New Year Thoughts: Ashes in a Cedar Box

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’m thinking about life. I’m thinking about joy and suffering. I’m thinking about ways to explain my thoughts. Let’s work our way back to that.

I made a box from cedar for my mother-in-law’s ashes.

This will require some back story, so warm-up your coffee.

Here goes.

Next year is 2025. It has been a quarter of a bleeping century since the year 2000. It has been five years since 2020.

In late December of 2019, we were innocent of COVID-19. We had the dumpster-fire year of 2020 ahead of us. We didn’t know.

We just didn’t know.

Lock-down in March. Working from home. Working in our yards. Door-Dashing from restaurants.

We were always hoping it would just burn itself out, that it would just be over. Finally, we only have embers burning in odd corners, but that’s long after 2020.

Then we came to Christmas of that year. We took our lives in our hands and got together. It was a nice day. 

The next day--in separate events--a friend of mine passed-away from COVID, but before that my mother-in-law fell ill.

Seriously ill.

Because of the lockdown we couldn’t see her, couldn’t be with her.

That was the beginning of a 4-month waking-nightmare that ended with my mother-in-law’s death on May 1, 2021.  

We brought her home in January, so at least we had time with her, but that period marked everyone in the family, from oldest to youngest in a way that is still very present.

Each of us began to change in response to that event, to the interconnected events that occurred during the various dumpster fires associated with COVID. (“Dumpster fire” became part of my working idiom, for one thing.)

I took up wood-working in late 2021 and since then I’ve acquired some nice tools; have built up a nice shop; and have learned how to do hand-tool woodworking to a certain degree.

At some point I acquired a bit of rough-cut, locally-grown cedar.  Then this summer, the summer of 2024, I decided that I would make a box to put my mother-in-law’s ashes in. 

I measured the box the ashes are currently in. I cut and glued up some panels from the rough-cut cedar.

Then I just let them sit.  I had in my head what I wanted to do, but I just could not proceed. The wood panels just laid around my shop taking up space because I could not proceed.

Then Jean and I went to Scotland on a walking tour. This is something we just wouldn’t have done before. There was always time to do it later.

Then I went to Paraguay.

When I got back, Jean and I started talking about vacation for next year, and she said it was time to take Janet’s ashes to the family plot in Indiana.

I began squaring-up the wood for the cedar box right away, and within a week the box was done.

It is beautiful beyond my vision for it. 

It’s not perfect. If it were perfect, then it couldn’t’ve been made by me.

But it is beautiful.

Jean looked at it and said that we’re not burying it in her family’s plot in Indiana. We will keep it here and put some of her mom’s memorabilia in it. We will bury her ashes in something else.

Suffering is a part of life. Maybe we’re supposed to get something out of it; maybe not. It doesn’t matter because the suffering is just there.

You do what you can in response; it’s never enough; but maybe it’s better than not doing anything at all.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Chisels, a cabinet, and the Bobist Way

By Bobby Neal Winters

Buying chisels, especially good chisels, is an addiction. They are useful, they are versatile, and they can be beautiful. I love my chisels, and I believe they love me too, even though they extract blood from me from time to time. I think that might be the way they show love.

I’ve gone from having one or two, to having several, and then to having many. Each has its use; each has its purpose; each is beautiful in its own special way.

Chisels need to be taken care of.  This means you need to keep them sharp; you need to keep them clean; you need to keep an imperceptibly thin coating of oil on them.  You take them out; you use them; you care for them; then you put them away. It is an eternal circle.

You need a place to put them.  This is key.

As my chisel addiction has come upon me gradually, I’ve not been intentional in having storage. First I had them in a drawer, then I bought a canvas roll with pockets, and then another canvas roll.

And then another.

I’m up to three canvas rolls for my chisels, and one or two more for my wood carving knives.  Wood carving knives is also an addiction.

A canvas roll as a means of storage is not completely satisfactory.

The rolls are nice, don’t get me wrong. They are a great place to put your chisels if you need to carry them from one place to the next. The problem comes with normal usage: You have to unroll them every time you use them and then put them back. Then unroll them again, the next time. 

And so on.

With all the rolling and unrolling it becomes easier just to leave them laying out, where they can get lost; where they can get something else put on them; where they can get knocked to the floor and chipped; where some other man might just come along and take them. (I shudder just thinking about it.)

I’m building a cabinet for my chisels.

This has happened by accident.  I bought a book on making tool cabinets with the hope there would be a nice, easy to follow plan in.  

This was not the case.

There were lots of pictures of lots of pretty, homemade tool chests, but not a plan for a single one. Here’s a picture of an acorn; now go and build a house.

So I didn’t have a plan, but I had an idea. Build some trays--some drawers with separators in it--for my chisels. I thought I might need to build two. Do the same for my knives. Then after the drawers were built, then build the cabinet.

There might be some great woodworking guru, some skillful master of tools who says this is the way to do it.

Don’t.

This next bit I am going to write carefully because they might be the most important words I’ve written.  If they ever start a religious order based on one of my writings, it will be about this one, so pay attention.

You are going to mess up. You ought to do everything as carefully as possible. Measure twice, cut once. That’s great. But as careful as you are going to be, you will still mess up from time to time.  Order your work so that when you do mess up you will be able to fix it.

For example, if you are cutting a board, arrange your actions so that if you err you will cut it a little too long instead of a little too short. It’s easier to take off a little more wood than to put it back on.

And again, if you are cutting a mortise and tenon, cut the mortise first and then cut the tenon. It is easier to cut a tenon to fit the mortise than the other way around. You can cut the tenon a little too fat and then slowly shave it to fit the mortise.

And finally, which I have just learned the hard way, when you are making a cabinet to hold drawers, make your cabinet first because it’s easier to make drawers to fit a cabinet than to change the whole cabinet to fit the drawers.  

That’s it. That’s what the Bobists will vow.

As I sit here, the glue is drying. It is probably as square as anything I’ve ever made, but it would be nicer and I would be less stressed out if I had made the cabinet first.

After the glue is dry, I will go out and put it conveniently located in my workspace. I’ll wax the drawers and the drawer runners. And I will rest better knowing my lovely chisels have a place to rest.

But it could’ve been better.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 A Wicked Image

By Bobby Neal Winters

Jean and I went to see “Wicked” on Black Friday. 

For those of you who don’t know, “Wicked” is a reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. I suppose many of you are like me in that “The Wizard of Oz” was an annual treat for my family while growing up.  They used to show it on the holidays. I most strongly associate it with Easter.

The new offering, “Wicked” is funny; it’s got some great songs; and it will make you think if you are so inclined.

Oddly enough, the main theme in “Wicked” is the same as that of the original “Wizard of Oz”: Image.

There are spoilers ahead so I suggest seeing both “Wicked” and “The Wizard of Oz” before proceeding further.

As you recall, the big reveal in “The Wizard of Oz” was that the wizard wasn’t really a wizard at all.  He was a fast-talking carnaval showman. He’d created the illusion of magic to mislead the simple folk into thinking he was a wizard.

When Dorothy, the Tinman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow went to him, he first sent them on a quest; when they unexpectedly succeeded, i.e. lived, the Wizard attempted to put them off.  After he was revealed to be a charlatan, the Wizard then gave the Tinman, the Lion, and the Scarecrow visible symbols of what they wanted rather than the things themselves. That is to say, he gave them the sort of “magic” that he did know how to use.

“Wicked” starts in time with the birth of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. She is born green and because of this is despised by her supposed father. I say supposed because it’s hinted that the Wizard is her father.  Because of her green color, she is an outcast.

At an early age, she discovers that she has true magical powers, something which is increasingly rare, even in the merry old land of Oz. Those of you who are interested in such things, take note that this is the textbook start for the classic “hero’s journey.”

Not an accident.

But I digress.

“Wicked” is a study of the importance of “image.” At University, the magically talented but green Elphaba meets the untalented but beautiful and ambitious Galenda (eventually to rename herself Glenda). Glenda is the archetypal popular girl.  She is beautiful, shallow, and un-self aware, serving as a perfect complement to Elphaba.

Glenda is one of those people who we are naturally drawn to love.  Their beauty is such that you must love them--if you can get over wanting to kill them.  Nature or God must have put them among us for a purpose. Whether they are designed by divine plan or by evolution, they are ultimately used by those who really run things to sway the opinion of us normal, homely folk.

One might be tempted to hate them because, but they are only cogs in the machine, just like the rest of us.

Elphaba, it seems, is the first person in Oz after a long, long time, who has any real magical ability at all. She, however, is unaware of this.  She believes that the Great and Powerful Wizard and her mentor at the university have magical power. 

This is not the case, but they carefully maintain the image of having magic.

Elphaba does have magic, but she doesn’t control her image, so it doesn’t matter.  She’s just green, and therefore, wicked.

While this movie is entertaining and has wonderful songs--though a young man of my acquaintance suggested it could be made a lot shorter by cutting the songs out--I believe we need to pay close attention. We are living in an age that is becoming increasingly “post-truth.” Image and perception are only things that matter. And as I think about it, this has been true for a long, long time.  

We are separated out into groups, set against each other, lied to, given a common enemy to hate.

And it is all laid out before us, in a “light” entertaining musical.

The whole battle plan of the ruling elite is rolled out in front of us in shocking clarity, and the ruling elite lets it happen.

They must not be very afraid of us.

On the lighter side, the movie is entertaining, does have some good songs, and they managed to make the flying monkeys scary again.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 A Four-Digit Word for Fool

By Bobby Neal Winters

Think about the first calculator you owned or your first LED watch, if you had one.  The symbols it used were displayed on a seven-segment LED.  These are somewhat misnamed. They have eight segments, not seven. One of the “segments” is not geometrically a segment; it’s a decimal point.

But the geometrical segments are the important part.  There are two vertical segments on the left; two vertical segments on the right; three horizontal segments up the middle.  Two plus two plus three equals seven, and you don’t even need an electronic calculator for that.

These LEDs are limited as to the symbols they can display. You can do the decimal digits: 0, 1, 2,..., 8, 9.  You have to have those for arithmetic.  You can also do: A, b, C, d, E, and F.  These are important to machine-level programmers who work in hexadecimal, i.e. base 16, arithmetic.  But there are constraints.  Note that even in getting all of the extra hexadecimal digits, I had to go lowercase for b and d.

Such is the skill of the brain of interpreting and reinterpreting that there were games played by nerds back in the 70s in making calculators spell words like bOObIES.

And nerds we were, but rest assured I never used my intelligence for anything that salacious. 

Since the first half of the year, I’ve been devoting a large chunk of my time to learning the details of the Atmega328P microcontroller. I’ve learned enough to add it to the list of things I can be a bore on. (That list is published in three volumes, and each volume is as thick as the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Given that this chip is smaller than a kidney bean, there is a surprising amount written on it.  The basic resources I’ve been using consist of a pair of 250-page technical documents.  Think of the style of writing in these documents being like the IKEA instructions for putting together the Roswell Probe, but without as many helpful pictures.

I’ve done this project in order to teach a class. And it is going to be a good class. But my idea of what I am going to do has changed tremendously as a result of my own learning experience. 

Tremendously.  I didn’t choose that word lightly.

A device like this--and indeed any computer-like device--does three things: it takes in data; it processes that data; it then displays its results. We can call that Input, Process, and Output. 

Of these three parts, we usually spend most of the time on the middle part, Process. This is not because it is so hard, but rather the reverse.  The remainder, Input/Output, is so hard that it has been done for us by others. It has been dealt with and put to the side so that most people can concentrate on the process part.

The thing is that someone has to think about Input/Output. Someone has to work out those details to make it easier for everyone else.

Last night I was at a Computer Science Club meeting. (It was at 6pm on the Friday night before Thanksgiving break; that is hardcore.) Two of the students who presented did so on computer mice they had made and programmed in one of their EET classes. They were amazing.

Computer mice represent input.

For my part, I’ve been working on writing to the seven-segment LED I mentioned at the beginning of this column.  The hardware I am working with (a Freenove project board for those of you who are interested) has a four-digit seven-segment LED.  This will let me display a decimal number between 0 and 9,999. If I use hexadecimal, I can get any number between 0 and 65,535, but only a nerd could read it. 

By the end of September--just before I left for Paraguay--I’d managed to write a program that would output to that four-digit display.  The problem was that I could no longer find anything in that program. It had grown organically as I was in the process of learning what I was doing, and it had gotten away from me.

Since that point, I’ve been going back over the code and basically rewriting it from scratch.

Last night, before the CS Club members gave their presentations, I went in and fiddled with my program just a little.  I’d been having trouble getting it to act predictably, but I had an insight and fixed something. 

I put in my code, pressed run, and there came my output in four seven-segment digits: bOOb.  While this has a salacious interpretation, I mean it as a description of someone who enjoys solving this sort of puzzle as much as I do.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 The Perfect Gift

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve finished the chess set.

Let me take that back.  I may put a coat of wax on the pieces, but, to outside observers, I have finished the chess set.

They are carved.  I’ve stained the hillbilly farmers and have oiled the dairy farmers.  I’ve made a box to keep them in. I’ve put dividers in to keep the pieces in order.

I am only lacking a hook latch to keep the box closed, and that is in the mail.

But, were I to die today.  If I had a coronary between this paragraph and the next one, there would be a tearful moment on Christmas morning when Jean shakily handed one present to my grandsons saying, “Your grandpa loved you. This was the last thing he made.  It was for you boys.”

Kind of makes you want to see the movie, doesn’t it?

This was an incredibly satisfying project.

Those of you who are of a certain age, know what I have in mind with it.  Fifty, sixty, one-hundred years from now, some child yet unborn will be rifling through a closet looking for games to play,come upon this box, and open it.

“What’s this?” the child will ask.

“Your grandfather’s grandfather carved it,” the mother will answer.

We just have to hope that things are going well enough that they don’t decide to use it as firewood.  But if they must, they must, and they have my blessing.

This is the nature of a gift. You give it, and you let go with hope.

I am now in a pleasant period of a good life.  In the 16th Psalm it is written:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

you make my lot secure./

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance./

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

even at night my heart instructs me.

I don’t have to worry financially. I have time to do things. I’ve got as much health as a 62-year-old could hope for. In other words, the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

In addition to all of this, I’ve discovered the things that make me happiest, the things that give me the most satisfaction: Giving in secret to those who can’t repay.

If they know it’s me, if they thank me, it makes me uncomfortable. I am an introvert at the end of the day.

It’s nice if they actually appreciate it and if I can see that they do, but that is not necessary.

As much as I support giving money to institutions (the University, the Salvation Army, the Lord’s Diner), the feeling is strongest when whatever I am giving goes to individual people.

The chess set provides a nice metaphor for this.  It provides a connection between me and some people who won’t even know me one-hundred years from now. (Again, barring termites, fire, a family dog that likes to chew, etc.) I can think about the person taking it out, setting it up, and using it without the awkward discomfort of them coming to thank me.

My vision of this is somehow better for me than actually seeing it. That says something about me that I might need to think about, but let’s move on.

I’ve made clear the trouble with giving something like the chess set: These earthly treasures can be destroyed by moths and vermin.  We can give things that are harder to destroy.

When you teach someone how to do something, that can’t be destroyed.  Here I am talking about small, tiny things. Like how to wash a sharp knife. You keep it out of the sink until last, and you never let go of it. My father taught me this; his mother-in-law taught him this.  There might be a chain of learning that goes back to the invention of washing cutlery. 

Acts of kindness work in the same way.  If you treat someone with kindness, you are teaching them how to be kind. We are monkeys after all and monkey-see, monkey-do.

As in the sense of giving a gift, you have no control on what happens next; you have no control on what the person you give it to does with it.  There is just this vision in your mind that, maybe, somewhere down the line someone will get just a tiny bit of happiness out of something you’ve given, something you’ve done.

And they won’t even know it was you, so no awkward discomfort of thanks.

How perfect.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 The Right Words

By Bobby Neal Winters

When you are joining a couple of boards together, there are times when one of the boards sticks up a little bit higher than the other. We say that the board that is sticking up higher than the other is proud.  This is the classical meaning of pride: it sticks up just a bit higher than the rest.

If you are a joiner, what you do is to take your plane and shave the proud board down until it aligns with its partner.  Then everything is nice and even.

As speaking humans, words are our tools just as a plane is a tool to a joiner.  Instead of “speaking humans,” I was going to write “writers,” but every adult human being uses words as tools.  

I hate myself for what I am about to write. No, let me correct myself, I feel humbled for what I am about to write. And that is this: We need to be very, very careful in our use of words.

There are three words/phrases that are often used interchangeably.  I am of the opinion that those who are using these fragments of language believe in their hearts they all mean the same thing. 

No.

No, there are important differences.

What are these phrases?  Have I kept you in suspense long enough?  Okay, they are these:  Pride, Self-Esteem, and Self-Respect.

Consider the situation where someone is looking at a homeless person drunk in the gutter.  They see this person and ask, “Why don’t they have more pride?”

They don’t mean to ask that.  What they mean is, “Why doesn’t that person have more self-respect?”

Before you all go off on me, there are other questions that could be asked: What can I do to help?  What can be done to help? What is the best way to proceed with my life?

And there are all sorts of assumptions that are made in the question.

But that is what they mean to ask. They aren’t asking why the person isn't puffed-up, putting himself above others. They are asking why the person isn’t giving himself respect as a human being, as a child of God?

Respect is a call for mindfulness in the sense you really need to pay attention to something.  You respect a sharp knife; you take care when you are handling it so as not to cut yourself.  But you also keep it sharp and avoid abusing it when you work with it.

Respect is a good word.

But we can also get into trouble with the use of the word “respect.”  There is a persistent, and dare I say respectable, cohort of the human race that says, respect must be earned. It carries the sense that you save your respect for something better.

I think about this on and off.  I will think about it some more.

We now come to the phrase “self-esteem” because it is also problematic.  This is to say, it rubs some people the wrong way. In particular, the teaching of self-esteem in the public schools is considered suspect in some quarters.  Is too much self-esteem really healthy?  

I see why there are problems with this, but I also see the attraction of teaching self-esteem. That is, I see why some would say it is a good thing.

Maybe we are trying to get a word or two to do too much work.

The question--it seems to me--is less about the particular words, and more about the actions we take.

We need to look at ourselves to see who we really are. This may be the hardest part, and it might very well be spread over a period of years.  To do this, you have to look at yourself from a distance.  

This is hard. 

As Robert Burns said: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Then, like you were looking at something that has value but needs help, you go to work fixing it.

The phrase we often use in a situation like this is, “This needs a little love.”

That four-letter word is a bit over-burdened itself, but maybe it is the one I am looking for.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Rockets, Fanny Hill, Computer Programming

By Bobby Neal Winters

Rules can be frustrating, but they can free us.

One of my favorite science communicators, Scott Manley, did a YouTube video recently about the engineering reasons for the shape of Blue Origin’s rocket. If you don’t know what I am talking about, I suggest you google this very carefully and you will be enlightened. In order to prevent being too--direct--in describing “the shape,” Manley makes use of quotations from “Fanny Hill: The memoirs of a woman of pleasure” by John Cleland.  

My understanding--I’ve never read it--is that “Fanny Hill” (written in the 1700s) is a work of pornography.  Because of the times, Cleland had to be very careful about avoiding direct language. Because of this, he was forced into the world of colorful euphemism.  For similar reasons, Manley makes use of the reservoir of creative description from “Fanny Hill” in his video on the unfortunate shape of Blue Origin’s rocket.

I found it to be hilarious. Perhaps that is a sign of my fallen nature.

But there is a point to be made here: Constraints foster creativity.  Having rules in place to avoid direct description of vulgar objects, forced Cleland to be creative in his euphemisms. 

While goodness knows we don’t have the same sort of constraints in place now that they did in the 1700s, there is quite a tradition of being roundabout in language for the sake of preserving the innocence of children, a noble cause. This tradition has produced quite a bit of very good art.

I faced this myself recently while carving some chess pieces for  my grandsons. (Please, please, if you run into them, don’t let on.) Each of the main pieces was carved from a piece of bass wood that was one-inch square and 4 inches tall.

As you may recall from a previous column, this is a non-traditional chess set.  Instead of a king and queen, there are farm couples.  Instead of knights, one side has dogs and the other has cats. Instead of bishops, one side has priests and the other has preachers. 

There were lots and lots of different ways the carving could have gone, but the size constraint made of a lot of my decisions for me.  There were things that I simply could not have done--with my small skillset--in that space.

Art is not the only place where this phenomena occurs. I’ve run into it in computer programming.  (Indeed, I owe the notion to the computer programming guru Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin.) For the past several months, I’ve been learning assembly language programming.  Those of you who have been loyal sufferers of this space, may recall that I went through a period of learning Python programming.  

What is the difference between these two? By analogy, Python is London where you have subways,taxis, Ubers, and trains.  Assembly language is the Amazon where if you want to get anywhere, you need to first make a dugout canoe, but before you do that you need to make an ax, but before you do that, you need to learn to smelt iron, etc.

This comparison goes further.  Python, like London, has a lot of laws; by way of contrast, there may be laws in the Amazon, but who is there to enforce them?

Assembly language is wide open; there are very few constraints. Which means it can be hard to do, but there is a trick to make it easier: you put the constraints on yourself.  Arrange your code like you arrange your workshop.  Force some structure on yourself.

This will require some creativity on your part, but it will make what you write easier to read.  The time you save may be your own.

None of this is new. Members of religions have been putting constraints on themselves for thousands of years. (Or God, has.)  THOU SHALT NOT! 

Monastic orders impose rules upon themselves. Times of prayer throughout the day, throughout the year.  Times for restricting the intake of food; times for feasting! Rules to be followed.

We do have to be careful.  Too many rules will try us down like the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver. But--as a friend told me once--if a kite doesn’t have a string on it, it can’t fly.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

The Quintessence of a Dog

 The Quintessence of a Dog

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been back in my workshop, back working with wood.  I aim to be an artisan, not an artist.  Indeed, to be recognized as an artisan would be a great step forward for me as a hobbyist. 

But I have made a discovery: If you aspire to be an artisan, you must open yourself to be at least a little bit of an artist. 

To be either, I need to put in a lot more practice.  In order to do this, I’ve set up some projects.

Don’t tell my grandsons, but I am carving them a set of chessmen for Christmas. Before you set the wrong image in your head, let me explain that this isn’t the usual King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn setup.  

It’s a country chess set.  I am carving it out of one inch by one inch by four inch balsa wood.

Instead of the King and Queen, I’ve got a farm couple, or farm couples, I should say, because I am making them different from each other.  One man is wearing a cowboy hat and his wife is wearing a bonnet.  The other man is wearing a baseball cap and his wife’s hair is uncovered.

Instead of Knights, I am giving one side dogs and the other side cats. Instead of bishops, I am giving them preachers. If I can figure out how to carve collars, I will make one side Catholic and the other Protestant. 

Rooks, at this point, are undecided.

Outhouses have been suggested, and I am fond of that suggestion.  I think they will be easy to carve in a recognizable way--and that is important as I will explain later--and that they will be cute.  For the other side, I am thinking of milk tanks because--in my mind--the man with the cap and the woman with the flowing hair are dairy farmers. That is why they have cats.  However, they are not easily recognized.

Let me now explain why that is important.

I am in an interesting phase of my craft. When I carve, say, a dog, I will show it to a nice person to ask what they think. They look at it, study it carefully, and say, “What a cute...dog?”

I will then heave a sigh of relief, and say, “Yes, yes, a dog.”

Let me just say, it takes a lot of work to carve even something that looks barely like a dog, and to do it on a small piece of wood.

I am mentioning dogs rather than cats because they have been harder for me.  It’s the noses, the snouts.  

All cats' noses look alike--at least at the point of view of someone with my tiny skill set--but dogs have a huge variety of snouts. They have all sorts of lengths and all sorts of angles.  If you are just a tiny bit off with a short nose, you go from dog to pig. And that’s no good.

I’ve had to do some thinking about what makes a dog look like a dog, what makes a cat look like a cat, what makes a farmer look like a farmer etc.

To make a dog look like a dog, I’ve had to stop worrying about making it a realistic dog. For me, the snout can’t be realist, or, as has been mentioned, we slide the slippery slope down into pig-hood. 

The snout must be--at least a little--cartoonish.

At my low level of carving skill, the photo-reality of a dog is in tension with the dog’s quintessence. And the quintessence has got to win if someone untutored beforehand looks at it and says, “What a cute dog!” with the exclamation point there instead of a question mark.

What makes a dog--in my opinion at least--is its snout AND its ears.  For the cat, it’s the ears and the tail.  Whiskers add a bit as well, but it is hard to tell in a small medium.

At the end of this, I will have increased my skill set a bit. I know this because I’ve gotten better already.  And my grandsons will have something to remember grandpa by.  

And I hope they will have evidence that they themselves will always be able to learn something new. And that I love them. And that those are dogs.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 

 

 Corruption and Incorruption

By Bobby Neal Winters

We are on a journey:  Each of us as individuals; our cities; our countries.  The journey is through space and time. We walk our own path, but do we walk alone?

I’ve been optimizing my paths as I walk here in Asuncion.  I take a walk every morning, and to give it a point, I walk to a place to have coffee.  I’ve got one particular place up on Avenido Eulogio Estigarribia that is my favorite, and I’ve been trying to find the best way to get there

I walk from where I am staying about 30 yards south to De Las Palmeras.  I then go east. I cross to the plumbing-contractor supply place and continue two blocks.  At the first block, I hop over some exposed plastic pipe that is laying on top of the ground.  I would say this was a temporary fix, but that’s what I said a year-and-a-half ago when I saw it when I was visiting them. When something goes wrong, you need to fix it as soon as you can afford to. If you put it off, other expenses will arise.  With possible exceptions, nothing gets cheaper; nothing gets easier. 

After a year-and-a-half, this above ground plastic pipe is a feature.  

A block past that is where I turn north.  This is a good street, but there is a large abandoned house on the corner. It was impressive in its day, but it’s been empty for a while now.  It has caught my attention now in particular because of a smell that is coming forth from the overgrown courtyard behind the impressive wall on the corner.

It is the smell of something rotten and it’s not fruit.

Something, some animal, is dead behind that impressive wall. It could be--and probably is--that someone’s pampered pet made its way back to go to its last sleep within the impressive foliage that has overtaken the once rich courtyard.  Very probably.

My problem is that I am a Law and Order fan. If this were an episode of Law and Order, the person walking along the street would climb the wall and find a dead body.  He would then report it to the police, who would detain him from going home until he was cleared of being a suspect.

I see a policeman who’s pulled a motorist over to the side.  Given what I’ve seen happen in traffic here, it boggles the mind what the motorist must’ve done to be pulled over.  I could tell him about the smell.

But...

This isn’t New York, and I’m not a character in Law and Order.  I am not hanging around until I’m cleared as a suspect.  I am getting on a plane at 2am on Saturday morning and going home.

I turn the corner and head north.  Soon the smell is behind me.

I’ve chosen this as the best way because the sidewalks are so nice. In Asuncion, as in many places, you are responsible for your own sidewalk. Some folks build a nice one when they build their house.  But there are two parts of anything, the building of it and the upkeep.  Just because you had the money and desire to build it doesn’t mean you will be able to keep it up.

What I’ve noticed is there is a correlation among the conditions of sidewalks in front of one house and the next.  If your neighbor has a nice sidewalk, you are more likely to have one. It’s called keeping up with the Joneses. But you come to an abandoned house or a house that is owned by people who’ve fallen on rough economic times, and its side walk has deteriorated.  There is then not the pressure on the neighbors to keep up appearances, so they let theirs slide. 

On this street, San Roque González de Santacruz, the correct socio-economic factors are in place that will allow me to walk on the sidewalks without playing hopscotch.

Here I see courtyards with well-kept gardens; walls decorated with art and statuary; sidewalks being hosed-down by groundskeepers, and swept by house maids; locked gates and armed gatekeepers.

No trash, no overgrown foliage, no mysterious, malevolent smells coming over the nicely painted, well scrubbed wall.

So different from the house at the other end of the street.

Who we are requires so many things: work; spirit; luck; the times we are in; the neighbors we have; and the people we know.  The road we are on has two ends to it.

Where will we end up?

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 

 

 God’s Imagination

By Bobby Neal Winters

God has a much better imagination than we do. He sees opportunities where we do not.  His grace encompasses everything.

I’ve been doing a scientific sampling of the coffee shops that are within walking distance of where I am staying here in Asuncion.  There are many fine places: Juan Valdez Café; El Café de Acá; El Café de Porfirio. None of them quite as good as Signet or Root, but all much, much better than...well you know. The big chain.

In my explorations, I was directed to one that was located “behind Centro Medico Bautista,”  the Baptist Medical Center.’t 

It’s a hospital. A hospital established by the Baptists.  I would guess Baptist missionaries.  I walked by and read the signs.  In addition to the hospital, they’ve got Sunday School on Sundays; two services, morning and evening; they’ve got Wednesday evening services; and something on Saturday for the youth.

And a biggish hospital. I say “biggish” because I don’t know their numbers.  It ain’t KU-Med, but it is a teaching hospital.

I was born, raised, and baptized as a Southern Baptist.  The week of your birthday, you were supposed to go to the front of the church, put in a penny in a little house for every year old you were, and have the congregation sing happy birthday to you.  That money went to missions.

I stood for a long moment looking at what I believe to be some of the fruit of that collective effort.

As I continued to walk, I looked at the neighborhood.  There were lots of nice service businesses here. Well, of course, they are next to a hospital. There were restaurants--coffee shops!--pharmacies.  There was a “Beef Club”. (I’ve no idea what the hell that is!) All of this was drawn by the hospital.

Then I thought about all the doctors who would have houses and in this culture housekeepers, groundskeepers, etc.  Many incomes are being generated beyond those just in the hospital.

The ripples go throughout the city.

And, in my mind at least, this is connected with all those pennies Baptists are putting in the little red-roofed houses for their birthdays.

I want to hold on to that.

Sometimes when I am scrolling through my Facebook Feed (doom-scrolling they call it), I come upon statements like: “Not a dime of foreign aid while there is a single homeless veteran.”

And I have to agree with the sentiment of helping our veterans.  All gave some, some gave all.  

We owe them.

We owe them, but this is not an either-or thing.

The quote “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can” is often attributed to John Wesley.  This is probably a misattribution, but we don’t know that he didn’t say it, and it makes Methodists happy to think he did.

Doing good has a way of spreading in unexpected ways.  God’s imagination is better than our imagination.  Helping in foreign lands might unwittingly help ours.  Some of the businesses moving in around Centro Medico Bautista were North American-owned chains.  The little pennies put in the red-topped houses are coming back as dollars to North American corporations.

There’s nothing wrong with that.  The sick are still being healed, but the big McDonald’s across the street is making some money.

I can hear the traffic out my window.  Asuncion is beginning to wake up on this Saturday morning.  I think I will make a circle to get a cup of coffee from that little place behind Centro Medico Bautista.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

Baptized into the Church of Asuncion

Baptized into the Church of Asuncion

By Bobby Neal Winters

Yesterday, I went to the movies .  I saw the Joker, Part 2 with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. It was playing in the Paseo La Galeria mall in Asuncion. This is the ritzy-est mall I’ve ever been in, for what that worth.

I went totally unprepared. I’d not read anything about it, though I had seen the movie that it follows. Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best American actors of his time so I thought it would be worth it.  

For me it was. I, however, sometimes have a rather strange taste in movies.  I’d not expected Joker II to be a musical.  But it is: a good one.  I’ve not followed the work of Lady Gaga, nor do I plan to, but she has a good voice which can shape emotion.

I’d not expected it to have a compelling love story.  But it does: a strange, twisted one. 

I’d not expected so much Jungian imagery.  But I got it: from the very first.

It is the story of broken people in a corrupt society. The corrupt society breaks people.  The corrupt society distorts any means by which those people can be healed.  The refuse of that society believes they have found someone who embodies their brokenness and who can extract vengeance for them.  When that fails, well, you won’t be surprised.  Or maybe you will: I was.

It is one of those I don’t want to take responsibility for advising you to see, but it did give me a lot to think about. 

Today, I went to church. Saint Andrew’s Chapel, an Anglican Church, on the north side of Avenida Espana just to the west of where it crosses Avenida Maximo Santos.  I’d made a failed attempt last week. This week I regrouped.  I knew exactly where it was; I got on google maps to mark my path out.

Then I woke up to the sound of thunder this morning.

They have been needing rain here.  There have been fires in the Chaco, and the smoke from them has been coming into the city.  While there have been cool days with clouds, there’s been no rain.

It had begun to rain what I called an “8-inch” rain in that the drops were hitting on the sidewalk 8 inches apart.  I thought about walking, then I thought about going into a church sopping wet, so I decided to take an Uber.

The rain remained more speculative than real as we drove along.  I could have walked it.  I vowed that I would walk back.

I was the first one there.  I minister--Donald--was setting up the altar.  He saw me and came back to greet me. We chatted.

The congregants began to trickle in.  There were so few even trickle is too generous a word. More than 20, fewer than 25.  All sizes; all shapes; all economic conditions.  Three Americans; three South Africans.

Broken people from a corrupt society. Just like anywhere.

Music consisted of one man with a guitar who led us in hymns. A sincere voice that kept the focus where it should be. There was a sermon that the Apostle Paul could’ve given, in the sense there was nothing novel in it: Repent and God will forgive you because He loves you.

The usual prayers; communion; going forth; then lemonade and cookies. 

My heart felt light and was strangely warmed.  I began my walk home.

There were drops of rain here and there.

I stopped at a grocery store and bought some oranges so I could have a little plastic bag to put my phone in.  Just in case.  The store didn’t sell umbrellas just to let you know.

While I was in the store the rumor of rain had become the real thing.  

I pressed on.

While storm sewers are not unknown in Asuncion, their system is not, shall we say, fully developed.  As a consequence of this, the streets were beginning to run like rivers. Little rivers, but rivers nonetheless.

I pressed on.

I came to an intersection with a very busy street.  Direct across from me, I saw a graffito scrawled on a wall: “Sonria, Cristo te ama.” Smile, Christ loves you.  Above this heartfelt scrawl was a video billboard that was 30 feet wide and 40 feet tall. In flashy, dynamic fashion it was offering all of the joys of a commercial society.  All of this can be yours if you bow down to worship me.

I was standing there, waiting for the light to change with this running through my head when a city bus came by and hit one of the rivers flowing down the street dead-on, and I was baptized in the church of the city of Asuncion.

They believe in full-immersion.

The rain never got any lighter.  I made it home and changed into dry clothes.

It’s been a good day.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Family, neighbors, friends, and Watermelon

By Bobby Neal Winters

On many days during my stay in Paraguay, I walk to the Superseis that is on Avenida Argentina, just south of the intersection with De Las Palmeras.  At the intersection, there is a fruit stand.  They will bring fruit to drivers in their cars as they wait for the light to change.

I see that they have watermelons.

They call a watermelon by the name sandia in Paraguay.  I pay attention because I love watermelon.  I love watermelon on many levels.  It is sweet, it is filling, and it has few calories per unit volume.

I also love them because of memory.  They open a door back to a world that is almost forgotten to me.   They remind me of my Grampa Sam.

Summer days were long in the cross-timbers of Oklahoma, not just in the measure of hours of daylight, but in the measure of perceived time.  A summer day would sometimes last an entire year in the mind of a 5-year-old.

The sun was bright: it bleached my hair; it tanned my skin.  My bare feet were made hard by walking through grass and gravel.

On some days, when the season for watermelons came, my Grandpa Sam would mysteriously obtain one or our neighbor Buck Crabtree would bring one by.  Neither mentioned ever buying one.  Sam and Buck were men who had friends, and often the friends would give them things.  Those were the way things were in that time and place; at least that is the way I remember them.

There was a ritual. One would obtain a watermelon, but more needed to be done.  Watermelon is a dish best served cold, as they say.  The watermelon would be immersed in cold water or--even better--water that had a big block of ice floating in it. It would be chilled in this manner for as much of the day as possible.

Then, after a few months of the day had passed, as the sun sank low in the west, we would gather around with family and neighbors and eat the watermelon.  And it was always the whole family and neighbors, because all of the watermelon had to be consumed at one sitting.  The idea of cutting up a melon and putting it into the refrigerator for later consumption had not yet entered our culture.

No, we gathered around this offering and shared with our neighbors.  We shared melon; we shared news; we shared triumph and tragedy.  

We shared ourselves.

But now individuality has crept so into our society it even affects our consumption of watermelon. I can buy a watermelon now; cut it up; put it in the fridge; and breakfast on it for a week.  That is, I can get a week’s worth of breakfast out if others who come through my household--they know who they are--don’t steal it from me.

That last sentence is a measure of how deeply the disease of individuality has taken root.  I seek to gather to myself what was once an occasion of sharing.  Indeed, I resent sharing.  But in my defense, I might not resent sharing my melon as much if I got to share lives at the same time.

I talk to my students in Paraguay.  What are their plans for the weekend?

For many the answer is that they go to their grandparents--their abuelos--for asado--barbecue. Large families, sharing food, sharing lives.  One would imagine them gathering after having shared the eucharist.

I bought half a watermelon from the fruit stand on the weekend.  They are aggressive; they wanted to sell me a whole one.  I protested that I would have to carry it very far.  The young lady rubbed my shoulder with her hand and told me that I was strong.

Oh, please.  Give me a break.

But I did buy half a melon and only worried later about the perils of buying melon cut by people who were so ruthless in their sales technique.

I am alone; I am in journalist mode, whether I’ve a right to that state or not.  I am an atomic human observing a sea of molecular humanity.  I’ve not seen the likes of this since I was a boy.

A boy in Oklahoma on an infinite summer day having watermelon with my family, my neighbors, and my friends.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Sunday Morning Coming Down

By Bobby Neal Winters

Word has come to me here in Asuncion that Kris Kristofferson has passed away.  I was thinking of him just yesterday morning.

I am in Paraguay for 3 weeks.  I’ve made a point to try to find an English language church service here. Sometimes we pray for help; I googled. I did a search for “English language church service.”  I got the website for St. Andrew’s Anglican church.  Services were at 10am.  There was a location.  

The site had last been updated in 2016.  Churches are notorious for not keeping their webpages up to date, but it was all I had.

Google maps assured me that it was a 34-minute walk, but I gave myself an hour, starting at 9.

It was a beautiful morning.  Traffic was light, mostly people who were clearing going to church.  I walked past two or three churches where services were being held in Spanish.

The sounds of liturgy came out from the sanctuaries, which were open to the outside.  Outside men stood in white shirts.  I don’t know if they were waiting for the next service, waiting as their wives worshiped without them, or just having a smoke.

I walked past kindergartens and grocery stores; past restaurants and bars; past car dealerships and ice cream parlors. 

Google maps took me up a street called Avenida Senador Huey P. Long.  Yes, that Huey P. Long.  It was a very nice neighborhood with inviting restaurants, bars, and pubs.  Senator Long would have approved.

I crossed Avenida Espana.  Google told me I was getting close.

“Destination on your left,” it said.

No. Not there. Neither a church nor anything that could plausibly serve as a church. Ever.

I still had half an hour, so I searched again.  This time from my phone instead of my computer.  I don’t know, maybe it would make a difference.

There it popped up: Saint Andrew’s Chapel.  This time there was a picture.  There was a sign in the picture in front of the church that confirmed that services started at 10AM.  Google maps confirmed that the chapel was on Avenida Espana...50 minutes by foot from where I stood.

Maybe I am stubborn. (Surely not.) Maybe I just didn’t have anything better to do. (Probably.) I began the trek.  Google told me I would get there by 10:24 am.  

So I would be a little late.

I began.

I set a good pace.  I was enjoying the morning, practicing my Spanish by reading signs.  Being philosophical about how they used English in some of their advertisements compared how we use Spanish. 

Then it got surreal.

I was walking under a palm tree and a bird dive-bombed my head.  It was kind of scary, but no harm done.

I walked two blocks further and it happened again.

I began to think about Joseph in pharaoh's prison and the baker who had had the dream about the loaves of bread being picked at by birds.

Nevertheless, I pressed on.  See the remark concerning stubbornness above.

Google assured me my destination was ahead on the right. I looked and saw the chapel.  I also noted there weren’t many vehicles there.  Not many as in not any.

The gate to the driveway was closed. 

Hmmm.

I talked to the gate to the sidewalk and checked the handle. It opened; I entered.

In the twinkling of an eye, there was a guard there.

Okay, the guard was somewhere between 16 and 20 years old; he wasn’t wearing a uniform; he didn’t have a gun; but I am still going to call him a guard.

I’ve reached a level in my Spanish where I can make myself understood a lot of the time, and I can kind of guess what they are saying to me.

This was the Sunday the priest went to preach to the Guarani, the local  indigenous people. There would be church at this location next Sunday.  

I walked back to a supermarket I’d passed and got a bottle of pop. Paraguay’s version of Fresca.  I drank my pop and thought it over.  Then I got a taxi to head back to the room.

Today I learned that Kris Kristofferson passed away yesterday. I think he would’ve kind of liked my story.

There’s nothing short of dying/ half as lonely as the sound/ of a sleeping city sidewalk/ Sunday Morning coming down.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Breakfast in (South) America

By Bobby Neal Winters

A remix of Breakfast in America was coming over the sound system. I was feeling good about myself for knowing what a re-mix was, kinda.  And I am old enough to remember when Breakfast in America was new.  I knew about Supertramp because my friend from high school (I was going to say old friend, but she will always be 17 to me) Robyn Phillips listened to them.

Anyway, I was in the La Vienesa on Civil Legionnaires de Extranjero next to where it crosses De Las Palmeras and this remix of Breakfast in America was playing.  This was my first morning in Asuncion.  I’d slept like the dead after a long day of travel the day before.  

I’d woke up refreshed, took a shower, and headed to breakfast.  After examining the menu, I ordered the cheapest breakfast item they had: Vienesa.  I figured they’d named it after themselves, so they were probably proud of it.  It consisted of coffee, orange juice, two slices of toast from thin bread, a slice of ham lunchmeat, and a sandwich slice of swiss cheese.

That was it.

From many years of traveling to Paraguay, I know this to be a typical breakfast.  You will see eggs in other places, unexpected places, but not at breakfast, normally. Eggs are for frying and putting on top of a steak.  Cold cuts are for breakfast.

And that was fine.  I wanted only a light meal, and cold cuts did it.  

I then went out on my mission: Shopping.  My shopping trip was two-fold: get some groceries and buy a pill calendar.

The groceries were easy: fruit, potatoes, yogurt, meat, and beans.  I sort of looked for the pill calendar at the Superseis, but experience has taught me that in Paraguay groceries and groceries and medicine is medicine.  You can’t get so much as a bandaid at a grocery store, you need a pharmacy.

I went to a pharmacy in one of the malls near this particular Superseis.  The sales girl--and it was a girl as the population pyramid is properly shaped here--was very attentive.

At that point it occurred to me that I didn’t know the Spanish phrase for “pill calendar.”

This kind of thing has happened to me before, so I have a strategy.  Step one: try a naive direct translation.

“Quisiera un calendario de medicinas,” which is “I would like a medicine calendar.

She became very excited at the challenge and began to look through her files.  She then produced a pill-splitter.

I then took my other method.  Recreate my world for her.

“Todas las semanas yo pongo mis medicinas en domingo, lunes, martes, miércoles,...”  

That is to say, “Every week I put my medicines in Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...”

I saw the light of understanding go on in her eyes.

“No tenemos.”  We don’t have it.

Of course not.  In Paraguay everyone is young.  If you are old enough to take so many medicines that they have to be laid out, you can find some other solution.

That’s what I am going to do.

I think I will make some black beans and rice for supper tonight and have some left over.  I might fry up my meat for lunch tomorrow.

But I may very well head back over to La Vienesa for breakfast on Sunday morning.  Nothing quite like ham lunchmeat and cheese for breakfast.

Take a jumbo, across the water//

Like to see America.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

PIttsburg is on the map

 Pittsburg is on the map

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have a friend in Philadelphia who sends me news stories he thinks I might be interested in.  Most are about mathematics and mathematicians, but a recent one that he sent me was about Pittsburg, Kansas, my home, and for my Pittsburg readers, our home.  It was from the Associated Press and was concerning the new abortion clinic in town.

One of the themes of the article was that this is a small town, you know everybody, and you are going to see the people you disagree with. In reading the article I noted that I knew people on both sides of the controversy. I don’t need to mention their names because they know me too. This is a small town.

That there would be an abortion clinic in our town was not a surprise.  Indeed, from a particular point of view, its arrival was almost certain. This is because of the juxtaposition of two events.  The first was the reversal of Roe v. Wade which sent abortion laws back to the states.  This decision, I believe, was part of the impetus for the attempt to pass the “Value Them Both” amendment to the Kansas Constitution.

The second event was the subsequent defeat of the “Value Them Both” amendment. Its defeat solidified, in a political sense, Kansas’s very permissive abortion laws for the foreseeable future. It was defeated so decisively that it will take a while for its proponents to regroup. The current legal situation in our state is stable and possibly set in concrete.

Given those two events, human nature, economics, and geography, the establishment of an abortion clinic in this part of Kansas became something that was going to happen, a fait accompli. 

Full disclosure: I am pro-life, so I take no pleasure in the new clinic in town. 

Am I angry?

I’ve reached the age where events like this simply make me sad. The 1st verse of the 9th Chapter of the Book of Jeremiah hits tragically on the mark: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”

But, regardless, the clinic is here. In our town. In my town.

What’s going to happen?

Yes, that is the question.

As the AP article pointed out, there have been times in Kansas where this state of affairs has not been handled very well.

I don’t want that for my town. For our town.

For those of us who are against abortion, what do we do?

In a small town, just ignoring it is not an option, not even if that option was acceptable to your conscience.  For my part, my personal physician and the pharmacy that I use are just a stone’s throw from the clinic.  I will be reminded of the clinic and what is going on there every time I have a checkup, everytime I get a prescription refilled, both of which happen with alarming regularity because I am old.

I can’t tell you what to do. You might be pro-choice and just be happy with this. You might be pro-life and getting guidance from your church on what to do.  

What I am going to do is pray.  

Prayer seems to have become more a theme of these columns recently.  I don’t know whether it’s because I am getting old and wise or simply old and irrelevant.

I think we need to pray for the women who are going through this. Please give me a moment to make my point.

Men are traditionally supposed to be brave, but women are the brave ones. Historically, childbirth was probably the number one cause of the death of women. Yet consider the story of Rachel from the Book of Genesis who was absolutely desperate to have a child. She eventually did have two and died while having the second one. 

In that world, the women knew the risk; they had all seen other women die in childbirth; had been there as it happened; and yet they continued.

That is bravery.

I know that there are those who will disagree with me, but I believe nature has planted a desire in women to become mothers. For a woman to come to a point where she believes that killing her baby is a way out is in tension against that nature. 

It’s tragic.

But right now at this point in time, I believe prayer is just about all I can do.  Pray for the women; pray for their children. Pray that the men who fathered these children would step up and be men. Pray that these women will be able to find another way out.

God help us.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

Learning Arithmetic

 Learning Arithmetic

By Bobby Neal Winters

Arithmetic was never my favorite subject. (Can I have an AMEN?) Indeed, I hated it. I used to get my mother to do my long division homework for me.

What an irony then that I am now a Professor of Mathematics at a respected state university.  They probably won’t want to include that in their press release.

Actually, the take away from that is mathematics is quite a bit more than arithmetic.

But here I am now, turning 62 next month, relearning arithmetic. 

Having stepped out of administration, I’ve been having a sabbatical of sorts before going back to the classroom, and I am using it to equip myself to step into my university’s growing Computer Science program.

As a part of that, I’ve been learning the architecture (that’s the term they use) of a particular integrated circuit and learning how to program it in assembly language.

I will be getting a little technical but will try not to fly off into full geek mode. You will need to tell me how I do.

Computers store numbers in binary form.  The number 0 is still zero, and the number 1 is still one. Okay, hang on, here we go: The number 10 is two; the number 11 is three; the number 100 is four; and the number 110 is five. I could go on, but it’s not important that you understand the particulars, but that there is a different way numbers are stored in a computer.

The numbers are stored in “bytes.”  This is a pun on the word byte. (Geeks have always been geeks.) Historically bytes have had different sizes.  It’s now been pretty well settled that a byte is 8 bits, i.e. 8 binary digits.  So 11001010 would be a byte.

The unit of memory that a processor works with is called a “word.” The size of the word varies from one type of processor to another.  In most computers these days, you can figure that the word is 32 or 64 bits long.

To bring me back to my topic, the longer the word size the more arithmetic you can do.

The chip I am working with uses the 8-bit byte for its most basic operations and you have to build up from there. You have to know some arithmetic. Let me show you what I mean.

An 8-bit byte can represent a number between 0 and 255 (between 00000000 and 11111111). If you want to add say 17 (00010001) to 20 (00010100), you can do that easily enough to get 37 (00100101). But if you want to add 250 (11111010) to 10 (00001010), you’ve got a problem. The answer is 260 (00100000100). I’ll save you the counting; it requires more than 8 bits to represent.

On this chip, you have to write your coding to extend the addition process.  It’s not hard. The designers of the chip knew this limitation was there and prepared for it.

They did this with multiplication as well. By its very nature, multiplication gives you bigger numbers quickly. The chip I am working with anticipates this by assuming that multiplying two 8-bit numbers will require 16-bits of storage. So right off the bat you can have a product that is as big as 65535 (1111111111111111).

As nice as that is, it will only get you so far, but you can get around this limitation by doing a little math and a little more programming.

Subtraction is handled in a way more similar to addition than it is to multiplication, though there are some complications in the way negative numbers are handled. (Buy me a coffee and a cookie at Signet, and I will tell you about it. You might want a whiskey. Signet can’t help you there.) 

We can even do the equivalent of decimal multiplication using this chip, but I am still getting my head wrapped around it.

Here we come to my favorite subject: division.  This chip doesn’t have 

If I am going to deal with division, there is not going to be any help from the chip. It’s all going to have to be done by programming.

I wish my momma was around to help, but I think she’d just tell me I was on my own.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.