When U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, took the podium at the General Session of the 98th Annual Meeting of the Iowa Farm Bureau, he did so representing a blue administration and looked out at a sea of people who mostly called the red areas of the state their home. I, myself, had never voted for him.

He would speak conversationally, in a soft tone, like a farmer in his pickup, opening the door to offer you a ride back. Back from where? Back from the brink, perhaps. It’s a service thehard working folks of the heartland have provided more than once. Vilsack should know the way, he’d seen the brink before.

“A tragedy, actually almost 30 years to the day in my small hometown of Mt. Pleasant, created an opportunity for me to get into public service,” Vilsack said. “You all have given me just an incredible opportunity. You’ve allowed me to realize every dream I ever had as a kid. You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to give a guy from Pennsylvania the opportunity to be a mayor…to be a state senator. You certainly didn’t have to give me the opportunity to be the governor of this great state for eight years, and because of that I had the opportunity to serve you as the secretary of agriculture for eight years.”

The tragedy he referenced was on December 10th, 1986. Ralph Davis was to address a Mt. Pleasant City Council meeting, but instead produced a handgun with which he wounded two city council members and killed the mayor, Edd King. King’s father would later wind up at Vilsack’s law office and persuade him to run for mayor.

A Des Moines Register article records that Davis, in his court testimony said he did not regret the shooting, and if he could do it over again he’d get a better gun. Last year, Vilsack was interviewed about the incident as Mt. Pleasant began restoration work on the memorial fountain erected in King’s honor. Of Davis, who spent time as a Japanese prisoner of war in WWII, Vilsack said, “I believe in my heart that that experience really changed him mentally. Had he not had that POW experience, one wonders whether he would have not done what he did.”

In our current efforts to build a more charitable world by being uncharitable to those we deem uncharitable, it was the charity of Secretary Vilsack that stood out.

“The 15% of the population that lives in rural America supplies 35-40% of our military. Over my lifetime, it has increased its production by 170% on 26% less land and with 22 million fewer farmers. That production has lead to low cost food that has stimulated our economy. Everyone that does something other than farming, gets to do it because of agriculture. Agriculture has made us a land of unlimited opportunity. A country so great that a child that began life in an orphanage winds up spending his time talking to the President in the White House.”

He reminded the crowd once more of the importance of protecting our water, of free trade, and of an immigration system that works. Having said his peace, he drew his remarks to a close.

“People ask me why I have stayed. I stayed because I love the people I work for. I stayed because I love the people I work with. I’ve got to meet a lot of hard working farmers and ranchers in this country, and as long as I live, I’ll always be grateful.”

The crowd rose and applauded. I jotted down his final line. When I had finished, I got in with him.

Whether or not love trumps hate, I do not know. I do know either is equally rare. In their place stand more often than not stand fear and ignorance. If not for you, then for me.

Fear and ignorance are trumped by charity. Charity is neither red or blue. It drives a humble truck, and perhaps it will get us all away from the brink.

I’ve been unable to write of any consequence for the last couple of months.  Last night I gave serious thought about how I might shut down this little blog and began in earnest in writing the piece that would do that.  This morning I scrapped it.

In early fall I was dating a good gal.  The two of us took a drive one day.  From her side, she asked me, “You drive this old car, slip into a World Series jacket, and wherever you go someone winds up striking up a conversation about one or the other.  What do you suppose that says about you?”

“Please talk to me, I guess.”

And they have:  women and men, straight and gay, white and other, rural and urban, rich and poor, successful and working on it, conservative and liberal, faithful and unaffiliated.  I’ve enjoyed it all, and this Thanksgiving will find me thankful for that.   It also reminds me what a shame it is they don’t do a better job of talking to each other, and how common it is becoming to simply have no connection at all.

The blog’s original premise was that there is nothing so ancient to connect us to the human experience than the sharing of a story.  Just as ancient is the refusal to connect.  From Bobby Kaufmann to Hamilton, I guess.

There might be a good chance that around the Thanksgiving Day table, some of those groups you aren’t part of will be seated there.  You can refuse to deal with them if you want.  You can also opt to be present and accounted for.  If so, save more of the speech than you would have otherwise.  Replace it with a story and try to let them write a little of it.

It gets you out of your group, them out of theirs, and you become what you always were:  two people in the end.

“Maybe tomorrow, Honey, someplace down the line,
I’ll wake up older, so much older, momma,
I’ll wake up older, and I’ll just stop all my trying.”

When I turned thirty, they had a party at the world-famous Cumming Tap.  I drank with friends, and I remember thinking how I was almost on the cusp of something.  How I was almost there.

I don’t remember where the ‘there’ was exactly.  It doesn’t matter now anyhow.  ‘There’ is always where we think it ought to be.  It isn’t, though.  It turns out to be nothing more than the places we find along the way.

Recently I turned 40 on an empty stomach and in the same location.  I hung out at the back of the bar this time.  Eventually I had enough beer to step ahead, just like we’d done 10 years ago.  Shots came around from the bar, and the evening gets dark, save a vague recollection of the chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes that made a vain attempt to soak up the alcohol which had already gotten a big head start.

The only thing I was on the cusp of was a hangover.

Though my short night would seem to point otherwise, I’ve reached 40 with a better idea where that elusive there is.  It’s no longer an income, or a status, or a job.  It’s simply an idea of the man I would like to be.

I’ve got a better idea of the principles I want to get there with, and the path in the dark wood I much take to reach it.  I’ve begun to find the maturity to know I’ll never see the finish line, and I hope I’ve found the wisdom that part of our purpose in life is to make sure we don’t.

We are never as far away as when we think we’ve arrived.  It’s the constant state of becoming that makes a man.  I’ll grow up one of these days.

40, then, is the age when you replace the destination with the journey.  May you turn it having had lunch or dinner.  Afterwards, may you find your way back to the path.

November 4th is the U.S. release of Hacksaw Ridge, a film portraying part of the life of Desmond Doss, a U.S. Army Medic who would become the first conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honor.  Doss was a Seventh-day Adventist.  His church uses the term “conscientious participant.”

Just over a month later, on December 11th, Bob Dylan will accept the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.  He’s the first songwriter to have ever received it.  Considerable debate continues on if he deserves it.  I suppose it depends on one’s view of Dylan.

How to view Dylan is the subject of another a movie, a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese called No Direction Home.  It covers the period in the mid 1960s when Dylan left the folk scene which propelled him to prominence.  In one scene fellow songwriter, Joan Baez, delivers the following quote about Dylan and their one time relationship:

“I was feeling this political pull very strongly, and I was thinking what the two of us could do together as far as any kind of movement….Dylan wanted to do his music, and I wanted to do all this other stuff….He had given us by that point the greatest songs in our anti-war/civil rights arsenals.

 Thirty some years whenever I go to a march, sit-in, or lie-in, or jail-in, people always say ‘Is Bob coming?’ I say he never comes you moron. When are you going to get it? Never did, probably never will…I think he didn’t want to have to be the guy people were going to have to go to. The times then were cut and dried you were either for the war or against it…You were forced to take a side.”

The quote comes at a time when the camera has already caught several, including Baez, patting themselves on the back for bringing Dylan out of obscurity.  It’s also catching a sense of the bitterness his leaving left them with.  While Baez seems to suggest Dylan took the self-serving, easy way out, Scorsese’s camera as well as his title seem to point in a different direction.

It is as though Dylan chose to protest even the protestors, and traded in their self-congratulatory acknowledgement to continue to grow.  We see the hostility, isolation, and mental strain that result.  Perhaps Dylan’s songs have no “them” to direct our ire against.  Perhaps there is only an us, and that’s the side Dylan took.

The movie has a scene where Dylan is about to be honored by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in late 1963.  Dylan says about the dinner, “They were trying to build me up as a topical song writer. I was never a topical song writer to begin with. For whatever reason they were doing it was reasons that didn’t really apply to me.”

Scorsese delivers this quote from Dylan that evening, the only quote in Scorsese’s own voice:

“There is no black, white, left and right to me anymore. There is only up and down. And down is very close to the ground, and I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.”

Dylan could have dropped off the face of the earth to do that, but he didn’t.

In between Hacksaw Ridge and the Nobel Ceremony, lies the event currently dominating the news cycle.  One prominent American Evangelist has encouraged his followers to “hold their noses and vote.”  The trouble is that he isn’t really asking them to hold their nose; he is asking them to hold their conscience.

In conscience I was going to object to that particular race altogether.  Upon reflection I suppose I should try to find a way to participate.  Dylan’s lead would suggest we can do so by engaging the group we’re associated with instead of posturing towards the other one for a change.  Doss’ seems to suggest the same thing.  Perhaps in doing so, we grow.

Growth knows no party, and either seems to offer plenty of opportunity for it.

Does Bob Dylan deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature?  Damn straight.  It isn’t his fault if we can’t read.

1965, working for himself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8yU8wk67gY

On her wall was a butterfly collection, boxed in a simple frame with a black backing.  Pinned there, each was varied, beautiful in their own right.  They were also all dead.  That was the thing that separated them from us.

“So how does it feel to be vigorously dating?” she asked.

I smiled.  “That’s quite a combination of words.”

“It’s true isn’t it?  You said you’ve been out on more dates the last several months than you have in the rest of your life combined.”

I shrugged.  “Vigorous just makes it sound so action-packed.”  She smiled too.

“What have you learned out there?”

I thought for a moment.

“I hear people tell me repeatedly that they are looking for something different.  They also seem to be generally looking for something easy and comfortable.  I wonder if anyone appreciates the role the latter plays in not getting the former done.”

“That’s an excellent observation.”

“You get the credit.”

“How’s that?”

“Last time we spoke you asked about the gals I meet and find great respect for but don’t pursue.  I told you that for some it had to do with a lack of spark.  You asked how that spark thing had been working out for me.  I laughed.”

“I remember that.”

“Anyway, I think you were right.  Things feel comfortable and easy when they are familiar, and I think that familiarity has a lot to do with that “spark” everyone is talking about.  Some act surprised about how things turn out in their relationships, how the same situations repeat themselves, but should we be surprised that our emotions lead us to familiar turf?

We argue that the feeling in the beginning is different this time, yet our repetitiveness in which we fall for it makes it the same.”

“I think you are learning a lot.”

“If I’m learning, it will be reflected in my choices, right?  And to find out, we need to get out there.  I might have learned something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Hope is a comfortable feeling.  It lets us believe if we keep choosing the same thing, somehow it is going to be different.”

“Maybe that’s a good topic for future thinking.”

“I’ll never have kids, you know.  If I did, though, I’d want them to learn how to get used to being uncomfortable.”

“Why?”

“It’s the only way out of the corner we all paint ourselves into.  It’s how we are rewarded for discovering something more new about ourselves, what we believe, and about others.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“I think that is something worth hoping for.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I reached out to someone I dated in the past.  I told her I’d be curious what would happen if we continue to hang out.  I think she knew then all the things I’m talking to you about now.”

“And you didn’t realize it then?”

“No.  How would I?  It’s impossible to tell anyone something their ears aren’t ready for.”

“Did you hear back?”

“Yes.  She’s happily seeing someone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.  She’s a great gal.  She said something curious, though.”

“What was that?”

“She told me I should write a blog about men dating.”

“Sounds like a fantastic idea.”

“Action-packed, I’m sure.”

I was in Madison County.  Katie Olthoff was speaking.  While she works for the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, she and her husband raise turkeys.

( Katie’s own blog:  http://www.onthebanksofsquawcreek.com/ )

“We got the opportunity to put up a couple of turkey barns.  This was huge for us.  My husband would be able to leave his job with benefits and farm full time.  We would be able to create something the boys would have the chance to continue.  It was exciting.  I was proud of what we were doing.

I would share the story with the people I knew.   Some asked me how many we would raise.  I told them 120,000 birds a year.  That’s when I heard it.  ‘Oh, it’s a factory farm then.’

I didn’t understand what they were talking about.  It’s not a factory.  It’s our family.

Factory farms are like the monster under the bed my boys are afraid of.  You grab the cover, pull it back, and show them he’s not there.  He doesn’t exist.  We show people our farm, and then they understand that it’s not a factory. But they still believe factory farms are out there somewhere, just like my sons believe the boogey man is going to get them as soon as I leave the room.”

The article begins immersed in the nostalgia of Norman Rockwell’s America.  Nostalgia is simply the boogey man’s more attractive sister.  We do the present no favors in remembering the past better than it was.

In Norman Rockwell’s actual America, many of today’s conservation practices were non-existent.  Fields were plowed and worked repeatedly and laid bare over the winter.  Terraces were rare, and so were farm ponds.  A wetland was the piece of ground your Grandfather just hadn’t drained yet.  Buffers and no-till were unknown.

The technology revolution some abhor brought all of that to agriculture.  Farm families have been figuring out how to adopt them ever since.  Living and working in the Badger Creek Watershed, a farmer-initiated watershed going back to the 1950s, I get a chance to see that evolution everyday.  Everyday I’m reminded of the work left to be done.

Stowe maintains modern agriculture is the problem.  I’ll maintain modern agriculture, much more so than that of Rockwell’s, is part of the solution.  Modern agriculture has changed not just how we farm.  It invests continually in making scientific assessments about the impact we are having, in finding flexible, non-bureaucratic solutions, and the funding needed to bring them to fruition.

It seems that the smart, affable man at the Des Moines Water Works, who admittedly looks back in nostalgia to Norman Rockwell, also looks back with nostalgia to the environmental policy of the 1970’s.  He can look as he chooses.  It is a policy, however, both the regional administrator of the EPA and the current US Secretary of Agriculture seem eager to move beyond.  Farm families are too.

At the end, Stowe speaks of social justice.  It is an interesting term to throw out by a man repeatedly using the term “industrial agriculture,” a term which serves to dehumanize those engaged in agriculture today.  His own Des Moines Water Works Lawsuit seeks damages from 10 drainage districts which make up a very small part of the Raccoon River Watershed.  These districts have no way to raise funds, save from the few farm families that make them up.  Where is the social justice in that?

Among their few numbers, we will not find the boogey man that is industrial agriculture.  I know he’s not under my bed.  If you pull the covers back, you’ll find he isn’t under yours either.  Mr. Stowe seems convinced he’s at least under his.

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.

The Virgin of Cobre is a statue of the Virgin Mary, found floating in the sea by two Indians and a slave in 1608 off the coast of El Cobre, Cuba.  She has nothing to do with baseball, save for the fact that the two seemingly makeup the background in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.  We often assume the background to be of less relevance.  Perhaps we shouldn’t with Ernest.

In his book, some critics point to an absence of women, believing it underscores the lack of regard the author had for them.  There are actually several.  There is the old man’s deceased wife, whose former possessions are described as relics and whose image is shrouded in the cleanest thing the old man owns.  One of those possessions is an image of one of the other women in the book, the Virgin of Cobre.

The statue was found perfectly dry, floating on a board on which was inscribed, “I am the Virgin of Charity.”  Charity meant something different then.  It was the virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake.  The King James Bible translated the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13:13 as, “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”  King James opted not to use “love,” knowing perhaps the slew of things we all mean by that.

Hemingway’s old man, Santiago, has faith.  He has hope.  Perhaps his most admirable quality, however, is the charity he endures with.

In 1630, the statue would replace the patron saint of Spain, St. James, or as he is known in Spanish, Santiago, atop the altar in the church at El Cobre.  In 1928, she would get an entirely new house altogether.  Beneath the display of the Virgin of Charity in today’s El Cobre Basillica, is a room housing the gifts left for the Virgin’s intercession to the Almighty.  Some of them were given as part of request.  Some were a token of thanks.  Among them is a 1954 medal for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought.  But you have a right to.  Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother.  Come on and kill me.  I do not care who kills who.

In 1951 Ernest Hemingway might have been considered to be something of a has-been when he sat down to write The Old Man and the Sea.  He wrote it in eight weeks, about a washed-up fisherman who idolize a great baseball player who was at the end of his career.  It was also about faith.  When published in 1952 it would take his fame beyond anything he had known.  It would be his last major work published in his lifetime.

The exploits of Joe DiMaggio and his New York Yankees make up the background of Hemingway’s book like white noise, though there is much that’s missed in the intricate details Hemingway wove in.  Because of the box scores, it seems you can pinpoint the time of the book to a particular season, and with that you can estimate the age of the character the old man refers to as a “boy.”

Books are like people.  You can read all kinds, but it will take a lifetime to know one.

The Brewers bus had come and gone, and we walked over to the opposite side of Wrigley so the girls could try for an autograph from a Cub or two.  I was with a high school friend.  The girls were his, and despite how much they hoped, no players would sign.

Their father and I nearly rubbed shoulders with Theo Epstein.  The girls wouldn’t have known who he was.  We did, but he looked busy.

It was getting late in the afternoon.  In a half hour the gates would open.  The diehards were already in line for the bleachers.

“I bet they have tickets available,” I said.

“God, I’d love to go again,” said he.

“They do.  I just looked it up.  My treat.”

“I afraid the youngest might revolt.  She has her heart set on deep dish Chicago pizza.  Why don’t I take her, and you take my oldest in.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you kidding me?  You’ve seen how she’s been the last hour.  Do it.”

At the ticket window I bought two tickets just off the end of the Cubs dugout, ten rows back.

“You still got that ball Braun signed?”  I asked.

“Right here in my pocket,” she said.

“Let’s see if we can get a few more on it.”

“I’m going to get one from Ben Zobrist.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he’ll come out by the dugout again, right after the game, just like he did last night.  This time I’ll be there when he is.  I just know it.”

When the gates opened we found our seats, and she headed down by the infield to get autographs from the pitchers.  Aroldis Chapman dwarfed her and the ball his hand engulfed.  I worked on a bag of peanuts, sipped a beer, and talked to the man occupying the only seat to our right.

“Your daughter?” he asked.

“No.  My friend’s.  Her younger sister opted for pizza.  She opted for autographs.”

He smiled.  “I see she’s getting a few.”

“She’s not bashful about it is she?”  I observed.

An hour before game time they scattered the kids from the wall.

“What do you want to eat, Boss?”

“I can’t eat another hot dog.  I had one last night and one for lunch today,” she said.

“One more wouldn’t hurt anything,” I smiled.  “I saw burgers, though, and chicken tenders.”

“Chicken tenders sound good.  I’ll get some.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I know where they are.”

“Need money?”

“I got some.”

I let her go, as though she were on her own, and then lazily followed behind to get an Italian Beef.  My Cardinals have a great item with the Killer Pastrami Dogs you can get at Kohn’s Kosher Corner right behind home plate.  But they are only second to the Italian Beef found at Wrigley.   Together the chicken and the beef would be joined by super rope licorice, ice cream in a Cubs helmet, a Bud Light (also mine), two souvenir cups of pop, and a bottle of water.  In between we talked baseball, the day behind, and her belief in Zobrist ahead.

When the game ended, she made a bee line for the other end of the dugout with me in tow.

“I’ll wait for you here,” I said.  The day before was a double header.  It was getting late.  I had my doubts on Zobrist, but she was happy and I didn’t figure she needed to know how the world worked yet.

Losing her in the crowd, I spotted her blue and white Cubs hat all the way down in the front row.  She looked back at me and smiled for some reason.  And then in front of her, just like that, came the second baseman out of the dugout.

He was the only Cub that showed, signing balls and caps and taking selfies with the kids.  She was there, and she hit for the cycle.  I couldn’t have been more happy if she were my own.

I thought of the cynic I had been, while she beamed with a youthful joy.  I felt like an old man myself.  A drunk one row down stood on his seat, chanting, “Thank you, Ben Zobrist.  Thank you, Ben Zobrist,” over and over again.  The intoxication that comes, from finding those who get it.

Sometimes we nearly lose all faith.  If we are lucky, we remember or are reminded:  To the faithful, reward is certain.

Fideli Certa Merces:  To the faithful, reward is certain.

Ten days before Wrigley, I had been part of a group of guys who had splurged on Crown Club tickets in Kansas City.  The ticket gives you access to the rows directly behind home plate.  It also gives you access to an all you can eat and drink buffet in Kauffman’s basement.  We tried to make sure they lost money.

As we got ready to head outside, one of our group didn’t get up. So him and I remained, across from each other.

“You know I always thought if I had a son, I’d like to treat him to something like this.  I wouldn’t want to spoil him, but when I was a kid we always sat up in the cheap seats.  My folk’s busted their ass.  I’m just in a position where I could do better.  It’d be fun, you know, to share a mutual appreciation with your kid.”

Like a lot of men, we were talking baseball…baseball and other things.  Unlike most, we understood each other.

When I grabbed my seat, I could look into the dugout of the visiting White Sox.  They had all headed in, but bullpen catcher Mark Salas remained.  He stood at the top of the steps that headed down into the stadium and looked above at the kids vying for a ball from batting practice.  A muscle-bound and over-tanned dad in a tank top was pointing to his daughter, a shy girl of about 10.

“I thought I already gave you one, Miss,” said Salas.  The girl put her head down, but her father kept pointing.  Finally Salas pointed too, so there was no mistake who the ball was intended for, tossed the last one up to her, and disappeared into Kauffman.

The rest of the kids left, but the girl, a boy I assume was her older brother, and her dad gathered together in a row of seats just over the rail behind us.  The boy had on a backpack, and slipping it gave some indication of just how heavy it was.  His father unzipped it and pulled out an oversized Ziploc bag 2/3rds full of baseballs.

The girl placed hers into the bag and looked down as her father fished another out of the pocket of his running pants.  He returned the bag to the backpack, put the backpack on his son’s shoulders, and up the stairs they went:  the shy girl, the encumbered boy, and their orange meathead of an old man.

If they don’t appreciate it, I suppose you can always force them to do it anyway.  We can tell ourselves its for them, but we know its for us.  Salas had left, but he was already familiar with the script.

Anderson comes up the top of the 5th

In the top of the 5th, the Royals were enjoying a 3 to 1 lead with two quick outs.  A recently called up kid, named Tim Anderson was coming up to bat.  A man in his 60s ahead of us, pencil necked and sitting with his wife, decided it was a perfect time to talk shit.  Being on the other side of a backstop is pretty empowering I guess.

“You haven’t hit anything today, Anderson.  0 for 2.  How you liking Kauffman?”

Anderson watched a 94 mph fastball go by for a strike.  Then he took an 81 mph curveball and drove it, beginning a two out rally the Royals would not recover from.  Whether a kid is appreciated or not, they grow up all the same.  Hopefully some of them get around on it.