High Plains Drifter

This is a painful entry… but I will feel better if I at least type something. My beloved alma-mater… the University of Kansas Jayhawks… were defeated once again in the first round of “The Big Dance” by the Bradley Braves, a team who clearly no one knew much about… at least I didn’t (and the KU team itself, by the looks of the game!)… and pretty much wrote this game off as a “should-win”, looking ahead to a fairly competitive match-up against Pitt.

I sat and watched this game this evening, and I felt like I had gone back in time…. to a time about 4 months ago when young frosh were running up and down the court tossing the rock like it was a hot potato with every other possession resulting in an unforced turnover. What really makes a game like the game against Bradley so difficult to swallow is the fact that we came off one of our best games of the year last week against a good Texas team. Granted, I didn’t watch that game, but rather listened to it on the radio at work, but it amazes me how a team can go from such a stellar performance to something so unbelievably full of mistakes… like it was the first time the school ever played in a big tournament. Hah.. reminds me of my bowling, quite frankly — the up and down.

That’s the way a team will play, though, without senior leadership. I think the coaching staff can only provide so much motivation. There needs to be on-the-court leadership, and quite frankly the very young Jayhawk team has NONE. The two seniors we do have — Moody and Hawkins, do not provide much in the way of leadership because they are not on the court often enough to be leaders (How about a total of 16 minutes between the two of them? How’s that for on-the-court leadership?). They just aren’t as talented as our younger crew. Our age showed big-time… and it was exposed tremendously by a much more eager-to-win Bradley club. I watched my young Hawks and I just saw a lack passion and obviously experience. The sophomore crew were freshman against Bucknell last year, so they gained little tournament experience last year. It’s as if they knew they were better than Bradley and just mentally didn’t have it in them… whether that was because they were emotionally fatigued still from that big Texas win… or were looking ahead to Pitt… or knew “they were all that” after the Texas win… or a combination of all the above. I don’t know what it was, but there was no desire or passion out there on the floor.

I am still having a hard time putting my finger on Brandon Rush. He has been our highly touted freshman star all year… but I’m just not seeing the fire in Rush. He’s definitely not ready for the NBA, that’s for damn sure. I’m seeing much more passion out on the point with Chalmers and Robinson. These two guys will end up being the leaders on this team… especially Russel Robinson. Someone has to step up BIG-TIME if the Hawks are going to compete with serious competition on a consistent basis. Bucknell and Bradley are NOT serious competition!

So now I’ll root for Wichita State against Tennessee tomorrow… it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out. It would be one of the biggest wins in the WSU program in a long, long time (if not in the history of WSU Basketball), and a huge recruiting kick for Mark Turgeon. Wichita State is looking up, and that’s awesome to see.

Now time to “try” and get into Royals Baseball season now. It’s difficult being a KU Basketball, Royals, and Chiefs fan.

Storm chasing has certainly taken on a whole new meaning when it comes to tropical storms – especially over the past couple of years, as there has been an exponential growth in Great Plains chasers who seek to chase these incredible natural phenomena. It used to be that the limit of hurricane chasing would be high-end Category 2 type storms, at least when it comes to chasing the eye – or at the very least, get to within 5-10 miles of the coast to witness the eye before it “fills in”. There are several elements of the hurricane intercept and documentation that are lures to many who chase them. The experience of the eye. The incredible local variations in wind speed, direction, and pressure in a matter of only minutes. The Surge. Water in motion that cannot be explained unless you are there. And the wind itself. It must be incredible to witness firsthand.

Hurricane chasing is a logistical nightmare. You have to deal with power outages, shortage of fuel, shortage of food/water and even shelter. Especially in times of mandatory evacuations. After everyone has fled, including emergency response personnel, you are pretty much on your own, and when you try to leave, what about washed-out roads and litter of debris? It is these very reasons that I have no interest in the hurricane chase. There are others, however, who prepare for these very things in order to acheive the fullest in their experience.

Hurricane chasing, for those that do it most ethically and SAFE, are really photojournalists. It goes beyond just storm chasing. It is not simply just to get the shot, but to also tell a story.

The photojournalistic aspect to “tell the story” has prompted a few of the most passionate and dedicated hurricane chasers to push the limits of human capability to get these shots in the most extreme conditions. I think Hurricane Katrina certainly showed which chasers/photojournalists indeed are willing to take more risk. The risk-takers are the photojournalists who make a living out of it. A few of the chasers/photojournalists have become more well-known among the storm chasing community (and beyond) based on their most recent work the past couple of years, including Jim Reed, Doug Kiesling, Chris Collura, Jeff Gammons, Mike Theiss, Jim Leonard, and Jim Edds… just to name the most reputable ones.

I think there is a fine line, however, between these photojournalists mentioned above and those chasers who just simply shouldn’t be there; the chasers who don’t necessarily prepare for the intercept properly and are more of an obstacle to those around them than anything else. One such case from Katrina was from these guys. The “Stormgasm” crew, according to their accounts, appeared to be unprepared for their intercept and got to the point where they had to physically be rescued by a rescue boat. Over the past couple of years, these guys have developed a fairly poor reputation among the chasing community for their extreme chasing tactics and poor ethics – particularly their very controversial June 2004 Manchester tornado video when at least one member of their crew was dancing and frolicking as a tornado blew away a farm house.

Hurricane chasing/journalism is dynamic, and I know that I certainly have no future intentions of chasing hurricanes, simply because I know that there are just too many unpredictable things that can lead to very unsafe situations. I will stick with supercell thunderstorms, simply because I understand these storms far better and their damage capabilities are far more localized than hurricanes, and that is the bottom line for me. I’m not out to photograph/videograph destruction, but rather the artistic beauty of the atmosphere. For me, the artistic beauty of hurricanes is the view from above; the high-resolution imagery taken from satellite. This is absolutely amazing to me, and I’ll continue admiring from afar. That said, I respect my hurricane chasing friends Jim Leonard and Jim Reed, especially, because time and time again, they get it done right, even if they do put their life at risk, and they share their stories and photography/videography around the world allowing ordinary citizens vulnerable to these storms to gain a true appreciation for what the atmosphere and ocean can really do.

The Katrina Aftermath and New Orleans. This is no longer a natural disaster. This has rapidly spiralled into easily the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the history of this great country.

It’s 4:30 am, and I just finished listening to a recorded interview from Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans himself, on the WWL radio station from NO. It is now Day 4 of this crisis and the anger and frustration from the mayor of NO has grown to a boiling point. It was the most frightening, to-the-point “slamming” of the entire governmental chain of the United States I have ever heard, regarding the complete inept in utilizing all the resources capable to SAVE LIVES. The mayor cussed. He has completely lost faith in the entire governmental chain from State to Federal.

He is right. What the hell is going on here? Cable news network reporters in the field are saying the SAME THING!! An interview of the LA Governer by Anderson Cooper had the same tone.. Where is the HELP??!? All this talk but no action, and it was Thursday… The hurricane made landfall MONDAY MORNING.

It has gotten to the point now, that the death rate among those still left out there grows exponentially with every passing hour. Hundreds, to perhaps THOUSANDS of lives that otherwise would have been SAVED had a plan been in place. It appears as if there is no ultimate plan, no one single leader to head up this plan… There are “too many cooks in the kitchen” as Mayor Nagin has said.

Obviously, the scale of this disaster has stretched resources extremely thin. It doesn’t help that we spend billions and billions and BILLIONS supporting an Iraq mission that in and of itself has many questions. What’s left for US?? US being home… The United States. Clearly, we are a nation prone to extreme national disasters. Though events like this are rare, maybe 100 or 200 year events, they happen. There is simply NOT ENOUGH THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX in American Government. And it disturbs me.

In the words of Mayor Nagin,
“New Orleans will never be the same……………………..”

Mike

God it’s hot on the High Plains right now. 103 degrees here in Dodge City the past two days, but it was even worse than that in Hays, where the mercury topped out at 108 and 106 the past two days. It’s late July in western Kansas, it’s something I have to deal with

Whew, lot went on the past week. I drove down to Table Rock Lake last friday (15th) and met up with my brother who also drove down from Overland Park… to enjoy a wonderful weekend with family. It was a very enjoyable time from just sitting back relaxing… to getting sun burned on the lake… to going to my first “Branson Show”. No, no, no.. not an Andy Williams show.. but Russian-American comedian Yakov Smirnoff. My Aunt and Uncle, who are residents of the area, are able to get into these shows at a very discounted price. The Yakov comic show was very well done. It is a more family-oriented comedy show, but the sketches certainly made us all laugh. Yakov has an incredible talent where he is able to interject a certain seriousness at times, to capture the hearts of his audience through some of phenominal stories of how he became an American.

9/11/01. Certainly a day that changed this country in many facets of life; a day that really hit Yakov at heart. Yakov started his American life in New York, then becoming citizen several years later. Without going into the details of when he and his family moved to America (go see his show!), their first impressions of this country was one of big heart and outpouring support. So, when the two planes hit World Trade Center, it most certainly affected this Russian-American artist and comedian. I say artist. One year after that fateful day in world history, 9/11/02, an incredible rememberance was observed on the grounds of what was once the twin towers. Standing tall above these grounds, and everyone below, was a several-story tall painted mural. A mural painted by an anonymous donor. Yakov painted “America’s Heart” the night of the tragedy, which would ultimately become the vision that would stand tall above Ground Zero with the message: “The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart”. Read more here.