colony – Paul Benjaman’s Sunday Nite Thing The Run – Open Jam The Venue Shrine – Watermelon Slim – ($8.50-$10) Wyld Hawgz – Exposure Rock Jam Yeti – *Lauren Barth & Jesse Aycock

Mon // Apr 23 Blackbird On Pearl – The Portal Centennial Lounge @ VFW Post 577 – Dave Les Smith, Papa Foxtrot & Friends River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – The Marriotts Soundpony – North by North, The Fabulous Minx The Colony – Seth Lee Jones Yeti – The Situation ft. Adam The God

Tues // Apr 24 Blackbird On Pearl – The Pearl Jam Cain’s Ballroom – Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives – ($30-$45) Gypsy Coffee House – Open Mic

Lefty’s on Greenwood – *Sarah Maud, Sean Al-Jibouri & Dean Demerritt Mercury Lounge – Wink Burcham Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame – Depot Jazz & Blues Jams River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Dane Arnold Soul City – Dustin Pittsley The Colony – Singer/Songwriter Night Yeti – Writers’ Night

Wed // Apr 25 Cain’s Ballroom – MISTERWIVES, flor, Flint Eastwood – ($25-$40) Hard Rock Casino - Riffs – Wayne Garner Los Cabos - Jenks – Ronnie Pyle Mercury Lounge – SIRSY Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame – Shelby & Nathan Eicher – ($10) Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Brent Giddens Soul City – Don & Stephen White Soundpony – Molasses Disaster, Carlton Hesston, Cucumber and the Suntans The Colony – Tom Skinner Science Project Wyld Hawgz – Open Mic

Thurs // Apr 26 Blackbird On Pearl – Kalo BOK Center – *Judas Priest – ($42.50-$128) Cain’s Ballroom – *Of Montreal, Locate S, 1 – ($16-$18) Hard Rock Casino - Riffs – Weston Horn, Stars Lefty’s on Greenwood – Branjae Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Brian & Joey Los Cabos - Jenks – Maveric and Goose Duo Los Cabos - Owasso – Steve Liddell Lot No. 6 – Chloe Johns Mercury Lounge – Paul Benjaman River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – DJ Johnny Bananas River Spirit Casino - Paradise Cove – Foreigner – ($50-$325) Soul City – The Begonias Soundpony – Big Ro TV The Colony – The Soup Kitchen w/ Dane Arnold The Hunt Club – Ego Culture The Vanguard – Die Young, Piece of Mind, Give Way, Undervalued – ($10) The Venue Shrine – Bushwick Bill of The Geto Boys – ($15.25-$20) Yeti – Rock N Roe w/ Charlie Redd and the Full Flava Kings – ($5)

Fri // Apr 27 American Legion Post 308 – Wiskey Bent Bad Ass Renee’s – DJ MO Barkingham Palace – Population Control, Scathed, Violent Affair, Shoog Night Guthrie Green – *WGC Anniversary: Count Tutu, Red Dirt Rangers, The Harmaleighs, WGC AfterSchool music students Lefty’s on Greenwood – *Stephanie Oliver & Timbo Kelley Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – DJ & The Band Los Cabos - Jenks – Charlie Redd and Full Flava Band Los Cabos - Owasso – Local Spin Mercury Lounge – Scott Yoder Osage Casino - NINE18 Bar – The Hi-Fidelics River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – The Tiptons River Spirit Casino - Volcano Stage – Dane Arnold and the Soup Soul City – Scott Musick & Friends, Susan Herndon Soundpony – *Steph Simon, DJ Wallie Mayne The Beehive Lounge – *Acid Queen EP Release w/ Carlton Hesston, hUGg The Colony – George Barton, A.H. Pierce & The Arrows – ($5) The Hunt Club – Dante and the Hawks The Max Retropub – DJ Ali Shaw

The Run – House Party The Vanguard – Ingested, Bodysnatcher, Signes of the Swarm, Aberrant Construct, Fester – ($12-$15) The Venue Shrine – Bart Crow – ($7-$10) Wyld Hawgz – America’s Most Wanted Yeti – Okipa, The Dull Drums, Golden Ones

Sat // Apr 28 727 Club – Omerta Yae, Chuk Cooley Blackbird On Pearl – *Robert Hoefling Band, Chris Lee Becker – ($5) Brady Theater – Vance Joy, lovelytheband – ($36$42.50) Cain’s Ballroom – 80s Prom – ($22-$50) Guthrie Green – *WGC Anniversary: Rev. Sekou, Lance Canales, Tim Easton, Steve Poltz, Cole Quest and the City Pickers Lefty’s on Greenwood – Mary Cogan Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Scott Pendergrass Band Los Cabos - Jenks – Zodiac Los Cabos - Owasso – Weston N Barrett Mercury Lounge – Handmade Moments Osage Casino - NINE18 Bar – Travis Kidd Band Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Another Alibi River Spirit Casino - Paradise Cove – Eli Young Band – ($25-$40) River Spirit Casino - Volcano Stage – Jesse Alan Soul City – *Richele Sigrist Album Release – ($10) Soundpony – Pleasuredome The Colony – Brad James Band – ($5) The Hunt Club – RPM The Max Retropub – Mad Jamz w/ Jeff Bianca The Run – Infinity Uncle Bently’s – Circle Woody Guthrie Center – *WGC Anniversary: Eric Taylor, Larry Long, Phetote Mshairi Wyld Hawgz – IMZADI Yeti – Cucumber Mike’s Happy Hour

Sun // Apr 29 Guthrie Green – *WGC Anniversary: John Fullbright, The Accidentals, Ramy Essam, Ellis Paul, David Amram and Radoslav Lorkovic Los Cabos - Broken Arrow – Rockwell Los Cabos - Jenks – The Fabulous Two Man Band Mercury Lounge – Brandon Clark Pit Stop – DJ MO River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Jake Flint Soul City – Bruner & Eicher Soundpony – Zigtebra, Oceanaut, The Earslips The Colony – Paul Benjaman’s Sunday Nite Thing The Run – Open Jam Wyld Hawgz – Exposure Rock Jam

Mon // Apr 30 Blackbird On Pearl – The Portal Centennial Lounge @ VFW Post 577 – Dave Les Smith, Papa Foxtrot & Friends River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – The Marriotts Soundpony – Mouton, Echo Bones, Colouradio The Colony – Seth Lee Jones The Vanguard – The Maine, The Wrecks, The Technicolors – ($20-$50) Yeti – The Situation

Tues // May 1 Blackbird On Pearl – The Pearl Jam Gypsy Coffee House – Open Mic Mercury Lounge – Wink Burcham Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame – Depot Jazz & Blues Jams River Spirit Casino - 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar – Dane Arnold Soul City – Dustin Pittsley The Colony – Singer/Songwriter Night Yeti – Writers’ Night April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

filmphiles

filmphiles

Lior Ashkenazi and Sarah Adler in “Foxtrot” | SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

TWO-STATE DISSOLUTION Family tragedy cuts to the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict IF MOVIES WERE TRULY JUDGED ON MERITS alone, “Foxtrot” would dominate an awards season all the way through Oscar night.

When you look past what keeps a film like this out of the zeitgeist—an Israeli production with actors unknown to the West and a no-name director helming his second-ever dramatic feature—what you actually see is filmmaking that’s secondto-none.

Soul-baring performances of heartbreaking anguish intensify a true mastery of cinematic craft, one that transcends high production values to an evocative aesthetic teeming with intention and purpose, the kind that—from cinematography to production design to editing—can only be defined as capital-A Art. Elevating it even further, “Foxtrot” tackles a complex issue (the Israel/Palestinian conflict) from a deeply personal perspective, and it resonates much more convincingly than a slant of pedantic political soapboxing ever could (or would).

Two Israeli parents learn of the death of their son, a soldier killed in the line of duty. This shattering news is turned upside-down by a shocking revelation about thirty minutes in, provoking a search for what really happened. “Foxtrot” is a fitting title for that maddening pursuit; it’s a dance that keeps its participants shuffling around in circles.

The opening half-hour focuses primarily on the father (Lior Ashkenazi, “Footnote”). It’s an immersion into the initial hours of unspeakable grief and the numbing despair of necessary plans. The military officers guiding these steps have a detached procedural tone, magnifying the inhumanity of the loss.

Director Samuel Maoz’s visual lanTHE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

guage has the same effect. From the extended close-up, which never cuts away from the father as he processes the news, to stark dramatic angles (overhead wides, choreographed tracking, and more), Maoz amplifies the father’s disorientation, queasiness, and emotional claustrophobia.

The film’s second act then flashes back in time to the son’s final days at the rural military outpost, a checkpoint so remote that nothing ever happens there—until it does. Somehow, Maoz makes the tedium at this station equally fascinating, comical at times, tense at others, and poignantly revealing by way of the late-night conversations he depicts there.

Maoz also shows what it’s like for innocent Palestinians to be put under intimidation and scrutiny simply for trying to cross through Israeli territory.

For the final stretch Maoz brings us back to the present and the parents. With vulnerable candor, they reconcile truths and regrets. It’s a necessary confrontation between husband and wife; they offer confessions both sad and poetic.

A Hollywood adaptation wouldn’t commit to the integrity of this three-act structure—it likely would insist on cutting back and forth between present and past (if for no other reason than to keep the star from being off-screen too long), and it would be much lesser for it. The focus on each experience helps the story and themes to crescendo before packing their punches.

The truth of what happened is a devastating consequence of the Israeli/Palestinian divide, one where innocents on both sides are victims of intransigent ideologies. It’s a fictional story, but versions of it exist in the real word. “Foxtrot” mourns them all. –JEFF HUSTON

“Isle of Dogs” | COURTESY

BEST IN SHOW Wes Anderson adds to his oeuvre with ‘Isle of Dogs’ AMONG AUTEURS, WES ANDERSON SEEMS peerless.

Filmmakers are granted that title by leaving their distinct stamps on cinema, and most will also enthusiastically cop to the influences that shaped them. Often, we can see those influences for ourselves. It’s one of the joys and thrills of cinephilia.

But no one else does what Anderson does, or ever really has.

His cinematic universe is idiosyncratic, and rather than expanding it with new genres and styles he goes the opposite way, absorbing everything into his own.

Anderson is a genre unto himself.

His twee milieu is on vivid display in “Isle of Dogs,” his second foray into stop-motion animation. Set in a future Asian dystopia, all canines have mysteriously been stricken with dog-specific diseases and quarantined to Trash Island, a distant waste depository.

The dogs miss their cushy pasts, but their melancholy goes deeper. They really miss their masters—their best friends.

Chief (voiced by Bryan Cranston) is the exception. He’s a stray, a tough-asnails cynic, and his arc is the film’s most moving.

The dogs are a hilariously droll motley crew voiced by many from Anderson’s usual troupe: Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, and Jeff Goldblum (his purveyance of rumors is a hilarious running gag).

When a boy pilots a small plane to Trash Island in search of his beloved pet,

the dogs rally to honor his devotion. This inspires others on the mainland, including an activistic foreign exchange student (Greta Gerwig).

“Isle of Dogs” is crafted with Anderson’s scrupulous detail, vibrant colors and textures, deadpan erudition, and quixotic ennui, all at an epic scope.

Some of Anderson’s detractors claim his artful precision has no emotional entry point, that it’s hindered by a distant remove. Some dismiss it as smug. I’ve never understood that. If Anderson shares any trait with other auteurs, it’s Spielberg’s sentimentality. Add dogs to the mix and you get something truly heartfelt.

Thematically, some might discern a coded allegory to Trumpish nationalism, the resistance thereof, and the Orwellian hellscape they fear our 45th president would love to impose. That’s hard to buy, though. Anderson has never been a political filmmaker, and “Isle of Dogs” doesn’t feel driven by soapbox metaphors, either.

In fact, Anderson’s fables often pit oppressive power structures against the pure ideals of protagonist underdogs (even eccentric ones), whether it’s Max Fischer vs.

Rushmore (“Rushmore”) or, in this case, a boy and dogs vs. the Kobayashi dynasty.

Anderson’s two decades of filmmaking don’t reveal an artist trying new things.

He’s honing a singular style. Rather than experimenting with his palette, he doubles down, zeroes in, and perfects.

–JEFF HUSTON FILM & TV // 45

A BRIEF RUNDOWN OF WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE CIRCLE CINEMA CONTINUING ISLE OF DOGS (See review on pg. 45.)

OPENING APRIL 20 BEST F(R)IENDS A new film from the duo behind “The Room” (a.k.a. the worst film ever made, as portrayed in “The Disaster Artist”). Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero star in this thriller/comedy about a drifter who encounters a bizarre mortician and begins to realize he’s hiding a mysterious past.

ITZHAK A new documentary portrait about the American-Israeli violin maestro Itzhak Perlman.

OPENING APRIL 27 YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE Joaquin Phoenix stars as a traumatized veteran who tracks down missing girls.

This thriller from writer/director Lynne Ramsay (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”) has been hailed as a “Taxi Driver” for the new century. Phoenix won the prize for Best Actor at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Rated R. LEAN ON PETE A fifteen-year-old goes to Portland for a summer job with a washed-up horse trainer and forms a bond with a failing racehorse. From director Andrew Haigh (“45 Years”), it co-stars Steve Zahn, Chloë Sevigny, and Steve Buscemi. Rated R. LOVE AFTER LOVE In this examination of grief, a woman and her two adult sons struggle after the death of their husband/father in this poignantly comic drama. Andie MacDowell and Chris O’Dowd star.

SPECIAL EVENTS NATIVE SPOTLIGHT: 100 YEARS The true “David vs. Goliath” story of Elouise Cobell, a woman from the Blackfeet tribe who won a $3.4 billion class action lawsuit for 300,000 Native Americans against the U.S. Government for mismanagement of mineral-rich lands by the Department of the Interior.

Pre-show reception begins at 6:00 p.m.

(Sat. April 19, 7:00 p.m.)

MIND GAME (2004) Circle Anime Club presents this modern cult classic from Masaaki Yuasa, a colorfully vibrant and super-trippy tale about a loser who has an encounter with God and is determined to change his life. (Fri. & Sat. April 21, 10:00 p.m.)

THE EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY OF LEON RUSSELL This unique multimedia fundraiser event for the Leon Russell Monument Fund is led by historian Steve Todoroff. He traces the life of Tulsa’s Russell from his 1942 birth to his singular accomplishments. Tickets $40; can be purchased at circlecinema.com.

(Sat. April 21, 10:00 a.m.)

FREE TO ROCK A new documentary about how rock & roll helped bring an end to the Cold War. Narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, with The Beatles, Billy Joel, Metallica, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, and more. Screening followed

by Q&A with producer Doug Yeager. Preshow Tulsa FMAC mixer begins at 6:00 p.m. (Wed. April 25, 7:00 p.m.)

DREAM OUT LOUD: A U2 DOCUMENTARY The night before U2 opens their new tour at the BOK Center, this new documentary explores fans’ deep and abiding connection with the band, its music, and each other. Tickets $25. (Tue. May 1, 7:30 p.m.)

FREE IT ’S L E G A L T IL L

Tulsa’rsee F ONLY u na Marij yaer Law

Free legal representation for first offense marijuana possession.

Tulsa District & City Courts only.

No juvenile cases.

Reasonable fees for other charges.

Some restrictions apply.

Michael Fairchild • Attorney at Large • 918-58-GRASS (584-7277) 46 // FILM & TV

popradar

Maxwell Jenkins in Netflix’s “Lost in Space” | COURTESY

SPACE BINGING Netflix is go-for-launch with its ‘Lost In Space’ reboot

STREAM IT, WILL ROBINSON. Once you get past the sci-fi glitz, it’s not surprising to see that Netflix’s reimagining of “Lost in Space” is a conventional family drama. What is surprising is that it becomes much more than that.

A fresh take on the 1960s series, “Lost in Space” isn’t a show that forces you to wait through seven episodes to get to the good stuff. It’s not instantly addictive either, but by the halfway point of this first season’s 10-episode run, don’t be surprised if you find yourself binging to the finish.

The most fascinating aspect of its escalating intrigue is the robot, of all things, who is transformed from a boy’s techy sidekick to a mysterious, enigmatic being. The E.T./Elliot-styled metaphysical connection between Will and the sentient droid may mask a lurking Manchurian trigger. The robot makes an iconic impression.

It doesn’t, however, undergird a broader mythology. The series, with a gender-diverse team of writers and directors, wisely bypasses “Lost”- or “Battlestar Galactica”-like ambitions. Instead, an expansive narrative trajectory reveals itself by raising stakes beyond what’s expected.

Legitimate perils and cliffhangers don’t have self-evident solutions; that’s the essence of good drama. Late-season callbacks to early episode markers also provide satisfying payoffs—even gasps.

The basic premise is the same: It’s the future and humans are colonizing new planets. The Robinsons are members of the Jupiter 2, one ship in a bigger fleet headed for an idyllic fresh start. A traumatic event splits the convoy apart, crashing the Robinsons onto the polar region of an unknown planet.

The core characters are also the same: parents John and Maureen, oldest daughter Judy, middle sister Penny, and youngest boy Will. There’s also the scheming Dr. Smith, but replacing Jonathan Harris’s comically effete foil is a dangerously duplicitous Parker Posey. She’s the Phantom Menace of the series. This Smith never regurgitates Harris’s famous catchphrase, “The pain! The pain!” but she does create pain through passive-aggressive cunning.

There’s also Don West, now a roguish Latino who’s cut from the Han Solo cloth, complete with latent integrity but with bantering charisma rather than a droll smolder. Played by Ignacio Serricchio, he’s a surefire favorite, but Taylor Russell is the breakout. To Judy she gives a commanding depth suggestive of serious talent and confident, compelling instincts.

The strained Robinson marriage starts in predictable beats of estrangement, but extended storylines across multiple episodes create an unexpected arc for these two—through both conflicts and confessionals—that’s rich, substantial, and moving, and actors Molly Parker and Toby Stephens invest it with conviction.

Netflix pours a lot of cash into this scifi spectacle featuring first-rate TV special effects, movie-level production design, and epic visual landscapes, delivering tense, sometimes dark set pieces that thrill. And the show leans into science just enough to inspire kids to pursue it themselves.

“Lost in Space” may not be top-tier peak TV or become a “Stranger Things” phenomenon, but it’s pop entertainment that, to its credit, is smarter than it needs to be. –JEFF HUSTON April 18 – May 1, 2018 // THE TULSA VOICE

THE FUZZ THE TULSA VOICE SPOTLIGHTS: TULSA SPCA

2910 Mohawk Blvd. | MON, TUES, THURS, FRI & SAT, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 918.428.7722

PISTOL PETE is a fun coonhound who loves toys and treats. Energetic at nine months old, he is ready to grow up in a forever home. Pete knows his basic commands and would love to find a home with an active family who will give him a lot of attention and playtime.

ACROSS 1 Huge oversupply 5 Plotters in the back room 10 Little brats 14 Protective household garment 19 Roberts of romance writing 20 Way too fed up?

21 Suicidal emperor 22 Have complaints 23 Second, first and 31st 27 Like Richard Burton or Tom Jones 28 Bean variety 29 Picked-over rocks 30 “Ahead!”

31 Thing receiving a bid 33 Soap touting pureness 34 Novelist Cather 35 Buoy or elate 39 Soupy entree 40 Hat or Moroccan city 41 18th, 16th and 22nd 50 Bats, nuts or bananas 51 Sentence feature 52 Go past dislike 53 Horrific emanation 54 Name-andpicture cards 55 Flower part 56 Mercury model 58 Limb bone 59 Simple seat 61 Not need, but desire 62 Something the nosy sneak?

63 Though 66 Blasted flies 69 Strongly opposed 70 Whacks, in a way 71 Chocolate cookie 72 Dusty Steinbeck characters

GYPSY is a pit bull mix with so much love in her heart for the people around her. Gypsy is two and a half years old and loves playing chase and tag.

She also thinks she’s a lap dog, so be ready for some cuddles!

74 Emulate a hot dog?

75 Copier relative 78 Like some new blond hair 79 Spot over there 82 Member of the Quechuan people 83 Carpenter’s gun type 84 “___ Flux” (Theron film) 85 Con jobs 87 30th, 38th, 41st and 45th 92 Average grade 93 Like academic points 94 Money paid 95 Admission of a perjurer 98 Low pH solutions 100 Pest for a dog 102 Bucking creature 103 Horrible share 104 Not even 92-Across 105 Some Indian nobles 110 15th, 32nd and 27th 114 Arcing single 115 Party on a beach 116 Manicurist’s board material 117 “Alright, I guess” 118 Defeats or tops 119 Woes, as of society 120 F, compared to a 104-Across 121 Type of mortals?

DOWN 1 Emulate a beaver 2 Site of much gold 3 1,500-mile European river 4 Aberdeen toppers 5 It’s milky?

6 Say bad things about 7 Broom of twigs 8 Like an old campfire

9 Gift at a Hawaiian airport 10 Like a painful 83-Across 11 A little less than a yard 12 Commonplace, in writing 13 Man’s boy 14 Twist in a hot seat 15 Slink and hunt 16 Match in ability 17 Donizetti output, e.g.

18 Uncool bookish sort 24 Deceitful 25 It’s plotted out 26 “But, on the other hand ...”

32 Final amt.

33 Pour ___ thick 35 Large, sweet juicy fruit 36 Poke or provoke 37 Vientiane’s place 38 Country lodging 39 Bathwater residue 40 A Greek cheese 42 Whip-shape link 43 Near-the-end-ofyear songs 44 Waterslide feature 45 Billiards ritual 46 Jewelers’ devices 47 Sigmund Freud contemporary 48 Canonical hour 49 Male duck 55 Too-heavy drinker 56 Deliver dishes to 57 Word with glom 59 Concerning nasal membranes 60 “My Country, ___ of Thee” 61 Suffix with ransom 62 “___ Maria” (hymn) 63 Savory jelly 64 Nearly treeless plain

Little curious CLARISSA loves to sniff and explore new places. She is a three-year-old dachshund terrier mix.

She is easy to pick up and snuggle and would love to find a lie-on-thecouch-and-watch-TV buddy.

65 Spanish bank 67 “Who’s Afraid of Virginia ___?”

68 “___ Believe in Magic?”

69 Word with hearing or first 73 Griffey and Burns 75 Words with “a sour note” 76 MMA fighting venue 77 Flee 78 Figure in red 79 First king of Israel 80 Stone of Hollywood 81 Spot at a distance 84 Commotions 85 Queen Anne’s house 86 Early PC monitor type 88 Some peaks of Antarctica?

89 Foreboding or threatening 90 Roping venue 91 Tool that gets ground up?

95 “No one can beat me!”

96 Crazies of Mexico 97 ___ water (facing punishment) 98 Countermand 99 Reef buildup 100 Head-warming sickness 101 Goatish looks 102 Good grades 104 Vehicle to test-drive 106 Tiny building block 107 Gyllenhaal of Hollywood 108 From many miles away 109 Eyelid bump 111 Boxing’s “Louisville Lip” 112 Hem 113 Sodium hydroxide

Find the answers to this issue’s crossword puzzle at thetulsavoice.com/puzzle-solutions.

THE TULSA VOICE // April 18 – May 1, 2018

The Tulsa SPCA has been helping animals in our area since 1913. The shelter never euthanizes for space and happily rescues animals from high-kill shelters. They also accept owner surrenders, rescues from cruelty investigations, hoarding, and puppy mill situations. Animals live on-site or with foster parents until they’re adopted. All SPCA animals are micro-chipped, vaccinated, spayed/neutered, and treated with preventatives.

Learn about volunteering, fostering, upcoming events, adoptions, and their low-cost vaccination clinic at tulsaspca.org.

Joyful JENNY is an eight-month-old German shepherd mix. She is very social and friendly. Jenny is full of energy and is looking for an adopter who loves staying active and will take her to training school.

Miss CHEEKY is a sweet older kitty with a purr you can hear from across the room! She is about seven years old and enjoys being with anyone who will pet her. This beautiful calico cat would be the perfect companion for any adopter looking for an affectionate lap cat.

Universal sUnday Crossword PresidenT's row

By Timothy e. Parker

© 2018 Andrews McMeel Syndication

4/22 ETC. // 47

Pleas e re cycle this issue.