Editor’s Letter – 4/18/18

A few weeks ago, The Tulsa Voice editorial and design staff toured Fab Lab Tulsa at East 7th Street and South Lewis Avenue. During the tour, we all felt a bit like kids in a science museum—wide-eyed and attentive, ready to play with the gadgets. Those gadgets included 3-D printers—one playfully named the MakerBot—laser cutters and engravers, an electric sewing machine, 2-D and 3-D design software, and a digitally-controlled three-axis mill. (One of us did end up getting to play: TTV Graphic Designer Georgia Brooks made our cover’s nameplate at Fab Lab using cardboard and the laser engraver.)

TTV Digital Editor John Langdon and I became particularly excited about the possibilities Fab Lab houses when we spied a life-size Operation board game. There were actual kids in the lab, too—a middle school class on a spring break field trip. They made small, battery-powered LED lamps with acrylic they had laser-etched using the lab’s software and machines. As well as aiming to encourage the local community to build more things here in Tulsa, Pritchett emphasized their organization’s goal to enhance Tulsa students’ STEM education. It’s important, he said, for young people to learn how to envision an idea, then design, troubleshoot, and build it. The tactile experience of building something, he suggested, isn’t one many kids get in this age of screen time.

From an April 17 Politico article on how “digital fabrication is revolutionizing everything”: “All over the world, people are already using a range of computer-controlled tools to make everything from food, furniture, and crafts to computers, houses, and cars … moving toward community self-sufficiency locally.” TTV Editorial Intern Trent Gibbons hits on this very thing in his write-up of Fab Lab Tulsa, which appears in our feature about local sustainability efforts.

I used to live at 7th Street and Lewis Avenue, just a few doors down from Fab Lab. Artists and makers often parked in front of my house to get to the lab—with the large garage door open there, I could see them working on projects so big I was amazed at their capacity for imagination and creation.

Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo once lived in that house, too. Harjo appears in this issue to tell us what hunting means to him—beyond its conservation benefits (and the prize of meat), it’s simply spiritual, he says. Speaking of spiritual experiences, have you eaten the mushrooms around here lately? 

Elsewhere, Barry Friedman exposes Scott Pruitt’s potential plans for earth domination, Damion Shade checks in on Oklahoma teachers as their walkouts come to a close, and Paul Rosenberg of Random Lengths News talks polar bears, fake news, and the reality of climate change—and its deniers.