Tulsa and Claremore

On Friday we looked for a church served by a friend of Torrey's. Siri directed us to an unrelated public school maybe a couple miles away from it. It didn't help that I had searched for the wrong name (Aldersgate vs. Asbury, or some other Methodist name with an 'A'), which still had nothing to do with the name of the school it found. Generally I've had good luck with Apple Maps, but apparently it is not quite ready for prime time in Tulsa. At least this time it didn't try to send us to Austin, TX.

The pastor returned Torrey's call and said he was tied up with a CPR class for fifth graders and would rather be giving us a tour of his church. So the security guard turned on the lights for us in the 2800-seat sanctuary. It was dark because it has no windows at all. Mood lighting can be provided by projectors.

I walked up to see the organ console, and the organist came in about then and turned it on for me to try out as she headed for a dental appointment. It is a four-manual Rodgers, a mix of pipes and electronics. I tried to tell which was which, but everything seemed to have the same amound and kind of reverb. The music director heard the organ and came to show me how to use the peculiar controls that direct the sound from differnet divisions. He said the organ includes nineteen ranks of pipes, as I recall. The reverb is something done for the whole room, it turns out, and is settable to different degrees. He clapped his hands and decided that it was set to maximum at the time, perfect for the organ. He and I chatted about hybrid instruments like that, and he refected on the setup at the Crystal Cathedral when he and his wife worked there. Then I tried out different sounds up to the limit of my attention span, until it was past time to leave to visit another museum, the Philbrook. Surprisingly, Apple Maps got us there instead of sending us to a Boy Scout camp in New Mexico.

The highlight for me of the Philbrook is the exhibit of art by three generations of Wyeths, N. C., Andrew, and Jamie. I especially liked Jamie's gull and pumpkin painting.

I was also quite taken with the Madonna painting shown below. Young John the Baptist hands Baby Jesus a lamb to pet. (OK, it looks more like a pig to me, but it is a lamb. Trust me on this.) John even that young was fulfilling his rôle as prophet and forerunner, showing Jesus his future mission. I got into an interesting and enjoyable conversation with a woman who was studying the picture looking for ideas for her Monday presentation in a class she was taking at the museum.