The Great Plains -- A Retrospective

Calling Out Your Name

Well the moon moved past Nebraska
And spilled laughter on them cold Dakota Hills
And angels danced on Jacob's stairs
Yeah, they danced on Jacob's stairs
There is this silence in the Badlands
And over Kansas the whole universe was stilled
By the whisper of a prayer
The whisper of a prayer

And the single hawk bursts into flight
And in the east the whole horizon is in flames
I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

I can feel the earth tremble
Beneath the rumbling of the buffalo hooves
And the fury in the pheasant's wings
And there's fury in a pheasant's wings
It tells me the Lord is in His temple
And there is still a faith that can make the mountains move
And a love that can make the heavens ring
And I've seen love make heaven ring

Where the sacred rivers meet
Beneath the shadow of the Keeper of the plains
I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

From the place where morning gathers
You can look sometimes forever 'til you see
What time may never know
What time may never know
How the Lord takes by its corners this old world
And shakes us forward and shakes us free
To run wild with the hope
To run wild with the hope

The hope that this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song not sung in vain
And I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

And I know this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song not sung in vain
I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And with the prairies I am calling out Your name

Rich Mullins
Psalms 19:1-6

It has been over twenty-five years since I left the Great Plains. I still carry with me the nasal southwest Kansas twang -- I will probably have it till my dying day. I had no appreciation for my homeland of western Kansas when I was growing up. It was a place to get away from. Definitely un-cosmopolitan, consisting mostly of wheat farms, pasture, cattle rances and prairie. Life revolved around planting and harvesting the wheat crop, getting cattle to market, Friday night football games or basketball games. Small farm towns, like Protection, where I grew up, were a symbiotic partner with the farms and ranches. I was a "town kid" -- my family provided services to the farmers, ranchers and townspeople. As the seventies hit, and the small farm was beginning to decline, I was one of those with stars in his eyes - who wanted to get far, far away from the seemingly dull existence that the high plains offered.

Rich Mullins, on the other hand, was making the journey in reverse. Already a "star" (though that is not what he intended to be and sought not to be), Rich came to the plains of Kansas as someone who could appreciate it's unique beauty for what it was -- and that is partly what he communicated in the song printed above, "Calling Out Your Name".

I came late to appreciate Rich Mullins. And I came late to appreciate my homeland. Better late than not at all.

Poor Man's Blackberry (tm)

Most people these days have a cell phone and most of them have an SMS or Text Messaging function. It is possible to use that feature to turn your phone into a "poor man's Blackberry". Most likely, you would not want to be notified of every email message that comes to your account, but would like to be kept aware of specific mail messages when the arrive.

Most corporate mail systems have the capability of user-created and user-managed rules regarding disposition of messages. In my case, if I'm away, I would like to know if I get email from my boss and I would also like to stay on top of the requests coming into the corporate help desk -- since they affect me, as a systems admin. So, to accomplish that, I set up a mail rule to do the job which I can turn on when I'm preparing to be away from work and turn off when I'm in the office.

My mail rule (see screenshot below) notices any Help Desk messages or any messages from Joe, my boss and routes a copy to my cell phone via text messaging.

The only real downsides to this approach are 1) SMS messages are limited in length and 2) your plan may charge by the message versus unlimited. My plan charges about .10 for each text message, but if I need it, it's no big deal, as far as I am concerned. This allows me to stay on top of what's going on Helpdesk-wise without being tied to the PC.

Tornado Alley

Since yesterday morning, it has been hard to watch the cable news or the Weather Channel without seeing footage and commentary about the Greensburg, Kansas tornado. We were staying at a hotel preparing for our son's college graduation, as my Mom and Dad joined us for breakfast. Their first words were, "Did you hear about Greensburg?"

This was not the first tornado "experience" I have had, but the amount of devastation is hard to get my arms around. I was living in Emporia, Kansas in 1974 when a killer tornado struck, destroying a shopping mall, a large trailer court and a wide area of upper-middle-class apartments and residences. There were 12 fatalities. It was eerie. The description of Greensburg as "looking like a war zone" was used then, as well. I'm not sure they were using the rating scale on tornados that they are using today. I don't believe Emporia's tornado was an F5 like the one that took out Greensburg.

Years later, when we were living in Bloomington, Indiana -- a tornado struck on the the south side of Bedford, about twenty miles south with similar types of damage, only a much smaller area. The reason I write this is: I grew up very near Greensburg. I have been there and driven through there countless times in my growing up years. It is all very familiar to me -- and to watch from afar -- it is even more gripping for the memories of the town I knew, but is now nothing but rubble.

Finally (but one never knows), we have had a several tornados near our home in Junction City, Louisiana in the last few years. One came as near as half-a-mile and thankfully we had no damage though others a few miles down that tornado's track had localized but massive destruction, like the Greensburg photos.

Our prayers are with the people of Greensburg.

Addendum: My dad forwarded a news article that stated that the Greensburg tornado originated near my old hometown of Protection, Kansas -- accounting for the 20-30 minute warning that the residents of Greensburg had. Here is a link to a stormchaser site that covered another multi-tornado outbreak near Protection on April 23.