Cinco de Mayo in the City
Michelle Jaime eats ice cream during last year’s Cinco De Mayo festival in this file photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman.
Oklahoma City’s premier Cinco de Mayo celebration has a new venue and a new date this year.
“Festival Cinco de Mayo ‘07″ will be held on Seis de Mayo (May 6). And after years at Chelino’s restaurant in Bricktown, the party is moving to Plaza San Miguel at NW 10 and Pennsylvania.
The sponsors, Chelino’s and KZUE-AM (La Tremenda), say they moved the date because more people can come on a Sunday than a Saturday. And they moved the venue because the popular festival had outgrown the Bricktown site.
“Bricktown, it looks good but there is not enough space,” said Ruben Espinosa of KZUE.
The celebration begins at noon Sunday, May 6, and runs through 10 p.m., with Mexican entertainers, mariachis, folkloric dancers, information booths, food vendors and more. Admission is free.
–Judy Gibbs Robinson, staff writer
‘X’ doesn’t mark the spot
We’ve all done it. Even men, but they’re less likely than women to admit it.
The “it” is looking at a map for directions.
Maps will never disappear, even if the paper versions of this travel tool do. The world is becoming a paperless society and, sooner than later, maps will be only available in electronic form.
Automobiles are increasingly being equipped with global positioning systems. Several Web sites offer free driving directions and maps.
That’s good.
Have you ever successfully folded a map back to its original shape? Folding a map shouldn’t turn into an origami project.
Anyway.
The Internet still has its drawback as it relates to mapping services.
Ask Tish and Lyle Ashley.
For the previous two years, vacationers have pulled their travel trailers and boats up the Ashley’s one-way street near the shore of Table Rock Lake in Missouri. That would be fine if the 150-acre vacation resort the vacationers were looking for was actually located on the Ashley’s property.
Ozark Mountain Resorts is south and east of the Kimberly City bridge. The Ashley’s house is across the lake, north and west of the bridge.
Directions found on a popular Internet mapping service are misguiding users looking for Ozark Mountain Resorts to the Ashley’s three-story bedroom ranch-style house.
“It’s been going on for two or three years,” Tish Ashley told the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader. “Some of them are pretty unhappy when they end up on our one-way street. We tell them we’ve tried to do something about it, but you can’t ever get ahold of anyone from (the mapmaker) to get it solved.”
Perhaps the Ashleys should turn their house into tourist attraction.
Maybe open a bed and breakfast.
Brian Sargent
Staff Writer
Miss Red Earth 2007 announced
A news release arrived by e-mail today announcing that Carrie “Kay Kay” Franklin, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, is Miss Red Earth 2007.
As such, she will spend the year promoting the Red Earth festival, held this year from June 1-3 at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.
Young Indian women who have never been married or born a child compete for the Miss Red Earth title not at a beauty pageant but through written applications. Critical to winning is a promise the applicant’s tribe will provide financial support for her to appear at events throughout the year as an ambassador for the Red Earth festival.
Applicants also are encouraged to list education and honors, and Ms. Franklin, 23, has lots of those. She’s a graduate of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., where she was sports editor of the campus paper. Now she’s working on a master’s degree at Colorado State University.
I wish I could say the application process ended there but there’s one more requirement: An 8-by-10 photo in tribal regalia. So I guess looks matter too.
–Judy Gibbs Robinson, staff writer
Carrie Underwood “Idol Gives Back” Available on iTunes
Carrie Underwood’s “Idol Gives Back” music video package, which was filmed during her trip to Africa earlier this month and aired on Wednesday’s two-hour “American Idol,” is now available via download at Apple’s iTunes Store. All proceeds from downloads for this special acoustic audio version of The Pretenders’ song “I’ll Stand By You,” as well as the video, will go to the Charity Projects Entertainment Fund (CPEF).
CPEF have partnered with American Idol and their corporate sponsors to raise awareness and funds for organizations that provide relief programs to help children and young people in extreme poverty in America and Africa.
Environment: greenhouse gas regulation
Interesting update this morning out of California in regards to regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that he will sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unless the agency moves more swiftly to let California regulate greenhouse gases from cars.
The state tried to regulate the emissions–which very likely cause global warming–back in 2005. At that time, the EPA stalled, saying it could not make such regulations under the Clean Air Act. But a Supreme Court decision from earlier this month says the federal government can regulate greenhouse gas emissions, sparking this new debate.
By John David Sutter
Environmental Reporter
White is the loneliest color
My father was no fashion plate.
An office worker in a railroad outpost, he favored acrylic cardigans, flannel shirts, poly-blend pants and orange hunting caps imprinted with the railroad company’s logo. At home he often wore little more than saggy long underwear beneath an unbuttoned flannel.
Dad aspired to better clothing. One of his coworkers, who owned a small haberdashery on the side, wore suits to the office every day, and in my father’s sneering stories about the man’s needless overdressing, one could detect more than a hint of secret envy.
On Sundays, Dad tried his hand at sartorial flair. His palette was limited — some discount store suits, thrift shop shoes and an outdated assortment of clip-on neckties. With five kids and one income, he didn’t have a lot of cash to spare on church clothes.
I knew that, of course. So did my siblings.
But like all children of a certain age, we were ashamed of our parents — especially the day Dad wore white shoes with black socks and a blue suit.
None of us had actually noticed. Nor would we have cared a whit if a well-meaning but tact-challenged woman named Carmen Plappert hadn’t decided to correct my dad’s fashion faux pas right there in the middle of the crowded church foyer.
“You never wear white shoes with black socks, dear,” she said, addressing him as if he were a child. “That just doesn’t do. And you should never wear white shoes with your nice clothes unless they’re white, too. Then you can wear white shoes. But not after Labor Day.”
O, the humiliation. My father simmered until church was over, then treated us to a blistering sermon about nosy women and stupid fashion rules. Thankfully, there was no altar call.
Dad never wore white shoes with black socks again.
I learned the lesson, too. For decades, I have studiously avoided making my father’s mistake. In fact, I have never once worn white shoes or socks with dress clothes.
Until today.
I’ve been ill lately and haven’t had a chance to do laundry. Got up this morning and threw on a white shirt, tan trousers, a tan sweater vest, and a tan-and-blue tie.
Then I realized I didn’t have any clean tan socks. I dug through my sock drawers. Nothing. I subjected dirty socks to the sniff test. No good.
By then I was running late.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I made a bold, rash and perhaps inspired decision.
I had no tan socks. I couldn’t very well wear black, gray or navy socks with tan clothes. I did, however, have plenty of white socks. And I had a pair of white shoes with a tan stripe. Sure, they were casual, but all the colors matched.
I’d look pretty darn good, I realized. I’d be styling. People would admire my dramatic fashion sense. I would be a pioneer, a clothes iconoclast. OPUBCO employees everywhere would remember me as the guy who singlehandedly broke through the color barrier and spawned a workplace in which white-on-white isn’t a crime, in which — for that matter — lime pinstriped pants can be worn with floral-print Hawaiian shirts without fear of recrimination, contempt or snide comments; an environment in which white shoes coexist with black socks and black shoes intermingle with white socks; a world in which my father is vindicated as a visionary champion of fashion freedom forever!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Instead, people laughed at me. My wife, who works here, stopped dead in her tracks, covering her mouth with her hand as she dissolved into silent giggles. My boss pointed at my shoes and said quietly, “What. Are. Those?” A young colleague happily declared: “If we ever have to wear uniforms here, I want THOSE to be the official shoes.”
Sorry, dad. The world isn’t ready for us yet.
– Ken Raymond
Birthday nostalgia
My friends surprised me last night with a birthday party at Incredible Pizza in Warr Acres. I hadn’t been to a place like that in years.
It made me nostalgic for Crystal’s. Those who’ve lived in the metro area for a while might remember Crystal’s. There was one on the south side and another at Northwest Expressway and Rockwell. Both have been gone for years.
Crystal’s had a lot in common with Incredible Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese’s. It was a pizza buffet with an arcade and skee ball. But what always made Crystal’s stand out above the others for me was the decor. The whole place had a victorian theme. It was like being on the boardwalk at Coney Island in the 1930s.
The pizza was wonderful. I am a pepperoni guy, but I will always remember the Canadian bacon because the slices were huge and covered a whole large piece of pizza.
Growing up on the northwest side of town, Crystal’s was a regular destination for birthday parties, church lock-ins and as a reward from my parents for good behavior or grades.
Incredible Pizza was wonderful, and I’m sure there are a whole new generation of children who are building memories there like I did at Crystal’s. I think places like that give a city character. I’m 28 now, and I’ve forgotten a lot of the restaurants and businesses I visited as a child. But I’ll never forget Crystal’s.
Bryan Dean
Staff Writer
He’s preparing for a career in the newsroom
Overheard in the Stafford household tonight when my son asked to borrow my cell phone so that he could use the speaker phone on it to call a friend while simultaneously playing a game on his Nintendo DS: “I’m multi-tasking.”
He’s 10 years old.
I probably didn’t hear that term until I was 40 years old.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
War Funding Vote
The U.S. House is scheduled to vote later today on a bill that provides about $96 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through September and also sets a goal of withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq by late March 2008.
All five of the House members from Oklahoma are planning to vote against it.
Rep. Mary Fallin, R-Oklahoma City, took to the House floor early today to blast Democratic leaders for pushing a bill that President Bush has vowed repeatedly to veto.
“Congress must immediately send our troops the resources they need to win this war, without strings attached and without delay,” Fallin said. “But instead, the Democrat leadership is proposing to tie the hands of our troops and hamstring our generals with a misguided plan to micromanage the war effort. This is unacceptable.”
Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, has voiced misgivings about the war, and he opposed Bush’s plan to add more troops this year to help secure the most dangerous parts of Iraq, but he opposes the timelines in the bill.
Nick Choate, Boren’s press secretary, said, “The bill still imposes a timeline telling commanders when they have to start sending troops home, and he has said from the start that he will not support a bill that includes a timeline.”
The vote is expected to be close in the House and Senate. Even if the spending bill clears both houses, it’s not going to become law. Whether the next version will be something Oklahoma lawmakers _ and the president _ can support remains to be seen.
The bill also includes money for construction at Fort Sill and other military bases that are gaining work because of the 2005 base closing commission. And it includes $3.5 billion in agriculture disaster relief, some of which would go to Oklahoma producers hit by drought and other disasters.
Chris Casteel
Washington Bureau
Sick daze
In the realm of the obvious, there are fewer things more self-evident than this:
Being sick is no fun.
I guess I tend to forget that sometimes. Every once in awhile, buried beneath an avalanche of work and being growled at by half-mad editors with the blood of other hapless reporters already dripping from their fangs, I look at the vacant desks of ill coworkers with something akin to envy.
“I bet she’s at home in bed watching ‘Simpsons’ reruns and eating ice cream,” I think.
Or: “I bet he’s not even sick at all. He’s probably just taking a long weekend.”
But recently I’ve been reminded just how unpleasant illness is. A week ago, I had a slightly sore throat. I blamed it on undiagnosed allergies and went about my business.
The next morning, I awoke in a hacking, wheezing, sneezing, dripping haze of mucus and phlegm. I couldn’t breathe. I could barely move. I felt, quite frankly, like poo.
My wife called in sick for me.
I don’t know where that day went. Or the next day, when I was again off sick. I know I slept a lot. I also spoke nonsensical sentences aloud and laughed at the croaking sound of my voice until I realized that laughing hurt my throat. I blew my way through a veritable forest of tissue.
Then Saturday dawned. I still didn’t feel great, but buoyed by antibiotics, I felt well enough to go into work. I made it through the shift with little trauma and just knew I was on the mend.
“This was nothing,” I thought. “My white blood cells have mad mojo.”
Wrong. I spent the next two days sick in bed. I came back to work yesterday, but got sent home sick about 2 p.m.
Now I’m back for another try. To say I feel well would be a gross overstatement, but I keep telling myself it could be worse. I could have a wooden leg and a glass eye and a pacemaker — like my grandmother.
One thing’s certain: I’m not going to envy my ill colleagues anymore.
At least, not until the next time the editors attack.
– Ken Raymond,
Staff Writer
Maestro of Mucus
The Tissue Slayer
Spreader of Viral Disease
