This document explores themes of cultural shifts from traditional community life to a more nomadic existence, the changing roles and identities of individuals, and the decline of hometown heroes. It references the poem "Casey at Bat" and uses baseball as a metaphor for the pressures of living up to expectations. Fragmented quotes and images portray a transition away from stable communities and towards more mobile, uncertain lives.

2. “A culture of speed rubs
up against a culture of
slowness and conquers
what it can.”
Abandoned drive-ins
are just one sign of the
cultural shift towards
nomadicity.

3. New roles
have been
assigned…
Leaving
old haunts
long behind

4. And quickly we learn
“All the World’s A
Stage….”
“….And All the Men
and Women Merely
Players”

5. In the
new
nomadic
culture…
“People
must mask
themselves
in their
roles”

6. But….
“The mask
never melts
utterly into
the face”

7. Trapped in the Time Capsule
“Some
part of us
is always
backstage”

9. Zen and the Art of “Nomadic
Lifestyle” Maintenance
Or….
another
blurry face
in the
community
oil
painting?

10. Field of Dreamers
It seems
the
audience
has exited
and decided
to each take
their own
stage.

11. To Be or Not to Be, What’s My Role?
“We
really
have to
protect
people
from
wrong
choices.”

12. Blazing Trails or Following Footsteps?
Gutter Ball
How long will I be waiting
in the on deck Circle?

13. Casey Get Your Bat
Could “Casey at the Bat” swing
some sense into my confusion

14. “Casey at the Bat”
By: Ernest Thayer
A straggling few got
All crowds need a hero,
up to go in deep
just as the hero needs a crowd……
despair.
The rest
Clung to that hope
which springs eternal
in the human breast;
They thought, if only
Casey could get but a
whack at that -
We'd put up even
money, now, with
Casey at the bat.

15. 1st ……
2nd......
3rd…….
And all the players need a Role
to make their mothers proud….
But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

16. A Familiar Summer Home
Oh,
somewhere in
this favored
land the sun is
shining bright;
The band is
playing
somewhere,
and
For even the hometown hero, somewhere
who crushed our hope hearts are light,
in the breathless clutch;
And
only failed in hitting the goal
somewhere
while playing his role just as much
men are
laughing, and
somewhere
children shout;
But there is no

17. The crisp spring air
pours through me…
I dig my steel toes into the batters box and try
to see beyond the centerfield fence line…
I daydream about crushing curveballs
into the stratosphere like Roger Maris
I daydream that
there’s two outs in the
bottom of the ninth and
Nolan Ryan’s on the
mound…
And I realize that most of my
heroes are people I’ve never even
met….
They’ve been broadcast
into my world…

18. “There's
nothing we
can do.
It's always
been this
way. Before
me, before
you, before
the ones who
came before
you.
Back and
back and
back.”

19. The Setting Sun Closes the Curtain on the Good Ole’ Days,
Ushering in the Era of the New Nomad

20. Dark Days for the Hometown Hero
Could Casey’s
strikeout represent
the end of an era?
Was this the end of
the small town
community as we
know it?
What happened to the
residents of Mudville after
the hometown hero’s
infamous failure?

23. Maybe it’s not that the
Casey-like characters ever
left but that the crowd
stopped watching.
Maybe Casey’s still at the bat.

24. If we are going to seek roles we could
use some role models……
…..If we are going to
continue to use more
“extensions of self” we
could use a little
direction.

25. Or are We Too Far Gone
to Get back Home?
“Things
do not
change;
we
change”

26. With the signs of spring all around us, I wonder
what changes- if any- the new season will bring to the
cultural landscape

27. All Photos were Taken By Josh Anderson Between 4/01 and
4/07 of 2009.
Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited. First Holt paperbacks ed. New
York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
1993
Shakespeare, William. As You Like it. Arden ed. of works by
William Shakespeare. London; New York: Routledge, 1989.
Thayer, Ernest. “Casey at the Bat.” Baseball Almanac. 3 April
2009.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_case.shtml
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden.150th anniversary illustrated
ed. of the American Classics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

28. Todd Gitlin is quoted on slides 2, 5, 6, and 7
Lois Lowry is quoted on slides 11 and 18
William Shakespeare is quoted on slide 4
Ernest Thayer is quoted on slides 14, 15, and 16
Henry David Thoreau is quoted on slide 25