Author: Sarah Burris

Longtime Yukon Community Volunteer Darrell Burris Succumbs to Brain Disease

On a cool November day in 1934, in a small Oklahoma house with a dirt floor, Darrell Gene Burris began his journey, touching the lives of thousands. What day, exactly, that was, became a point of contention, because the doctor went on vacation and ultimately forgot the exact date.

“I remember,” his mother Ruby would tell him. “I was there.”

From that humble start, Darrell began a life filled with service to others, not only because it was his faith, but also part of his being. He helped his late father Gene Burris paint and wallpaper houses at a very young age. When his sister Paula (Burris) Casey and brother Randy Burris were born, he helped his mother shower them with love.

When he was just 17-years-old, he saw a tall, beautiful girl walking to school and asked if she wanted a ride. Despite him being a baseball and football star as well as a handsome high school teen, she told him “no.” Day after day he would ask until finally, she agreed to have a coke with him after school. Less than a year later, when Mary Lou Porter was just 15-years-old she and Darrell snuck off to get married.

For six months they kept their marriage a secret by continuing to live with their families and longing to be together. Her father was furious and threatened to annul the marriage when he discovered. Darrell fought to keep Mary Lou and they remained married for 35 years until one freezing day in 1987 when she was taken too soon from a tragic car accident on the Overholser Bridge on Highway 66 near Bethany. She was just 50-years-old.

Besides Darrell’s love for his wife Mary Lou, he loved his family and many friends. He enjoyed the service members he met during his basic training in the U.S. Army at Ft. Sill and spent time at Ft. Polk and Ft. Belvoir. Hoping to never see active duty he confessed to his commanding officer that he didn’t think he could ever kill another person because he was a Christian. While serving in the army, Darrell learned his trade of printing that would become one skill he would carry throughout the rest of his life.

Civilian life allowed Darrell to hone his printing skills by working at several companies including OPUBCO while always dreaming of owning his own shop. In 1979 in Oklahoma City he finally achieved his goal and opened Burris Printing. The company printed material for many clients including Braum’s Ice Cream & Dairy, the National Weather Service Training Center in Norman, Oklahoma, and Stucky’s Diamonds in Houston, Texas, just to mention a few.

When granddaughter Sarah Katheryn was born, Darrell and Mary Lou’s lives changed forever. After his wife’s death, it was his time with Sarah, he said, that saved him. “You’re going to have to learn how to use the dishwasher,” Darrell remembered Sarah telling him. At age 6, Sarah literally saved him when he accidentally caught his kitchen on fire while cooking as he watched a basketball game on TV. There were also the times Sarah tried to force him to eat his vegetables and she would later find them hidden in his napkin. Darrell struggled with diabetes and she would frequently find his freezer full of Nutty-Buddies and chocolate milk.

His Yukon home on Oak Street frequently became a favorite place for his granddaughter’s giggling teenage friends to hold their slumber parties and New Year’s sleepovers. To this day, a whole generation of Yukon graduates refers to him as “Papa.”

(Below is a video of the two talking one night in a rehab center where he stayed after he fell in 2017)

After retiring from printing, Darrell joined the team at Lowe’s in Yukon working part-time, promising all his customers a 10% discount. He enjoyed using his time away from Lowe’s at the Yukon Bowling Alley where he volunteered to teach over a hundred children in youth bowling classes.  Many of his students even went on to win tournaments. Darrell’s family and friends lost track of the number of perfect score-300 games he bowled.

Darrell joined his wife Mary Lou in Heaven on Wednesday, April 22, 2020, Earth Day. His granddaughter Sarah and his sister Paula lovingly held his hands until his final breath while playing his favorite Elvis songs at his assisted living center in Oklahoma City.

Those left behind are his sister, Paula (Burris) Casey and husband Mike Casey of Oklahoma City, brother Randy Burris and wife Vicki of Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia, son Michael Burris and wife Susan of Yukon, son Samuel Burris of Los Angelas, California, granddaughter Sarah Burris of Washington, D.C. as well as nephews Michael Siekel and wife Jeri of Oklahoma City, Scott Wallace and wife Jennifer of Southlake, Texas, nieces Jennifer Burris and Andee Allen of Georgia as well as great-nephews and nieces Lucas, Lilyan, Jacob, Brandon Kyle and Dee.

After succumbing to Lewy Body Dementia, Darrell agreed to donate his brain to the Boston University’s study with the Veterans Administration investigating how concussions can contribute to degenerative brain diseases.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, services for Darrell will be held at a later date when his friends and family can all come together to remember his life.

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What Lakeview Pet Hospital in Oklahoma City did to help our family cat

I don’t normally do reviews like this on my personal website, but this pet hospital deserves it.

I can’t say enough about Dr. Schmitt and her dedication to our family cat Max. It seemed like everything was going wrong and we were turning to a dark place but our family wanted to fight for him and she was ready to do it too.

She went the extra mile in ways I can’t even begin to explain. When he wouldn’t eat, she brought a can of tuna from home because he likes tuna juice on his food. When he had a seizure and I had a total freakout, she was there saying we could still save him.

The whole team was quite simply the sweetest most thoughtful people I’ve ever had look after my pets. Krista and Sarah were so gracious and caring about our multiple phone calls and requests to face time when we were out of town.

We will forever be in their debt for the care they bestowed on our family.

They are probably one of the best vets in Oklahoma City and if not they should be.

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My two hours in “GMail jail” all thanks to my war against AOL spam

What happens when the email account you’ve been using for over 10 years suddenly locks you out because you’ve been reported as violating their Terms of Service?

That’s what happened to me after I waged a war against a spammer with an AOL.com email. For years I’ve been getting these spam messages from an AOL email. And for years I’ve reported the account as a spammer. For years, nothing has happened.

Finally, when I was given a real person to talk to and send my complaints to, I thought something might actually happen. Spam is frowned upon by most internet companies and if someone is using their email server to spam swaths of people, they would probably want to know. It doesn’t generally look good for a company when they can’t police their own users.

I kept reporting and for about a week I never heard back from anyone. When I asked the @AOLSupport twitter account for help again, they gave me another email address to try. That got me a response, albeit a lousy one: report it as spam. Gee, thanks.

Nevertheless, I persisted. Theoretically, spammers should not be allowed to flourish on any mass email server. It can ultimately end up causing problems for their own IP addresses and impact all of the users. Thus, it seemed to me that they would at least shut the person down for a bit. Give him a warning. Something. Still, the emails came. Still I persisted.

Then I got this:
blocked from google after reporting spam

It seems AOL reported me as a spammer for forwarding them the spam I was getting. Each email I got from the AOL email I sent to the TOSgeneral@aol.com and abuse@aol.com. So, they found my persistent emails to be spam, but the original source of the emails was not shut down on their own server for spam.

Finding a Public Relations person at AOL has been a real adventure. Nowhere on the internet will you find one. Indeed, I can’t even manage to find an AOL corporate website. Each link I clicked sent me to some Oauth site. Ultimately, @AOLSupport seemed to have a person that could be sent my way. He even promised to accelerate to a supervisor and asked me for my AOL.com email. Ahhh if only…

After two hours, a 20 minute hold time on Google’s customer support line and outreach to several technology reporters and news sites, Google reinstated my email account.

One would think that this would be the close of our journey, instead, I’m starting my war against spam anew. Another call into Google has me in the queue. The question then will be how Google can stop a spammer from another email server and what they do to those that never cease.

Second, will be what I can only imagine to be an exciting conversation with a public relations person at AOL. I can’t wait. Why would AOL protect spammers? What does that say about their brand? When I think of AOL I think of an old man sitting behind a big desktop computer with a huge tube monitor and a tower where the fan never stops running because the CPU is so old it smokes when it gets too dusty.

American Online once existed as a place where people dialing into a phone could access the world wide web. I started using it as a kid in the 1990s. I had a stack of CDs that promised thousands of hours on AOL for free. Each month I had a new AOL account so I could have free internet for years.

Then, the actual internet was started. High speed, always on internet gave students like me the opportunity to seek out huge amounts of information, apply for colleges and read an absurd amount of fan fiction.

Like many, I graduated from the early days of the internet to the fancier, faster, sexier internet. I never thought I would be bothered by AOL again. Boy was I wrong.

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AOL allows spammers to run rampant on their server and they’ll report you if you complain too much

It all began several years ago when a listserv I’m on was infiltrated by someone from the outside. They stole all of the email addresses from the list and signed our emails up for random things. Most, if not all, of those things had an unsubscribe link on them and I could easily stop them from plaguing my inbox. Except for one.

An individual using an AOL email has been sending me propaganda emails to my GMail account for years. Every email I get I report as spam, but the emails still come. I keep reporting them — the emails keep coming. Finally, I reached out to the AOL Support twitter account and asked what I should do.

The reply I got instructed me to forward the emails to the abuse account. So I did. In fact, I forwarded all of them to illustrate the overwhelming amount of spam I’m getting from this American Online email address.

After a week of forwarding these emails to abuse@aol.com I reached out to the support Twitter again to ask for help. Not only did I not get any help — I didn’t get get a response. The spam emails on the Aol.com server simply keep coming.

So, the AOL Support account gave me another suggestion. It’s worth noting that every time I reach out they think I’m an AOL user trying to stop spam in my own email account. Instead, I’m another user on another email server and someone using their AOL.com server is spamming me using one of their accounts.

As you can see, I kept trying to explain to them that no matter what I do, the emails continue to come. No amount of spam reporting works. Plus, there’s the principle of the matter. Spam is a violation of AOL’s terms of service. Yet, when it is reported that someone is using their AOL.com email to spam people, those accounts aren’t shut down.

I kept following the @AOLSupport’s instructions and kept forwarding to spam@aol.com and tosgeneral@aol.com. Despite being spam and despite being a violation of TOS, they did nothing — until today.

Today my Gmail account got shut down because they received complaints I was spamming someone. Let’s see — who would I have been spamming? You guessed it — AOL. So, AOL considers me forwarded just a fraction of the emails I’m getting from THEIR spammer to be a spam violation and they’ll take action against ME, but they won’t take action against someone on their own server.

blocked from google after reporting spam

Now, I’m on the phone with Google support and I’m pretty sure he’s as flabbergasted as I am. How could you not be?

I reached out to the @AOLSupport twitter account asking for a Public Relations person to ask for comment but received no answer. I googled around but every time I try to go to the AOL corporate website it sends me to some Oath.com site, which gets me nowhere. So, if someone from American Online would care to comment please feel free to contact me in the comments below, since I have no access to my email.

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National Women’s March on Washington

Saturday was one of the most profound experiences of my life. It wasn’t merely the women that I met or the stories that they told me but more that so many women did whatever it took to travel to the nation’s capitol to make their voices heard.

You can read about some of the interviews I did by phone leading up to the march here.

For Susan McCool of Abilene, Texas, Election Day was a breaking point. The “almost 60”-year-old is one of very few Democrats in what she calls the ‘armpit of Texas.’ She told me by phone that her county was one of the top areas of the country that supported Trump.

Until this weekend, the most “activist” thing McCool had ever done was wear something special to a PTA meeting in protest of book bans — and once she proudly proclaimed at a Bunko meet-up that she was still a Democrat.

Raising two boys as a single mother left her little time and energy for activism, she said. Now, as a grandmother of an 11-year-old girl, she believes that speaking out is essential.

“I’ll be damned if my granddaughter has to go through any of that,” McCool said recalling what life was like when teachers couldn’t work if they were pregnant and women couldn’t serve in the church.

“I used Planned Parenthood then,” she said about the years she spent as a single mom. She had a hysterectomy but still wanted to make sure she was getting her annual exams. “I didn’t have the money nor could I take off, and they were open on Saturdays. So, if you did that, it was based on your income and I had a decent income, but I had two kids. So, I would volunteer back and work in there to pay for my annual exams.”

Read more of her story here.

Hope you enjoy the interviews!

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The importance of the every-day protest: Mike Pence being booed edition

On a Friday night, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence took a break from leading Donald Trump’s transition team and went to see the critically claimed and Tony Award-winning musical “Hamilton” on Broadway.

Apparently, when Pence entered the theatre for the show, he was booed by a lot of people, and the internet is loving it. Many people were shocked last week when Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, and they are not happy about Pence being in the White House either. The result is what happened in the video above.

You have to understand, Mike Pence is one of the least liked politicians in the country. In fact, his whole state hates him and was grateful to be rid of him. He caused far more harm than good that extended beyond hurting women, causing an HIV crisis and destroying the economy – all with his ideological governing. Since being elected as the VP, however, progressives have found little ways of reminding him that no one likes him.

This is one beautiful way. Neighborhoods in Northwest Washington are being flooded with pride flags and “Trust Women” signs and hopefully, his stay in Washington will continue to reveal that he’s not welcome.

For now, enjoy these boos.

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This Little Guy’s Name is Hollis and He Wants to be a Policeman

Hollis2Tonight, I joined with hundreds of my fellow Washington, DC activists, in attending the National Moment of Silence (for Michael Brown).  I made my way through the crowd annoying everyone with my “excuse me” and “pardon” as I photographed every sign and as many determined activists as I could.

Toward the end, I walked by a family and overheard a tiny voice ask “Mommy am I going to get shot by the police?”

Everyone this is Hollis (who I photographed with Mom’s permission).  Hollis is in the first grade.  When he grows up he wants to be a policeman, but he doesn’t want to fight in the war because his grandpa fought in the war. And he doesn’t want to be a fireman because he doesn’t want to get burned.

How Hollis’s mom didn’t cry at his innocent question I’ll never know, because, truthfully, I almost did.

I have tried to stay level headed during the last several days and come to these rallies with an objective perspective only seeing the scene to capture and report it. But these moments bring down my wall of emotionless detachment. Sometimes there are no words, just sweet, innocent, smiling faces, and moms who live in fear. In that moment I saw both, and my heart wept.

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Hacktavist Group Anonymous Releases Dispatch Tapes After Michael Brown Shooting

There’s something to be said for transparency and with the hacktavist group Anonymous that is exactly what we get. After the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, people took the streets in protest and the local police responded with violence and threats. Activist hacker group Anonymous appeared right beside them threatening to make a whole lot of information public if the police didn’t back down, and they are making good on their threat.

Released now are the police dispatch tapes discussing Michael Brown’s shooting, there’s no audio for the first minute, discussion of the shooting begins after 11 minutes. The tech site Mashable has confirmed with the St. Louis Police:

“Reached over email, St. Louis Police spokesperson Brian Schellman tells Mashable, “We are aware of this and are currently investigating it.”

Details for the recording present MANY questions:

9:35: “Ferguson has a… uh… is asking for assistance with cloud… crowd control [intelligible] officer involved, can I send one? … They just told me they needed assistance with crowd control in Canfield Green”

10:53: “1190…. He said there’s just a large group.. the original call was a [intelligible] just occurred and now they have a large group gathering there and she doesn’t have anything further…”

(writer’s note: Why is the crowd control called in before the shooting was?)

11:16: “Hey we just got another call stating it was uhhh… and officer-involved in a shooting there at Canfield Green in [intelligible] I don’t know who called it was called into my desk…”

11:27: “Ok… 2190… be advised, this uh… information came from the news.. so… I don’t know…[mumble]”
“Absolutely can I have another car go to Canfield…”

11:54: “We’re just getting information from the news and we just called Ferguson back again and they don’t know anything about it… so…”

(um… seriously?)

Around the 19 minute mark there seems to be a lot of clarification about information coming out of Canfield “down there in Ferguson.”

21:53: “2190 – I’m getting a request here in from my desk that they are requesting more cars. Do you want me to send more of YOUR cars?”

22:18: “2190 can you advice uh.. you know um.. they are asking the other radios now… so…”

23:42: “I don’t know if they need you, stand by and let me double check Jennings supervisor is the one requesting more cars and they’re getting cars coming at the other precincts now.”
“2190 if you’re with the Jenning’s supervisor now can you advise him they’re sending tag cars now.. do you want to disregard any other cars on our precinct?”
“2190 that’s clear. And don’t start adding the tag cars [intelligible]”

25:00: “Ok 2190 in reference to the K-9 now, we’re getting information now that Ferguson is supposed to have their K-9 and he’s supposed to be on scene do you still want to request one of ours?”

26:19: “2190 be advised that TAG is not responding YES they will call back and advise if and when they are responding.”

(Writer Note: I’m continuing to listen and find these but I have to change location folks are leaving the office but MoJo’s piece quotes this part in between where I stopped and when they switched over to the riot channel (but their time stamps are off):
43:55: “Attention all cars, be advised that in reference to the call 2947 Canfield Drive, we are switching over to the riot channel at this time . . .”

 

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What Robin Williams Said He Hopes Heaven is Like Will Make You Cry

At the end of Robin Williams’s epic performance on James Lipton’s Inside The Actor’s Studio, Lipton asks Bernard Pivot’s infamous questionnaire.  The final question is “If heaven exists, what do you want to hear God say when you arrive at the gates?”  Here’s what Robin said:

The rest of the show is 1.5 hours of your life that you’ll be grateful you spent watching this. When I’m having a bad day I watch this and Robin made everything better. I wish he had something like that for himself to make him feel better.

 

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President Obama Responds to Passing of Robin Williams

A tragedy even President Obama wanted to speak out about:

“Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between.  But he was one of a kind.  He arrived in our lives as an alien – but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit.  He made us laugh.  He made us cry.  He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most – from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets.  The Obama family offers our condolences to Robin’s family, his friends, and everyone who found their voice and their verse thanks to Robin Williams.”

via release by the White House

Watch Robin Williams break down the last 10 years of politics (NSFW Language):

 

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