A tribute to Matt Biddle, my friend and colleague

 

Matt with his daughter, Faith, on the occasion of a visit to our home

My friend Matt Biddle died last evening (10 April 2018 - the 39th anniversary of the Red River Valley tornado outbreak), after a long struggle with a host of physical challenges.  I can't detail his entire medical history, but his most recent problem was a heart stoppage, resulting in anoxic brain damage.  When Vickie and I went to see him in the ICU of Mercy Hospital, he was unresponsive and on a ventilator.  His family then decided the best thing would be to take him off of life support.  His passing was peaceful and his family was there at the end.

Matt was saddled with these physical difficulties for the entire time I knew him, but he somehow managed to carry on with his life.  To me, that represents extraordinary courage and determination - those were two of his defining characteristics.  Matt was seriously dedicated to issues that involved people, as a geographer who felt compassion for others and sought to provide mechanisms to reach out and help those with physical handicaps in severe weather situations, even as he had to overcome so many physical problems himself.  His contributions to the University of Oklahoma in terms of storm preparedness were vastly out of proportion with his rewards - both financial and personal.  He was an avid storm chaser and participated in scientific field programs whenever given the opportunity - he supported the science with his full commitment to whatever missions he was given.  He was also a big fan of the Detroit Red Wings.

Matt was an opinionated, argumentative person, so naturally I was drawn to him - so much of what he said and stood for made perfect sense to me.  Of course, I didn't always agree with him about everything, so we argued frequently.  I don't believe he ever took this personally and he gave at least as much as he got.  I always respected what Matt had to say, even if I disagreed at times.  Sadly, Matt wasn't appreciated by academics and management because he spoke his mind clearly and with passion.  Most seemed ready to kick him under the proverbial bus rather than to provide him with opportunities and the means to contribute.  I was able to help Matt obtain his PhD in Geography after Matt had a stroke that left him with aphasia affecting his ability to speak and write his thoughts.  Think about how frustrating it would be to have thoughts but be unable to express them!  Nevertheless, I forced him to do as much as he could without my intervention, so he could feel he "owned" his dissertation.  I was so proud of him and pleased to see him conquer the process and his aphasia on the day he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation.  Unfortunately, even that achievement failed to win him much respect in the professional world.  We tried several times to get funding to do various interdisciplinary projects related to severe storm preparedness, but ... no luck.

Matt's PhD Advisory Committee after his successful dissertation defense

His life during the time I knew him seemed to be a constant roller-coaster ride.  Great joy and satisfaction with his successes, only to be laid low by one physical issue after another.  His greatest and most constant joy was his daughter, Faith, who is pretty and quite bright - she's always done well in school.  I know she looked up to Matt and did things to help him cope with the tough side of his life.  He simply adored her.

I regret not having spent more time with him.  I'm reminded of an occasion when I was chasing with Al Moller in Kansas.  Several of us, including Matt, converged on an Applebee's in Newton, KS for a late supper.  We all jabbered on for a long pleasant interlude before going our separate ways.  A happy memory.  It's also somehow comforting to know that despite all his difficulties, he was able to chase;  it was something he loved doing.

Occasionally, we'd get together for a beer and perhaps a meal, but in retrospect, I wish we had done so much more often.  Matt leaves behind many in the chasing community who held him in high esteem.  If the level of his professional support had been based on the admiration of his friends, he'd have been able to do great things.  His passing is far too soon but the challenges with his body he faced were too much even for his strong will.  Matt may never be cited very often in scholarly circles, but his spirit and his accomplishments live on in the hearts and minds of the many who knew and loved him.  He will be missed by a multitude.

My de facto brother, Bob Lundeen has died

Last night, we learned that my cousin, Robert Lundeen, died after a protracted battle with Alzheimer's Disease.  Bob was the big brother I never had.  To understand how this came about, I have to acknowledge that my mother and her younger sister, Frances Lundeen (Bob's mother), had a very special closeness.  Thus, it came to pass that I spent my summers on the farm of my Aunt Fran and Uncle Irving for many years.  I was treated just like their two boys, Harlan and Bob.  In addition to my idyllic summers on the farm, we visited them every Christmas, and they visited us most every Thanksgiving.  Their farm was about a 4-hour drive from our house, near Galesburg, IL.

Cousin Bob, in 1998.  That wry smile was a trademark of his.

Being a few years older than I, it was inevitable that I thought of Bob as a role model.  It was also inevitable that he would tease me without mercy.  That's what older brothers do, naturally.  There were times when his teasing would really make me upset, but I eventually learned that if I didn't show him I was upset, he'd quit - teasing's no fun if it has no impact.   That was when I sometimes referred to him as "Sweet Old Bob - or sometimes just the initials"!  Despite all the teasing, Bob was mostly pretty good to me and we did many fun things together, including him taking me to the drag races:  specifically, the World Series of Drag Racing at the dragstrip in Cordova, Illinois.

We had many hours together on the farm, so we sometimes did things that young boys do.  One time, we filled up a pipe welded closed at one end, used to pound metal fence posts into the ground, with about 50 large grasshoppers.  Bob's parents had left us alone on the farm - with Bob, that was an open invitation for boyish deviltry.  After filling the pipe, we threw in a "Silver Salute" firecracker (an M-80) that Bob had obtained somehow.  When it went off, a jet of flame and grasshopper parts sprayed out and splattered pieces of grasshopper all over the north exterior wall of their house.  The pipe itself contained a "soup" of grasshopper parts and the goo of grasshopper guts.  Blech!  I don't know if his parents ever discovered the evidence, which was gradually washed away by rainfall.  We didn't repeat the incident.

I'd already been leaning toward a career in meteorology, and Bob was destined to become a mechanical engineer.  During slack moments on the farm, we would talk about our dreams and hopes for the future.  Bob had a small mirror telescope and we would go out into a field in the evening and use the telescope to see Jupiter and Saturn and the Moon and nebulae and star clusters and so on.  On a warm Illinois evening in the summer, it was an inspirational trip to the planets and stars we made many times.  I always loved the night sky on the farm - the very little light pollution and virtually no haze made the dark sky pop!!  The typical summer rains in Illinois corn country are associated with nocturnal thunderstorms.  Many a night I was awakened, in the room Bob and I shared when I was there, by the thunder and lightning show.  My enjoyment of storms was a foreshadowing of my storm chasing hobby, as well as my career as a scientist.

Bob wanted to get away from the farm, whereas I felt it was a delightful vacation to be part of an American family farm enterprise.  I guessed eventually that living it constantly could give one a different perspective, as opposed to my occasional dabblings in family farm agriculture.  Bob helped me to see how someone might have a different point of view from my own.  He was teaching me a life lesson.  One of many.

When we had both grown up and established in our careers, Bob used to call me on the phone from Idaho and just wanted to talk, sometimes at great length.  I always was happy when he called and so I could hear about what was going on in his life, and share my experiences with him as an equal.  Bob's mechanical engineering career led him to work for the Navy in Idaho Falls; evidently associated with the nuclear machinery in a submarine.  His work was classified so he couldn't say much about it.    Vickie and I finally made it to Idaho Falls on a 2012 vacation trip out West, and it was great to visit with him in the Idaho home where he raised his two boys, Chris and Gregg.  Chris and his wife Cindy have been caring for Bob during the course of his battle with Alzheimer's.

I can't even begin to recount all the ways that Bob has influenced me in positive ways.  His passing leaves an unfillable hole in my life.  He is already profoundly missed.

Spirituality and loss of self

After some discussions with friends over the weekend, I was reminded of very profound events that have occurred during storm chases, and during the pursuit of my scientific understanding of the world.  The essential element in this is what I refer to as "loss of self" that can occur when your ordinary life with its concerns about yourself and your needs or obligations fades away and is replaced by a peaceful surrender to what is happening around you.  Your ego disappears and you experience a feeling of merger with what you are experiencing.

During storm chases, this can happen when you find yourself confronted with something much larger than yourself that's just so awe-inspiring you may be "thunderstruck" (pun intended) - your jaw drops open and you're mesmerized by what you're seeing.  A chaser might well be so absorbed with what she's witnessing that cameras are just hanging in her hand by her side, unraised and unused.  The majesty of what you see can be so overwhelming in its majesty and power, you can become completely absorbed in the event.  The "self" has disappeared, in a flood of astonishment.  Such moments are unpredictable (as are the events that create them) and are always unexpected.  These examples are relatively easy to explain and are understandable to most people.  This part of storm chasing is often described by storm chasers in their accounts of their adventures.  It leads to such adjectives as "incredible", "awesome", "jaw dropping", and so forth - terms that in my opinion are both overused and somewhat misleading.  They seek to describe the triggers for this loss of self.

When Al Moller and I intercepted the 08 June 1995 tornado in Pampa, TX, about halfway through its life cycle, we stopped and got out of our chase vehicle to continue our photography and videography of the tornado.  When the tornado finally dissipated, I discovered that my mouth was completely dry.  Perhaps this was because of adrenaline, or the fact that my jaw had dropped open and stayed that way, or both.  Regardless, it's somewhat amazing I managed to continue operating my video camera during this time of loss of self.  I was transfixed with the spectacle.  It felt like waking up from a dream when the last remnants of the rope-out faded away.

There's another way I've had this loss of self during chasing.  I've developed a serious love affair with the U.S. central and high plains and the people who live there.  In the process of a chase, there can be a certain amount of down time and I often try to use that down time to capture images that convey the emotional content of my feelings toward the plains.  Yes, I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to those oceans of seemingly empty real estate.  What I see clearly is influenced by the light we encounter (photography can be thought of as "capturing the light"), by the dramatics unfolding in the sky, by the flora and fauna of the plains, by the wistful character of weather-beaten human structures and the stories they can tell, and so on.  When we get out of our cars and walk into the landscapes of the plains, I can find myself in a very spiritual state where my self vanishes.  For instance, many of the beautiful wildflowers of the plains are at the end of relatively long stalks, so they're prone to flailing about from the action of the virtually inevitable plains wind.  To capture what we envision, we may have to wait for that brief moment when the wind calms down and we can capture that moment.  Ordinarily, I can be impatient and not want to spend time essentially doing nothing.  But I find I can call upon something in those moments that lets me wait, silent and immobile, for just that brief instant, for many minutes, if need be.  When my self disappears, I'm able to wait, like a spider, to capture my "prey".  I experience in a first hand way something akin to what that spider in her web experiences.

In becoming totally absorbed in doing my science, the effort to concentrate on what I'm doing becomes easy when I'm so wound up in my work that time and seemingly boring, repetitive simple tasks become important only as the means of reaching my goal of following some new insight.  What might look to someone else as a task both tedious and trivial is, for me, a transcendental experience.  The passage of time is not noticeable.  I can immerse myself in this for hours without difficulty, as I'm so fixated on finishing the work.  Most of science seems boring to non-scientists but in my world, it can be transformed into a deeply spiritual adventure with the potential for something really exciting at the end.

I often tell people that the plains can elicit spiritual experiences, but in order to experience them, you have to slow down, go to quiet places in your mind, stop talking, and focus deeply on what's going on around you.  The light, the wind, the sky, the life of the plains can transport you to a world you can experience at the the deepest levels of your conscious mind.  Such moments can't be summoned on command.  You don't reach them simply by willing them to happen (although you can put yourself in situations that might lead you to them).  They come on without you being aware of their approach until you realize you're in them - a timeless state of union with the world around you and the universe.  As Robinson Jeffers wrote:
 
Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken. 

Man, a part of that, not man apart from that.  Your self disappears when you have that deep sense of being a small part of the majesty and glory of the natural world.  The feeling that we dwindle to insignificance is by no means negative when we feel we've somehow merged with those majesties.

Boomer Sooner?

I've spent more of my life in Oklahoma than anywhere else.  I like the weather here, given my passion for severe thunderstorms.  I like the physical geography of the state, with its large contrasts from east to west.  I was rather satisfied with the education I received here at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and had some great mentors who were OU faculty and staff.  However, recent postings on social media have raised a point of concern with regard to the University's "mascot" - the Sooners.  The school's fight song is "Boomer Sooner", composed by Fred Waring (!). 

 Many people are unaware of the origin of the term Sooners - it's tied to the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.  The "Boomers" were settlers who tried to grab parcels of land blatantly in the so-called "unassigned lands" (that was home to Native Americans) before the official starting date of 22 April 1989.  The US Army removed as many of them as they could.  The "Sooners" were people who sneaked into the unassigned lands early but kept a low profile, hoping to make a legal claim after the official starting date.  Both Boomers and Sooners were, effectively, cheaters seeking to grab the land of the Native Americans before they were allowed to do so.  These are not exactly the sort of folks that one would choose as a role model and certainly should be somewhat embarrassing to the University.  But I have my doubts many associated with OU ever give it any thought.

We already have seen a growing chorus of discontent by indigenous people with using Native American-associated terms for sporting team and Universities.  Recently, the 'mascot' of the University of North Dakota was changed from "The Fighting Sioux" to "The Fighting Hawks" in response to many protests by the Sioux tribe.  The controversy there was long and bitter.  There also has been concern about the Kansas City Chiefs, the Florida State Seminoles, the Washington Redskins (!), the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago Blackhawks, and many others.  Not surprisingly, there's been considerable pushback from those who rationalize such uses of these nicknames and logos.  I'm not about to enter the morass of that debate, but I do generally believe that our use of such cultural icons for our own purposes is disrespectful to Native Americans and their cultures.  Obviously, there are those who disagree.

Here at OU, the mascot is even worse than the preceding examples, because it honors those who participated in the plundering of Native American lands by white settlers.  The Boomers and Sooners grabbed their parcels of land by illegal means.  The Native Americans were the ultimate losers, sadly.  The whole of the lower 48 states represents the home of Native Americans who were here long before any white European settlers arrived to claim all those lands (except for reservations of generally worthless land assigned to those Native Americans who were not killed).  The indigenous people of the Americas were subjected to various forms of genocide and destruction of the original environment on which they depended.

Our treatment of indigenous people is shameful and it continues right up to this very day!  Anyone with a conscience should be deeply ashamed of this aspect of our national history.  As usual, the rationale for this history has been based on viewing them as primitive savages who were not even qualified as human beings with unalienable rights.  I have little expectation that OU will be changing their mascot any time soon.  White privilege is alive and thriving here in Oklahoma, and that isn't likely to change in the foreseeable future.  But I don't have to like that situation, and I don't have to support robbing Native Americans of their cultural heritage.