Tuesday, February 10, 2026, is the primary election date for any Oklahoma school board elections with three or more candidates. (Two-candidate elections, like the Tulsa Public School District 4 and District 7 races, have a bye and will appear on the April 7, 2026, school general election ballot.)

The complete list of elections is here. You can use the Oklahoma Voter Portal to see if you are voting tomorrow, check your polling place, and look at a sample ballot.

There are 415 independent (K-12) school districts in Oklahoma, 91 elementary (K-8) districts, and 29 technology center (CareerTech) districts, and every one of those 535 districts has a school board term expiring this year, but only 13 of those elections drew three or more candidates.

• Asher (McClain, Pontotoc, Pottawatomie)
• Chouteau-Mazie (Mayes, Rogers, Wagoner)
• Drumright (Creek, Payne)
• Grandfield (Cotton, Tillman)
• Hobart (Kiowa)
• Keys (Cherokee)
• Moffett (Sequoyah)
• Moss (Hughes)
• Okay (Wagoner)
• Rush Springs (Grady)
• Seiling (Dewey, Major, Woodward)
• Silo (Bryan)
• South Coffeyville (Nowata)
• Wilson (Carter, Love)

Two more seats have elections to fill unexpired terms:

• Central (Sequoyah)
• Metro Tech Center (Oklahoma)

It's pretty funny for advocates of top-two jungle primaries (SQ 836) to complain about turnout and participation in legislative and statewide elections while saying nothing about school board elections, which have exactly the system they want to impose on the entire state with even lower turnout and few candidates.

In these primaries, a candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote is elected; otherwise, the top two candidates advance to the April 7, 2026, general election.

There are more school bond issues than school board seats up for a vote: 28 districts (only one in Tulsa County) have at least one bond issue proposition on the ballot.

Jenks school district has two bond issue propositions totalling $20,300,000. According to the Bond Disclosure, Jenks Public Schools Proposition No. 1 asks for $19,640,000.00 for buildings and equipment, while Proposition No. 2 seeks $660,000.00 for student transportation equipment. Proponents claim that property taxes will not increase if the propositions are approved, but taxes would certainly decrease if the propositions are defeated. The biggest items on the list are $5.9 million for "Tennis Facility Upgrades," $3.71 million for "technology equipment district wide," and $2.6 million for "Frank Herald Fieldhouse Expansion and Renovation."

There are other matters up for a vote tomorrow.

House District 35 voters will choose between Democrat college teacher Luke Kruse and Republican rancher Dillon Travis to fill the seat vacated by Ty Burns (R-Pawnee).

Burns resigned effective October 1. Burns pleaded guilty to three misdemeanors for incidents of domestic abuse and assault involving family members in November 2024 and April 2025. He received a one-year suspended sentence and must complete a 52-week Batterer's Intervention Program. Rep. Burns was one of the more moderate Republicans in the Legislature, earning a 67% cumulative average on the Oklahoma Conservative Index for the five years he served.

House 35 is centered on Pawnee County, with sections of bordering counties (Payne, Creek, Noble, Osage). Sadly, the Republican nominee is the CAMP candidate (as was Ty Burns) and is attracting significant PAC money. (CAMP is the RINO campaign consultancy that supported Democrat Karen Keith's 2024 campaign for Tulsa mayor.) The seat will be up for election again this fall. Were the Democrat to win this special election by some fluke, Republican voters could nominate a grassroots conservative in June without having to defeat a well-funded PAC-backed incumbent in the primary.

Oklahoma City Council chairman David Holt, who wants to Californicate Oklahoma, is up for re-election, with one challenger, Matthew Pallares. The part-time at-large seat on the council, also known as "mayor," has no executive authority under OKC's council-manager form of government; the City Manager, hired by the whole Council, is the CEO of city government. If elected, Pallares hopes to direct more attention and support toward neglected areas of the city.

Several other cities and towns have municipal elections including Collinsville, Pawhuska, Sapulpa, Norman, Midwest City, Muskogee, Okmulgee, Pryor Creek, Ponca City, Hugo, Ada, Krebs, Seminole, Sallisaw, Wewoka, Alva, Durant, Yukon, Purcell, Walters, and Mangum.

Bartlesville has five propositions on the ballot: Propositions 1 through 3 are general obligation bond issues, which would increase property tax rates. Here is a list of all the bond issue projects. Proposition 4 extends the 1/4-cent economic development sales tax for five years. Proposition 5 extends the 1/2-cent capital improvement program sales tax for five years. If the propositions are defeated, the sales taxes would expire on June 30, 2026; if passed they will be extended until June 30, 2031.

• PROPOSITION NO. 1, FIRE FIGHTING APPARATUS PROJECT
• PROPOSITION NO. 2, STREET AND BRIDGE PROJECTS
• PROPOSITION NO. 3, PARKS AND RECREATIONAL FACILITIES PROJECTS
• PROPOSITION NO. 4, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM SALES TAX EXTENSION (ordinance with list of projects)
• PROPOSITION NO. 5, CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CIP) SALES TAX EXTENSION (ordinance)

The City of Cushing is re-voting on five city charter amendments:

Voters will consider five propositions addressing updates to the Charter. These topics were previously approved by voters in 2024; however, due to a technical issue with notification procedures, those results were invalidated. To honor the will of the voters, the topics are being presented again.

The proposed amendments will modernize the City Charter and eliminate inconsistencies with State Law.

Three counties are voting on sales taxes. Johnston County is voting on a five-year extension to its 1-cent sales tax, 63% of which goes to general county government.

Shall the resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Johnston County relating to:

Levying an excise (sales) tax of one percent (1%) upon the gross proceeds from all sales to any person taxable under the sales tax law of Oklahoma, providing for administration and collection of tax; requiring filing of returns; providing for interest and penalties for failure to pay tax when due; providing for refund of erroneous payments; requiring taxpayer to keep records, vendors to collect tax from purchaser at the time of sale, and establishing liens; making tax cumulative; defining items, providing severability or provisions; pledging the monthly income of the revenue of said tax to the General Fund for a period of five (5) years, beginning January 1, 2027 & ending December 31, 2031 as follows:

Emergency Services: City & Rural Fire Protection 6%, Ambulance Service 8%, Civil Defense 4%, Sheriff's Reserves 1%, General to Emergency Services 1%; Community Services: OSU Extension & 4-H 8%, Counseling, Inc. 1%, County Free Fair 2%, Senior Citizens 4%, General to Community Services 2%; General County Government: Courthouse Maintenance & Operation 16%, Support of County Offices 40%, General to County Government 7%

Be approved by the electors of Johnston County?

Latimer County will vote on a permanent 1/4-cent sales tax:

Shall a 1/4 cent sales tax in Latimer County by the Latimer County Government continue perpetually for the establishment, maintenance and operation of County Government, Latimer County Solid Waste and Latimer County 911 be approved by the people and divided as follows: 1/8 to Latimer County General Fund; 1/16 to Latimer County Solid Waste Trust Authority; 1/16 to Latimer County 911

Woodward County has a single sales-tax proposition that looks like it should be two separate issues, making a 1/10th-cent tax permanent and extending a 3/10th-cent tax for 15 years. Some civic-minded county resident ought to challenge this in court, because it blatantly violates the single-subject rule in the Oklahoma Constitution.

Shall a proposition of Woodward County, Oklahoma, making permanent, with no tax increase, one-tenth (1/10) of one (1) percent of the existing County sales tax for general government purposes, including, but not limited to, jail operations and maintenance, courthouse operations, public safety, and all other lawful functions for the benefit of the County; and extending three-tenths (3/10) of one (1) percent of the existing sales tax for a period of fifteen (15) years, with no tax increase, for qualified economic development and community facilities purposes including, but not limited to, matching funds for state and federal grants, electrical, water and sewer upgrades, road and bridge improvements, fire and EMS service support, promotion, retention, and expansion of business and industry, and all other projects that promote economic growth for the benefit of the County; providing for all revenues to be administered by the Board of County Commissioners and subject to annual budgeting, audit, and public reporting, as authorized by Title 68 O.S. §1370; and authorizing the pledging of sales tax revenues for the payment of principal and interest on any indebtedness incurred by or on behalf of the County, if applicable, be approved?

UPDATE with RESULTS: The lowest turnout election across the state was in the Town of Kendrick in Lincoln County. All 8 voters (out of about 60 registered) voted in favor of granting ONG a 25-year franchise to provide natural gas.

Most school bond issues passed. Jenks's passed with about 83% for each proposition, but turnout was just under 4% of registered voters. Democracy!

School bond issues in Bridge Creek (Grady County), Canton (Blaine), and Locust Grove (Mayes) managed a majority but fell short of the 60% threshold for passage. One of the two school bond issues Hulbert (Cherokee County) ended in a tie vote; the other broke 50% but fell short of the 60% threshold.

School bond issues in Marietta (Love), McAlester (Pittsburg), Meeker (Lincoln), Merritt (Beckham), and Weatherford (Custer) districts didn't even get 50% of the vote, with some failing by 40%-60% or worse.

McAlester Public Schools was seeking $4.7 million for a 12,000 sq. ft. STEM building, to house robotics and aerospace programs and also serve as a safe room. To their credit, they published a detailed cost estimate prepared by Crossland Construction. But the bond issue would have increased property taxes by 9%, which is substantial and probably explains the defeat. From the Bond Transparency disclosure, it looks like voters approved a $27,430,000 bond issue in 2021 for a new classroom and multipurpose building (Activities Center), but those bonds have not actually been issued, and additional bond elections in 2024 and 2025 approved a total of $3,090,000 for "windows, glass, glazing and storefronts" and "drywall" for the same building; those bonds were issued. Seems odd -- will have to dig further.

Weatherford was asking voters for an eye-popping $201 million to pay for a brand-new high school campus, plus converting the existing high school into the middle school. This would have amounted to a 10% property tax increase. The bond would have been repaid over 24 years, and the majority of the bond issue revenue would go to interest and fees. The actual project cost was only $82 million.

Ryan Michael Lowe won the Muskogee mayor's race by 11 votes over James Robert Gulley. 86% of Oklahoma City voters decided to let David Holt pretend to be important for another 4 years, but turnout was only just over 10%, despite using an election method that Holt swears will be more democratic and improve voter turnout.

All of Bartlesville's tax propositions passed with 70% or better. All three county taxes passed by wide margins.

Monday was the first day of the second regular session of the 60th Oklahoma Legislature. State Senators have filed 2,183 bills over the course of this two-year legislature and State Representatives have filed 3,506. Many if not most of those bills have been offered in reaction to some failure, inefficiency, or abuse. The hope is that adding a rule or clarifying an existing rule will halt the abuse, prevent something important from falling through the cracks, and make government more efficient.

This is a deep impulse in the American psyche. There used to be a comic strip called "There Oughta Be a Law!" where readers submitted frustrating situations that presumably could be mitigated by legislation. The Daily Oklahoman had a regular feature of the same name, highlighting ideas for new laws to make life better. In one of the first installments, appearing in the January 3, 1968, edition, Mrs. Dorothy J. Jones of 700 Musgrave Blvd., Oklahoma City, proposed:

"A person should not be able to buy his auto tag without proof of his coverage by both kinds of insurance and notice of any subsequent cancellations would be forwarded to the state." She suggests the driver's license would then be revoked or the car tag taken away until coverage is again secured. She complains that it is difficult for one whose property was damaged by another without insurance to get compensation.

After more than a half-century of discussion, that actually became a law in Oklahoma in 1976 and is still the law today, with many subsequent amendments to close various loopholes. When first passed, the law only required car owners to sign a statement affirming that they had liability insurance when they went to renew their tags. Eventually, we had to bring proof of insurance to the tag agency, and then the law had to deal with the possibility that someone might take out a policy for just long enough to get the tag, then drop it. Even with all the additional safeguards, in 2023 an estimated 12.0% of Oklahoma drivers did not carry the required liability insurance. In 7 states and DC, that proportion topped 20%. Many of us pay extra for Uninsured Motorist coverage to protect us when one of these clowns runs a red light.

Among this year's bills is a proposal to tighten the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act by prohibiting any two or more members of a public body from discussing business privately. Currently, a public body is required to post a meeting notice and allow the public to observe any deliberations involving a quorum (usually > 50%) of the body's membership. The notion behind that threshold is that a quorum is required to conduct business, and less than a quorum can't take any official action. That still allows advisory committees to deliberate privately, but any final decision has to be made in public. The problem comes when what should be contentious and debatable proposals, such as the list of non-profits that will receive a share of a federal grant to the city, are approved in the public meeting without a word of debate; clearly the matter was decided in private.

That's the particular scenario that former Tulsa City Councilor Grant Miller is trying to combat. A committee of four councilors (Phil Lakin, Vanessa Hall Harper, Jeannie Cue, and Lori Decter Wright), meeting as the ARPA Working Group, decided which non-profits would receive a share of federal COVID relief grants. As far as I've been able to determine, no substantive discussion of the list took place in a City Council open meeting. This is clearly an abuse. This Substack post by Miller offers several recent examples of the City Council and Mayor exploiting this loophole. Miller has a two-pronged remedy, which the City Council could adopt itself in an unexpected fit of integrity, or the State Legislature could impose it right away.

If a task force or working group is created by the City Council and tasked with influencing public spending, it should automatically qualify as a public body under the Open Meeting Act. The Council can make that the rule with a single vote -- by adopting a policy that all multi-member advisory groups, regardless of size, are subject to public notice, agendas, and minutes....

When major issues are briefed privately to councilors, the public is left with a fragmented view of how policy evolves. The Council could set a rule that any policy briefing involving more than two members must be noticed and open. That eliminates the serial-meeting workaround -- the "three here, three there" pattern that turns the quorum rule into a shell game.

State Sen. Brian Guthrie, who previously served as Mayor of Bixby and thus also on the Bixby City Council, has proposed several reforms to the Open Meeting Act. He has filed a bill, SB 2161, which would expand the definition of meeting. It's along the lines of what Grant Miller proposes, but broader in scope:

Any task force, working group, advisory group, study group, committee, subcommittee, or other group which is convened or created by a public body to discuss and deliberate, for the purpose of making recommendations to the public body, regardless of the number of members present, shall constitute a meeting of the public body.

And by making it a meeting of the public body, a notice and agenda would have to be posted in advance and filed with the County Clerk, and the public would be allowed to attend. If Sen. Guthrie's SB 1252 passes, the public would be allowed to comment on every item that involves taking action. Effectively, any informal conversation about policy between any two or more members of a City Council or school board or utility authority would be prohibited.

County Commissioners have been living with this constraint since the Open Meeting Act was passed, because there are only three commissioners in every county in Oklahoma, and any two of the three constitute a quorum. Nevertheless, there may not be much debate or disagreement when an item comes up for a public vote. I remember being amazed when the Tulsa County commissioners, sitting as the Tulsa County Industrial Authority, voted, without debate, to divide the billion-dollar Vision 2025 revenue bonds between two bond companies, one affiliated with Bank of Oklahoma, the other with F&M Bank. Similar no-debate votes had decided which projects would appear on the Vision 2025 ballot and how those projects would be grouped. How could such complex matters be decided without public debate, when it violates the Open Meeting Act for any two commissioners to discuss public business?

I'm not sure how Bob Dick, Randi Miller, and Wilbert Collins reached their consensus outside of the public eye back in 2003, but these days the process involves deputy county commissioners. Each county commissioner appoints a First Deputy. The First Deputy is not answerable to the voters. The First Deputy is not confirmed by any other public body. When county commissioners want to reach a private consensus on a public issue, each instructs his respective deputy, and then the three deputies meet and deliberate out of the public eye. They aren't public officials, so the three deputies can discuss public business privately without violating the letter of the Open Meeting Act. Each First Deputy communicates the conversation to his respective county commissioner. There could be multiple rounds of negotiations with the First Deputies acting as go-betweens. Theoretically, the First Deputies could be making the actual decisions with the county commissioners as mere figureheads. Who would ever know?

So here is an unintended consequence of well-intentioned sunshine laws: Deliberations about matters of public interest are carried out in private among assistants who have not been in any way vetted by the voters.

Sen. Guthrie is wise to this loophole and has proposed a bill to close it. SB 832 adds the phrase "including deputy commissioners" to the definition of "public body," in the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act.

It's easy to imagine how this could be evaded. If the deputy commissioners can't be go-betweens for the commissioners, use some other county employees, or people who aren't county employees. They could be lobbyists or lawyers or spouses or siblings or sons-in-law, just as long as they don't have the job title of deputy commissioner.

The same strategy could be adopted by other public bodies if SB 2161 passes. Any group of third parties could be used to discuss public business privately, and the taxpayers won't even know who is having the conversation.

What would help more than another rule to keep the process honest is for voters to elect enough cantankerous, thick-skinned city councilors to insist on discussing each line item in public, rather than allowing proposals to be approved without debate. Grant Miller tried valiantly, but as one of nine he was easily neutralized by the rest, although they had to resort to lies to destroy his career and his reputation. Big campaign donors spend a lot of money to keep intelligent, independent-minded people out of public office; they support agreeable people who want to be liked, because those people will do what they're told to do. That money is spent to convince voters that credulous, compromised toadies are intelligent and virtuous, while intelligent and virtuous candidates are bickering troublemakers.

I used to have a lot of faith in structural solutions to bad governance. Change the rules, fix the problem. If only we had term limits. If only Republican candidates had to pledge support for the platform. If only we had stricter campaign reporting requirements. If only we changed the voting method or election calendar to make elected officials more or less responsive to popular sentiment. Rule changes can be beneficial, can add some friction to resist the deviousness of bad officials, and may be worth doing even if they won't fully fix the problem, but they can also penalize good officials. Term limits got rid of Gene Stipe, but they also got rid of Jason Murphey and Nathan Dahm. A new rule might be the right thing, but the bad guys always seem to find a way around those rules, and often find ways to use the same rules to beat the good guys up.

The 17th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution is another example of a well-intentioned reform that failed to accomplish the aims of its proponents. Repealing it would also fail to produce the hoped-for results.

A growing number of conservatives have been calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment, which requires direct popular election of senators, along with the 16th Amendment, which authorized the federal income tax. (We have already repealed one of the four Progressive Era amendments, the 18th. A few radicals think the 19th ought to go as well.) Anti-17ers point out that the Framers of the Constitution expected the Senate, whose members would be appointed by their respective state legislatures, to represent the interests of state governments, acting as a check on the growth and power of the federal government, while the House would represent the people. There are distinctions between House and Senate that remain in the Constitution, distinctions that only make sense if the two chambers are meant to represent different constituencies: All bills for raising revenue must originate in the House, the representatives of the people. Senators, representing the states, provide advice and consent on executive and judicial officers and on treaties.

Of course, the people who pushed for the 17th Amendment (which passed a Senate filled with members elected by state legislators) believed they were defeating corruption and taking money out of politics. Constitutional scholar C. H. Hoebeke wrote about the 17th Amendment's adoption and the false hopes it inspired:

It was with no small sense of vindication that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed the proclamation of 31 May 1913, declaring the Seventeenth Amendment duly ratified and incorporated into the fundamental laws of the United States. More than twenty years earlier as a Nebraska congressman, "The Great Commoner" had joined the struggle to free the Senate from the control of corrupt state legislatures, and despite three failed campaigns for the presidency, he never wavered in his determination to make the Senate a popularly elected body. Now, after the most protracted political battle in that usually bloodless revolution historians refer to as the Progressive Era, Secretary Bryan put his seal upon the reform that, in the expectations of those who had labored for it, would end the dominance of party "bosses" and the state "machines," stamp out the undue influence of special interests in the Senate, make it more responsive to the will of the people, and of course, eliminate, or greatly reduce, the execrable practice of spending large sums of money to get elected.

As we shall see, even while the amendment was still being considered by the American public, there were ample reasons to doubt its effectiveness and to question the credulity, if not the integrity, of those who proposed it. But more than eight decades after the amendment, the current condition of Senate elections and Senate politics makes the sanguine predictions of 1913 look wholly naïve. Progressive Era reformers scandalized by the rare campaign expenditure of a hundred thousand dollars might be shocked senseless to learn that by the 1990s the average cost of a Senate seat would be well over five million dollars, that a candidate would not even approach the threshold of scandal until he had spent fifteen or twenty million dollars. If there was once cause for concern in the muckraking stories of industrial tycoons and railroad barons buying Senate influence through contributions to the state legislators, then the largess of lobbyists and activists that is today handed openly and directly to Senate candidates (overwhelmingly in favor of incumbents) should be a cause for outright alarm. And if in 1913 the old-time brokers of Senate elections were cleared from their smoke-filled rooms, the current regime of media consultants, professional pollsters, mass-market specialists, and "constituent-minded" software is hardly the victory over political cynicism that Bryan and the Progressives had envisioned.

That was in 1996, and things have only gotten worse. But even at the time, there were good reasons to doubt the value of the reform. Hoebeke continues (emphasis added):

In direct contradiction to the reformers' contention that the Senate, elected by the legislatures, was too unresponsive and too corrupted and that it would never yield to the demands of the people until placed directly under their control, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the legislatures concurred in a constitutional revision alleged to be against their political self-interest. The very adoption of the amendment would seem to call into question its necessity. Furthermore, considering not only that the Senate itself endorsed the amendment but that all of the legislatively elected incumbents renominated for Senate seats went on to win in the popular elections of 1914, it is difficult to determine precisely which of the "special interests" had been defeated by its ratification. Add to these considerations the utter failure to remove the influence of money and the fact that the much-maligned electioneering machines appear not so much to have been overthrown as to have adapted their tactics, and it is not merely the necessity of the amendment that is called into question, but the validity of the assumptions on which it was advanced.

I encourage you to read the entire article, and Hoebeke has also written a book on the subject, The Road to Mass Democracy: Original Intent and the Seventeenth Amendment. As foolishly hopeful as 17th Amendment advocates were, history shows that the pre-17th system had drifted far from the Framers' expectations. Mass democracy was already shaping the election of senators long before the 17th was ratified. As early as 1834, Senate candidates began making the general public the target of their campaigns, encouraging voters to select legislators who would vote for their preferred Senate candidate. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were not held to influence Illinois legislators but the voters who would elect the legislators. There's good reason to believe that repealing the 17th would not significantly change the federal-state balance of power.

The other great experiment in indirect election, the Electoral College, has devolved from people to points on a scoreboard. It never was a deliberative body. Electors are nominated as a reward for party loyalty, and they are punished by law if they dare to exercise the independent judgment that the Framers of the Constitution expected of them. (The Electoral College is still far better than nationwide popular vote, which would allow one fraudulent state to cancel the voting power of states with honest elections.)

(And if SQ 836 passes, you can bet that it will not produce a government full of wisely moderate and non-partisan officials.)

If elected officials aren't virtuous, more rules will only inspire their creativity in evading the new restraints. The remedy is to elect the good guys who are running for office and to give more good guys hope that, should they run, they'll have the backing of a majority of voters who are sufficiently courageous and perceptive to elect them instead of well-camouflaged bad guys. It does happen once in a while: Grant Miller is a good guy. Brian Guthrie is a good guy, even if his proposed Open Meeting Act reforms won't help as much as we'd hope. E'Lena Ashley is a good guy, and she needs your help right now to win re-election to the Tulsa school board this spring. (I could name a lot more good guys currently in public office, but I won't, for fear of leaving someone out.)

We're electing a long list of officials this fall. Character, principles, and savvy all matter. Big color postcards and expensive TV ads are there to fool you, not to inform you. Do your homework. I'll do my best to help.

Last Saturday, January 24, 2025, I was on Tulsa Beacon Weekend with Jeff Brucculeri. The weekly public affairs show, sponsored by the Tulsa Beacon newspaper, airs every Saturday from noon to 1 pm on AM 970 KCFO. Jeff and I talked about the City of Tulsa's incoherent response to homelessness and a bit about the Broken Arrow zoning case involving a proposed mosque. It was a fun conversation, and the time flew by.

As part of the discussion of homelessness, I mentioned City of Hope Outreach, a ministry to street people led by Jon Maust. City of Hope seeks out and works with the homeless who don't go to the shelters.

We have a simple, but life-changing mission: Identify those members of the homeless community who desire to put the streets behind them. We Connect those individuals with a local church and a mentor in order to Equip them with the tools and assistance needed to fully reintegrate; and then Follow Through with them until their reintegration is complete.

As I said on the show, if the City of Tulsa were serious about addressing homelessness, the committee that's deciding how to spend the $75 million taxpayers approved would include people who work with the homeless and understand the root causes, people like Jon Maust of City of Hope and Steve Whittaker of John 3:16 Mission. Instead, that money is going to provide employment for gender-studies majors in non-profit organizations.

Bruce and Leta Wilbanks of the Marriage and Family Initiative were Jeff's guests in the first half hour of the show, and they spoke about upcoming marriage-related events coming up over the next month or so.

We recorded on Thursday the 22nd, so I was safe and burrowed in at home when the show went out on Saturday. With all the preparations for last weekend's snow storm, I neglected to get word out about this in time so you could listen live; sorry about that. Although the episode has already aired, you can listen again until this coming Saturday via the KCFO app and the KCFO website. Click this link, then click Tulsa Beacon Weekend. (The most recent episode of Joe Riddle's Old Time Radio Theater is also on the app for your listening enjoyment.)

Here's a direct link to the audio of the episode.

A flock of very aggressive petition circulators have been accosting shoppers in parking lots over the last month or so, trying to meet the signature requirement to put State Question 836 on the Oklahoma ballot. The deadline for signature collection is in the next few days.

They call SQ 836 an initiative petition for open primaries, but that isn't accurate. Texas and other states have open primaries by virtue of the fact that they don't have party registration for voters. In Texas, each election year you decide before the primary date in March whether you will take the Republican, Democrat, or some other party ballot, and that limits you to that party for the rest of the year, but you could choose to take a different party's ballot the following year.

SQ 836 would set up a jungle primary, in which all voters (all who bother to show up) would choose from all candidates of all parties in a single primary. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates, regardless of party, would advance to a runoff. The only difference between this and the City of Tulsa's non-partisan elections is that party labels could appear on the ballot.

Under the SQ 836 system, the general election (really a runoff) would only offer the voters two choices. There would be no third-party candidates, no independent candidates, no option even for a protest vote against the top two.

It's a bad idea that sounds very small-d democratic. An example of how it goes wrong is the governor's race in Louisiana in 1991: Several reasonable candidates (including incumbent governor Buddy Roemer) split the majority of the vote in the primary, so that the top two to advance to the general were Edwin Edwards, a crooked former governor who had lost the 1987 election, who had already been tried for corruption, and who would later serve time in prison for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud, and David Duke, a former Klan Grand Wizard. There was a popular bumper sticker at the time that read, "Vote for the Crook. It's important." Because it was a top-two runoff, voters had no other options, no independent or third-party candidates to choose from, no way to cast a protest vote.

Wikipedia's description of that election:

The first round primary gubernatorial contest included Roemer, Edwin Edwards, David Duke, and Eighth District Congressman Holloway who all ran in Louisiana's open primary. Roemer was wounded by his mistakes as governor, while Edwards and Duke each had a passionate core group of supporters. Roemer placed third in the primary. One of the contributing factors to his defeat was a last-minute advertising barrage by Marine Shale owner Jack Kent; Marine Shale had been targeted by the Roemer administration as a polluter, and Kent spent $500,000 of his own money in the closing days of the campaign to purchase anti-Roemer commercials.

Had Holloway not run, Roemer likely would have finished second and given voters a sensible choice in the runoff. The SQ 836 system is very sensitive to spoiler candidates, who, with some dark-money backing, could win enough support to take out all the reasonable choices in the race.

Average voters who have been seduced by SQ 836 believe that they'll have as many choices as they do today. But nothing is static, and these changes will push parties to return to the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms." As a strategic matter, parties would develop private processes to select a party-backed nominee to represent the party on the ballot, in order to avoid splitting the majority party's vote among several candidates and allowing the other party to win with a tiny minority. To enforce this unity, parties would have to impose penalties on any party member who files for office without the party's endorsement. This is the system used in the UK; the nomination process is entirely private.

SQ 836 is a massive, two-page-long constitutional amendment, an awkward add-on that would be called "Article 3A." That link will take you to the actual language that the petition-backers wants to stick into the Oklahoma Constitution. The details of Oklahoma's election processes are currently set out in statute, where they can be adjusted by legislation over time. SQ 836 would write processes in stone. Even if you wanted something like SQ 836's system, but saw some minor changes you'd want to make, you wouldn't have the power.

This massive constitutional amendment is generic, developed by its out-of-state promoters, and it doesn't plug in neatly to the language used elsewhere in Oklahoma's constitution. It even has a severability clause, for pete's sake, which means the authors of SQ 836 expect that some aspects of it will be thrown out by courts; who knows what will survive? Voters and candidates will have to live with uncertainty while challenges move through the courts, and whatever does survive court challenges will be extremely hard to change however mutilated it may be.

Backers say we need this because there are too many elections decided in Republican primaries because no Democrats, Libertarians, or independents bother to file for office. There's an obvious remedy that doesn't require a constitutional amendment: File for office, and be sane enough to appeal to voters.

Back in the 1970s, when my family lived in Wagoner County, there were many county offices that were decided without any input from my parents, who were rare registered Republicans in that heavily Democrat county. That was the norm all over Oklahoma as recently as the 1970s, but the situation has completely flipped, without the help of constitutional amendments that change the election system. Republicans started running for those offices, and voters, who were already voting for Republicans over the loony leftist Democrats at the Federal level, started voting for Republicans at the county and local level. 1964 was the last time that Oklahoma gave its electoral votes to a Democrat, but it wasn't until the 2000s that Republicans gained majorities in the legislature, and it was the 2010s before the GOP became dominant in county government.

There's a lot more that could and has been said. OCPA has a lot of material on SQ 836 on their website. OCPA has also set up a website to urge Oklahomans NOT to sign the 836 petition: DeclineToSign.com

If you signed the petition for SQ 836 and have come to regret it, there is a way to rescind your signature. There is a form from the Secretary of State's office that you will need to fill out, then sign in front of a notary public (UPS Stores and banks usually have a notary), then submit in person or by mail to the Secretary of State's office in Oklahoma City. Withdraw of Signature Affidavit - Statewide Petitions - oksos2025.pdf. Here are the instructions:

1. Please provide your name, address and county information, as it appears on your voter registration record.
2. Must identify and state the petition number and state question number for signature removal [Petition Number 448, State Question 836]
3. Along with the date the petition was signed
4. Execute/Sign your affidavit, in witness of an Oklahoma Notary Public (only handwritten, original signatures are accepted).
5. Notary public must fully execute their witness statement accordingly.
6. Then, please mail or deliver in person your original (copies are not accepted), fully executed affidavit to:

Oklahoma Secretary of State
Exec/Leg Division - Statewide Petitions
Oklahoma State Capitol Bldg.
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Ste. 122
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73105

No Republican elected official has come out in support of SQ 836. David Holt, a former Republican state senator who now serves a part-time non-partisan position as chairman of the Oklahoma City Council, is its most prominent supporter.

By now you've heard that the application to rezone a parcel for a mosque from Agricultural to Commercial General was denied by the Broken Arrow City Council by a vote of 4-1. Broken Arrow city councilor Justin Green moved to deny the mosque rezoning, seconded by Lisa Ford, supported by Mayor Debra Wimpee and David Pickel. Vice Mayor Johnnie Parks was the lone vote for the mosque rezoning. @Snarkio_ on X has a clip of the vote.

Here is the 4-hour livestream of the Broken Arrow City Council meeting. This link is cued to the applicant's rebuttal following public comment, which is followed by council discussion and the vote. Councilor Lisa Ford asked to cut off the public hearing and proceed to council discussion and a vote. At Ford's request to stop public comments, there were shouts about freedom of speech from the audience. I'm not sure which side these people were on. Based on many years of attending zoning hearings, I'm amazed that the council allowed comments to go on for hours. Typically there are not only time limits for individual speakers but an overall cap on comments on either side of an issue. Thirty minutes each side would be generous.

At that point, the applicant's representative explained why the mosque has joined NAIT, but also stated (to my surprise) the mosque would not hesitate to disengage from NAIT if the federal or state government required that. He said that Islamic Society of Tulsa is also part of NAIT, with a local board that runs the programs, raises funds for operating the mosque, but "NAIT's role is custodial, very minimal role," that he characterized as asset protection, continuity -- the property can't be sold, the mosque remains a place of worship, "because that's what the donors have funded this for," and legal stability: "When the founders pass away, there's no dispute on where the mosque goes.... But so far it is the only nationally-established support org [for mosques] that is similar to any church structure."

As I mentioned in the post about NAIT's ownership of the proposed mosque site, national control of the property of local religious congregations is a problem for Christian churches, too. What happens when the national organization is taken over and taken in a completely hostile direction? Do local leaders have the freedom to leave and keep the property? I started writing more about this, but it belongs in a separate post.

The applicant's representative defended the changes that were made after the planning commission hearing, in response to public concerns. He also stated that the architect recommended getting the zoning approval before proceeding with costly engineering work on stormwater, sewage, and site preparation. This is the typical sequence; no point in spending money on engineers if you won't be able to build there.

At 3:56:15, She made a few comments, followed by Councilor Justin Green, who offered a few thoughts and put forward the motion to deny the application.

Here's what Councilor Ford had to say on Facebook after the meeting:

Tonight I cast a vote that I knew would not make everyone happy, and I want to be clear about why.

My decision was not about religion, hate, or disagreement with anyone's beliefs or way of life. I know and respect many good people on all sides who call Broken Arrow home.

As a City Councilor, my responsibility in development cases is to evaluate the proposal itself. This was a rezoning request, and the questions are always the same:

Does it meet city requirements?

Is the infrastructure adequate?

Does it align with our comprehensive plan and ordinances?

In this case, it did not. Because of that, the only responsible vote was no. That decision would have been the same regardless of who brought the proposal forward or what type of project was proposed for that property.

Broken Arrow should always be a place where all citizens can enjoy their families, freedoms, and quality of life. This vote was based solely on zoning, infrastructure, and long-term planning--not on people or religion.

I also want to thank everyone who reached out. I personally responded to every email, phone call, and message. Your civic engagement matters, and your voices are valued.

Lastly, thank you to law enforcement, the fire department, and city staff who put in extra time and effort to ensure this special City Council meeting ran smoothly. Your professionalism and dedication to our community do not go unnoticed.

Special thanks to OFFICER Gibson and OFFICER Keech for taking care of me tonight.

I couldn't have said it better. Thank you Lisa Ford for BA City Council Ward 2. Broken Arrow is--and should always be--a community where all citizens can enjoy their families, freedoms, and quality of life. This vote was based solely on the facts and feasibility of the proposed project, not on people, religion, or any particular way of life. I'll also add I have dear friends who are Muslim, so again this vote was not about the particular place of assembly as many tried to make it on both sides.

I will add a reminder our municipalities run on sales tax revenue, we are unlike any other state in that aspect. So my first desire would be to have commercial on any piece of property that available. However, even straight commercial development on this site would not be appropriate at this time, as the surrounding infrastructure--particularly directly in front of the property--is not sufficient to support any project currently.

Logistics of last night's meeting...I could not be more proud of our city team and public safety departments for your incredible efforts to accommodate our citizens and to keep everyone safe. The behind the scenes efforts were most impressive!

Finally thank you to NSU for hosting last night! Your partnership in all things BA is truly appreciated.

On Monday, January 12, 2026, at a special meeting at the NSU-BA Administrative Services Building, the Broken Arrow City Council will consider a zoning amendment that would allow construction of a development that would include the Tulsa area's fourth mosque and the first in a Tulsa suburb. Many citizens are upset about it and want to see the council deny the application, but it's important to understand the technicalities of the zoning process and what discretion the City Council has.

The City Council does not have to accept the recommendation of planning staff and can weigh many different factors when deciding to change the zoning ordinance. On the other hand, the appearance that the decision was arbitrary and capricious or illegally discriminatory can expose the council to lawsuits, and a legal judgment against the city would be repaid from the sinking fund, which would be replenished by a property tax increase. Here is a description of municipal zoning powers from an article on the Oklahoma Bar Association website:

There are some very basic legal standards to consider when advising a planning commission, governing body or private client. One of the most important is that the Oklahoma Supreme Court has consistently held that unless a zoning decision of a municipality is found not to have a substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare or to constitute an unreasonable, arbitrary exercise of the police power, its judgments will not be overturned by the district court. Also, courts may not substitute their judgment for that of the municipal legislative body. The court's duty will be to determine whether the restriction on the use of the property is a reasonable exercise of power under the zoning statute. When the validity of a legislative classification for zoning purposes is fairly debatable, legislative judgments must be allowed to stand.

One significant case upholding this principle is Clary v. Oklahoma City, in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the district court's ruling that upheld the city's decision to deny rezoning a single-family home in a residential area for commercial use, finding the question of appropriate zoning as "fairly debatable" and therefore within the city's discretion.

On December 18, 2025, the Broken Arrow Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of the zoning change and the conditional-use permit for a place of assembly, file number 25-1766. (Video of the meeting is available here. After public comment, the discussion among the planning commissioners starts about four-and-a-half hours into the meeting. The vote is at about 4 hrs. 50 mins.) The proposal would rezone a 15-acre parcel on the east side of Olive just south of the Creek Turnpike from AG (Agricultural) to CG (Commercial General) and FD (Floodplain), and then would grant a conditional-use permit to allow a place of assembly on a CG-zoned parcel. The two issues are separate, but the second issue is dependent on the first: The zoning change could be granted and the conditional-use permit denied. The Planning Commission voted 4-1 to recommend the rezoning to CG (Robert Goranson, Jason Coan, Jaylee Klempa, Jonathan Townsend voting yes, Mindy Payne, voting no). The conditional-use permit passed 3-2, the three men (Goranson, Coan, Townsend) voting yes and the two women (Klempa and Payne) voting no; Goranson added a stipulation against broadcasts and announcements on the exterior of the facility (public safety excepted) to his motion to approve the Conditional Use Permit. From the Planning Commission agenda item:

BAZ-002469-2025 is a request to change the zoning designation of 15.08 acres from AG (Agricultural) to CG (Commercial General) and FD (Floodplain). The property is located approximately ½ mile north of Tucson Street (121st Street) and just east of Olive Avenue (129th E. Avenue). The Creek Turnpike and its interchange with Olive Avenue is north of this property.

The proposed development will have access from Olive Avenue. This property is Comprehensive Plan Level 6, which supports a rezoning to CG. The proposed development includes a commercial retail center along the frontage of the property, the Islamic Center in the center portion. The rear portion of the property is partially floodplain and is planned for a retention pond and vacant land. A Conditional Use Permit for a place of assembly is also a part of this item for consideration.

Parking requirements for places of assembly are 1 parking space per 4 seats in assembly area or 1 per 100 sq ft in meeting area without seats. The conceptual development layout details 726 total parking spaces, however, the final number will be determined and approved in the site plan review process for both the Islamic Center and the retail
development....

According to FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer, the rear portion of the property features an area of 100-year flood plain. That area is planned to remain undeveloped currently. All developments will follow floodplain development requirements as set forth by the City of Broken Arrow and FEMA.

All surrounding properties are currently zoned AG. Immediately to the south is Walnut Grove Church, pastored by David Ingles, founder of the Oasis Radio Network. The other surrounding parcels are vacant and wooded. The driveway to The Property Event Center is right across the street.

City planning staff, who review each zoning amendment, recommended approval of the proposal.

Recommendation:

Based upon the Comprehensive Plan, the location of the property, and the surrounding land uses, Staff recommends that BAZ-002469-2025 and SP-002526-2025 be approved subject to the property being platted.

Reviewed by: Jane Wyrick

Approved by: Rocky Henkel

The Broken Arrow Comprehensive Plan Future Development Guide Map designates the parcel as Level 6, Regional Employment/Commercial, while the areas to the south are Level 3, Transitional. The conceptual site plan, which is not binding in any way, shows the existing pond remaining, with a septic field next to it. The 20,700 retail strip along 129th East Avenue is shown as "future," while the 23,764 sq. ft. mosque is "Phase 1."

The description of Level 6:

Level 6 represents an opportunity to develop regionally significant and highway oriented commercial and employment nodes in Broken Arrow. The Level 6 classification is for a mixture of medium to high intensity commercial and employment uses in the vicinity of major transportation corridors. Nodes along Elm Place, Aspen Avenue, and Kenosha Street, as well as key interchanges along the Broken Arrow Expressway and the Creek Turnpike, are all appropriate areas for Level 6 development. Typical uses could include large shopping centers, big box retailers, commercial, automotive, and office/employment centers.

The Future Development Guide Map shows a half-mile-wide, 2.5-mile-long swath of Level 6 along the Creek Turnpike, extending to both sides, from Florence (111th Street S.) at about 121st East Ave to Elm Place (161st East Ave). This area already includes a Walmart Supercenter, Regal Warren Theater, Reasor's, and a collection of fast-food restaurants. The obvious intention is to have a continuous corridor of car-oriented sales-tax generating businesses along this high-capacity corridor to serve and encourage residential development on Broken Arrow's south side. I've outlined the site of the proposed mosque development in red.

The Transportation Plan Map shows a frontage road that would parallel the turnpike on the south side and allow more of the corridor to be developed commercially; it would likely cut through the property. This road has been cited as a reason to deny the rezoning. (If Broken Arrow wants the possibility of building this road in the future, they had better begin acquiring the right-of-way.)

While there is a church just to the south, it is in the Level 3 transition area, and not in Level 6, and it is well south of the proposed frontage road. Those subtle differences would warrant somewhat different treatment.

At the Planning Commission meeting, State Sen. Christi Gillespie, a member of the Broken Arrow City Council prior to her election to the State Senate last year, argued for denial based on land use planning, transportation planning, and economic development concerns. She posted video of her remarks on Facebook.

Gillespie reminded the planning commissioners that the staff recommendation for approval did not bind their freedom to exercise their own judgment. The same thing is true for the City Council: The Planning Commission has made a recommendation for approval, and the City Council has the discretion to deny.

Gillespie pointed out that, "Everything we depend on in Broken Arrow to have quality of life depends on sales tax." The Olive (129th East Ave) exit is the first BA exit on the Creek Turnpike when coming from the west, which makes it a strategic location for highway-visible retail businesses to capture dollars from south and east Tulsa residents.

Regarding the conditional use permit required to allow a place of assembly on the site, Gillespie noted that there would be three places of assembly within a quarter-mile -- Walnut Grove to the south and The Property Event Center to the west, making three large parcels at this key exit that would not be generating sales tax. The future "measly 20,000 square foot strip center would not begin to offset sales tax lost to this development. Honestly, the applicant -- they acted that they didn't even want to do it, and it wasn't even their idea." I suspect either their land-use attorney or BA planning staff suggested adding the retail strip to the drawing to improve the application's chances for approval.

Gillespie reminded the commissioners that Broken Arrow has a precedent for not permitting concentrations of places of assembly. A commenter on Gillespie's video named Clint Babb stated that when a church sought to occupy the former Reasor's on the east side of Elm south of New Orleans (101st St.), the city council denied their application, despite the church including a strip of small shops across the frontage of the building. The city had invested a considerable amount of money into reviving the vintage 1980s retail node now known as New Orleans Square, and they didn't want to see yet another large retail space (originally a 72,000 sq. ft. K-Mart, which opened in 1979) at the intersection occupied by a non-sales-tax-generating use. (I subsequently learned that this was Millennial Church, according to State Sen. Dana Prieto, a member of the church.)

The septic field shown on the concept drawing, and no plan to connect to the city sewer system, was another red flag for the state senator.

Finally, Gillespie called attention to the Creek Turnpike frontage roads shown on the Comprehensive Plan. This proposed development wouldn't allow that road to be built. If the frontage road is blocked, there will be no access from Olive to any business that wants to locate on the S side of the highway; it will have to be accessed from Tucson (121st Street South), putting traffic pressure on that road and on the 121st Street & Olive intersection.

Gillespie concluded: "My goal is to ensure we have a common-sense economic development plan for my district. This development does not comply with the Comprehensive Plan, nor does it make business sense for the inevitable growth between Aspen and Olive. It's for these reasons that you have no choice but to vote no."

This case against the zoning proposal is not a pretext to discriminate against a particular religion but stands on its own based on the city's interest to encourage and not impede retail development along this strategic corridor. Sen. Gillespie said that even if it were her own church proposing to build on the site, she would oppose it for the reasons stated.

It's been too long ago to find the case, but circa 1991, when Christ Presbyterian Church sought to plant a satellite campus in Broken Arrow, they attempted to rent space in the retail strip on the NE corner of Aspen and Albany (145th East Ave. and 61st St.). The city rejected their permit because a church in that location would have made the cocktail lounge at the Holiday Inn (now the Clarion) illegal because of spacing requirements around a church.

A concerning aspect of the proposed Broken Arrow mosque is its ownership. In a later entry, I'll get into the technicalities of the zoning amendment process and the grounds on which the Broken Arrow City Council might plausibly deny it, but the organization that owns the land is a topic that we explored almost 20 years ago here at BatesLine, in connection with the hostility endured by an anti-terrorist Muslim immigrant from Pakistan from the leaders of Tulsa's Islamic community.

The 15-acre property on the east side of Olive Street (129th East Avenue) just south of the Creek Turnpike has been owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) since 2014. The Islamic Society of Tulsa (IST) purchased the land from the Clarence E. Brooks Trust for $625,000, then later in 2014 transferred the title to NAIT, "to have and to hold said described premises unto GRANTEE as perpetual trustee (in Waqf)."

NAIT is also the owner of record of the former Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School at 46th and Irvington, which is now home to a mosque and Peace Academy (a private school). The property on which the Muslim Student Association mosque at 4th Place and Florence sits is owned by the University of Tulsa; by contrast, the neighboring religious student ministry buildings on the same block are owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and the Wesley Foundation, respectively.

September 19, 2014 Journal Record story about the construction of Masjid as-Salam mentions plans for a future Broken Arrow mosque:

The mosque serves about 1,000 Muslims each week, roughly double 1999 levels. Siddiqui said holiday activity now exceeds capacity, leading the Islamic Society to buy 15 acres in Broken Arrow for future development.

A 2006 controversy over claims of American Muslim support of international terrorism called public attention to Tulsa Muslim connections to an influential network of Islamic organizations.

Jamal Miftah wrote an op-ed, published in the October 29, 2006, Tulsa World, condemning terrorism in the name of Islam and calling on Islamic leaders in the US to join in that condemnation. He noted the complicity of some American Muslim organizations in financing worldwide terror:

Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in [Al-Qaeda's] hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.

For his courage, he was confronted at the Islamic Center of Tulsa by the imam and the leader of the operating council and banned. The situation received national attention. That conflict came to mind recently when Helen Pluckrose called upon liberal and reforming Muslims (that is, those who believe in freedom of conscience and don't demand the conversion or subjugation of all humans to Islam) to speak out against violent behaviors by their co-religionists. I called her attention to Miftah's experience to explain why more Muslims don't speak out.

I encourage you to read through that entire category of BatesLine articles, which expanded to include Gov. Brad Henry's barely-camouflaged attempt to give Islamic leaders in Oklahoma a special seat at the state government table.

As the story developed we learned that the Islamic Society of Tulsa is affiliated with NAIT and ISNA, part of a network of organizations that increasingly dominate Muslim community life in the US. Critics say that the organizations have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood and that significant funding from Saudi Arabia through these organizations has worked to shape the practice of Islam in America after the image of the strict Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam.

The name of one particular Tulsan illustrates the close connections between various national Muslim organizations and the Tulsa Muslim community: Mujeeb Cheema. At the time, Cheema was executive director of NAIT. He is currently listed as a board member of NAIT. Cheema is also currently on the board of the American Halal Institute. He was an incorporator of the Islamic Society of Tulsa at its founding in 1997. In 2003, as chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa, he hailed the construction of the Muslim Students Association mosque on the University of Tulsa campus as possibly "the first building constructed on an American college campus for the specific purpose of serving as an Islamic mosque."

In 2006, the NAIT website said about itself (emphasis added):

The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is a waqf, the historical Islamic equivalent of an American trust or endowment, serving Muslims in the United States and their institutions. NAIT facilitates the realization of American Muslims' desire for a virtuous and happy life in a Shari'ah-compliant way.

NAIT is a not-for-profit entity that qualifies as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. NAIT was established in 1973 in Indiana by the Muslim Students Association of U.S. and Canada (MSA), the predecessor of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). NAIT supports and provides services to ISNA, MSA, their affiliates, and other Islamic centers and institutions. The President of ISNA is an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of NAIT.

NAIT holds titles to mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and other real estate to safeguard and pool the assets of the American Muslim community, develops financial vehicles and products that are compatible with both the Shari'ah (Islamic law) and the American law, publishes and distributes credible Islamic literature, and facilitates and coordinates community projects.

A February 8, 2004, front-page feature story in the Chicago Tribune recounts a battle over the Bridgeview, Illinois, mosque, which was founded in the 1950s by Palestinian immigrants, but taken over by newcomers, funded by Kuwaiti donors and Saudi and UAE governments, and deeded to NAIT in the 1980s, over the objections of long-time members. (Here is the article on Newspapers.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Beitunia farmer Khalil Zayid arrived in 1939 and rented a room along 18th Street in the heart of the Arab community on the South Side.... Like many in the Islamic world at the time, Zayid and the other Beitunia immigrants practiced a form of Islam that allowed Muslims to socialize freely.

They viewed their religion as an important part of life, but not all of life. Men and women could mingle. The women wore short sleeves and did not cover their hair. The men sometimes ran liquor stores even though many Muslims believed Islam forbade selling alcohol. While they wanted to succeed in America and fit into society, they also wanted a place of their own to practice their religion and hold on to their culture.

But in all of Chicago, there was no real mosque or official religious leader for Arab Muslims. In 1954, about 30 families from Beitunia, including Zayid's, decided that something needed to be done. They formed the Mosque Foundation and started raising money for a formal place of worship. Zayid stepped forward to become the group's first prayer leader, holding services in a storefront. He had no formal Islamic training, but he considered himself a religious man....

Most of the Beitunia immigrants who had dreamed of their own mosque are now gone.

The congregation's first prayer leader, Khalil Zayid, worshiped there until he died in 1988. He was never allowed to lead prayers at the new mosque. Many of the early leaders' children attend other mosques or pray at home. Leila Diab, the daughter of a founder, rarely prays in Bridgeview. She said she tried to meet with Sheik Jamal several years ago, but he insisted that she cover her hair, and she refused....

Sheik Jamal and other [Bridgeview] mosque leaders still pursue a controversial agenda. In March 2002, the mosque hired a new assistant prayer leader--the same man who had run the local office of an Islamic charity until it was closed by the federal government for alleged terrorism ties. Even a few board members questioned whether he should have been hired so quickly. At a prayer service last May, Sheik Jamal raised $50,000 for Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida who is charged with being the U.S. leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

To rally donors, the sheik called Israel "a foreign, malignant and strange element on the blessed land." Al-Arian denies the charges against him. Oussama Jammal, the mosque president, defended the fundraising for Al-Arian. "We raised for his legal defense. That's allowed under U.S. law," he said.

"If people were against this, they wouldn't have paid." In December, at an Islamic conference in Chicago, Sheik Jamal said that Muslims should not listen to contemporary music and that women should not travel long distances without chaperones. He also praised Sayyid Qutb, whose writings helped lay the foundation for Muslim Brotherhood beliefs. The mosque remains so conservative, several former leaders said, because more and more mosque officials are Brotherhood members. Mosque leaders declined to comment on the Brotherhood, but director Bassam Jody noted that most of the mosque's 24 directors belong to the Muslim American Society--a group with strong ties to the Brotherhood. The mosque vice president runs the society's local chapter.

Stephen Schwartz, an academic, a journalist, and a follower of Sufism, testified in 2003 before the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee about the spread of Wahhabi influence in the American Muslim community through NAIT and related organizations:

Wahhabi-Saudi policy has always been two-faced: that is, at the same time as the Wahhabis preach hostility and violence against non-Wahhabi Muslims, they maintain a policy of alliance with Western military powers -- first Britain, then the U.S. and France -- to assure their control over the Arabian Peninsula.

At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism, although the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the so-called Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques.1This is a claim we consider unfounded.

Rather, Wahhabi control over mosques means control of property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content of preaching -- including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational solicitation. Similar influence extends to prison and military chaplaincies, Islamic elementary and secondary schools (academies), college campus activity, endowment of academic chairs and programs in Middle East studies, and most notoriously, charities ostensibly helping Muslims abroad, many of which have been linked to or designated as sponsors of terrorism.

The main organizations that have carried out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and CAIR. Support activities have been provided by the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, its sister body the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and a number of related groups that I have called "the Wahhabi lobby." ISNA operates at least 324 mosques in the U.S. [as of 2003] through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). These groups operate as an interlocking directorate.

In a 2002 Q&A with National Review, Schwartz had this to say about Wahhabist influence over American mosques (emphasis added):

Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only country outside Saudi Arabia where the Islamic establishment is under Wahhabi control. Eighty percent of American mosques are Wahhabi-influenced, although this does not mean that 80 percent of the people who attend them are Wahhabis. Mosque attendance is different from church or synagogue membership in that prayer in the mosque does not imply acceptance of the particular dispensation in the mosque. However, Wahhabi agents have sought to impose their ideology on all attendees in mosques they control.

How many mosques are held in trust by NAIT is hard to determine. The list on their website is empty. NAIT's self-proclaimed role as a guarantor would allow it to step in should local mosque leadership choose to reject Wahhabism and embrace a more liberal, American-flavored version of Muslim life. This is a similar dynamic to that of liberal Christian denominations who owned local church property; conservative congregations seeking to leave a liberalizing denomination like the Presbyterian Church USA and the Episcopal Church, because of their objections to the denominations' embrace of left-wing ideology and rejection of the Bible, were forced either to abandon their long-time homes (e.g., Falls Church, Virginia) or to pay a hefty ransom to retain the facilities built with the sacrificial gifts of local members (e.g., Tulsa's Kirk of the Hills).

A current NAIT webpage describes the organization's power to override local mosque leadership when the property is held by NAIT in waqf:

In the United States, corporate culture has permeated all spheres of life, and religious world in to immune to its influence. Under the influence of this prevalent corporate culture, most mosques are governed by a Board of Trustees/Directors. Such a governing board may be tempted to act as if its reach of governance is unfettered to the extent that it can change the use of the property, use it as a collateral for a loan, prohibit some universally accepted mode of worship, permit an un-Islamic activity, etc. None of such actions would be feasible if the property is part of the NAIT Waqf Family of Islamic Centers.

On a different (newer?) website, NAIT mentions a Tulsa situation in passing as it describes the benefits of waqf:

In addition to this main goal, being a part of the NAIT family of centers provides a platform for the unity of Muslims, which Islamophobic forces are aiming to subvert. The centers might benefit in other ways when it entrusts its property to NAIT. Such benefits include the fact that center's assets are protected from liabilities arising from its organizational activities, such as lawsuits by a disgruntled individual or due to the mistakes of its officers.

NAIT has advanced millions of dollars in interest-free loans to centers to complete their infrastructure projects. Relationship with NAIT (e.g. the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma) can help in inducing the signing of construction contracts in the face of limited immediate availability of construction funds. Affiliation with NAIT helps in obtaining and renewing property tax exemption, and in dealings with the IRS.

Discover the Networks has detailed and lengthy articles on the North American Islamic Trust and its parent organization, the Islamic Society of North America, carefully and precisely documenting their connections to terrorist-linked organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Holy Land Foundation.

A financial subsidiary and "constituent organization" of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was founded in 1973 in Indiana by members of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada. NAIT is a tax-exempt nonprofit endowment that not only subsidizes the construction of new mosques in the United States, but presently claims to hold the mortgages on more than 325 existing mosques, Islamic centers, and Islamic schools in 42 states. Some sources indicate that NAIT holds the mortgages to about 27% of all U.S. mosques, which is roughly consistent with the Trust's own claim; other sources place the figure much higher, at somewhere between 50% and 79%.

Because NAIT controls the purse strings of these many properties, it can exercise ultimate authority over what they teach and what activities they conduct. Specifically, the Trust seeks to ensure that the institutions under its financial influence promote the principles of Sharia Law and Wahhabism....

At the 2007 trial investigating allegations that the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development had engaged in the illegal financing of terrorism, both NAIT and ISNA were named as "unindicted co-conspirators" and as "entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Prosecutors presented copious evidence that ISNA had used NAIT to divert funds to leading Hamas officials like Mousa Abu Marzook, and to a number of Hamas-run institutions (such as the Islamic University of Gaza and the Islamic Center of Gaza, the latter of which was founded by the late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin).

The designation of NAIT as an "unindicted co-conspirator" was upheld in 2009 by a federal judge, though that judge ruled against the previous public disclosure of the designation. Many media outlets have repeatedly mischaracterized this as a lifting of the designation.

There is one non-NAIT mosque in Tulsa: The Tulsa Islamic Foundation, located on 61st Street east of Mingo, is a Shia mosque affiliated with Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya and Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Najaf, Iraq.

KJRH ran a story today on Jasmine "Jazzy" Smith, an 18-year-old Oklahoman who is undergoing treatment in Florida for conditions related to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome:

TULSA, Okla. -- An 18-year-old Oklahoma singer whose life revolved around performing is now fighting for her health after a rare connective tissue disorder left her nearly bedridden....

"When I was a dancer, cheerleader, I always dislocated things, subluxed my knees, shoulders, and then subluxed my neck," Smith said. "Then after like a few months, it just all I started regressing really badly, and I was noticing really weird brain patterns."

Doctors eventually diagnosed her with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare connective tissue disorder that can affect nearly every system in the body.

Months ago, her health collapsed completely. She endured long hospital stays, severe head and spinal pain, multiple daily seizures, and days without sleep....

In Florida, doctors diagnosed Cervical Cranial Instability, a malformation, and Intracranial Hypertension -- conditions linked to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that increase brain pressure and cause regressions to systems in her body.

The news story describes it as rare, but at a prevalence of 1 in 3,100 for the most common type, hypermobile EDS (hEDS), there's a decent chance that someone in your world has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (a disorder affecting the formation of collagen in the body). At that prevalence, there could be around 1,300 people in Oklahoma with EDS.

The effects vary and for many are not as severe as Jazzy Smith has experienced. Because collagen is everywhere, seemingly unrelated symptoms -- joint hypermobility, headaches, tachycardia, allergic reactions to foods (mast cell activation disorder) -- may all be downstream of the same root cause, but doctors who are unaware of EDS may just try, unsuccessfully, to treat the individual symptoms.

Recently we met someone who had worked in the medical field and had EDS symptoms, like frequent shoulder dislocation and tendon rupture as a side effect of Cipro (see note below), but had never heard of EDS. There needs to be more awareness.

Tulsa is blessed with at least one doctor, David Chorley at Axis HealthCare in Bixby, who understands EDS, and there are online communities like EDSOK - Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Oklahoma, which can help you find EDS-aware specialists and resources for learning to live with EDS. An EDS patient named Deborah Cusack has developed a nutritional approach, called the Cusack Protocol, which "focuses on improving connective tissue integrity and function through a combination of supplements targeting specific cells involved in collagen production and tissue repair.

NOTE: People with EDS are one class among several who are at risk for tendon rupture and other severe side effects from the fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics, which includes ciprofloxacin (marketed as Cipro and generic ciprofloxacin), ciprofloxacin extended-release (marketed as Cipro XR and Proquin XR), gemifloxacin (marketed as Factive), levofloxacin (marketed as Levaquin), moxifloxacin (marketed as Avelox), norfloxacin (marketed as Noroxin), and ofloxacin (marketed as Floxin).

Edited and updated from the version originally published on December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today.

My Christmas Eve was spent doing a little bit of last-minute shopping, including a visit to the Nut House for some pecans and to Persnickety Consignments in Catoosa for one of their hand-painted, glow-in-the-dark Christmas ornaments celebrating the Blue Whale and the Route 66 Centennial. I picked up some barbecue from Rib Crib just an hour before they closed at 5 (out of ribs, of course) for an early dinner.

My wife and I and our two local children attended our church's Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols candlelight service, which once again featured a Nativity-themed poetical homily written and recited by our pastor. I wore a green sweater over a red shirt for a family photo after the service, but it was only for appearance's sake; it was warm and muggy as we left the building, reminding us of our Christmas 2013 in Sarasota, Florida. I drove home through several midtown neighborhoods to look at lights. A favorite extravagant display on 30th Place east of Utica is missing this year, replaced by a For Sale sign, a sign with a sad story behind it.

Christmas day will be quiet, and just the four of us. We'll make phone calls to connect with far-flung family. With such a small group, we've decided on dinner out, although we'll make our traditional breakfast casserole for the morning.

At some point, we will listen to this year's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, and enjoy the solo chorister sing the opening verse of "Once in Royal David's City," the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, and the bidding prayer that opens the service.

While Lessons and Carols is an Anglican tradition, it is encouraging to see how it has escaped its cradle and found a home in Bible-believing churches of many different denominations.

As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. My 8th grade year was the first year I was required to attend, and I expected to be bored. Instead, I was entranced. My last two years in high school, I was a member of the Concert Chorus and was privileged to join in the singing of Tomas Luis de Victoria's setting of O Magnum Mysterium, an ancient poem about the wonder that "animals should see the newborn Lord lying in a manger." As a senior, I was one of the 12 Madrigal Singers. The six ladies sang the plainsong setting of Hodie Christus Natus Est (Today Christ Is Born), repeating it as the students processed into their places. Then all 12 of us sang Peter J. Wilhousky's arrangement of Carol of the Bells, with the 3 basses landing on the final satisfying "Bom!" on that low G.

At the beginning of Trinity's service, after the processional, Father Ralph Urmson-Taylor, who served as Holland Hall's Lower School chaplain, would read the bidding prayer. Confessing Evangelical has it as I remember it. It's worth a moment of your time to ponder.

Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmastide our care and delight to hear again the message of the angels, and in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger.

Therefore let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child.

But first, let us pray for the needs of the whole world; for peace on earth and goodwill among all his people; for unity and brotherhood within the Church he came to build, and especially in this our diocese.

And because this of all things would rejoice his heart, let us remember, in his name, the poor and helpless, the cold, the hungry, and the oppressed; the sick and them that mourn, the lonely and the unloved, the aged and the little children; all those who know not the Lord Jesus, or who love him not, or who by sin have grieved his heart of love.

Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are one forevermore.

These prayers and praises let us humbly offer up to the Throne of Heaven, in the words which Christ himself hath taught us: Our Father, which art in heaven...

The bidding prayer was written by Eric Milner-White, dean of the chapel of King's College, who introduced the Lessons and Carols service there on Christmas Eve 1918. Jeremy Summerly describes the prayer as "the greatest addition to the Church of England's liturgy since the Book of Common Prayer."

In some versions, the prayer for "all those who know not the Lord Jesus, or who love him not, or who by sin have grieved his heart of love" is dropped, perhaps because of political correctness and religious timidity, but they seem to have been restored in recent years. Who needs prayer more than those who reject the Way, the Truth, and the Life?

The phrase "upon another shore, and in a greater light" always gives me goosebumps as I think about friends and family who are no longer with us, but who are now free from pain and delighting in the presence of the Savior they loved so dearly in this life. As he wrote those words, Milner-White, who had served as an army chaplain in the Great War before his return to King's College, must have had in mind the 199 men of King's and the hundreds of thousands of his countrymen who never returned home from the trenches of Europe.

This year that number includes my father, who was Christmas cheer personified for our family and for many Tulsans for the last two decades. The staff at Philbrook Museum, where he held court every year since 2005 that they'd had a Santa, very kindly invited my sister and me and our families to one night of the Festival and presented us with Christmas ornaments honoring his memory. His successor at Philbrook is a fine gentleman and was a good friend and colleague to Dad, and it was nice to Dad's custom-built throne still in good use.

Added this year to the number of those who rejoice on another shore and in a greater light are several other men who were fathers in the faith: Brother Gerald E. Dyer, the pastor at First Baptist Church of Rolling Hills who baptized me in 1972 and who went on to serve pastorates in Baxter Springs, Kansas, and Miami, Oklahoma; Dr. Donald R. Vance, a world-renowned expert in Hebrew and Semitic languages, co-editor of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: A Reader's Edition, a former professor at ORU and teacher at ACA, and a faithful friend; and Ray Rose, who was my boss at Burtek back in the late 1980s, and who set an example of living out his Christian faith both in and out of the workplace.

On the very same day that my dad left this life, my Aunt Gerry, my mother's youngest surviving sister, left us, too. Aunt Gerry was a voracious reader. When I was young she would lend me her favorite sci-fi novels, and she gave me albums that introduced me to Monty Python and Willie Nelson (and Willie Nelson introduced me to the Great American Songbook). She spent several years as a reporter and editor at small-town newspapers in southeastern Oklahoma and was a skilled grant writer.

Remembering those who have gone on before leads us to the final verses of the Epiphany hymn, "As with Gladness, Men of Old", which describes "another shore" as "the heavenly country bright":

Holy Jesus, every day
Keep us in the narrow way;
And, when earthly things are past,
Bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide,
Where no clouds Thy glory hide.

In the heavenly country bright,
Need they no created light;
Thou its Light, its Joy, its Crown,
Thou its Sun which goes not down;
There forever may we sing
Alleluias to our King!

The final verses of the processional hymn also speak to that blessed hope:

And our eyes at last shall see Him,
Through His own redeeming love,
For that Child so dear and gentle
Is our Lord in Heaven above;
And He leads His children on
To the place where He is gone.

Not in that poor lowly stable,
With the oxen standing by,
We shall see Him; but in Heaven,
Set at God's right Hand on high ;
When like stars His children crowned,
All in white shall wait around.

MORE:

"Once in Royal David's City," the processional hymn from King's College Lessons and Carols, was Christmas 2023 Hymn of the Week at Word and Song by Debra and Anthony Esolen.

This year's broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge marked its 107th anniversary. You might be able listen to the service for the next four weeks on the BBC Sounds website, but this year, because of changes in BBC policy, you might need to use a VPN and a private browser tab and an account registered to a UK address to listen. A pre-recorded video of the service, called Carols from King's, is available internationally for download at a price of £8.33 (about $10 US).

You can view the booklet for the service and an article on the history of the service here. (Direct link to service booklet PDF. Direct link to history booklet PDF.)

The history of the Lessons and Carols service was presented in this 15-minute BBC program, Episode 8 of the series "A Cause for Caroling." Alas, it was not repeated this year, so it is not available through the BBC, but it is available through Audible and as an audio CD.) Edward White Benson, first Bishop of Truro, originated the service of Nine Lessons and Carols in 1880. It was published in 1884 and began to be used more widely. From the 2018 service booklet:

The 1918 service was, in fact, adapted from an order drawn up by E. W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, for use in the large wooden shed which then served as his cathedral in Truro at 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve, 1880.

A. C. Benson recalled: 'My father arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve - nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop'. The idea had come from G. H. S. Walpole, later Bishop of Edinburgh.Very soon other churches adapted the service for their own use. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Milner-White decided that A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols would be a more uplifting occasion at King's than Evensong on Christmas Eve. He used Benson's plan, but wrote the now-classic Bidding Prayer to set the tone at the beginning. Since then the spoken parts, which provide the backbone of the service, have only occasionally changed.

MORE: John Piper explains what Christmas is all about in 115 words:

Christmas means that a king has been born, conceived in the womb of a virgin. And this king will reign over an everlasting kingdom that will be made up of millions and millions of saved sinners. The reason that this everlasting, virgin-born king can reign over a kingdom of sinners is because he was born precisely to die. And he did die. He died in our place and bore our sin and provided our righteousness and took away the wrath of God and defeated the evil one so that anyone, anywhere, of any kind can turn from the treason of sin to the true king, and put their faith in him, and have everlasting joy.

STILL MORE:

Author William Federer, on the Eric Metaxas Show, explains the evidence that establishes December 25 as the date of Christ's birth.

At her blog, A Clerk of Oxford, Eleanor Parker has written a great many articles about the Anglo-Saxon commemoration of the Christian year. This Twitter thread and this blog entry will lead you to a series of articles on the "O Antiphons," the Latin poems of praise to Christ that are read at vespers over the week prior to Christmas day, each one naming a title of Christ reflecting a different aspect of His glory -- Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Dayspring (Morning Star), King of Nations, and Emmanuel (God with us).

Her essay from 1st Sunday in Advent 2020 reflects on Advent, Christmas, and time, on 2020's lack of holidays, the impossibility of "pressing pause" on life, the origins of Christmas and claims of cultural appropriation, the emotional impact of the season. A worthwhile ramble on a gray day. It's all worth reading, but this passage stood out to me, and it cites that wonderful phrase from the bidding prayer that undoes me every year:

The British festival year used to involve numerous seasons and holidays when people could gather together, in extended families and in local communities; now for many people in that 90% it's almost all concentrated on Christmas, and that's a lot of pressure. Of course advertisers exploit that pressure for their own ends, so many of us have a vision in our heads of the 'perfect family Christmas' which may bear little or no relation to how we have actually experienced the season. (I'm sure the journalists are attacking the imaginary advertisers' Christmas more than anything they've seen in real life.)

It's typical of the modern Christmas, most of all in its focus on family and childhood, that it leads people to places of strong emotion, both good and bad. Whether your memories of childhood Christmas are happy or unhappy ones, when Christmas comes round there's no escaping them. Whatever your family is or isn't, or whatever you want it to be, this is the time when you are insistently pushed to think about it and to compare yourself to others. Any sense of loss or deficiency in the family is made worse by the contrast with images of other apparently perfect families, or by remembering past happiness, or imagining what could or should be. Grief is harder. Absences are more keenly felt. It's a season when one phrase or one note of a song can open floodgates of emotion, calling forth profound fears, griefs, and longings which in ordinary time we might manage to contain. Christmas used to be a season of ghost stories, and it's certainly a time when it's hard not to be haunted by memories - even happy memories, of 'those who rejoice with us, but on another shore and in a greater light'.

You can call that sentimental, or irrational, but it's very powerful all the same. And it's no coincidence - of course it isn't - that this is all intensified because it takes place at midwinter, when the days are very short and the nights very long; when the weather is cold and hostile; when light is lowest, and the shadows longest. There's a reason we call this season 'the dead of winter', with all the sterility and hopelessness that implies. That makes the Christmas brightness all the brighter, or the darkness all the darker - the lights and the warmth and the company all the more welcome, or their absence all the more painful.

It's a bleak and lonely and isolating time of year, at the best of times; and these aren't the best of times. How much more endless the empty evenings seem now in November than they did in April, now they begin at four o'clock in the afternoon! The 'it's just one day' people can go on saying that as much as they like, but this particular day, after nine months of isolation or separation from family, is going to be hard for a lot of people.

Just remember: If you didn't fulfill every Christmas tradition you wanted to honor, give every gift you wanted to give, sing every carol on or before December 25, there are still eleven days of Christmas remaining!

RELATED: Tom Holland writing in Unherd in December 2020 on The Myth of Pagan Christmas. Holland takes us back to the Christmas feast at the court of King Athelstan in Amesbury in 932, and looks back from there to the idea of measuring time from the birth of Christ:

Bede, more clearly than any Christian scholar before him, had recognised that there was only the one fixed point amid the great sweep of the aeons, only the single pivot. Drawing on calendrical tables compiled some two centuries earlier, he had fixed on the Incarnation, the entry of the divine into the womb of the Virgin Mary, as the moment on which all of history turned. Years, by Bede's reckoning, were properly measured according to whether they were before Christ or anno Domini: in the year of the Lord. The effect was to render the calendar itself as Christian. The great drama of Christ's incarnation and birth stood at the very centre of both the turning of the year and the passage of the millennia. The fact that pagans too had staged midwinter festivities presented no threat to this conceptualisation, but quite the opposite. Dimly, inadequately, gropingly, they had anticipated the supreme miracle: the coming into darkness of the true Light, by which every man who comes into the world is lit.

He concludes with this:

This year of all years [2020] -- with a clarity denied us in happier times -- it is possible to recognise in Christmas its fundamentally Christian character. The light shining in the darkness proclaimed by the festival is a very theological light, one that promises redemption from the miseries of a fallen world. In a time of pandemic, when the festive season is haunted by the shadows of sickness and bereavement, of loneliness and disappointment, of poverty and dread, the power of this theology, one that has fuelled the celebration of Christmas for century after century, becomes easier, perhaps, to recognise than in a time of prosperity. The similarities shared by the feast day of Christ's birth with other celebrations that, over the course of history, have been held in the dead of winter should not delude us into denying a truth so evident as to verge on the tautologous: Christmas is a thoroughly Christian festival.

Today, I stopped to do some Christmas shopping at the new Decopolis Tulsarama Station on Historic Route 66 at 5717 E. 11th St. The Decopolis Discovitorium has been open since 2020 at 1401 E. 11th St. in the Meadow Gold District, but Tulsarama just opened on November 22, 2025, a bit less than a year before U.S. Highway 66's centennial on November 11, 2026.

Tulsarama, named after Tulsa's 1957 celebration of Oklahoma's semi-centennial, is like a collection of little specialty shops in one location. The building was originally Creech's Cafe, but for most of its existence was McCollum's Restaurant, sitting just west of the Will Rogers Motor Hotel and amidst a mile of motels on what was then Tulsa's eastern outskirts. Just inside the door from the parking lot, you'll see displays with photos and text on the history of the building and the area, and even an old menu.

Every room is beautifully and imaginatively decorated by owner William Franklin, who is an accomplished painter of murals, portraits, and trompe l'oeil, with work installed around the globe.

Right along 11th Street is the bright and sunny Tulsarama ice cream parlor, serving a dozen hand-dipped flavors from Tulsa's Big Dipper Creamery. The booths are decorated with owner William Franklin's whimsical Tulsarama Gang comic strips, each one illustrating an aspect of Tulsa's history, and with artwork and articles from Oklahoma's 50th anniversary. 1957 was the high-water mark of Route 66 and the post-World War II great American road trip, when locally-owned small businesses dominated the two-lane roads that took Americans across the country.

In the corner of the ice cream parlor, there's a Tulsa Visitor Center, with free maps and brochures, as well as books for sale about Route 66, Oklahoma, and Tulsa. They've got the new Route 66: The First Hundred Years by Jim Ross and Shellee Graham.

The complex also encompasses FableRealm Bookstore, which has books, toys, and gifts related to popular fantasy fiction series.

Just beyond the bookstore, you reach William's Tulsey Town Art Gallery, with prints celebrating Art Deco and Tulsa history. There are prints of historic Oklahoma maps, of architect Paul Corrubia's evocative 1937 charcoal sketches of Tulsa landmarks, and of William Franklin's own paintings of Tulsa's architectural gems. There are plans to offer painting classes in this room early next year. You can also find handmade, leather-bound journals, and the pottery of Jezz Strutt, who offers some Tulsa and Route 66-themed items.

Decopolis, a combination gift shop and museum devoted to celebrating Tulsa's Art Deco heritage, first opened in a storefront in the parking garage at 6th and Boston in 2012. In 2016, the store moved a block north into the Thompson Building at 5th and Boston. The downtown location closed at the end of 2020, but Meadow Gold District location had opened in October of that same year and is still thriving today. The Discovitorium features dinosaur, sci-fi, and fantasy-related gifts, toys, and books. It includes a mini Tulsa Art Deco museum where you can pick up a free Tulsa Art Deco downtown walking tour map.

William's dream is to add a new and bigger Discovitorium and a full-fledged Tulsa Art Deco museum to the new Tulsarama complex. In a Facebook post from last week, he talks about the tourism impact of many individual small-business initiatives, but they need local support to succeed and grow:

[Tourism as an industry] is a new thing for Tulsa that I believe has huge promise and potential for growth. Go to the Meadow Gold District and check out the "Route 66 Giants" and the fun shops and restaurants that have sprung up there in just the last couple of years. This is just one, small part of what promises to be a whole new, vital industry which could bring fun, excitement, money and jobs, to Tulsa, to you.

There is a saying, You can make a big splash in two ways, throw in a big boulder, or throw in a lot of coordinated pebbles. All the little tourism related attractions and businesses along Route 66 in Tulsa, and in our neighboring towns, could make a wonderfully big, fun, neon colored splash!

BUT this is still a nascent enterprise and we are facing what looks to be a tougher year than normal. Right at the time when a lot of small Tourism related businesses on Route 66 in Tulsa have just started, or expanded. So we could use a little extra attention this week and next from the good people of Tulsa to help us out.

Our BIG dream? We would like to add a full fledged Museum, the DECOPOLIS Tulsa Art Deco Museum, a new bigger Decopolis Discovitorium and Mesmer Island Dino Adventure, to the same TulsaRama & FableRealm Books property. A wonderful new attraction for you to visit and enjoy! Scheels? Once we achieve our plans, we will leave them in the dust.

Over the last year, amidst exciting concept sketches and photos of construction progress, William shared the frustrations of the City of Tulsa permitting process, which slowed everything down and put hopes of opening for the Route 66 Centennial year in jeopardy. Individual entrepreneurship, individual owners each with their own quirky vision, is what built Route 66 and made it memorable, and yet city leaders focus their attention on top-down, government-funded "attractions" like the Cry Baby statue. People like William don't need government subsidies, they just need the city to make the permitting process as painless, predictable, and quick as possible. Redirecting weird statue money to improving government services would be a good start.

I hope you'll take time to visit Decopolis's two locations and the many other locally owned businesses along Tulsa's Route 66. Both stores are open 10-6 tomorrow, Christmas Eve, and remember, there are twelve days of Christmas, starting with Christmas Day, so you can keep shopping and giving gifts through Epiphany.

I tend to keep browser tabs around for a long time. I find an interesting story that I want to write about, but never get around to it. I'm going to try to get through a few in this entry, but will not let myself spend more than an hour. Here are a few recent stories on new laws passed this year by the Oklahoma legislature.

OK property owners can repurchase seized land after Nov. 1: This Fox23 story from October 28, 2025, reported on State Rep. Tom Gann's (R-Inola) bill to force the Oklahoma Transportation Commission (aka ODOT) to give the previous owners an opportunity to buy their land back if it is surplus to requirements. This was already being done if the previous owners still had a remnant of the land adjacent to the land that was taken; this bill requires that opportunity for a total taking as well. HB1103 was authored by Gann and sponsored by Sen. Ally Seifried in the Senate, and it passed by wide margins in both houses. (12:40)

Oklahoma leaders say behind-the-meter law protects ratepayers from data center costs: This is a News on 6 story from December 14, 2025, about an interview with State Rep. Paul Rosino and former State Rep. Jason Dunnington on an unidentified bill the story says passed in 2024:

"BTM basically says companies, data centers, if you want to come to Oklahoma and set up shop, then you pay for your own power," Dunnington said. "You build it yourself, you use your own power. That alone, the legislature looking out for the utility rate payers by passing that was massive, and it needs to get talked about more."

SB 480 actually is from the 2025 session, and it passed without opposition in both houses, with dozens of legislators signing on as co-sponsors. The new language doesn't appear to require large data centers from buying electricity from the existing public utilities, but it allows them to generate electricity on site, if they at least partially using natural gas. It exempts these private power-generating companies from being regulated by the Corporation Commission as public utilities. Here's a news story on a new Chickasha industrial park being developed under the new law. Previewing the bill before the session, the Oklahoma Electric Cooperative described SB 480 as "raising new challenges for [rural electric] cooperatives around infrastructure planning and peak demand."

There's some weird, interesting language that was deleted -- a special carveout for some company in Washington County and for generation of "green hydrogen." The Washington County language appears to date from 1971. ("Amended by Laws 1971, HB 1080, c. 26, § 1, emerg. eff. March 22, 1971; Amended by Laws 1971, HB 1257, c. 322, § 1, emerg. eff. June 24, 1971") The "green hydrogen" language was added by HB 4065 in 2024.

The same Oklahoma Electric Cooperative bulletin mentions HB 2752, which was to ban the use of eminent domain by private companies for renewable energy facilities (e.g. wind and solar farms) and to require a Certificate of Authority from the Corporation Commission before using eminent domain to extend high-voltage lines, using a process defined in HB 2756. Both bills passed overwhelmingly, but HB 2756 became law without the governor's signature.

(That's 58 minutes work, mainly spent looking up the actual bills -- easier if the news report mentions the bill number -- reading through them, and finding related stories.)