The return of Bob Wills Day

One of the state’s most significant figures in music history will be celebrated at the Oklahoma State Capitol on Monday, March 6. The Oklahoma Arts Council and Oklahoma Historical Society have announced the return of Bob Wills Day, a celebration returning to the Capitol after a hiatus of nearly a decade. The event commemorates the life and legacy of the “King of Western Swing” who helped popularize the music genre during the 1930s and 40s. Wills’ band, the Texas Playboys, had a daily program on the Tulsa radio outlet KVOO and were regular performers at the venerable Cain’s Ballroom.

Bob Wills Day will feature a special recognition of Wills—who passed away in 1975— in the Oklahoma State

Senate and Oklahoma House of Representatives. Wills’ daughter, Carolyn Wills, will be in attendance.

A slate of performances by Western swing musicians will fill the Capitol rotunda throughout the afternoon, and Bob Wills memorabilia will be on display. The Oklahoma Historical Society will host a live evening recording of A Very OK Podcast: The Bob Wills Story about the iconic musician at Ponyboy, located near the Capitol.

Free and open to the public, performances will take place in the second-floor Capitol rotunda from 1 - 5 pm. Performers will include Jana Jae, Jay Steagall & The Part-Timers featuring Danny Steagall, Kyle Dillingham, Oklahoma Opry, and Cowboy Jim Garling.

The live recording of

A Very OK Podcast: The Bob Wills Story will take place at Ponyboy, located at 423 NW 23rd St. in Oklahoma City. Hosted by Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) Executive Director Trait Thompson, the show will feature a panel discussion with former OHS Executive Director Dr. Bob Blackburn, OKPOP Executive Director Jeff Moore, Carolyn Wills, and authors Brett Bingham and John Wooley whose book Honky-Tonk tells the story of Cain’s Ballroom.

Bob Wills Day at the Capitol was started in the 1980s by state Senator John Dahl. The celebration took place every spring until the Capitol restoration project began in 2014. In 1988, Bob Wills’ song “Faded Love” was designated as Oklahoma’s official country and western song by the legislature.

Gardening School hosts Blooms for Birds

Birds add a delightful element to any landscape and play a crucial role in creating healthy gardens and natural ecosystems by helping to control pests, pollinate plants and spread seeds.

Myriad Botanical Gardens’ gardening school program features speakers who will showcase a range of birds to attract to your garden and how to design and plant gardens to attract and sustain them. You will learn how to be an active participant in helping birds and wildlife thrive in urban, suburban and rural home gardens.

Presented by the Meinders Foundation, Blooms for Birds is March 11 from 9 am – 4 pm at the Kerr-McGee Auditorium at OCU. The cost is $40 for members, $70 nonmembers, $25 students and a $15 lunch. To register go to myriadgardens.org.

The Oklahoma Gardening School is the state’s premier annual horticultural symposium that brings together hundreds of gardeners of all levels to learn from experts. Topics presented by renowned naturalists, authors, and horticulturists are timely and applicable to the cultivation of plants in Oklahoma and your own garden.

Speakers include author David Mizejewski, wildlife biologist Mark Howery, horticultural consultant Eva Monheim and landscaping specialist Adam Sarmiento.

Pandora a historical novel

By Susan Stokes-Chapman

The suspenseful novel Pandora is a mixture of all things that make a great mystery of the 18th Century, that fascinating romantic era of history. Characters tell their haunting story in a novel of three parts. Susan Stokes-Chapman chose the form to blend the period, the Grecian art antiquities, and attractive characters from elite families, thieves, robbers, obnoxious relatives and events with realistic combining of facts and mystical “could be,” to make the three sections of this novel become a reader’s delight.

Pandora is the first novel written by Stokes-Chapman, a writer who grew up in a Georgian city of Lichfield and four years in Aberystwyth and graduated with a

BA in education and English literature and creative writing. This novel burst onto the scene as a smash #l bestseller and has gathered acclaim for fiction prizes as well as the London Sunday Times Historical Book of the Month. The subject matter is only part of the reason for its success. The fascination for the period and the accuracy of description and vivid references add to the facts and mental pictures the author has as she searches the references of Hermes, the magpie, and the myth of Pandora’s box.

The emporiums for expensive items that were owned by the Blake couple who live there with their daughter, Dora, a young specialist in Greek drawings of jewelry. These turn into a rage ‘must have’ a few years after the couple has died, and the untrustworthy Uncle Hezekiah steps in to make false claims. Fortunately, a handsome lad named Edward Lawrence appears and soon has earned a place in the plot as well as in

Dora’s heart.

The respect that the author has for research and mystery gives the overall sense of magic throughout, and makes each section a source of detail and dreams for all the people involved in their secrets. Even the drawings of the Diving Machine Suit worn to retrieve a submerged artifact add to the authenticity of the tale.

The clothes, hair styles, dancing steps at an evening affair attest to the good taste and dangers facing the Blakes and the members of the Society of Antiquaries, as well as the health hazards attached to antiquities that have been out of circulation long enough to become suspect for diseased but valuable stones.

What a rare book! Stokes-Chapman prepares you for the suspense ahead by her kick-off nod to John Milton (Paradise Lost) “The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

Thanks to Full Circle Bookstore for sharing these books with FRIDAY readers.