by Nathan Gunter

On Feb. 3, 1889, almost three full months before the famous first Land Run, the outlaw Belle Starr was ambushed and shot to death near Eufaula, Oklahoma, just a few days shy of her 41st birthday. Her murder was never solved, and when it came time to prepare her body for burial, none of the women of the town wanted anything to do with the grim chore…

by Gene Perry

The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival can make you believe in ghosts. He may have died more than 40 years ago, but last week Woody Guthrie haunted Okemah, OK, the town where he was born…

by Lindsay Hodges Anderson

I have betrayed Oklahoma. I no longer have its rich, red soil beneath my feet. It gave me my first home in America, and now I am half the country away. But I will be back, and I can not wait to see it again…

by Gene Perry

This is an experiment, but it’s a good time for experiments. A couple of months ago, The Oklahoma Gazette reported that only one reporter, from OETA, visits the capitol building every day. They wrote that the total number of journalists covering our state government is in the teens, compared to 39 reporters in 1978…

by Gene Perry

A few years ago, I visited the opening of a museum. The man who had funded the new building was being interviewed, and the interviewer said at one point, “One of most amazing things to me is that you’ve stayed so humble.” The man, who the museum was named after, replied, “We don’t have the problems with huge egos that you might see in other parts of the country.”…