by Randall Atkins, special correspondent for VoicesofOK.org

Cairo – Drunk on the victories of the recent revolution and ousting of their hated president Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s youthful opposition may have just sobered up to the realities of their newly democratic state. The March 19th referendum on constitutional amendments, which they say did not go far enough, was not the change they envisioned when they took to the streets in January. Newly formed political parties, some of which have yet to even pick a name for themselves, fought to get the amendments voted down.

For most who pass through Egypt, it is a tourist destination; a place to see first hand the remnants of an ancient civilization. During the winter months resort towns along the red and white seas serve as a sunny getaway for middle class westerners, but what is lost on most of these visitors is the vast inequities and contradictions that exist in the country.

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 Danny Marroquin

You may not know the burgeoning songwriter John Fullbright, who’s currently planning his first 5 or 100 albums in the solitude of the East Oklahoma countryside. If you do, anything I write here is obsolete with what your ears have already told you. The best I can do is throw a few links, write some anecdotes and tell you about this really cool thing that happened at The Blue Door on a Friday in May…

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

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.”…