Kimmel Harding Nelson Residency: Day 2

Iowa corn field
The Flying Nun

As our plane approached Omaha, Nebraska, I surveyed the irregular grid of rectangles and squares formed by western Iowa's country roads. Cumulus clouds cast dark shadows of punctuation over the vibrant greens, yellows, and siennas of the state's corn and soybean harvest.

I tend to think of our nation's industrialized monoculture as a rigid corporation of hundreds of thousands of acres of symmetrical fields, but, in practice, even agribusiness can only bend the land so much. At an altitude, one sees that our fields are as shaped by the extant topography as they are by human manipulation. Indeed, some of Iowa's fields, with their rounded edges and calligraphic plow lines, could, from the air, be mistaken for southeast Asian rice paddies.


Aerial view of western Iowa agriculture
My neighbor on the plane was a pleasant Benedictine sister. Dressed in full habit, she was en route to Norfolk, Nebraska, for an assembly of the world's Benedictine Monastic Missionaries. She works and resides in Namibia, Africa, assisting with education and HIV/AIDS prevention. I deeply appreciate the charitable activity and lifelong devotion of such missionaries, but I remain wary of the proselytizing component.

At several points in my conversation with the sister, I felt as though she was soft-selling her faith. She commended me on my given name, Christopher, explaining that I was named after the Catholic saint that supposedly carried the young Yeshua of Nazareth across a river. (Of course, that isn't quite right. The saint, if the man in fact existed, was named for his deed; the Greek word Christophoros translates as "bearer of Christ.") She was also happy to learn that my vocation, my calling, was art, and encouraged me to use my artwork to "usher in Christ's love everlasting." I replied with a noncommital "um hmm," and left it at that.

Perhaps because my response was ambiguous, she persisted. Inspired by my affinity for art, she recollected a visit she made to the Norman Rockwell Museum, where she viewed a sculpture by Rockwell's son, Peter. According to the nun, the sculpture featured a crucifix crowned by devil horns. The piece sounds wholly adolescent, but it evidently upset one of the nun's companions, who couldn't understand why the "symbol of all that is good" would be paired with "the symbol of all that is evil." The nun reassured her friend by pointing out that "at least Peter Rockwell isn't an atheist." She weighted the last word, and shook her head as she pronounced it. I'm not sure what element of the sculpture informed her confident conclusion about Rockwell's metaphysics, but her story made clear her negative feelings for those who doubt or deny her particular faith.

Some minutes after the Rockwell anecdote, she expressed pleasure at Pope Benedict XVI's decision to expand contemporary Catholic use of the Tridentine Mass, a Latin text that vilifies Jews. Considering the nun's clear dislike of atheists and her implied disapproval of non-Christian religious beliefs, I'm happy that I dodged any questions that, squarely answered, would have revealed something of my personal path from a Christian baptism, to agnosticism, to atheism, to my current exploration of and identification with panentheistic or panendeistic Judaism. Part of me was disappointed in myself for not confronting her ecumenical failure, but, frankly, I was more interested in looking out of the plane's window.


Auto repair yard on Central Avenue; Nebraska City
First Impressions of Nebraska City

If you define "city" as a settlement with a large population, Nebraska City is a misnomer. Compared to New York City, my home for almost a decade, Nebraska City is a population blip. New York City's population, estimated at 8.5 million, is 1,200 times Nebraska City's roughly 7,000 residents.

Shortly after we loaded the minivan with our bags and left the Omaha airport, Ron, the owner (and sole employee) of Tree City Taxi Service, said that most Kimmel Harding Nelson Center residents that come to Nebraska City from big cities experience some degree of culture shock. But, although I now live in New York City, I originally hail from Locustville, Virginia. Locustville's population was just 99 when I lived there, and I don't believe that the number has significantly increased or decreased in the years since. Compared to my hometown, Nebraska City is, as its name suggests, a veritable metropolis!


Closed store on Central Avenue; Nebraska City
In conversation with Ron, I gathered that the largest employer in Nebraska City, the American Meter Company, has recently laid off a significant number of its employees. Two other companies that the townspeople depend upon, Cargill Meat Solutions and Diversified Foods & Seasonings, are also facing cutbacks. As a result, many of Nebraska City's citizens are struggling to make ends meet. The economic woes are apparent on the town's main street; it seems as though every block on Central Avenue is home to at least one vacant storefront.

Ron also confirmed my assumption that white-tailed deer, turkey, carp, and channel catfish are major focal points of the region's outdoor recreation. He proudly told me that two of his granddaughters, decked out head-to-toe in camouflage gear, already accompany their dad deer hunting. The image of the camouflaged little girls made me smile, perhaps because I fondly recall the too-big camouflage outfits of my childhood.

Along with hunting and fishing, the major pastimes in eastern Nebraska are high school and college football. This afternoon, from the kitchen window of my residency apartment, I watched the middle school football team practice. I wondered if, compared to their coastal peers, a greater percentage of Nebraska's teenage athletes bank on athletic scholarships and dream of going pro. Many of the players' parents arrived early and watched them from the edge of the practice field.


View on 6th Street; Nebraska City
Photo credits: image of Iowa corn field, ripped from Iowa State website; image of western Iowa fields, ripped from Legacy By Design blog; all photographs of Nebraska City, Hungry Hyaena, 2009

$$$ and Sense

The Colorado Rockies have secured a spot in the 2007 World Series and the Cleveland Indians are their likely opponents (barring an incredible turnaround by the Boston Redsox). I'm not a fan of either team but I root for underdogs and so am pleased to see these two clubs experiencing success.

My pleasure is dampened, however, by the constant fretting of so many sports commentators and journalists about the "problems" with "small market teams" vying for the championship. Sure, Major League Baseball's executives (and those at the invested television networks) are more worried about "the numbers" than they are a good sports story, but those men and women are the suited vultures, the "money men," a tribe I hold in low regard. Why should the commentators echo their concerns?

I'm not usually one to romanticize sports history - nostalgia is a refuge of the deluded or the defeated - but it wasn't long ago that popular sports mythology was built around icons and iconic achievement at the individual and team level. Frustratingly, our contemporary culture celebrates the sports investors almost as much the records, players, and managers. The much caricatured, beer-gutted fan sprawled in his recliner is today as concerned with salary caps, free agency moves, and team revenue as he is batting average and stolen bases. Off season dealings are as much a subject of water cooler conversation as the break-out rookies or outstanding team efforts. Indeed, contemporary sports talk might be confused for a stock portfolio review.

These are the times we live in, and our mercenary understanding of sports just one more tell, but for a more poignant take on contemporary apathy (and what it represents or portends) link over to James Wagner to read his "Good Germans" post, a response to Frank Rich's op-ed in the October 14th Sunday New York Times.

Player Haters?

Last Sunday, sick and frustrated, I watched the deciding game of the May "Subway Series" on television. Some weeks earlier, a friend had offered me a ticket to the game and I had eagerly anticipated the afternoon ever since. But instead of animatedly talking baseball on a beautiful Sunday at Shea Stadium, I was feverish and pouting on my bedroom floor in a sweat-drenched t-shirt and boxer shorts. That the afternoon had turned rainy and cold, thereby making things less than ideal for those fans who were able to make the game, did little to make me feel better; I'd been betrayed by my immune system. Even the run of unfortunate errors by the young Mets' players, and the resulting Yankees rally (which whipped me into a frenxy of anguish despite my fugue-like state) could not quell my frustration at having not been able to be there.

Fortune sometimes smiles on all of us, though, and another friend offered me a ticket to a Wednesday night Yankees/Tigers game in the Bronx. So yesterday, in now familiar cold and rainy New York weather, I headed up to the Bronx after work. Despite having lived in New York City for nearly six years, this would be my first game in Yankee Stadium! The seats were the best I have had since attending a Baltimore Orioles/Cleveland Indians game at Camden Yards in the early 1990s. Directly behind home plate, just this side of the "gated" boxes, I found my spot moments after the first out of the game. I love baseball stadiums almost as much as I love the game, and I spent the better part of the first inning studying the stadium itself. By the end of the third inning, though, it was neither the game nor the stadium that demanded the bulk of my attention, but the fans. One pair, sitting four rows behind my left shoulder, was especially difficult to ignore. Early in the evening, during a relatively quiet moment in the stands, one of them yelled out, very loudly, "F*ck you, Detroit! You f*ckin' suck, you pieces of sh*t!" Unfortunately, this was only a warm-up.

I've been to a number of baseball games in the last decade - though only a small number of cities: Baltimore, MD; Philadelphia, PA; New York, NY - but I have never before heard such hateful taunting. Granted, I have a chip on my shoulder. I don't hate the Yankees, as a team, but I do loathe most Yankees fans. They represent the worst kind of spoiled royalty. As I see it, the fans who support the richest and winningest team in all of American sport should be proud and charitable. To point fingers and scream "You suck" at the rest of the field is akin to a member of the aristocracy leaning out of his carriage to call a toiling peasant a loser. But my desire for the average Yankees fan to inherit some humility and grace is not the matter at hand.

While watching that Sunday "Subway Series" television broadcast, I could hear New York Mets fans boo Kaz Matsui, the struggling Japanese import, when he approached home plate to bat up. Each time I heard these jeers, I shook my head; after all, the Mets are one of my favorite teams (second only to the Chicago Cubs) and the heckling that Matsui was dealt incensed me. The commentators noticed the booing, too, and mentioned how difficult such treatment had proven for Matsui. In the Japanese equivalent of our major league (Puro Yakyu), fans never heckle their own players. In fact, they don't boo or berate players on opposing teams either! Kaz Matsui (not to be confused with the more successful Hideki Matsui, currently playing across town for the New York Yankees) emerged a superstar from a league in which players receive only support. Today, he finds himself centerstage in a much tougher arena, one in which fan regard is fickle and their bite is often terrible.

The friend who had given me the ticket is married to a Japanese man and I decided to ask him, as we quietly sat among the ruckus at Yankees Stadium, what he made of Major League Baseball. While he isn't a big baseball fan, he immediately commented on the difference in the stadium experience. In Japan, he explained, each player has a song or a dance associated with them and Puro Yakyu stadiums are filled with fans ritualistically celebrating their team, even when they lose. The whole experience, he said, "is about having fun."

When the Yankees next scored on a two RBI double by Jorge Posada, the fans in our area went crazy. The first few seconds were fun, with lots of high fives and wild cheering, but then the chorus of, "F*ck you, Detroit!" and "Who's your Daddy?" began anew. A crippled man seated in front of me grabbed at his wrist crutches and struggled to his feet. He attempted an awkward high five with a buddy of his who was screaming something to the effect of, "We own you, Detroit!" Perhaps wrongly giving him the benefit of the doubt, I imagined that this crippled fellow, a casualty of genetics or circumstance, couldn't move quickly enough to ditch his sh*thead friends. I suppose he, too, could have been slandering the mothers of the Detroit Tigers, but I couldn't hear his more quiet ejaculations over the rest of the din. The crowd "celebration" was a curious mix of happy excitement, vitriolic fervor, and entitlement. I turned back to Koh and said with a smile, "Just like Japan, huh?" He shrugged and shook his head, half laughing. He appeared bemused. We sat in our seats among the standing, screaming Yankee fans and tried to take it all in.

By the time that exchange took place, the Yankee duo sitting behind us had elected to up the ante. Below are just a few of the many things screamed over my shoulder. Some of these were repeated many times.

"F*ck you, you f*ckin' f*ggots!"
"Hit the mother f*cker in the face with the pitch....Yeah, hurt 'em!"
"You fat piece of sh*t, there's a cheeseburger on second...can you make it, fatboy?"
"Detroit sucks! Boston sucks, too! F*ggots live in Boston!"
"Let's Go Jankees! Yeah....Jankees!"
"You suck, Detroit! Why bother trying?"

Occasionally, these fans even opted for a little abuse of their own boys.

"Hey, Giambi, you f*ckin' juice head! You're a potato head, you sh*t!"
"Hey, Matsui, hit the ball to China or wherever you come from!"
"Hey, Posada, if you had good knees you could run better! Shoulda been on second with that hit, you putz!"

In between such outbursts, the pair talked about beer, cell phones, and their pursuit of women. On beer, for example, one announced, "I don't drink Heineken...it's just too dark and thick, ya know?" Heineken is way too dark and thick? Um...okay.

Anyway, while these two "characters" were certainly the loudest around, they were not alone. Cries of "Detroit sucks!" could be heard anywhere you moved and every time a Yankee player failed to make a play or get a hit, no matter how difficult, the fans voiced their displeasure. Most distressing of all, though, was the encouragement given the loudest idiots in the stadium. Even those folks who seemed more inclined to clap and cheer than berate and boo egged on Tweedledum and Tweedledee. A girl noticed me staring over my shoulder at the pair of jackasses and she laughed. "They're awesome, aren't they?," she asked, with a smile. No, they're reprehensible and offensive, in fact. Shamefully, I said nothing.

I don't want to give the impression that I never cheer on my teams - I've jumped up and down at games and screamed obscenities at the television more than once - and I can't claim to be above booing a bad call. (A clear bad call is legitimately angering, but I won't boo close ones, even if disappointed in the result; after all, I'd hate to make a judgment mistake on the field, and I trust that the referees and umpires want to do as good a job as they can.) Yet I have absolutely no urge to call anyone on the other team a "piece of sh*t," even if I dislike them. What little I know of Alex Rodriguez, for example, makes me disinclined to like him, but I've never booed him (though I have wished for a strike-out or a botched bit of fielding). Shaquille O'Neal drives me mad with his dominating play and arrogant attitude, but I don't hope for a broken knee or a torn ACL.

The point is, I'm distressed by the prevalence of negativity in American sports. I'd like to think that it hasn't always been this way, but the truth is I'm not so sure. The nostalgia one feels for "the good ol' days" is largely a result of edited history; Ken Burns need only add a sepia tint and a banjo track to his "Baseball" footage and everything seems that much better. Even Barry Levinson's "The Natural," considered by many to be the pinnacle of "sports movies," hints at the venomous sting of the fan base. Is our culture really this willing to become the ignorant mob? If, as many folks say, contemporary athletes and celebrities are elevated to sainthood, their experience is equal parts transcendence and martyrdom. We love 'em, we hate 'em. We love to hate 'em, we hate to love 'em. It all seems a little schizophrenic to me. While I champion complexity, I guess I just prefer Southern hospitality and reserve at the ball park.

Making my way out of the stadium, a few drunken Yanks fans decided to make comments about my Cubs hat. Fortunately, they were not particularly nasty. "Look at this guy with the Cubs hat. What the f*ck is that about?," and "Hey, a Cubbies fan is here tonight, bro," weren't intended to insult. These drunks just wondered what I was "all about," and there's nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, I left the stadium thinking highly of baseball, but none too highly of the species that showed so much promise back when games were first being invented, when we were discovering ways of channeling our competitive aggression into an afternoon of fun.

Photo credit: unknown source; image of Freddy, an old-timer who attends every Yankees home game and bangs on his pot with a spoon. On Wednesday night, his spoon and pot were so abused by some fans that he reclaimed them, then opted to hold them out of reach for a while.

Baseketball

I love this time of year. The weather is terrific, and so are the sports.

Throughout high school I viewed organized athletics as a mandatory requirement (which they were). I loathed playing football (my bum knees and weak wrists are a testament to the breaks and fractures I experienced playing the wretched game), and although I did enjoy basketball and baseball more, the daily commitment and my athletic inadequacy made the games both boring and frustrating. I was an especially lousy batter; my coach screamed, "Jesus, Reiger! Hit the ball!" with disheartening regularity. Standing in the outfield, I longed to be elsewhere. The time would have been better spent, I thought, taking a walk in the woods, playing Civilization, or reading in the library. My basketball success stories were equally limited, though I did manage to avoid shooting on my own basket, something not everybody on the "3rds team" accomplished (that's right, "3rds," one level under Junior Varsity).

In college, I gave up sports altogether. I didn't watch them and I didn't play them. Visits to the gym, paintball battles, and midnight games of Capture-the-flag were more my speed. (So much so, in fact, that for a time I became the Capture-the-flag coordinator.) How then, did I come to love the NBA and MLB? Honestly, I'm not really sure. One day I just started following the teams and players. Before I knew it I was "in the know."

I believe part of the charm is rooted in the operatic silliness of professional sports: the ugly excess; the show-boating; the ignorance; the intrique. Sports provide a socially acceptable outlet for all of our dirty thoughts and animal rage. There is also something appealing about the routine of sports' schedules. The knowledge that, barring collapse, the baseball stadiums will be crowded and the lights will be turned on is comforting, like regular bowel movements.

I should point out that I never stopped supporting "my" teams, even though I stopped caring for a number of years. When very young I picked a favorite team (or teams) in each of the major American sports leagues. Most people pick teams based on geographic proximity, but I did not care for the Washington Redskins or Bullets. Instead, I chose teams based on team name. Thus, I ended up rooting for the Cincinnati Bengals, Chicago Cubs, Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Bucks, and the Minnesota Timberwolves (later, when they were founded in 1989). You might notice the animal theme. Yep...that's how I picked my boys. Either you're an animal or you're against us. (In more recent years, I have opted to support a few teams without animal names. For example, I root for the Mets, the perennial blue-collar underdogs who reside in my borough of New York City.)

Not only do I follow professional basketball and baseball, I also enjoy playing the games. Though I still suck, I enjoy playing basketball a great deal and, were there to be easy access to a baseball diamond and a crew of willing participants, I'm sure I would have a lot of fun taking cuts at a fastball.

Anyway, spring time represents the beginning of the NBA playoffs AND the beginning of a new baseball season. The overlap spoils me. I can spend a Saturday or Sunday in the studio, listening to a NY Mets game on the radio and head to a bar in the evening for a little NBA playoffs action on television. Ah, the simple pleasures...

Photo credit: ripped from BASEketball.com

Hunting JFK

I occasionally irritate friends by highlighting their environmental transgressions. It's only fair, then, that they should return the favor by challenging me to defend hunting.

I consider myself a conscientious hunter. I eat no meat, including fish, unless I catch it or kill it myself. I kill only a few animals a year and catch fewer than ten fish. Otherwise, I live on a vegetarian diet, aiming to minimize my contribution to the environmental degradation wrought by the meat industry. Moreover, I hunt only species biologists deem to have "surplus" populations, such as white-tailed deer (and, then, only does), mallard ducks (only drakes), cottontail rabbits, and some species of squirrel.

Unfortunately, there are also surplus "trash hunters," and I will defend neither their ignorance nor their abuse of the hunter's ethical contract (see my post on the New Jersey black bear season). For me, hunting is a reasonable and thoughtful activity, not at all at odds with being "green."

Laughing, drinking beer, telling dirty jokes and tall tales - all of these things are associated with the "hunting tradition," but I wince when I witness such self-consciously masculine behavior in the field. The dealing of death is no laughing matter. I will gladly share "good times" over the resulting meat meal, but the activity of hunting is, for me, a time of inner quiet and outer awareness. The camaraderie should take place before or after the hunt; save the stories for the grill or a winter evening football broadcast, but do not offend the sanctity (and gravity) of the hunt with such boorish behavior.

I'm therefore disturbed by the word "sport" when it is applied to hunting or fishing. "An active pastime or endeavor" is one of the given definitions of "sport" and, in this application, it accurately describes a range of activities, including hunting, fishing, rock climbing, or basketball. But "sport" is more closely associated with balls and strikes than with bag limits. In my own (undistinguished) athletic career, more than one coach told me to "have fun out there" and reminded me that "to excel at the game, you gotta enjoy it." But the killing of an animal is no "game" and, though the hunt can be considered enjoyable, "fun" isn't the word I would use. In fact, the experience is often deeply emotional and distressing.

But let's be honest, I could give up meat altogether and never again have to convince anti-hunters that white-tailed deer hunting benefits the environment or that I honor and admire the creatures that I kill. Why do I continue to do it, then? I must admit that a significant part of the appeal of hunting is existential. Those first difficult moments after you execute a large ungulate are transfiguring; your own mortality is highlighted and a sense of oneness with the natural world preoccupies you. Your intimate connection to the brutal deed, and to the slain animal, reduces the ego, opening you to a more universal experience of the universe. To use Dr. Morris Berman's analogy, the experience removes the respectful hunter from the vertical worldview and allows him to reside as part of the horizontal stretch, if only for a few hours. My love and respect for the natural world is rooted in the time I have spent outdoors, but particularly in the time that I've spent hunting. Birdwatching, a pastime I enjoy a great deal, might afford me an encounter with wonder, but hunting always seizes and wraps me in the beautiful, ambivalent mess that is the Everything. It is hunting, above all, that humbles my spirit, and makes me profoundly grateful for life, in every sense.

Three news items have me thinking about hunting and death today. SWORDS, robotic killing machines, have made headlines recently. The United States military will begin using these death toys in Iraq later this year. Last week, reading an issue of Outdoor Life Magazine, I came across this article on remote-control hunting. This morning, on my subway ride to work, I read that the makers of the videogame, "JFK Reloaded", are offering a $100,000 prize to the gamer that can most convincingly re-create the 1963 Dallas assassination of President John Kennedy.

There is a common thread. "JFK Reloaded" allows us to kill a digital Kennedy as often as we like, trying to make that "perfect shot." To enjoy such a game, where the target is not a faceless "enemy" but instead a well-known person who was assassinated relatively recently, the gamer must abstract (or even debase) his or her sense of morality. Our culture, as any religious zealot will tell you, is experiencing a moral schism. Murder, even for our soldiers in Iraq, is becoming an abstraction. From fist to blade, blade to spear, spear to arrow, arrow to bullet, bullet to...what? How can you describe a system whereby the man-boy assassinating a digital JFK on the computer screen might as well be gunning down Iraqis with a SWORD or slaughtering a big buck on a Texas game farm? For that matter, is not the murder of the pixel proxy similar to the pricking of a Voodoo doll? A clear association is made by the gamer; the digitized image on the screen - your quarry - represents a flesh-and-blood human. But when you pull the plastic trigger and assassinate JFK, that's that. You can turn off the gaming console and hit the sack. No police will show up at your door. No posttraumatic stress disorder will accompany your return to civilian life. No bang. Just a click.

The disconnect between animal and meat on the plate is but part of the problem; with every passing month, the disconnect between hand and killing becomes more ingrained in our culture and, as I see it, such a trend does not bode well for empathy. With less empathy and compassion in the world, abstraction of the "other," already a natural inclination, becomes that much more easy. Terribly, this leads to more violence.

Photo credit: Titled Forum Project