Fulbright visit 2017-2018

Fulbright Enrichment Seminar Huntsville Alabama Fall 2017

Continuing our availing of the cultural offerings in Oklahoma we went to the City Museum of Art on Sunday (October 15th).  While not a very extensive gallery it is beautifully laid out with lots of interesting and choice pieces of art (including the two Warhol originals (see below).  There is an interesting selection of pictures from the WPA (the Works Progress Administration) which was part of Roosevelt’s New Deal by which artists were employed by the states to try and lift the economy after the Great Depression (of the 1930s).  We also caught a special exhibition of beautiful glassworks by Dale Chihuly.  We also had brunch in the museum cafe which was really tasty and one of the best meals we’ve had in Oklahoma.  

Saturday October 14th we went to another musical show this time in the Lyric Theatre at the Plaza.  It was a live production of the Rock of Ages which features lots of hits from the 1980s.  It was great fun.  The Lyric is quite a small theatre with a very informal atmosphere so one felt very close to the action.  And there was lots of action!

Sunday October 8th we visited the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma.  There was a museum with some very informative exhibits tracing the history of the Chickasaw Nation mostly from the time of their first contact with Europeans.  The Chickasaw are one of the tribes from the Mississippi region (sometimes referred to as the five civilised tribes) who were not nomadic by the time Europeans arrived.  They were displaced (along with many other tribes) to Oklahoma in the 19th century by the American government in the ‘Great Removal’.  Their history from the time of first contact with Europeans is all quite tragic.  Today they work hard to retain their language, culture and heritage.  In the cultural center these are presented in what seems to be a somewhat sanitised version for tourists.  Images below show some of the buildings that would have been in a typical Chickasaw village although in their heyday the Chickasaw sometimes lived in reasonable sized towns.  We were also treated to some traditional tribal dancing.

Saturday September 30th we went to see the Carol King based musical called ‘Beautiful’ presented by OKC Broadway who bring Broadway productions to Oklahoma City.  The show was in the Civic Center Music Hall in downtown Oklahoma City - a magnificent venue.  The staging was fanastic with enormous changes in scenery executed seemlessly regularly throughout the production.  The performers were also terrific with the lead playing the Carol King part most convincingly.  The first part of the show covered Carol King’s early career as a songwriter in New York while the second half covered her later career as a singer-songwriter based in California.  The first music album I every bought was Carol King’s Tapestry so it was bit like reliving parts of my youth :-) A great night out!

We were hosted once again last Friday (October 6th) to a wonderful meal at the top of another tower by colleagues here in Oklahoma City.  This time it was Head of Department Dr Stephen Crawford - he who also took us to the football match and who we said looked uncannily like Richard Attenborough.  The venue was the restaurant on the penultimate (49th) floor of the Devon Tower.  The Devon Tower is the tallest building in Oklahoma City.  It is 259m tall and goes to 50 stories.  For comparison our tallest (excluding churches with tall spires) building in Ireland is the Elysian in Cork which has just 17 stories and is just over 68m tall. The views over the whole city were wonderful.  One could see for miles and what was impressive was just how sprawled out the city is and how flat. The food was also just about the best we have experienced since coming to OKC - haute cuisine in every sense!

View from the Devon Tower over Oklahoma City looking east.

This weekend marked the 51st Annual Heritage Hills Home and Garden Tour.  During this weekend a selection of homeowners living in the Heritage Hills area of Oklahoma City open their homes and gardens to the public. The images herewith indicate the style of homes around the Heritage Hill.  These homes were mostly built in the early 20th century by wealthy entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in Oklahoma.  Current owners have, by and large, gone to considerable trouble to restore and maintain these impressive residences.  

Saturday September 16 and we are here a month.  We were treated to the spectacle of an American football match in the Owen Field – the University of Oklahoma stadium in Norman, Oklahoma.  Our host was the Head of the Department of Family Medicine – the charming and affable Dr Steve Crawford who, we are agreed, looks the spit of the late Richard Attenborough.  We were taken first to a tailgate party outside the stadium.  This is a tradition associated with sports events in which people assemble before the game and have food and beverages around the tailgate of their truck.  Nearly everyone here drives a truck.  However, the tailgate party has evolved and has been formalized a bit more of late.   The one we were at was held in a sort of gazebo where there were two large cool boxes with drinks – one for beer and one for what they call ‘sodas’ i.e. minerals – and other containers with hot food – chicken nuggets, chicken burgers and delicious warm cookies.  The hosts of our tailgate party were the Sooner Club i.e. the supporters club of the University of Oklahoma college football team of which Dr. Crawford is a member.  All around the stadium were a range of other formal and less formal tailgate parties.

Suitably refreshed we went into the vast stadium – capacity 85,000 which is larger than Crooke Park.  Imagine a college (university) football team has a stadium which is larger than the largest one in Ireland.  And they are not unique.  Many of the large universities here have huge stadia for football.  College football, as is known, is really big here.  Not as big as NFL (National Football League) but it is the next step down – First Division relative to the Premiership in English soccer terms.  

American football, like most American sports it would seem, is about far more than the game.  It is all razzmatazz and spectacle.  There are marching bands, cheerleaders, a flyover by an Air Force jet and all sorts of incidental entertainments as well as lots of vendors of food and drink if you haven’t already had your fill at the tailgate party.  

The game itself took a little bit of getting the hang of, although the basics are reasonably straightforward.  One team has the ball and its offence players try to get the ball past the opposition’s defense.  This can be done by ‘rushing’ forward until tackled and brought to the ground.  The idea is to try and get 10 yards forward within 4 moves (4 downs).  Alternatively, the quarterback of the offence team can throw the ball forward to one of his team mates who, if he manages to catch it before being tackled, can then try and run forward with it until tackled and/or makes the end zone and scores a ‘touch down’ – worth 6 points.   After a touch down there is an opportunity for the offence to kick the ball between goal posts something like a conversion in rugby although, if successful, this is worth only one additional point.  If after 4 downs the offence have not made 10 yards; or after they have failed to score; or after they have scored; the opposition’s offence come on and the other team then puts on its defence players.  Indeed, it seems that there are a large number of players milling around all the time with offence and defence players coming on and off at regular intervals.  

In the particular game we were at OU – the University of Oklahoma a.k.a. ‘the Sooners’ were playing Tulane University of New Orleans a.k.a. ‘the Green Wave’.  In the first quarter it seemed more or less evenly matched with each team scoring two (converted) touch downs.  However, it was clear that they were reaching these goals by quite different approaches.  Tulane scored mostly by ‘rushing’ whereas OU got their two scores as a result of a couple of long and successful passes.  During the remaining three quarters, though, a chasm opened up between the teams with OU continuing to score still mainly by passing but also by rushing whereas Tulane never scored again after the first quarter.  One almost felt sorry for Tulane who were not only outplayed on the field but who were vastly outnumbered in the stadium which was a sea of crimson and cream (or at least red and white) – the Sooners’ colours.  There was virtually none of the green and white of Tulane.  Even their marching band and cheerleaders were completely outnumbered.

Weekend 3 in OKC and as our son (Niall) is still with us we went with his choice for the day out on Sunday.  Hence, we ended up in Oklahoma City Zoo.  This is reputed to be one of the best zoos in the US.  It is certainly large, well spaced out and has a large variety of animals that look well cared for.  It isn’t the easiest place to navigate as it seems to be organised more on the lines a wheel and spokes rather than there being any obvious route to take to see all the different animals.  But overall it is a pretty good zoo.

We’ve found a very cool watering hole here in OKC (Oklahoma City).  It’s a bar on the 7th floor of an hotel near where were are living, in mid-town.  It’s called the O Bar.  We went there on Friday night and we got talking to a few folks - a couple (Sandra and Sage) and their friend Miguel.  Sandra is from Estonia, Sage from the US and Miguel from Mexico.  Sandra and Sage were recently returned from a wedding in Ireland.

Great views of downtown OKC from the O Bar

In an earlier post I mentioned that I didn’t manage to get any photographs of the moments of totality during the solar eclipse.  Fortunately, though, I did manage to get talking to a gentleman called Damian Laris from Mexico who was beside us at the Stuhr Museum.  He has kindly shared some of his images with me and has given me permission to include them here.

bailey’s beads

diamond ring effect

Last weekend was Labor Day weekend here in the USA.  It’s one of their relatively few public holidays which means a three day weekend.  The weather is still very hot so we had to do like the locals and stay indoors i.e. go shopping.  We found an outlet centre and so we were able to grab a few bargains.  We also returned to Bricktown which is definitely a spot for hanging out at the weekend.  We had lunch in Bricktown Brewery which we had visited before.  Prompted by our son, who is with us for a few weeks before he goes to college in Santa Barbara, we also went to a highly unusual museum.  The Museum of Osteology.  It was an exhibition of skeletons of a great variety of animals of all sizes and shapes.  There was also a display of replicas of various humanoid skulls that have been found over the decades tracing the evolution of hominids.  It was a bit bizarre but interesting none the less.

On Labor Day itself, Monday, we were kindly invited for a barbeque to the home of one of my colleagues in the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre.  We were given a lift from on of the family doctors from the department whom we learnt  lives nearby – a few blocks away, as they would say.  The barbeque started at 5.30 but ended at 8.30 so we were home a lot earlier than we would have been from a similar event at home.  The consumption of alcohol was also very modest by our standards.  I don’t think anyone had any more than two drinks during the three hours.  Although there were only a few people there – ourselves, two other couples one half of whom was a department member and the hostess and her family – it was very enjoyable.  We sat around a kitchen table rather than eating outside (still too hot) and had a grand old chat about all sorts of stuff. Everything from science fairs to baking to rearing children.  All very sociable.