#oklahoma things

[mbrainspaz]

me, an ex-Oklahoman: man I wish I could turn down the volume on my emergency weather radio's tornado siren.

[quixoticanarchy]

When I lived in Oklahoma and would see a confederate flag there on occasion I would sometimes think "come the fuck on, you weren't even a state yet!" which... is true. However despite living there for several years I did not learn til recently that Oklahoma (then referred to as Indian Territory or as the Cherokee Nation, Choctaw Nation, etc depending on location) was the site of plenty of Civil War action as the Union and Confederacy fought over the territory, and that some indigenous nations fought with the Union while others such as the Cherokee (initially, and some factions til the end) sided with the Confederacy, and that some Cherokee had owned plantations and slaves on the east coast and brought them along on the Trail of Tears, and that the rights and citizenship of those descended from these eventually-freed enslaved people are still a fraught issue. Not a person, place, or thing in this country untouched by some facet of slavery and antiblackness and their long shadow / enduring presence

[quixoticanarchy]

whenever the pigeon museum post gets notes people are like "omg op where's the pigeon museum?!? i need to go to the pigeon museum!!" and well i'm pleased to tell you the pigeon museum is in oklahoma & this post has been a trap to get you to come to the wretched state of oklahoma

[quixoticanarchy]

god i'm leaving oklahoma in a month and genuinely sort of distraught i'm going to miss the pigeon museum so fucking much. i'm going to have to start grabbing feral pigeons at random just to cope

[quixoticanarchy]

The thing about oklahoma is that if you take an old state highway heading away from the cities it's actually beautiful and green with rolling valleys and little creeks-- but then there's an oil well. and a walmart, even way out here. and here they're widening the road. and there's another oil well.

[quixoticanarchy]

I'd like to submit some advertising for the museums of the state of Oklahoma to all your followers who are going to visit for the pigeon museum:

The American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City is super fun and recently had a temporary exhibit with Kermit the Frog's banjo, the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa has garden cats, the Sam Noble Museum in Norman has literally so many dinosaurs, the USS Batfish in Muskogee is a WWII submarine in a landlocked state because why not really, and the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City is probably the best example of centering Indigenous perspectives that I've ever seen.

I still have to go to the First Americans Museum but yeah i've heard good things! and as for the rest, yeah one thing Oklahoma is great at is having museums to fill niches no one would realize need filling - I add to your list the National Museum of Horseshoeing Tools in OKC. exactly what it says on the tin. not quite worth the entrance fee imo. (the Historical Train Museum (OKC) and the Museum of Osteology (OKC) and the Woody Guthrie museum (Tulsa) are other quite good ones though! and the cowboy/western heritage museum is also a very interesting time, though I suspect First Americans handles all that history better)

[quixoticanarchy]

Oklahoma governor grants clemency to Julius Jones, halting his execution

Julius Jones' sentence will be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the governor said in an executive order issued

!!!!!!

no execution, but unfortunately NO release, and no acknowledgment of innocence

[quixoticanarchy]

[id: a tweet by Oklahoma Poison Center @/OKPoisonCenter from December 9th 2021, reading “The string of magnetic balls are a nice touch to our Poison Center tree. Busy year in poison prevention.” below is a close up photo of part of a christmas tree with ornaments that include a string of magnetic balls, a silica gel packet, and a tube of ivermectin. end id]