A folk music group from the 1990s, “Cry, Cry, Cry,” released an enigmatic song called Shades of Gray in 1998 written by Dar Williams. The lyrics follow three young men Workers stop to take in the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City following its bombing on April 19, 1995. from Arkansas on their misguided road trip in 1995, full of mischief and entry-level crime, through the backroads of Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It seems a straightforward folk tale

The news media was designed to be the strap and buckle of a nation, and to unify. I was a senior in high school when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We got the news of his shooting during my journalism class. Our teacher, Mrs. Householder, announced it and turned on the TV. A silence descended on the classroom as a sadness arose from the dozen or so of us who were there. Quickly we were all locked in to what the go-to news anchor of the day, Walter Cronkite, was telling u

In April 1995, I found myself in Oklahoma, reporting journalistically on the aftermath of the Murrah Federal Building bombing, and not knowing what tomorrow would bring. I certainly did not expect it to bring a very different kind of relationship into my life, but it did. Looking for distractions from the pain we all felt – and the personal pain I felt from losing my wife, I decided to drive south from Norman to Ardmore, about an hour’s drive, on a sunny Saturday morning in

“Please describe your spiritual journey for us," an employer once asked me. Although this is a question that would normally seem out of bounds in hiring interviews, I wasn't surprised when the college dean asked it. The reason? I was applying for a leadership position at a faith-based liberal arts college, and I had already been told this question was coming and that it could be a determining factor in my getting hired. Nevertheless, it was a tough question to answer. For I h

“Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.” -- Heraclitus. Our dreamworld has been the subject of scientific scrutiny for a very long time. Like many other people, I've always wondered about my own dreams. Especially when they get wild and wooly, as can happen when illness forces me to take drugs that can affect those dreams. That happened this week, and it produced a doozy. The med is Benzonatate , and my dosage is 100 mg.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing about growing up in the then-new Oklahoma town of Midwest City. My family moved there in 1949 when I was only 3 and the town was 7. Maybe, I thought, the town could be like my big brother. Maybe I could learn from it. My guiding question in those written reflections has been this: How much of who I am today, is where I’m from yesterday ? I’ve realized one challenge memoirists face is the question of just how much they can actually remembe

By Jim Willis When I was in the 6th grade back in Oklahoma, my teacher, Mr. Blackwell, came to me one day and congratulated me on being named captain of the Kiwanis Junior Police for our school, Westside Elementary. Growing up, few honors meant more to me than that one. Wow! I was now in charge of all the student crossing guards! My captain’s sash was a special gold color, while theirs were blue or white. And my badge was cooler, with CAPTAIN stamped right in the middle of it