I was the smallest boy in my school. That, coupled with a lifetime struggle with allergies, has rendered me a lifelong non-athlete. I was a kid who lived in his own imagination, and, to a lesser degree, in his own NES. I couldn’t be bothered with playing shortstop when there was a princess that needed saving – be she 8-bit or entirely imaginary. She was out there, and she needed me.

Oh, wait, was I supposed to catch that? Whatever.

That said, I enjoyed the last little league team I played for. My mom was one of the coaches, and we won second place in the league tournament that year.

We were the 89ers.

After we won our trophies, all the coaches and parents chipped in to take us to All Sports Stadium in Oklahoma City to watch our namesakes, the Oklahoma City 89ers.

That night stands out in my mind as a highlight of my childhood; it was one of the first times I remember truly enjoying sports. Every time I hear the Don Henley song “Boys of Summer,” I think about that night.

In high school I knew someone who worked at All Sports Stadium, on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Fair in Oklahoma City; it was not a great facility. Since then the stadium has been razed, its glorious replacement erected in Bricktown, and the team’s name changed from the 89ers to the Redhawks.

I know the Oklahoma Land Runs inspire memories of Manifest Destiny and broken treaties; Oklahoma City singer-songwriter K.C. Clifford wrote a whole song about it, titled “Redman.” But whatever the implications, the team name, The 89ers, was reminiscent of something very specific to Oklahoma City – the way and the time in which it was founded, a way that is unique and weird among American cities. The “Redhawks” name for me sounds a little generic.

Don’t get me wrong – All Sports Stadium was nothing compared to The Brick; love sports or hate ‘em, that this city is moving up in the world in terms of its professional teams and facilities has done wonders for it. I’m looking forward to a summer full of games downtown.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia; I think, in the end, most of what Americans love about baseball – especially in this age of endless steroid confessions – is about nostalgia, about a simpler time. For me, the name – The 89ers – it evokes that.

Photo courtesy Flickr user eschipul.

Caleb Puckett’s latest prose collection, Market Street Exit, appeared in 2011. Though he now resides in Kansas, Puckett has lived in numerous places in Oklahoma over the years.

He recently contributed to This Land by lending his torso to the cover is the February 1 issue (Vol. 3, Issue 3). The resultant “This Machine Lives Hard” cover is a masterpiece from Art Director Jeremy Luther and would be a extremely impressive declaration of company loyalty, if only the tattoos in question were real.

Dustin has several years of experience as an ad rep, most recently withThe Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Observer. He has, however, seen the error of his ways and come home to Tulsa. We’re glad to have him on our team.

Check out Dustin’s answers to our MEET & GREET questionnaire:

1. What influences you?

I love being around people who are doing what they are passionate about. It doesn’t matter if they are chefs, architects, athletes, artists, musicians, beer and winemakers…whatever. To be able to perfect their craft, these people have spent so much time practicing, learning and pushing themselves. The dedication it takes is amazing but if they love what they do those grinding hours of practice aren’t painful, they are pleasure. I think a good example of this is Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn. He gets up everyday and makes hand-made knives. He loves it.

2. What inspires you?

I’m not a creative person. However, I work with some very talented and creative people. I want them to be able to continue to do what they love. For our crew to be able to do what they love, I have to generate revenue. That’s my talent. Our team is making something special. I know it and I believe in them. I can’t imagine a day where we would be forced to close our doors and all them having to split up and go elsewhere. Forget that. The fear of letting all those people down makes getting out of bed and going to work easy.

3. Favorite piece for This Land?

I really enjoyed working with Jeremy on the discontinued Sports Illustration. It was interesting to see his process. I would pitch a sports related idea to him and he would come back the next day with a beautiful illustration. That boy is good.

4. What do you love about Oklahoma/Tulsa?

I love that Tulsans are taking it upon themselves to make Tulsa a cool, fun city. They have stopped whining and are actively creating a city to be proud of, with their own hands. That spirit is intoxicating. Stop bitching about our midwestern plight. Oklahoma is as awesome as we make it.

5. What is your favorite drink (alcoholic or non)?

I like it all from… High Life to St. Bernadus to Franziskaner. I have been known to guzzle margaritas in the summer and a Makers Manhattan in the fall.

~~

For more info on Dustin, check out his bio; if you are in the the restaurant/bar industry and would like to get in touch, you can reach him via Dustin@thislandpress.com

“Jim loved to shred documents,” curator Kim Jones said with a grin. “He’d have done well with the CIA. I’m not sure why, but he was always eager to shred paper for us. We’d set him up with a stack of old internal paperwork, and he could just shred for hours.”

The museum named Parkinson “Volunteer of the Year” in 2008, and again posthumously this year. Having retired from a career at United States Aviation, Parkinson showed up in his badge, lanyard, and logo-embroidered shirt to volunteer at least eight hours a day, three to five days a week.

“He was a great guy who would do anything for us,” he said. “He loved aviation, and just wanted to help out. Most days he was running the show behind the desk, but there wasn’t anything he was above doing. For a little while, we were between bookkeepers and needed someone to do it. He made it clear that he didn’t want to be our bookkeeper long term, but happily took the position until we could find somebody else.”

Every Monday, when the Air and Space Museum is closed, there is a bustle of volunteers cleaning, repairing, and maintaining the exhibits. They call them “The Monday Boys.” They even wear t-shirts proudly bearing their moniker. While Tom didn’t work on Mondays—he volunteered all week while the museum was open—that didn’t stop him from being a Monday Boy.

“It’s our tradition to go down the street to Evelyn’s for lunch, and Tom would always join us. We looked forward to having him around. He was a tall man with stark white hair and a big white handlebar moustache, and always a huge grin. He was quite a joker.”

Even after Parkinson’s health took a turn for the worse, Jones said he continued to come to their Monday lunches as long as he was able.

“It was hard for all of us to see this vibrant, vital man wither away. We had really grown used to having him smack in the middle of our loud, energetic crowd.”

The easiest way to get to the gaming floor at River Spirit is to ride the elevator from the garage below; maybe that’s what it’s like to be beamed into a spaceship. The gaming floor looks like what’d happen if Chuck E. Cheese grew up to be a Vegas show manager, with cocktail waitresses in black skirts, and busty movie stars instead of cartoon characters emblazoned on the games, and bars and full-service buffets taking the place of the prize counter. I found a game just as a man sitting at the next machine switched his cigarette to his right hand and stretched to slide his members’ card into the reader. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said as I backed away, even though he insisted that I go ahead. He played both machines while I went around the corner and won $10 on a game called Coyote Moon.

A lady I saw on the way to cash out sat her oversized purse on the seat next to her, as if to have someone familiar, even if it was a something, to sit by. She didn’t look up as I passed, like she was plugged into the machine by her eyes somehow, like something in The Matrix. Rows and rows of games are arranged to fill practically every space on the floor, and the faces of the players—they’re in neckties, in full rodeo cowgirl regalia, in OU pajama pants—glow as they stare at the numbers and images spinning before their eyes, pressing buttons and pulling levers, never sure when ritual might transform into reward.

***

Two years ago, the Cherokee Nation—the third-largest gaming tribe in Oklahoma, which is No. 2 in the U.S. for Indian gaming revenues and fourth overall, behind Nevada, New Jersey, and California—followed through on a plan to hedge against those times when the gaming floor isn’t flooded by opening The Joint, a concert hall tucked into the corner of the Grand Ballroom of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. The entertainment director there is Danny Finnerty. He’s the former co-owner of Cain’s, and he also worked as the press secretary for then-Representative Inhofe. Later, he was communications director, then special assistant to the Senator, whom he describes as “kind of a practical joker, actually.” He worked on Inhofe’s campaigns, and he was his liaison to the national media, setting up interviews with CNN and Fox News and Meet the Press. Now it’s his job to rope the acts on the casino circuit into the 2,700-seat venue at Hard Rock, and he bagged 40 of them in the first year: The Doobie Brothers, Blake Shelton and Hall and Oates, not to mention Eagles founder Don Henley, Finnerty’s favorite act to pass through The Joint since its opening. “There’s plenty to do in here—the most I get out on the floor is if I go have a beer with one of the guys who played,” he said, meaning like Henley.

“He left me a message not long ago,” Finnerty said of his former boss. “We were doing a country show here, and he left me a voicemail: ‘I just have two questions for you: Do you want me to bring my guitar and open for ya? And two, are you wearing one earring or two?’ So I called him back and left him a message: ‘No, and two.’ ”

He emerges every now and then from his domain, in a pair of boots with rhinestones in the heels that sparkle when he walks, a black, striped scarf tied around his neck, even indoors. “It wasn’t much of a transition, coming here,” Finnerty said. “The family business has always been entertainment. I mean, Jim was my regular job.”

As the rain poured, even the dry ares of the outback had filled with water chest high. Gayla Gower jumped into the river along with the other tourists, but underestimated the current. Arms flailing, struggling to surface, and worried about death-by-crocodile, she was swept away. From the bank of the river, a fellow guide shouted to Mick Gower to save the American.

Mick, the dreadlocked, shoeless tour guide didn’t mind rescuing the “best looking one in the bunch” as she floated  downstream, sporting shorts of stars and stripes. He dove in and pulled her to his side, easily bringing her to shore. Gayla needed rescuing two more times during the hike. Each time, it was Mick to the rescue. By the end of the tour, Mick and Gayla had become an item. And years later, Mick abandoned his “feral lifestyle”—not to mention an entire continent—to be with Gayla in Tulsa.

In this photo by John Vachon, we see four employees of the Mid-Continent Refinery, which was located in West Tulsa. A few years earlier, in 1938, the refinery was the scene of one of Oklahoma’s most violent and long-lasting strike.

I was assigned to diligently catalogue every piece of literature that had been written about this collaborative over the seven years since the founding of La Estampa. Cataloguing and organizing, waiting for permission to be granted so that I could finally enter the compound that so many people dreaded visiting. A place where dreams die. And then I received word from Coco; I was granted entrance.

We sat on the train, Coco and I: he with his Einsteinian appearance of white, wiry hair and mustache, casually flipping through the paper, and me, cold and disheveled, nervously anticipating the institution.

From the station we took a cab to the perimeter of an immense plot of land that looked like an abandoned soccer complex covered with course yellow grass. We walked 200 meters to the first police checkpoint, a small kiosk situated between “out” and “in.” An officer took my passport and the admittance letter and we were escorted to the next checkpoint, near the entrance to the prison. I walked through a small scanning machine, left my cell phone and other belongings behind, and followed Coco in his labcoat through hundreds of steel bars.

The skeleton keys that opened each door were as long as my face. Through many cold corridors, we finally arrived at the studio. Women drinking maté, drawing, talking, twisting paper, making paper, painting, building frames. All the cogs of the machine that I was so familiar with were swinging and spinning, and occasionally interrupted by the clanking of an old grocery cart that was filled with cigarettes, chocolate, toilet paper, and other random goods that the girls could buy with their credit.

I sat down and spoke with Doris, a Peruvian jungle woman. We talked about the stars, as I was most intrigued by the night sky at this time. Doris and I share a favorite star, and a fascination with diamonds.

Some stars, instead of exploding or imploding or becoming black holes, simply lay down and stop breathing. Their massive carbon corpses slowly crystalize into a diamond skeleton. Jewels of the night sky that no longer glisten like sequins on evening gowns.

Doris was from a remote place in the jungle where folkloric tales were whispered to her by her aunt—tales in which animals possessed secrets and treasures, tales that she trudged through like toes through mud after a summer rain:

Walking eight hours through thick viridian tones, to a place where a waterfall sits on its throne of three converging rivers, snakes hold diamonds in their mouths … However, when the snake goes to bathe in the river it will leave its diamond on the shore … If you capture the snake’s diamond, you will be granted anything your heart desires … But the snake will chase you, for he is very fond of his diamond … With the diamond you must escape to the canopy of the trees …

Doris spent her childhood searching for the diamond of the snake, and many years of her adult life in prison, painting this scene—painting the night sky that she was no longer allowed to see.

Dear Doris,
I found your diamond in Thailand.
Love, Erin

In a tree house, an open-air platform governed by the light of the sun, and breezing the ocean’s breath, a winged-serpent and her diamond were born. Fifty feet of chicken wire and newspaper swung and sung on the wind a song of the Ouroboros, the Phoenix, the Quetzalcoatl, the Snake and her Diamond. It is a song of rebirth, renewal, resurrection, the cyclical nature of life, immorality, the eternal unity of all things.

At sunset on October 24, 2011, at the Middle Way, on Koh Phangan, in Thailand, a group of 20 gathered for the exhibition of the “Snake and the Diamond.” We awaited the glistening stars of the night sky to light the massive serpentine beast. She was carried down to the beach, soaked with petrol, and sent to her fiery grave. It was a ritualistic burning that spoke to the ancient symbols of the song—a procession and process that united and ignited this group of people in the darkness of the new moon.

The burning lasted about five minutes, giving the nearest neighbor ample time to rush to the conclusion that a brush fire was about to consume his home. The panicked expat and his Thai wife came running down to the beach (where the group found themselves entranced by the flames) screaming such phrases as, “Respect Thailand!”, “Is this some yoga bullshit!?”, “Would you do this in your own country!?” Well, yeah, of course I respect Thailand, no it’s not some yoga bullshit, and yes, I have definitely done this in my own country. In fact, this is the third sacrificial paper sculpture I have burned.

Rumors of naked hippies, forest fires, and pagan rituals spread like wild fire around the local hangouts and hubs on the island. Like any small community, gossip keeps people alive and well in the most boring of moments.

Only the faint smell of petrol, seeping like whisky from the skin the day after a hard drink, was left on the boulders where the smolder occurred. When the police and the mayor arrived the following day, they found only a few leaves that were charred from a tree that was watching too close to the flames. No traces of Quetzalcoatl, Ouroboros, Phoenix, or the Snake and her Diamond were left on the beach because, as everyone knows, from her ashes she will rise.

Jeremy Luther is This Land Press’s Art Director/Illustrator. This “slashy” sort of title only hints at the extensive amount of art, design and visual delight that he delivers in every issue.

For example,  in the current issue “This Machine Suits Up” (Vol.3, Issue 2), Jeremy (who is featured on the inside front cover) crafted a portrait of Mr. Sherman Ray (of “Mr. Ray Fits a Suit“) out of fabric remnants, thread, buttons, spools, and a vintage thimble. He then proceeded to shoot the image on film and used Photoshop to add in the text and other graphics.

Jeremy  joins This Land’s crew by way of Kansas City, having studied at the Kansas City Art Institute.  He is obviously an asset to This Land for his conceptions as an artist, ease in working with multiple mediums and his wizardry in ye old Adobe Creative Suite. We’re glad to have him on board.

Here are Jeremy’s answers to our MEET & GREET questions:

1. What influences you? (alternately, what are your “Must Read/Listen/Watch” items? Print or online). 

I have a wicked addiction to the encyclopedia, and I spend far too much of my free time with my nose adhered to those hallowed seams. Really, whose hobby is reading the encyclopedia? C’mon. I get a lot of influence by just being aware of what’s out there: following other artists and designers from around the world has never been easier and I relish in that. Check out great other creatives like James Jean, Eric Fortune, Jon Foster, Daniel Rozin, Chris Ware, Derrick Dent, Bee Johnson, and my good friend John Lee. There’s too many to list really, and they’re all more intense than a campsite. Really.

Also, I have a strong Norwegian connection and my inroads there allow me to follow closely what’s going on in European design and culture, something which I enjoy greatly.

2. Who or What inspires you to do the work that you do?   

I am inspired by pretty much anything and everything. I love seeing patterns in the surrounding world, and that excites and energizes me. I get very charged by mathematical expressions like fractals and the things going on at CERN. Nikola Tesla rules the roost.

I like to jaywalk through the intersection of mathematical, technological, political, cultural, artistic, and scientific history whenever I can.

Specific to art, I’m a big supporter of knowing the rules before breaking them, and so I have a lot of respect for and admiration of the classical masters from the Greeks to Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Bernini; to the more recent Sargent, Rozzi, Jean, Rockwell, Fortune, Ware, Leyendecker, Mucha, Lautrec, and so on.

3. What is your favorite piece you’ve done for The Land Press?  
On the Charles Smith cover (Vol.2, Issue 14) I was faced with finding an elegant place to put our issue number and price tag; against all odds I managed to figure out it should go right above the UPC. IT looked great there, and it was a real moment for me.

A lot happens on my desk in two weeks, so much to the point I tend to forget most of what I’ve done here. I can tell you that I love working on the covers every single time, although sometimes I practically have to kill myself to get it just the way I want it. My favorite interior illustration off the top of my head was the Faulkner Love piece, of a girl sitting in a giant red ampersand. Being a designer, you’re pretty much required to have a licensed typography fetish with a Certification in Ampersands- so any time I get to integrate type into an illustration, especially a great big “&”, I’m a happy camper.

My favorite issue visually speaking, is the upcoming February 1st issue, which I spent a lot of time re-designing and creating illustrations for.

4. What do you love about Tulsa and/or Oklahoma?   
Oklahoma at large is generally new to me and so aside from the pleasing assortment of straight lines and gnarled coils that make up the silhouette of the state, I haven’t much place to say. I’m still learning it. I can say that Tulsa is a lot like a huge little town: Small enough to pretty much know everyone but big enough to always meet someone new. There are truly exceptional people here, and they would be reason enough to stay.

5. What is your drink of choice? Alcoholic or otherwise?

~~~

For more about Jeremy, check out his bio and for more of Jeremy’s work,  feast your eyes on the Past Covers Board on This Land’s Pinterest board. Catch his latest masterpiece, on the front of the latest issue of This Land, found at any of our 50+ distribution spots or via Subscription.

Possibly the biggest champion and admirer of Tulsa’s iconic art deco buildings, Joe Coleman saved structure after structure from demolition, convincing citizens, lawmakers, and architects to renovate and repurpose instead of destroy. Over the course of his fifty-year career, he redeemed classics like Tulsa’s old City Hall, Central High School, and the Adams Hotel.

“It was a time when most of the United States was tearing down its older structures in the name of urban renewal, but he didn’t want to do that,” Zeigler said. “He had the vision to keep the older structures and repurpose them for modern use. The biggest challenge you face is vision, because you’re working with someone else’s design and preserving important work—while getting it up to the right codes. If you’re building something new from scratch, you can do anything, but the kind of work Joe did was much more creative.”

In 1970, after having become the first architect to be elected commissioner of streets and public property, Coleman went beyond buildings to save the Council Oak Tree—an old Burr Oak tree under which a Creek tribe first established Tulsa in 1836. He coordinated an unusual land exchange between the private owner and the city to acquire and preserve the area, which had been put up for sale. Thanks to Coleman, the Council Oak Tree sits safely on a hill in view of the Arkansas River.

“He understood that it was all about relationships,” Zeigler remembered. “He was easy to get along with, and had an uncanny ability to see both sides of the coin.”

In addition to his efforts in preservation, Coleman was a celebrated lay preacher for his Baptist church. His anticipated sermons led him around the world: He was invited to speak at religious events in Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa, including a special invitation to present Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer a humanitarian award.

In 2004, the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture awarded Coleman its Lifetime Achievement Award, commemorating his accomplishments in the adoption of new city building codes and numerous public improvements.