Meet me in the middle

I’m just going to say it.

I am not political, liberal, conservative, left, right or preoccupied by the sexuality of people around me.

I don’t like it that the head of a company can be figuratively boiled in oil for touting his love for Jesus Christ. And I don’t like it that someone would tout love for Jesus Christ while turning fellow human souls away - from labor, from family, from fellowship - because of who they are or what they do or where they fit in with his thinking.

I don’t like it that gay bashers would use a man’s courage to own his faith as a rallying point to not speak up for Jesus so much as to speak out against someone else, or an entire segment of the population.

I don’t like it that some have decided that if we don’t share their customs we can’t share their higher power.

I don’t like it that some are hell-bent to create God in their own image.

I don’t like it that in some eyes Christianity has become synonymous with rigid narrow mindedness and intolerance. I have met Christians from the far reaches of the world who walk in Jesus’ light, hold their hands out to those in need and drape their arms around the shoulders of those who on the outside appear different, though inside we are all the same.

Some of these Christians are gay. Some are Democrats. Some are left-handed. Some are vegan. Some have tattoos. Some text and drive, though I wish they wouldn’t.

The thing is, no matter how polarized we as humanity allow ourselves to become in response to loud, judgmental and condescending people on any side of an issue, we still are not nor will we ever be the one whose opinion will decide eternity.

I want to live in a world where I can believe what I believe without being bashed for it and live the lifestyle I am hard-wired to live without being condemned for being perceived wrong or scooped onto a sanctimonious pedestal for being anointed “right.” No matter what.

The Jesus in my life led me to believe he and his dad would take care of the judgment portion of the program. My job was to know his love and to share it.

I don’t believe I can practice love and charity in the same breath it takes to march lock-step with the far right or the far left.

You won’t hear me spout my views on these issues very often. That is not who I am. But if you want to find me, look for me quietly living my life here, sometimes alone it seems, on middle ground.

Thank you to our military veterans

Memorial Day has come and gone. This year, it seemed, there was less talk about going to the lake and more talk about paying homage to our military men and women who have given so much to protect our freedoms. That is a good shift in priorities.

At the Stillwater NewsPress we are collecting military stories again for a Courage Under Fire section we will distribute July 4. If you are a Stillwater-area veteran and you want to submit your story in your own words, write it down, dictate it to a friend or family member and send it to the NewsPress. If you want to talk to a reporter/videographer, let us know. This is our third Independence Day to share vets’ stories. We have done similar projects for Veterans Day the past two years.

Our veterans can never be adequately repaid for the sacrifices they have made and for the freedoms they have secured for us. We want to share their stories. If you are a Stillwater-area veteran or want to tell us about a veteran you know or knew, email me at editor@stwnewspress.com.

And to all who served, thank you.

April 19, 1995, on our minds as Woodward digs out

April can be a rough month.

Emergency responders from miles around swarmed in after a tornado slammed through Woodward last weekend. Some of these same emergency responders flooded into Oklahoma City 17 years ago after terrorists bombed the Murrah Federal Building and killed 168 people, many of them children. Our heart still cries for their families.

We cannot let April 19 pass without a nod to these men and women who go where the rest of us dare not go, do what we cannot manage and see what we could not bear. Firefighters, law enforcement agents, emergency medical crews, search and rescue teams of humans and their animal partners go where they are needed, when they are needed, and more often than not without being asked.

My husband – full disclosure here: he is a retired firefighter – has an art print by Katherine Huggins, who for a time was affiliated with Oklahoma State University Fire Service Training. The drawing is of an eagle. Embedded in its outstretched wing is the image of a firefighter in full bunkout gear.

The print says: “To those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected never know.”

I think of Katherine’s drawing, and the verse, when a soldier heads to war, when an emergency siren sounds, when tragedy strikes and the men and women who have dedicated their lives to saving us, protecting us and helping us, rush to their posts and to our aid.

Everyday people can be heroes. We see that in the aftermath of tragedy and catastrophe. Thanks to our heroes, Oklahoma, though forever scarred, is moving on from the horrific bombing that left a hole in our state capital and a hole in our hearts on April 19 - 17 years ago.

Thanks to the heroes at Woodward, whether a rescuer in uniform, a country star like Larry Gatlin taking the stage and reaching out with his song or a neighbor offering a hand, that community’s storm survivors, too, will move on. It’s going to take awhile.

April is a rough month.

Contact J.B. at jbittner05@gmail.com.

Woodward tornado survivors need support, not scams

I didn’t grow up in Woodward, Okla. I moved there as a young adult to be editor of a local newspaper. I married one of her sons and the community welcomed me and let me call her my home. Half my life has been spent there. My family is there still. Now tragedy and devastation, brought on by a massive tornado, have knocked my adopted hometown to her knees. And, 150 miles away, it’s ripping my heart out of my chest to see her pain, her loss, her despair. Our friends and neighbors are trying to salvage rain-soaked wedding pictures and keepsakes that can’t be replaced. They are picking up, cleaning up, clothing their children and helping themselves. They will get through this - together. Because they are tough and they're strong and they have faith, and each other. But today – before Woodward has even had a chance to bury her dead – we hear that crooks and thieves are preying on her people’s misfortune and confusion. People impersonating federal disaster workers are contacting Woodward tornado victims and soliciting money – lying that it’s a part of the process. I can’t even put into words what that makes me want to do. Woodward is a strong, independent community of good, honest, hard-working people. Woodward, Okla., is the heart of the oilfield and the wind industry. Much of the world’s iodine is extracted from the earth there, just north of town. This community’s people are farmers and ranchers, educators, professionals, public servants and manual laborers. They are Hometown, America. They don’t ask for anything and they are ready to give and give and give. Be at Woodward when a child is lost or a house burns or a family needs a roof or a meal or a gift for a child at Christmas. You will know in an instant you have been allowed in to a special place. This is a community that doesn’t know how to take. And now, after Mother Nature has taken so much, shameless people with no conscience are swooping in at the town’s weakest moment and trying to take the little bit its storm victims have left. A country singer from Woodward crooned a few decades back that the people in Northwest Oklahoma are the salt of the earth. Heck, I don’t even know what that means. But I know it’s a good thing. And those good people are battered and hurting. They are looking back on huge losses and looking ahead to enormous struggle. We can’t take back what has changed their world, but we can help them through it. If your heart calls you to donate to Woodward’s tornado victims, do it through a reputable organization, like your church or your civic club or the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army. If you donate through a relief organization make sure you designate the money is intended for the tornado victims in Woodward County and Northwest Oklahoma. Bank of Western Oklahoma in Woodward, 580-254-5525, is overseeing a tornado relief fund to take monetary donations. But if you or anyone you know is even thinking about reaching out to these folks in a way that is anything less than charitable, honest, helpful and sincere, let me paraphrase the video that thunders across the JumboTron at Boone Pickens Stadium when our Oklahoma State Cowboys take the field. If you hurt my homefolks, I’m coming for you. And Hell’s ridin' with me.

Happy birthday, Dad

My dad would have been 96 today. He died a couple months shy of his 90th birthday. My dad and I were not close. I was several rungs down the ladder from his favorite child. That is not to say I took nothing positive away from the relationship. My dad taught me two productive lessons I have adopted as my own. They were useful in our farm life when I was a child and I draw on them still today. “After you go through a gate, close it.” “After you use a tool, put it back in its place.” I might not exhibit much discipline in many areas of my life – I have been known to eat out of the frozen yogurt carton on occasion and the floor of the car can make a good collector of empty coffee cups when I am driving. But I know where to find my hammer when I need it, because I put it in its place after I used it the last time. And if my horses get out, it’s because passing white-tail deer tramped through their pasture fence, not because I left a gate open.

Sunshine Week: Keep the sun shining on government

Government business is best conducted in the light of day, with all eyes open. Today launches Sunshine Week, a time set aside to spotlight how important open government and freedom of information are to not only those of us who cover the news, but to all who are affected by the business of government. Voters select the people they feel are best for the job, or at least those who best represent their positions on issues of the day. Then how the city, county, state and country are run is left in the hands of the elected. It is a system that is not without its faults but one that we believe remains the best in the world. But giving a vote to a candidate is not the same as giving over all power. You as individuals and we as the media have the right to monitor what elected officials do with the power to govern they’ve been handed, how they spend the public’s money, how they perform as stewards of the public trust. To exercise that right, the public must have access to information, records and the decision-making process used by city councilors, county commissioners, state legislators and all others in public power. Not only is transparency in government a necessity, it is the law. Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Law provides only a few listed exceptions to the mandate that the people’s business be conducted in public. The law extends not only to government bodies but to other boards and groups, like school boards and regents, that have been given the privilege of overseeing public business and spending public funds. Sometimes those who are the overseers of the public’s business forget, at least temporarily, their role. They decide that tax dollars being spent are theirs to dole out without recourse or oversight and that records belonging to the public are their own property rather than simply entrusted to their care. When those memory lapses hit, we in the media are obliged to step up and say let the sun shine on government. We are committed to keeping the veil pulled away from the face of the public’s business. When those in government don’t remember the law, or simply don’t follow the law – in ignorance, in defiance or for whatever reason – the people must remind them. If the media are lax in standing up for open meetings and open records, it will be no time at all before the people will be lax in demanding transparency as well. When no one watches, when no one complains, when no one takes up the cause of righting wrongs and holding tight the rights we own, then those rights are placed in jeopardy. When the people’s rights concerning how they are governed, how their tax dollars are spent, how public decisions are made, erode even the slightest then the next time it becomes easier to say no and more difficult to conduct business in the open. It can be something so slight as a birth date removed from a criminal charge that otherwise would have let your neighbors and business colleagues know the defendant is not you but someone else with the same name. It can be something so simple as a city commission vote on an item not on the meeting’s agenda. It can be something that seems so little. And yet it means so much. Open government and freedom of information are on our minds, as community journalists, 52 weeks a year. This week, we remind you how important they are to your lives year round, too. Let the sun shine. J.B. Blosser Bittner is Stillwater NewsPress editor.

Voter turnout not so super for Super Tuesday

Stillwater’s mayor election drew a whopping 4,863 voters, most of them showing up to elect Councilor John Bartley to become the city’s next mayor.
Bartley indeed won big, with more than 81 percent of votes cast. But Bartley’s 3,968 votes represent only a tiny sliver of the voter pie in Stillwater, Okla.
With 22,978 registered voters in Stillwater, that means Bartley was elected by less than 18 percent of registered voters. That’s a sad commentary on our population’s use of the rights we have. I suppose having the right to vote means also having the right to not vote.
I will be interested to hear someone explain that position to the Stillwater soldiers coming home from Afghanistan in the coming weeks. They just spent the past year away from family -- and fighting terrorism. Most of Stillwater just spent election day doing anything but voting.
Thank you to our military men and women who put my freedoms ahead of their own lives. I voted today. You didn’t tell me how to vote. You simply stepped up to defend our way of life so that I could.