OK, so I’m not a big fan of Oklahoma City in particular and Oklahoma in general.  I also don’t plan on changing my mind on that anytime soon.  Reason Number 7,897:   we wanted to take the family out to do something meaningful.  I thought it would be great to take the family to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.  The problem is that it’s barely a museum in even the most liberal sense of the word.  It has a very limited collection of works, my “favorite” is a Duchamp suitcase (Boîte-en-valise) thing that has small reproductions of his work.  The problem is why do you reproduce a urinal turned upside down or an accidentally cracked glass.  Duchamp was kind of a nut, but his work is what it is.  To recreate readymade art in small scale is, to me, no longer art but a gift shop item.  Sort of like an inflatable Mickey Mouse. Silly as it is, it is about as significant at their collection gets IMHO.  To visit this museum would cost our family just under $50.00!  Nuts!  I looked up admission price to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which really is a museum, and the cost would have been $34.00 (kids are free after 3:00pm and weekends) with free return admission within 10 days!  Anyway, another sterling example of OKC’s puffed up sense of ego and its unwillingness to share anything with “those of lesser means.” 

Wow, I really got off track here.  Instead of shelling out $50, went to the Martin Park Nature Center which is run by the City of OKC Parks and is FREE!  We had a blast.  We hiked (now understood to be something you don’t want to do when you are two weeks from a delivery due date as Xochitl has been having random, painful contractions since about 11:00 last night).  We fed some giant sized catfish in the creek that runs through the center and took a lot of great pictures.  We plan to go back often.  Any bit of nature is a good thing.