STILLWATER, Oklahoma – When Oscar-winning writer and director Tom McCarthy homed in on a central Oklahoma city as one of the settings for his latest film, he didn’t know what to expect. But he liked the sound of it and was looking for a location in a land-locked state.

VALDOSTA, Georgia — A child in South Georgia has made significant improvement this week recovering from a rattlesnake attack, her mother said Tuesday.

When I was a boy in California in the 1960s, my family was pretty much the only family I knew that ate bagels. That’s probably because we were Jewish and bagels are a Jewish thing.

TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma – Six bicyclists from the Cherokee Nation are about to embark on a 950-mile journey to retrace the Trail of Tears, as they left for New Echota, Georgia, on Wednesday, May 26.

VALDOSTA — An audiotape of a supposed confession in the 2013 death of a Georgia teen found dead in a wrestling mat has been determined to be inauthentic, the Lowndes County sheriff said this week.

BYROMVILLE, Georgia — When Sylvester Bembry inherited the family farm in Hawkinsville from his parents, he inherited the debt that came with it. Debt that he doesn’t want to pass on to the next generation.

VALDOSTA, Georgia — A Georgia sheriff has reopened the case of a teenager who was found dead in a rolled-up school gym mat eight years ago.

After a noisy election season of discontent, Republicans see their road to recovery in discouraging eligible Americans from voting.

VALDOSTA, Georgia – An ethics complaint has been filed against a Georgia mayor for comments he made on his conservative radio talk show.

MUSKOGEE, Okla. – A gunman killed five children, ages 1 to 9, and his 24-year-old brother in a mass shooting early Tuesday at a home in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where they all lived together, along with the mother of the children. 

DALTON — A Whitfield County Sheriff's Office deputy threatened to arrest a television news crew after a reporter tried to ask embattled U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a question at a forum she hosted in Dalton Wednesday night.

A Democratic U.S. representative plans to introduce a resolution to expel Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress due to "repeated endorsements of sedition, domestic terrorism and political violence."

The violent mob that stormed the national Capitol Wednesday repulsed many voters who supported President Trump’s reelection but the insurrection did not demoralize his zealots in America’s heartland.

First-time Illinois Congresswoman Mary Miller could have drawn from the collective wisdom of countless thoughtful Americans as she addressed the group "Moms for America" at President Trump’s rally in Washington on Tuesday.

Untangling wires, replacing bulbs and breaking out ladders to hang Christmas lights every year can be quite the job for homeowners. But when the result is a brightly-lit house adorned with festive decorations, onlookers can rarely resist the lure of holiday spirit.

Molly Ivins, the feisty Texas columnist and author, described herself thusly before succumbing to breast cancer 13 years ago:  “I spent most of my life feeling like I’ve been shot out of a cannon.”

My grandfather, Harry S. Truman, initiated the protocols for the peaceful transfer of presidential power as we know them today. He invited President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower to send over his Cabinet and staff so they could kick the tires, as it were -- be briefed by their predecessors, attend meetings, try out the office chairs.

Following the announcement Saturday that Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, President Donald Trump ought to concede and leave office with more dignity than he has shown as commander-in-chief.

In Washington, flip-flopping never gets in the way of political want. Nor does holding to principle or telling the truth.

Last week many people noticed a strange, smokey sky over much of the country, not realizing why it was there. The haze was smoke carried across the U.S. by the jet stream from the giant wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington.

Fred Swiderski is still smiling, and the banners and balloons are still up, from his birthday celebration last month.

NORMAN -- Oklahoma University’s football team canceled practice Friday to march lockstep from the stadium to the campus Unity Garden to protest racial injustice and the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

If you oppose mail-in voting because President Donald Trump calls it a fraud, prepare to stand in long lines to cast your ballot on Nov. 3 Election Day.

WESTVILLE – It’s like a Norman Rockwell cover picture from a 1960s Life Magazine, with three children manning a lemonade stand while talking to a neighbor. But it’s in Westville, Oklahoma, today, in 2020.

President Trump’s weekend with reporters at his private golf club in New Jersey can be explained as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Earl D. Lawson's death by COVID-19 was doubly cruel.

LOCKPORT, N. Y. -- The great debate over voting by mail has begun.

INDIANAPOLIS – Federal health officials report a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths occur in the nation’s nursing homes, but the agency tracking their morbidity rates maintains a database riddled with incomplete information and errors.

GROVELAND, Mass. – This unpretentious Massachusetts town joined the national concern over racism this week when a white man resident told a young Black woman resident she made him feel unsafe driving through his neighborhood.

STILLWATER, Okla. – The governing board of Oklahoma State University Friday ordered the removal of the name of the state’s 9th governor from campus halls because of his racist reputation.

Some events have the power of a match set to a mountain of dry wood. The video from Minneapolis, showing a police officer killing George Floyd in broad daylight, his knee pressed hard onto a handcuffed man’s neck as he pleads to live, all 8 1/2 minutes of it — this has been such an event.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. Your last semester in high school has gotten demolished by a global pandemic and it is wickedly unfair. Your graduation is now a drive-thru, your prom is imaginary, and instead of spending your last semester of senior year hanging out with your friends and taking a victory lap, you spent it in your bedroom doing classwork over Zoom and making Tik Tok videos.

MOODY, Ala. – A veteran Alabama police officer was shot and killed Tuesday night in a standoff between police and two suspects at the Super 8 motel in this suburban community 22 miles east of Birmingham.

George Floyd's death at the hands – or rather the knee – of Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin has sparked protests nationwide, including some looting and destruction of property in my hometown of Dallas. I do not condone senseless violence, but I understand some of the rage and frustration that fuels it.

It has been eight weeks now since the Great Shutdown began. Humanity has not been forced to sit this immobile for this long since the 1951 movie classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and that time it was just science fiction.