Phranksphotos

Blizzardy Day Photos…

Frank Wallace — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:47:56 +0000

Not a lot going on with all the ice and snow moving in. So, grandson and I went for a tour of the county to see what’s happening…Click an image to enlarge.

Backyard Visitors…

Frank Wallace — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:52:08 +0000

Every morning (usually between 7:00 and 8:00) a group of four Deer, sometimes eight, crosses our back yard. They are going from their nighttime field to the woods across the street behind the Baptist church. I have wanted to get some good photos of this migration but despite sitting in the freezing cold for long periods, I’ve been thwarted. Today they waited a little too long and by the time they made a try, the church traffic scared them back to the field. I took some shots then but the fog made them unusable. It was after 2:00 PM that they finally got brave enough to try again, and I was able to get in a couple of quick shots.

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Warmin’ up!

Frank Wallace — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:49:23 +0000

Temperature got above freezing today, finally. Here are a few photos shot around Bartlesville this morning. (As always, click an image to enlarge)

Woody Crumbo

Frank Wallace — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:31:46 +0000

At the urging of Mr. Doug (Bucky) Buck, I was prompted to revisit a true art treasure in Nowata. In 1943, the noted Native American artist Woody Crumbo (1912-1989) was commissioned to paint a mural in the Nowata post office. I’ve been in this Post Office many hundreds of times since about 1955, but have never before really studied or appreciated the work or the man behind it. I’m not aware of many public building murals that he did outside of some at the federal Dept. of The Interior in Washington D.C. The majority of his non-mural work survives in museums across the country as well as in the Queen of England’s collection. He led an extraordinary life as a War Dancer, Indian culturist, Artist, Prospector, art curator, etc. Bucky was lucky enough to have known Mr. Crumbo personally. Woody’s bio as well as some of his work can be seen at http://frisk.ws/WoodyCrumbo.htm or http://kosharehistory.org/museum/crumbo.html

Below is the view of the Nowata mural ( ‘Rainbow Trail’ ), as well as some close ups. I hope that this work can be preserved for many years to come… It still looks really good after 66 years. Click an image to enlarge.

Butterfly Palace

Frank Wallace — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:40:09 +0000

When telling some friends we were going to Branson, MO this week, they said we HAD to go to the Butterfly Palace. Besides some other exhibits and animals, they have a large atrium with a couple of thousand butterflies of different species. I went with great anticipation of getting good photo opportunities. The subjects were there, but a combination of cool outside temperatures and a warm, really humid atrium resulted in almost constant lens fogging. Next time allow at least an hour for the camera to acclimate to the indoor temp. Few photos are: Here.

70 year old Tweets?

Frank Wallace — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:41:12 +0000

I recently came into possession of my dad’s journals which he kept religiously for the last 25 years of his life, right up to the day he died (1962) in an explosives accident. I don’t know if you’d call them journals, diaries, or logs. They weren’t used for philosophical ramblings or personal feelings so much as they were just a record of his work activities and expenses with a few other observations thrown in. However, in reading them through you get a good sense of his personality.

The thing about these little pocket work diaries is that the daily entry space is just about the size of the entry space in a Twitter posting (140 characters). So, it’s like getting tweets from my dad to see what he was up to so long ago. Besides work details, he usually would note what the weather was like, or often, if he had any luck fishing. Whatever he could get into three lines of text. He had excellent handwriting…a trait that is not inherited, I assure. I think television and telephones have led to the demise of penmanship in our society. Click a picture to enlarge.

When my dad started working for the Independent Eastern Torpedo Company he was manufacturing Nitro-Glycerin , a high power explosive used in oil wells to break up the formation sands for better oil flow. They had a small plant in the country west of Tulsa. A typical production day diary entry might be “made 900 quarts of nitro today”. While that sounds simple, that is an enormous amount of explosives. Just a few ounces of the stuff would make quite a mess. Also, my mother would tell of dad coming home with really splitting headaches from the nitric acid fumes.That was an occupational hazard in the making of nitro. I believe that making this compound was a solitary activity, maybe a one man operation. He doesn’t speak of any co-workers in the manufacturing of the nitro. Probably would not be easy to get life insurance for this line of work. Accidents were not uncommon in this industry. After a few years of this, he stopped working in the plant so much and started going to the oil fields and shooting the wells himself. This was to be his career from then on. Here’s a pic of dad in the truck at the nitro plant.

The diaries give a glimpse of a simpler time of family visits and travels. Interesting recordings of financial dealings, like when he loaned my sister Donna money to buy a TV….then recorded her every repayment to the penny over the next year. Or when my other sister Marilyn went to Connecticut to marry at age 17. There were fun entries like vacations in Colorado. Also there were serious entries such as my brothers motorcycle accident that broke his leg or my 14 year old sister Joyce being hit and killed by a car on the way to school. Reading these through has given me a new look at my dad who died before I really got to know him.

Oh yeah, here’s the best entry from 1947. Quite a momentous day! Click on the image to make it readably larger.

Cactus Lady

Frank Wallace — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:27:49 +0000

In the past year or so my daughter Allison has turned her attention to cacti. Her home has started looking like a shrine to the prickly desert spirits. I took some quick photos the other day but I will go back soon to try to do them justice. One is blooming like crazy right now.

Cacti

Trunk-or-Treat

Frank Wallace — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:55:31 +0000

A few pics from the Trunk-or-Treat celebration at the Baptist Church.

Trunk-or-Treat

The Fly

Frank Wallace — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:55:20 +0000

I never knew that flies had sucker-like pads on their feet. I suppose there are some kind of barbed hairs on them for gripping rather than using suction. Someone told me this is a Sarcophagidae, or Flesh fly. Click to enlarge.

Test of time.

Frank Wallace — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:13:52 +0000

You have to admire an invention that so well fits its intended purpose that more than a hundred years later, it is still being produced by the millions in a relatively unchanged form. When Chapel Carter devised his unique “Nail Clipper” in 1896, could he have foreseen that these many years later virtually every home would have several of them laying around. There just seems to be little room for improvement on his design. I wonder if he actually got rich from his idea?