Cool liberal ☹️
"There is no law except the law that there is no law."
—Physicist John Archibald Wheeler
> hayseeds for jesus | bison
At a coffee shop where I worked in Tulsa, The Branson Family continued to take me by surprise.
They seemed to care about the vision and values of the shop. They seemed to care about the coffee and pastries and local ingredients and bison from the Osage Nation.
They were smiling and nodding their interest.
This never happens. Many people are unsmiling or downright frowning and acting in a hurry. (Being in a hurry is all in your head, by the way.)
But The Branson Family didn’t act hurried. Despite my initial interpretation of them as insufferable Christian conservatives, they didn't act too important for Oklahoma history or too important for where the shop got its dairy and eggs.
So I kept going with my informal TEDx Talk.
"We make everything from scratch every day with ingredients from area farms," I told them. "The owner travels the world and decides what coffee to serve back here in Tulsa."
But my very favorite thing in this building, folks, is our bison from the Osage Nation just west of Tulsa County. The Osage purchased a sprawling Oklahoma ranch to nurture a bison herd.
The bison at one time nearly went extinct. Their population plunged in North America from tens of millions to just hundreds.
With all the seeming sincerity in the world, The Branson Family was still smiling, still nodding as I talked.
Did they actually care about the bison?
Even the few liberals who came into the shop were too cool to care about our bison.
- next time "This might be a prank."
- listening J.J. Cale "Call the Doctor"
>> full series | alerts | playlist / social | tip jar