All Posts Tagged With: "state"

The Smoking Gun is reporting that three Mississippi legislators have introduced legislation “that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons.” You can read the actual bill here. The report does mention that the bill is likely “dead on arrival,” but it’s the thought that counts!

Aside from hurting my feelings and prompting me to detour around that intolerant state, it begs the question, where are overweight travelers driving through the state supposed to eat? It also makes you wonder if the restaurant industry in the state is as enthusiastic about this bill as these misguided fools politicians. Not only will they lose their most profitable customers, won’t it expose their industry as being complicit in the obesity epidemic?

This doesn’t seem to be the most effective way to get people to lose weight. At least our mayor addressed our own city’s weight problem in a positive way, with a voluntary challenge to collectively lose a million pounds, rather than this police-state solution. Well, I’ll honor their intentions. This obese traveler won’t patronize any Mississippi eating establishments; in fact, I’ll just avoid the whole damn state! I wonder what this will do to the tourism in Mississippi if by some bizarre lunacy this bill were to become law.

I honestly can’t imagine that this would ever pass. And if it did, I can’t fathom that it would pass muster in the judicial process.

If nothing else, it’s more evidence (as if we needed any more such evidence) that our elected “leaders” are more consumed with the less significant, peripheral issues at the peril of the more urgent, central issues that need addressing — growing poverty, children and families without healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, faltering education, etc., etc., etc.

The first part of this blog’s name/title is about “who.” The second part is about “what” the “who” is doing. And the final part is about “where” the “who” is doing the “what” and the “where” is…

“…in Oklahoma”

That’s where I live. It’s a state that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s a place that I am (generally) proud to call home (except for those times when the most ignorant side of our state gets national exposure).

I’m a transplant to Oklahoma. My family moved to Altus in 1986 right at the start of my senior year in high school. We didn’t know what to expect at the time. When we heard we were moving to Oklahoma, we were deflated. “What’s in Oklahoma? Where is Oklahoma?” We had very low expectations about the state we were being assigned to. An Air Force officer at the base my dad was being stationed told us before we moved to appreciate and remember the trees where we were living at the time because there weren’t any in Oklahoma. Well, it was an exaggeration obviously, but he wasn’t too far off in Altus (located in the far southwestern part of the state).

Two things we noticed right off when we traveled through Oklahoma (literally from the northeastern corner, driving down I-44 through Miami (Mi-a-muh, as I’ve been repeatedly reminded by native Oklahomans), Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Lawton and then straight west to Altus.

1. Red dirt — and I mean RED dirt. That was the first time we had ever seen red dirt. Dirt is supposed to be brown or black, right? That’s all we’d ever seen… before coming to the red earth state.
2. Big sky. The sky seems so much bigger in Oklahoma than just about anywhere else* we lived previously, especially the farther west you go in the state. On a clear day in Altus, the sky was/is an awesome shade of blue that stretches from horizon to horizon and it seems so incredibly big. I can’t emphasize that enough. I know that other western states have similar views, but this was the first time I had noticed it and it was amazing. (*The exception would be when we lived in far western Kansas, but it still didn’t seem as big, but maybe I just wasn’t noticing and appreciating it at the time.)
   

I’ve lived here for more than two decades since and I have truly grown to love this state. There is an unquantifiable je ne sais quoi that makes it difficult to describe to outsiders what makes this state so endearing to those who call this place home.

There’s a natural beauty to the state (that some people don’t or choose not to see); Oklahoma promotes itself as having the most diverse ecological landscapes within its borders than any other state. Certainly, if you travel from northeastern Oklahoma to southwestern Oklahoma, you’ll notice a distinct difference; and if you travel between southeastern Oklahoma to northwestern Oklahoma, you’ll find an even more stark contrast.

More than any other state that I’ve lived in, this state has a spirit — the “Oklahoma Spirit” that locals like to brag about — that binds it together, that rallies its citizenry together in times of tragedy and need, and that rises above the distinct (and sometimes quite partisan) differences among its people.

I’ve lived in several other states: Florida, Texas (far southern part along the coast), Virginia, South Carolina, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana. They each have qualities I like about them, especially Florida. But none of them is like Oklahoma. And this is where I want to live. And this is the place I am proud to call home.

* * *

So, now you know “what’s in a name” when it comes to this blog. It boils down to this: This blog is about who I am, about what I’m doing and about where I’m doing it. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.