(mellow music) - On this episode of Post Cards.

- When I first started storm chasing I would only see maybe one tornado a year.

Now I see, I think I'm up to 15 tornadoes this year.

That's pretty crazy.

(laughs) - Dude, we saw a tornado.

- As I started growing up.

I wanted to become an artist and to be a professional I thought I had to let go of the little cartoon character, but this character kept kind of sneaking back into my life.

(mellow music) - Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Councils Arts calendar.

An arts and cultural heritage-funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram.

Online at 96.7kram.com.

- It's the Midwestern Way.

- [Lady] Yeah.

- [Tanner] to talk about the weather.

(laughs) (energetic music) (car beeping) (energetic music) (loud thunder) (car siren) (indistinct) (piano music) Storm chasing is one of those weird things that people are like, wait, what do you do?

Like, what is that?

(laughs) People have this perception of storm chasing or storm chasers, or they're like really crazy.

They have all these like crazy vehicles.

Their personalities are insane and all this stuff, and it's just really not the case.

Storm chasing gathers a lot of people from around the country and even the world, and all sorts of variety of personalities.

I'm more of your like probably typical storm chaser, I guess.

(laughs) I just get very excited and very like pumped about stuff.

- [Man] Hey, this is sick, bro.

(loud boom and windy) - [Man] Ha-ha.

Woo.

- [Tanner[ As a kid, I would always be like looking up at the sky.

Anytime storms would roll in, you know I'd be kind of looking out the window, looking outside like you know, just whatever.

My grandparents would actually record weather videos and TV shows on the VHS tapes.

I remember watching them like religiously as a kid just over and over again.

- [TV] Two people are dead after a series of tornadoes in Minnesota.

- [TV] The aftermath of powerful tornadoes that ripped through the state of Minnesota.

- [TV] Knocking down trees, ripping apart houses, and flipping vehicles.

- [Tanner] When I was a teenager that's when things became really real.

On June 17th, 2010.

That was the day that Minnesota broke its record for the amount of tornadoes that happened in like a single day.

We had 48 tornadoes that touched down in Minnesota some of which were EF4s, very powerful tornadoes.

My dad got a text from a friend or whatever, being like, hey, there's this, there's this, you know, crazy storm heading your way.

And my dad looks at me, he's like, do you want to chase it?

He has no experience whatsoever.

(laughs) And I'm like, yeah, let's go.

- [Tanner] And so we see this giant like lower income and I'm like I think that's the wall cloud thingy.

I don't know.

And then we see the TIV, and we see these like mobile radars go by.

And so if you've ever seen the the show Storm Chasers this was actually their TV show.

Like this is all of them like filming and stuff.

And so I was like, no way.

Like are you kidding me right now?

(laughs) And so me and my dad, we went and pursued.

We just followed them because we had no idea what we were doing.

We went outside of Monticello, and we ended up seeing a brief touchdown.

Ever since, I've been hooked.

(dramatic music) (windy sounds) - [Tanner] Hold on.

Yeah, we do.

We gotta go.

- Oh my gosh.

(police sirens) - So the United States has the highest amount of severe roller setups in the entire world.

So that means if you're a storm chaser the United States is literally the pinnacle place to be.

And so with storms there are different classifications of storms.

The most powerful one is supercells.

Less than 1% of all storms in the world are supercells.

There are beautiful ones that are just like, they are just massive.

And you can see every component of it working and like you can see the rotational points of it and the downdraft and the updraft and, and everything.

There are also messy supercells where you're like it's a lot of rain and you're like, huh.

The only way I know where I am is because of radar.

(laughs) You know, like this.

is how I know to position myself.

And hopefully you get a glimpse of something, right?

(dramatic music) So it's crazy how much has changed since I was 15 years old and I'm 29 now.

Back in the day, I would literally take my chunky laptop and I would convince a friend to drive me somewhere because I didn't have my license.

I was 15.

Today things are so much different.

Technology has caught up.

I can do everything for my phone.

I don't need a laptop.

It's a lot easier to chase now than it was back then.

(dramatic music) The best storm chase of my entire career happened actually in Minnesota, which is really cool.

It was July 8th, 2020.

And so this was the Ashby/Dalton EF4.

- [Tanner] I'm waiting for something like this all year, man.

This is the pinnacle of storm chasing.

This is literally everything that you want when you're storm chasing.

You know you have a nice slow-moving supercell.

You have a beautiful structure on the storm with like clearly there's like no rain here whatsoever.

This is all clearly visible.

And so this is my GoPro time-lapsed footage.

And like right here at the bottom this is when it's all rotating here.

It's all getting.

You can see the whole thing just rotate right here.

The funnel starts to appear.

- [Tanner] (indistinct) inside.

There we go.

Beautiful.

Classic funnel starting to develop right here.

And it's just, it's just all wraps up so nicely.

Like it's just gorgeous.

Just absolutely gorgeous.

Literally, birds are chirping.

Like what?

(laughs) (birds chirping) (wind blowing) So at this point, a tornado warning, obviously on it.

I am racing to get next to this thing.

This thing is becoming way more powerful now.

You just don't get structure like this ever.

Like it's just so hard to see the whole storm all the way up.

And it's like clear blue sky on this side.

You know, you can clearly see all of the elements at play.

There's like the inflow is going into right here into the tornado and it's going all the way up into the storm.

This is fantastic.

This is amazing.

These are some of my storm-chasing friends.

That's Bill Doms.

Yeah.

This is- - [Man] Oh no, oh no, Lord, please protect these people.

- [Tanner] Yeah, this was- - [Man] God, please protect these people.

- [Tanner] We never want to see this kind of stuff.

- [Man] In Jesus name.

- [Tanner] Like we never want to see these people just like houses being ripped to shreds, and different things like that.

- [Tanner] But this is what I was experiencing at the moment.

(wind blowing) Let's see.

So right here, this is where I was like filming the destruction that just happened.

And I was like, okay, like that house looks pretty that look, you know, that looks okay.

But then I turned around and this was all that was left of this like machine shed.

(sad music) - [Tanner] Unfortunately there were several workers in that shed and one of them didn't make it.

I think it's frustrating how some people think that we want to see destruction like that.

We don't.

(laughs) We really don't.

We really want to just, we want to capture what's going on and like the powerfulness of tornadoes and the beauty in awe and everything.

But we never want to see 'em go through like homes or towns ripping up a bunch of stuff and like killing people.

We don't want that.

It was a very bittersweet day because on one end I had the most incredible storm chase's experience of my entire life.

But on the other side, someone lost their life.

(sad music) - [Tanner] Good morning.

Good morning.

We are heading towards an outflow boundary that was set up by yesterday's storms.

- [Tanner] People don't understand that there's such a challenge to storm chasing.

There's such a meticulous way of going about it.

Like the reason why not many people see this, these things is because it's hard.

We don't have a technology to pinpoint when or what storms will actually produce tornadoes.

We just know the kind of environment that produced them.

- [Tanner] So there's still like an art of challenge in it.

When I first started storm chasing, I would only see maybe one tornado a year.

Now I see, I think I'm up to 15 tornadoes this year.

That's pretty crazy.

(laughs) Me and Mark are trying to figure out what, where the heck we're gonna go.

- We don't know.

- [Tanner] A really big thing for me in storm chasing is just connecting with people.

I love taking people along with me, and I love like connecting with other storm chasers, and it's like, I don't know also it's like a Midwestern thing where we're like, oh hey how's it going?

- [Tanner] But especially with storm chasing it's really fun cuz I'll have friends in Texas that will come up and storm chase in the Midwest here sometimes or I'll go down there and then we haven't seen each other all year.

And then here we are on a random dirt road like we didn't plan it and we're just watching the same storm, you know?

And it's, it's super fun.

- Dude, we saw a tornado.

(energetic, upbeat music) - [Tanner] Why do I storm chase?

Like why?

Why would anyone (laughs) risk their life essentially chasing these powerful, beautiful, crazy things?

- [Tanner] For me personally, getting out there and capturing images that are so unique and from my perspective is something that I just absolutely love and I love creating stories around that.

And so like I have a YouTube channel, you know and I love creating adventurous videos about my storm-chasing experience.

I'm also kind of an adrenaline junkie a little bit.

(laughs) - [Man] Come on, let's go, let's go, get closer.

(car door shuts) - [Tanner] I also can get paid for it.

News agencies that day or the next day will buy my stuff.

Sometimes I'll have TV shows, and that kind of thing, that'll want to utilize my footage.

And rarely, sometimes a few of us, will get opportunities for our footage to be in movies.

I haven't yet, but (laughs) hopefully.

But honestly, if all of that were to disappear I would still be out there storm chasing.

- [Man 1] Oh, I bet the rainbow is really dope right now.

- [Man 2] Awesome.

- [Man 1] Here we'll be turning in like two seconds.

- [Man 2] Oh.

- [Man 1] Nice.

- [Man 2] Ha ha.

Dude.

- [Tanner] I am just so awestruck by God's creation, by the beauty that storms provide.

- [Tanner] It's not just the tornadoes.

It's, it's the lightning.

It's the structure of how it looks.

It's literally just standing outside and having the big droplets of rain hit your face right when the storm is getting to you.

Like, it's just something I absolutely love witnessing and experiencing.

(energetic music) (mellow music) - [Blayze] Basically the Creation Shop is a pottery and sculpture workshop that's inspired by my little cartoon character, Tom.

As I started growing up, I wanted to become an artist and to be a professional, I thought I had to let go of the little cartoon character.

(happy playful music) To be a professional, I needed to work on craftsmanship and there is no place in that professional world for cartoons.

But this character kept kind of sneaking back into my life.

After basically wanting to bring this character to life I ended up meeting that individual who worked for Pixar, Dan McCoy.

It was just in a brief moment that he shared the insight that these cartoons can connect with our emotions.

And from there I, you know, wanted to bring this little cartoon to life.

(upbeat music) (trickling water from a sponge) - So I went to MSUM for a year, and then from there I heard about a visiting artist, Boomer Moore, who was originally from Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

He came back to give a presentation at M State.

And from there he talked about how his school takes trips over to Jingdezhen, China.

They have a study abroad partnership program.

And basically kids from all over the world can join their program and learn from the best potters in the world.

I ended up signing up and joining West Virginia for three months in Jingdezhen, in the porcelain capital.

(jazz acoustic music) - [Blayze] We took a slow train into Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital.

- [Blayze] Still about over a million people live in this city.

And here we went to an area known as the sculpture factory and stayed for two and a half months.

There within the sculpture factory we were taken, basically, we stayed in an artist's residency location and different master craftsmen would come in and show us their, their specialty.

So there in the city, everybody specializes in one skill.

So you've got the master wheel thrower who will come in and either he specializes in making ginormous pots or he can just reproduce the same form over and over.

From there, this craftsman will hand the work over to another, another craftsman who will trim up the work and then someone else will paint the work.

And then there's the master of the kiln.

So there, this city is known for having some pottery that has been touched by over 30 master craftsmen.

So it's a very cool city.

And we had the opportunity to have many demonstrations of these different skills.

(piano music) Coming home from China literally a month before Covid, we ended, I ended up landing here back in my hometown and wanting to open up another ceramic studio.

(Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata plays) For about four months throughout Covid we renovated this space here, and, basically, it was gonna be my little private workshop, and I'd start to open it up to the community for like date nights and maybe a Sunday kids class here and there.

As I was starting to open it I had someone contact me at a, about a bachelorette party.

And I was like, whoa, okay, we'll do it.

(laughs) Like, we'll try that.

And then from there we started like promoting team building activities.

So trying to get, we ended up getting Zero Variance like a marketing company in here to experience clay.

It's been amazing.

Like, like in, in, over in just over a year we've had over a hundred workshops, I think close to 150 now.

And that's been everything from birthday parties to Sunday kids classes to date nights to team building.

But I have been able to experience and meet so many people who have never touched clay before.

And it's, it's a really cool experience.

Like it helps, it seems like it's, it helps people get in touch with, with like their mind and their hands and helping kind of allow them to, to work on.

Yeah.

Forming and, and articulating their, their mind on on like a, a clay piece.

(upbeat music) - [Blayze] The journey pottery has taken me on has been, it's really expanded my view of the world.

I would say that really dedicating myself to to kind of almost one focus has allowed me to see how far you can take that that material and that medium.

And it has branched out into sculpting, you know, from pursuing pottery.

I've got into concrete, but it's a lot of the same material.

Just learning how to, you know, not necessarily fire it but to form it in, in a larger three-dimensional way.

But, you know, it's, it was my reason for going to China.

(piano music) As an artist.

What I am trying to do, what I feel like I'm doing is is trying to really capture all that I can within my life and knowing that that's impossible.

Like, like there's so many ideas and so many things I want to create but how can someone stay motivated to continue and to continue to produce and and expand on what they know.

Even when the world is, is so busy and there's so many life activities that are going on that that seem so important.

You know, how can you continue to, to do more and and to refine that skill more?

And that's kind of where the, my philosophy has taken me further.

(opera instrumental music) (military-type music) (airplane propellers) - [Paul] Well, before the war, I lived on a farm.

I enlisted when I was 17 and before that, I was just living on a farm.

That was all, yeah.

I had I had some jobs, of course, like everybody else.

I went to egg school at the West Central School of Agriculture in Morris.

Yeah, that's where I went to high school at.

And I went straight from there.

I enlisted in the Navy And I went straight to bootcamp.

- [Paul] There I was on a destroyer.

So we took care of all the electrical equipment, the communications equipment, and et cetera.

Our, our living compartment was in the back of the ship, fantail.

Oh, there's probably, oh I would guess 50 guys sleeping in there in bunks that were about, I think they were four high.

There was only about that much space between each bunk, you know.

- [Paul] Yeah, it was, it was crowded.

Yeah.

- Well, we all had our battle stations.

Mine was on a 40 millimeter, and I was a first loader on the first 40 millimeter.

So, my job was, we had a second loader.

He handed me the ammunition, and I put it in the gun and - [Paul] and cocked the gun and all that stuff.

- [Paul] So - [Paul] We had, during the invasion of the Philippines, especially the, the big invasion nothing happened there really.

There was about a thousand ships in there, landing crafts and ships.

But then we went from there to a invasion of like Mindoro in the Philippines.

That's an island there.

And that's when we came under attack by the kamikazes.

- [Paul] Yeah.

It was very scary.

- [Lady] Yeah.

I bet.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- [Paul] And we had one diving strategy added, and I had a second loader.

I reached back for more ammunition, and he was gone, and (sobbing) he'd crawled under the gun because he thought we were gonna get hit.

So the gun captain took his place and handed me more ammunition, and we kept on firing.

And a few seconds later he said, cease fire.

And I turned to the gun captain, and I said, where'd he hit?

He said he didn't, he changed his mind at the very last second, and turned and hit the LST that we were escorting that was loaded with troops and mining equipment.

- [Paul] Yeah.

So then we, we were ordered to drop out of the convoy, and pick up all these survivors off the LST, picked up like, I think it was 270 some of them, and we continued on with that.

But the survivors, we picked up, we let off the next day I think we, I think we, there was seven of them that died.

And we just, we just readied for the invasion after that, the Mindoro.

Oh, we did a land invasion.

We'd go in ahead of the landing craft and bombard the beach and whatever, whatever they needed done in the Army.

So then after the initial landing, we usually had to stay behind and whatever the Army directed us to do.

We'd bombard the beach or the island for the, for the Army.

And we usually had kamikazes.

They usually came in every day just about sunset.

And you could just about set your clock by them.

Yep.

- [Paul] We did a lot of convoy duty, you know the invasion convoys and, and we and usually, after they invaded we'd have to stay behind and bombard wherever the Army or whoever it was needed bombard shells.

And, and of course every day we had the kamikaze coming in, which was scary.

- [Lady] So if you were standing and and feeding ammunition into a, into these big guns.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- [Lady] What did that do with your hearing at the time?

- Well, I didn't notice it until, - [Paul] Right now, I have a hearing aids.

(chuckles) Yeah.

So.

Yeah, it does affect them a lot.

- [Paul] Oh, I, I would do a do it over.

- [Lady] Yeah?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd go through it again if I had to.

Yes.

- [Lady] What would you say to someone who's serving in the military today?

- Oh gosh.

It's, they're, they're great people.

Very, very.

Yeah.

We owe 'em a lot.

(military music) (airplane propellers) (energetic music) - Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the Citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's Arts calendar an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar.

Showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7kram.

Online at 96.7kram.com.

(outro music)