May 13, 2021 Bentonville to Tulsa Breakfast - Microwave cooked Eggs with Leyden cheese and bacon and a bagel with cream cheese and Leyden. Dinner - Venison Stew with Thai Cole Slaw and rice
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise over Beaver Lake and a gaggle of black vultures, which are said to be nuisances. There seemed to be many black vultures and they did not seem particularly afraid of humans, as they sat on the boat dock and trash dumpster, perhaps waiting for an easy fresh meal.
After getting dressed I made a bagel with cream cheese and slices of the Leyden like cheese and Suzette microwaved it for me. The result was a hot gooey mass of bagel, cream cheese and cheese. All the stiffness in the bagel was gone.
Then Suzette microwaved bacon until crisp, which turned out great. Suzette then whipped three eggs and put them in a small casserole dish with a crisp cooked piece of bacon and several slices of Leyden cheese on top. The result was amazing, a puffy omelet with melted cheese and bacon baked in.
I was happy we could create wonderful meals without a stove or fire. It seemed as if we had just discovered the magic of microwave cooking.
We packed up and drove through the Cherokee nation on the Cherokee Turnpike to Tulsa and arrived at the Gilcrease Museum around 11:30.
A bit after noon BIlly and Elaine arrived with lunch; chicken salad, challah, a wedge of Manchego cheese, and two types of chips. We opened a bottle of chilled Herman Wiemer Field blend white and we ate at lunch at a picnic table in the lovely garden beside the Museum.
After putting up the leftovers we toured the museum. Unfortunately, several parts of the museum were closed in anticipation of a planned remodel beginning in July.
Even Blumenschein was influenced by the transcendental painters.
I did not see Frederic Remington’s studio, so now I am keen to see the Philbrooke Museum tomorrow to see if my recollection of which Tulsa museum I saw it in is faulty.
What was left was impressive. There were many great paintings. Here are a few including, what appears to be the obligatory item for an American museum, a life portrait of George Washington by a Peale. Gilcrease did not just buy paintings, he bought several large and important collections of paintings and Indian artifacts. Perhaps he understood the importance of these items and images because he was member of the Creek nation who inherited his wealth from his allotment of land sitting on an ocean of oil.
What struck me was the emphasis placed on recent Indian artists by both the the Gilcrease and Crystal Bridges. I have two conflicting theories for this newly found interest in Indian artists’ works. It seems like there is a renewed interest to feature Indian art in a way I have not ever seen before. It seems like there is some sort of recompense for how Indians were written out of history during the great Westward Expansion or forcibly destroyed for being different or living in areas Whites wanted to settle or seek riches until around 1900 after the frontier was closed and only remnants of Indian culture were left and interest shifted toward idealizing and romanticizing Indian culture from destroying it or Americanizing it.
The second thought I have is based upon my living in the tri-part culture of New Mexico, where Indians still account for an important segment of the culture. This element is evidenced in the museums’ works of Contemporary and modern Indian artists, such Willie Crumbo, Helen Hardin, Pablita Velarde, Harry Fonseca, and Harrison Begay, as well as the works by the rich tradition of white New Mexican artists, such as the Taos Society of Artists who made Indians and Indian life subjects of their art, which was just a different form of genre painting at the time, because Indian culture was more dominant in the early 20th century in New Mexico than now. In other words the whites painted what they saw around them and the Indians trained as artists painted what they knew.
After viewing the museum collection we drove to our BNB at 719 Olympia in an old pre-WW I section of Tulsa near the Arkansas River. It was a pleasant cottage remodeled with lots of vintage furniture and accessories.
Suzette and I took showers and dressed in lighter clothing to match the warm, dry weather we had finally encountered. I then meditated until 6:30 while BIlly prepared dinner of venison stew, and rice.
At 6:45 we drove back to the Gilcrease for its Thursday music on the Porch. Tonight featured Latin Jazz. Soon after we arrived and found a bench to sit on on the lawn in front of the Gilcrease home a trio began playing a lovely acoustic jazz rendition of a Hendrix piece and then a female singer joined with Brazilian and Mexican standards. We left near 8:00 as she was finishing a long rendition of “Besame Mucho” and returned to the BNB for dinner.
We took out the NY cumin Gouda and goat milk feta and artisanal butter and French baguette while BIlly was adjusting the liquid content of the venison stew and Elaine was mixing the ingredients and dressing she had brought for the Thai Cole Slaw. I sliced, toasted, and buttered slices of French baguette. We poured sips of the opened bottle of 2017 Chateau Roudier, BIlly had brought and nibbled cheese.
Elaine had segregated all the ingredients into separate plastic containers. She first added several large handfuls of shredded Savoy cabbage into a large bowl. Then she added a container of chopped mint and cilantro leaves and finally dressed the slaw with a lovely peanut butter, sesame oil, and lime juice dressing she had prepared ahead and brought in its own separate container. I found her making the salad a testament to the precision she had learned from her pharmacological training.
BIlly loved the buttered bread, so I sliced six more slices of bread and toasted and buttered them for dinner.
BIlly opened the Jaboulet Les Cidres Chateauneuf du Pape and we were ready to eat.
We enjoyed dinner, but agreed with Billy that a farm raised Scandinavian red deer species did not taste the same as a wild Texas Whitetail deer like what I used to shoot in my twenties.
Yet another example of the homogenization of the food chain to meet increased consumer demand.
After dinner Suzette fetched the wheel of Isigny brie and we sliced pieces of brie and ate them on the remaining slices of bread as we finished the bottle of Chateaunuef.
Then Elaine brought a dense 88% chocolate bar to the table and Suzette fetched the bottle of Zacapa XO rum from the van and we enjoy after dinner drinks of the rich rum with chocolate. We told the story that Marty had described about discovering Zacapa XO while visiting his daughter Nicole in Guatemala and decided to call Marty. We had a great chat with Marty, who described how he re-discovered Zacapa XO at a Total Wine store in the US and said Yoyo was unavailable because she was busy painting the flower mural on the bathroom walls she had started before we arrived.
I guess the moral of the day was that there is a symbiotic relationship between collectors who fill their walls with purchased art and artists who respond to their creative urge to create art that provides them a livelihood and fills their surroundings.
Around 10:00 we put up the leftover food and all went to bed.
I awakened at 5:00 to blog.
Bon Appetit
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