Editor’s Letter – 10/18/17

Happy almost-Halloween, Tulsa!

Besides “Trick or Treat,” I think “I can’t believe it’s already this time of year again” must be the most-said phrase around Halloween. And as cocktail columnist Andrew Saliga points out, the season of revelry is upon us; Halloween kicks it all off. Luckily, he’s given us a hangover remedy. (It’s oxbone soup, not witch’s brew.)

We’ve got plenty of spirit and spook for you in this issue, including a guide to Halloween events around town, a look inside Nowata’s scariest haunted attraction—The Asylum, horror films, and—for the less scary but still witchy—aura portraits at Peace of Mind Books.

In the News & Commentary section you’ll find frightening topics of a different kind: OK Policy’s Gene Perry on the dire state of funding for our public education system—and what the numbers actually say, Barry Friedman on the recent mass murder in Las Vegas and the continuing lack of changes to gun laws, and Hannibal Johnson on the childhood innocence often not afforded to African American children.

We’ve also taken a long look at Scott Pruitt, our state’s—and specifically Tulsa’s—contribution-of-sorts to the Environmental Protection Agency. We were inspired not only by his recent announcement to rescind the Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced global warming emissions from power plants by a third by 2030, or by his removal of  the “Climate Change” link on the EPA’s main webpage, but also by the season. Our minds went to the classic example of hubris gone awry, “Frankenstein.”

In her novel (which she published at age 21!) Mary Shelley was good to remind us that nothing is permanent except change:

“We rest; A dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; One wandering thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of departure still is free.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability!” 

― Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”