Sunday, August 24, 2025

The Calculus of Cousins

 The Calculus of Cousins

By Bobby Neal Winters

When I write a test, I type it out on a word-processor (it’s actually a text-editor, but that’s a different rabbit hole for a different day) and I save it on my computer. I put the different classes in different folders.  Within each class’s folder, I make a new fold for each year and I name that using the date.

I am teaching Calculus II this year; it is my practice in Calculus to give the students a test every other Friday, so during the first week of class, I looked up my folder: The last time I’d taught the course was in 2003.

I told this to my students and asked them.  Were any of you yet born in 2003? Raise your hands.

Nary a hand. 

During the span of time since I last taught Calculus II, these students had come to term in their mothers wombs; they had learned how to walk, learned how to talk; gone to pre-school, to grade school, to middle school, to high school; they had learned to drive.

They had done all of this since I last cracked a Calculus textbook with intent to teach.

This should be fun, I thought.

And it has been.  I spend a few odd hours during the day working on problems.

For those of you who teach Calculus, we are using Thomas’s 15 edition Calculus book.  This is special to me because my cousin Gary gave me his 3rd edition of Thomas’s Calculus that he’d used in college in 1961, a year before I was born.

Gary was the first grandchild of Grandpa Sam and Grandma Lora.  Lora was in her mid-thirties when he was born. Don’t do too much math here.  I was Sam and Lora’s last grandchild, so Gary and I were bookends, as it were.

He gave me his copy of Thomas when I started working on the math major with the warning that there was a lot of “blood, sweat, and tears” in it.

In that he was right.  There is a lot of all of that in learning any skill, and mathematics is a skill to be learned.

There was also a lot of coffee in it, for Gary, in particular.  This I know because there are coffee stains throughout the book.  If you drink coffee while studying it is axiomatic that you will spill some of that coffee on your book.

I love that about the book.  I took it to class, and showed it to my students.  It was printed in 1961 and copyrighted in 1951.

Gary would occasionally email me.  He wrote his emails in all caps.  This is because he spoke in all caps.  I don’t mean to say he yelled. His words just carried a weight that required capitalization.

Gary was born in the oil field; served in the military; educated by the GI bill.  He’d worked in aerospace engineering, and transitioned to having his own business of buying, fixing, and selling used airplane parts.

I can still hear him saying, “The people who sell to me are happy, because I give them money; the folks who buy from me are happy because they are getting the part cheaper than they could buy a new one; and I am happy because I am making money.”

Only when he said it, it would’ve come out of his mouth in all caps.

This strikes me as the best business philosophy ever. It makes me proud to have had him as a cousin and proud to be an American.

He helped me.  He reached out to me.  This was at a time when I was not in a position to help him, nor would he have needed my help.

This is a debt that is owed, and the answer to this is known: Pay it forward.

Fortunately, I am in a position where there is ample opportunity to help people, to help young people.

I am blessed because it is my job.

My business model is different. I don’t sell airplane parts; I sell knowledge. 

I get to keep the knowledge that I sell.  In fact, I know it better by virtue of having to teach it.  While money does change hands at some level way above me, the real price they pay is the one my cousin said, “Blood, sweat, and tears.” Somebody might’ve said it before him.

Gary now sleeps with our fathers, as do more and more of Sam and Lora’s grandchildren.

The world is different.  Textbooks are now online.  I don’t like it. It’s unnatural. Try spilling coffee on the Cloud.

But it’s a new semester, and there is Calculus to be learned.

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, August 17, 2025

Moving Dirt for Track and Field

 Moving Dirt for Track and Field

By Bobby Neal Winters

Part of my daily routine this summer was to walk from my office in Yates Hall on the PSU campus out past the Crossland Technology Center and back.  This became increasingly difficult over the course of the summer because of all the construction.  

They are fixing the steam tunnels on campus. It’s one of those jobs that will be completely unnoticed by most when they are done, but it needs to be done. By way of contrast, between the Bicknell Family Performing Arts Center and the Crossland Technology Center, they are building a facility for track.

This has been fun to watch.

First they were in with a few dozers; then they put a big fence up around it to keep the “curious” from hurting themselves and suing everybody for their own "curiosity." Then they got busy moving dirt around.

And they did move some dirt, let me tell you, and in a surprising way.  Before the construction, when I looked at this from the north and from the south the field the track is going to occupy appeared to be level.  It turns out they had to move quite a bit before everything was level.

Then they started laying out the track, and there seems to be quite a bit to that as well.

As an Okie, I thought you would just put a couple of barrels on the field a hundred yards apart and let the runners beat the grass down to dirt as they practiced. 

You learn something new every day.

This is going to be an amazing facility when they finish.

I say this will all the authority of someone who has been to fewer than ten university athletic events in the last 36 years.

I want you to know that because I want you to read the rest of this column with the knowledge that I am not a big sports fan and that what I say is not coming from my heart, but from my head.

This track is an important thing.

Pittsburg State has, by all accounts, a great track and field program. Our current coach is said to be quite good, but I don’t know his name. But I’ve soaked up by osmosis over about three decades that Russ Jewett did an amazing job in building the program over the course of time.  (I can remember Russ’s name because he’d been a math major back in the day. We take care of our own.)

We’ve hosted important trackmeets over the years.  They bring people into town who stay at the motels and eat at the restaurants, etc. That’s good for the community at large and good for town-gown relations.

But there is more to it than that.

According to current estimates, next year the number of high school graduates in Kansas and in Missouri begins to decline.  That means the university will be trying to recruit students from a smaller pool.  That is a problem. 

This new track facility will be something that helps Pittsburg State stand apart from the rest.  Those high school students who are looking at PSU as a possibility for their choice in higher education who have an interest in track will find this facility very attractive.

I will probably never go to see a single track meet, unless one happens to be going on while I take my walk, but I am glad that this facility is being built.

I would like to say that this is all part of a plan by the university “brain trust,” but I don’t know that.  I am out of that loop, and the statement assumes the existence of a “brain trust.”  Maybe it is just the work of the Holy Spirit.

That would be okay too.

But dirt is being moved. A track and field facility is being constructed. It’s all looking good.

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.



Monday, August 11, 2025

What I did on my Summer Vacation

 What I did on my Summer Vacation

By Bobby Neal Winters

If you want a Bible verse to go along with this column, I suggest Judges 17:6.

Yesterday I finished a side table that I made for my recliner.  I designed it for that very purpose.  I designed a little drawer in it specifically for the purpose of putting the remotes for the TV into.  I know that they will wind up either on the love seat or stuffed between its cushions, and I knew that when I created the design, but I made it as I made it anyway.  After I’m dead, my children and my grandchildren can say that I made that drawer for the remotes as they laugh and stuff the remotes in between the cushions.

But who knows?  Maybe they won’t have remotes then.  Maybe everything will be voice activated.  Maybe the ability to control electronics will be wired into our brains.  

Maybe television will have passed away along with electricity and electronics, and instead of watching TV they will be watching the fire they built to keep the predators away, and my little table will be there to use for fuel.

You never know.

Like I said, I designed this “table” myself.  I put quotes around that because “table” doesn’t quite get it. It’s got drawers in it, so it could pass as a cabinet.  But it’s got a table top on it.

When I say I designed it myself, I am kind of bragging, but if any professional furniture maker looked at it, he would recognize “kind of bragging” translates to “taking the blame.” 

It is a simple design. I started out by making four one-foot by one-foot squares.  I used half-laps to join together wood that was about two inches wide and about one inch thick.  I say “about” because I didn’t measure any of it.  I’d cut the wood from two-by-four studs I bought from Home Despot [sic].

I took two of these squares and made a cube out of them by joining the top square to the bottom square by four 12-inch spindles I’d turned out of the same sort of wood.  This was one of the factors driving the project: I wanted to turn spindles and use them in a piece of furniture.  

I can now take that off my bucket list.

I took the remaining two squares and connected the top to the bottom with four 12-inch stretchers. I cut half-lap dados in the squares and half-lap rabbets in the stretchers, and did the joining that way.  

At this point, there were two cubes with one-foot sides.

I then glued the top one to the bottom (or the other way around it that works better for you).  

Then--and this is very important--in the bottom, I put in my wooden drawer slides.

At this point, every piece of wood I’ve used has been taken from two-by-four studs.  There was possibly ten dollars worth of wood in it.

It then got put aside for a while.

I got involved in making lean-tos for my potting shed.  I learned a good deal more about turning. (Using a wood lathe is addictive.  To me, joinery is to woodturning, as drinking wine is to taking crack cocaine.)

After a number of weeks, I got back to the “table,” and put some side panels on it.  I made my side panels from the six-foot fence pickets you can get for $2 from my favorite DIY store. I milled them up in my planer and on my table saw. They are cheap, but I find them to be quite pretty. 

I glued them into panels and glued them to three sides, leaving the third side open for drawers.

Remember when I said it was very important to note I’d put in my drawer slides?  When I did that, it determined what should be front and what should be back.  

“Should” is such an important word.

When I glued on the panels, I left the wrong side open for the drawers.  I’d set it aside and had forgotten about it.

At this point, everything was glued in place.  There was no going back. On one hand, I had possibly as much as $15 tied up in this project, and I am including glue in that estimate. On the other hand, I saw a way to fix it. 

So I did.

I put in some more drawer slides but in a different way. Not quite optimal, but it pleases my client.

I built the top using some recovered wood given to me by a dear friend.  I don’t remember which dear friend, but I remember the dearness.  Then I made the drawers out of wood I took from a construction grade yellow pine two by twelve. That is to say, except for the bottoms of the drawers which come from plywood that had been part of the shipping package around my new Grizzly bandsaw. (Yes, I am bragging again: I have a Grizzly bandsaw.)

If I have more than $25 worth of wood in this project, I don’t know how that happened.

The tung oil and shellac that I used to finish this project might have cost more than the wood.  They might be worth more than the finished project, but as I said, the client is pleased, and that is what matters.

For those of you who didn’t look up the Bible verse: “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

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.

Monday, August 04, 2025

Pastourelle

 Pastourelle

By Bobby Neal Winters

Those who follow this space know that the Bible is very important to me.  I am not a fundamentalist by any measure, though I grew up that way, but I’ve hung with the Bible through periods of change in my life.  These changes included higher education, getting to know people of other religions and of no religion, getting to know people who were respectful of my point of view and people who were dismissive. 

I’ve clung to the Bible; I’ve wrestled with it; I’ve never let it go.  As I’ve grown older this relationship has stabilized. As I’ve come to ideas I believe to be true, I’ve clung to them.  I’ve used them to build an understanding, to create a picture.  It’s gotten to a point where I think it has settled down to something close to complete, so I’d like to share it with you.

Last Friday, as I write this, I visited the Philbrook Museum down in Tulsa. If you’ve not been I suggest you go. I suggest you kind of dress up.  I don’t mean that you have to wear a coat and tie or your Sunday best, but if you wear the clothes you mow the lawn in or do your wood turning in, you are going to feel uncomfortable. 

There were people there who were dressed that way, but I got the impression they were actual artists.  You don’t want folks to think that about you unless it's the truth.

The Philbrook is an art museum.  It goes back to the late 1930’s and the early 1940’s.  To make a long story short, it was built by Oklahoma oil money. This means something to me.  My grandfather, my father, and my uncles worked in the Oklahoma oil fields.  I don’t think any of them ever worked for the Phillips Oil Company, but they were out there at that time. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that some of the money generated by their labor would’ve ended up there.

I found myself wondering what they would’ve made of it.  In particular, I found myself wondering what Dad would’ve made of it.  Dad didn’t finish high school.  He tried, but the fact that he was in fact working in the oil field during a time when he was of high school age created a barrier that he didn’t overcome.  This didn’t create any resentment toward education or art on his part, but, rather, an appreciation of it.

As I was there in the museum, which is housed in the Phillips mansion, and as I wandered its grounds, I thought of Dad and what he would’ve made of it.  I believe he would’ve thought they put their money to good use there.  They bought beautiful things, gathered them together in a beautiful place, and then made them available for everyone to see.

It’s nicely curated, and related pieces are together so that you can compare and contrast the perspectives of the various artists.

You have to pay to get in, but it’s not priced so as to keep anybody out.

Here’s the thing about an art museum.  It’s got art in it.  By art, I don’t mean just pretty pictures.  Beauty is a basic part of it, but art has to have levels with it.  What I mean is that, if you bring more in with you, then you will get more out of it. 

As I said, Dad had very little formal education. He did read a good bit, so there was some self-education, but he had lived abroad in the world and had lots of knowledge about people. He could’ve looked at the picture of a beautiful woman and appreciated that, but he could’ve also seen deeper than just the surface.

There is a picture called “The Shepherdess” (Pastourelle) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau that I particularly like that I think he would like as well.

Art reveals the subject to the viewer, but it reveals the viewer to himself, too.

There is very little about the Philbrook to criticise, but what little there is would be among some of the modern pieces.  There were one or two pieces I looked at and thought that they weren’t going to age too well.

Time will deal with those.

At this point, the reader might very well be asking himself, what does this have to do with the Bible.

The Bible is like a museum, but the very best museum. The pieces were brought together with a purpose. It’s curated. And there aren’t any of those silly modern pieces to distract from the beauty of the masterworks.

The Bible not only reveals the subject to the reader, but the reader to himself.

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.