Today's Transcript contains added value with the annual Discover Norman publication. Normally, the special section comes out just as students are arriving on campus. This year, we pushed the publication back a few weeks to allow school, football and family routines to begin.
The 48-page section contains features and lists detailing our community's festivals, schools, sports and artistic venues. Newcomers will find a wealth of information. Lifers like me may even learn a thing or two. (Who knew Little Axe had its own Frisbee golf course).
The special section is meant to be a keepsake. Pull it out when relatives visit and ask what's there to do in this city. Or don't wait for relatives to explore. Pour yourself another cup of coffee and chart your own course of discovery.
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More than 40 years ago, my spelling talents were challenged. As St. Joseph's School grade 4A champ, my husky head was wider than normal as fellow contestants prepared for the schoolwide bee. The championship was my next quest.
A sixth grader, Sue Thompson, swiftly took me down like a June bug in a Tyson hen house and was crowned the champ. My runner-up trophy occupies a special place in my home.
Those spelling talents, or lack thereof as some readers would insist, will be tested Friday at the inaugural Assistance League of Norman adult spelling bee. Thankfully, my task will be as a judge, not a contestant.
The project benefits the organization's Operation School Bells campaign to provide schoolchildren throughout our community with new clothes as they begin the academic year. Teams of spellers will compete for the inaugural trophy. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and spelling begins at 7:30 p.m. at the chapter house, 809 Wall St.
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The University of Oklahoma's favorable mention in a national newspaper last month merited much attention. The New York Times proclaimed OU as one of the 20 up and coming academic leaders selected from more than 2,500 colleges and universities.
Another national publication, The New Yorker, gave OU some ink this past week but it's wasn't as flattering. The magazine's "Talk of the Town" section, under the heading, "No Mercy," recanted the saga of Rhett Bomar, formerly the Sooners' starting quarterback. The writer used the Bomar example to illustrate our nation's allegiance to no tolerance policies.
Malcolm Gladwell cited then graduate student Robert Oppenheimer's 1925 prank of dousing an apple with noxious chemicals from a lab and placing it on the desk of his tutor as evidence that probation works. Mr. Oppenheimer was placed on probation and sent to London for regular psychiatric sessions.
"Even in Oklahoma, people seemed to think that kicking someone off a football team for having cut a few corners on his job made perfect sense," Malcolm Gladwell wrote.
Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com
Columns
Natives and newcomers can learn something in today's Discover Norman
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Tobacco ban comes as shock
Gov. Mary Fallin’s State of the State contained few surprises. The tobacco ban, however, came as a total shock to many legislators and state agency heads. “It was a surprise,” the governor told state press association members this week at ...
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Quitting should be smokers’ choice
The Jan. 29 editorial “The high cost of tobacco” claimed that tobacco use costs Oklahomans a lot of money, but it did not disclose the fact that tobacco use produces a lot of money for Oklahomans, which — in the interest of being fair — ...
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Polio nearly eradicated worldwide
From her quarantined hospital room on the third floor of Ellison Hall, seven-year-old Alesha Timmons Moring could often see her father, Boyce, as he headed into his office inside OU’s Evans Hall each day. They would exchange waves. ...
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Climate change remains in the cards
Nothing about Earth’s history is static or unchanging. That’s particularly true of climate, and thereon hangs more than one interesting tale, including recent news of a scientific advance in understanding how past climate has changed....
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Does making the press the villain work?
As a journalist and editor, I receive a lot of requests for help....
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Home on the train
PAOLI — The meandering Washita River that first crosses below my Heartland Flyer passenger rail car south of here actually has water in it on this sunny December morning. Rains in western Oklahoma replenished the stream that eventually ...
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A lesson in common sense
By Bill Huntington For The Transcript For many years the announcer at the Indianapolis Speedway made an announcement at the end of the race day. Paraphrasing, it went, “Ladies and gentlemen, you are entering the most dangerous place on ...
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The Resentment Equivalence
Recent opinion pieces have expressed a simple theme, an incredibly simple theme, that the Occupy Movement is all about envy…nothing more…just envy....
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Is money safer inside a shoebox?
During the 1920s, when the stock market failed and many financial institutions closed, cautious souls hid money in mattresses, flour sacks and shoeboxes hidden under the bed. Again during the Depression, grandparents commonly kept cash in ...
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Why we need the Keystone pipeline
“Game on” was the cry from the industry. “Game over” was the cry from the environmentalists, as they expressed their feelings over the Keystone pipeline construction. The true story lies somewhere between....
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Tobacco ban comes as shock
