The Viking Strain

By Bobby Neal Winters

This recent trip to England was for me an attempt to get back to my roots.  A distant cousin of mine in Mississippi, who I have to this day never met, had traced the Winters family tree back some 9 or 10 generations back to England.  We had been Winter then, having only acquired the “S” after crossing the Red River from Texas to Oklahoma.

This last fact I’d known most of my life, chafing under the shame of having ancestors too illiterate to spell their own name.

During grammar school, I’d thought the family might be German.  Dad had remarked that when he’d entered Germany during the Second World War, he’d been approached by the locals saying, “Vinters, Vinters,” having read the Winters on his name tag.  His remark had been, “They must be kinfolk because they are the poorest people in town.”

The knowledge that we were of English ancestry shouldn’t’ve come as a surprise, of course, given the part of the country we came from: the South.  

The family tree painted a nice picture of our family.  We’d settled in North Carolina and then every generation my branch of the family had moved west: Georgia, Northern Alabama, Northern Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma.  And now a jog north into Kansas.  Apparently we had a family trait of thinking that things would be better someplace else.

I suppose one reason for not realizing our English heritage is our image of the English being so refined.  They speak with English accents for goodness sake. They are automatically smarter, better educated, and more refined than us.  My family made jokes about bowel movements for goodness sake.  Men would emerge from the toilet beaming with pride regarding their recent accomplishment.

Having learned our origins, an urge began to grow in my belly. Unconscious, at first, it began to make itself known with urgency.  I must go to England. I must see from whence my people emerged.

The towns mentioned in the family tree were in East Riding of York, so it was determined we would go to York.  We flew into Heathrow, and then took the train from King’s Cross Station into York.  I’d bought us First Class tickets into York, so we drank proper tea like our English ancestors as we made our way north.

When you, as an American, think of England as it is now, it will help you to think of it as a historical theme-park. It is clean, well-kept, easy to get around in but you do a lot of walking, and while many things are free, they do make you pay theme-park prices for others.

This is in particular true for York.  The center of the park--in this way of thinking--is the walled city.  There are parts of the wall that go back almost two-thousand years.

First the Romans were there; then the Saxons; then the Vikings; then the Normans.  The Normans were so damn vicious that settled that.  They made the English call cow meat beef, and once that was straight history spun on like it should.

I noticed right off that all of the people around looked like kinfolks.  I also noticed that most of them were tourists.  Hmmm, maybe after two and a half centuries making a connecting would be hard.  

We pushed on.

We visited the museums.  First the Yorkshire museum where we learned York was founded by the Romans. It was easily defended and at the confluence of two rivers. They called it Eboricum.  When the Vikings took over from the Saxons, they called it Yorvik.  The Romans had built in stone, which the Saxons had inherited, but the Vikings had built in wood and mud.  The image began to form in my mind that this was sort of a mongrel place, with many streams of the human river coming together. Maybe the English weren’t all Masterpiece Theater.

We next went to the Yorvik Viking Museum. Standing in line, I ruminated about the genetic mix of the people in the area.  I wondered if the Viking strain explained two of my daughters’ blond hair.  We were drawn into the bowels of the museum wherein there was a ride taking us through a mock-up of a Viking village.  There were roboticized figured depicting people of the village in various everyday activities including one fellow straining in a Viking outhouse.

Upon exiting the ride, we went into an exhibit of archeological finds in the area. There were skeletons which had clearly been killed by violence. There were skeletons who’d suffered malnutrition. There was pottery, weapons, coins, campfires, all manner of the accoutrement of ordinary life.

In a way that is counter-intuitive to me, the wetness of the English soil allows the preservation of organic objects.  This enabled the archeologists to stumble upon something I am sure made their day: Viking poop, a specimen of which they have preserved in the museum.

This, at last, was the connection with the place I had been looking for.  I could imagined one of the men in my family, exhausted from his exertions, turning to look upon his creation, and upon seeing it’s magnitude having a wish to share this with others.

I can hear the words in his mind.  If only there were a special building where people from all over the world could gather to take a look at this.  And, yes, they should have to pay before entering.  It is only right.

So, yes, I do now believe that my family came from this place. I believe there may be a bit of a Viking strain in us leaving blond hair in some and an appreciation of scatology in others.

An Okie in England

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am not a travel expert, though I’ve done my share of traveling recently.  It occurred to me that someone like myself with the correct level of ignorance might be the right person to help someone making a first trip to England.

Let me start out with a tip that will work for any international trip.  Take a pen on the plane and keep it handy. Also keep your passport handy.  They always make you fill out that card declaring whether you’ve been to a farm or are carrying anything interesting.  You’ll need you pen and passport number to fill it out. Do it as soon as you can, put the card in your passport, and then forget about it until you go through passport control.

Once you are done with passport control, you’ll want some local money.  I’ve always had good luck with cash machines and only rarely do I directly exchange cash.  It doesn’t hurt to have some dollars with you just in case (I find $500 is a comforting sume), but this time I only had about $20 American on me.  I hit the ATM in Heathrow for 200 pounds and my cash needs were taken care of for the  non-London part of the trip. (In London they have shop-vacs at regular intervals to suck money out of your pocket; just saying.)

You’ve got your money. Now your job is to get the hell out of Heathrow, an entirely charmless place.  For this, I recommend the Heathrow Express.  It’ll take you from Heathrow to Paddingtion Station in 15 minutes.  From there, you will need to figure out how to get to your train.  Here I am assuming that you don’t plan to stay in London. If you do, that’s great, and I’ll have more to say about London later.

Let me now make an important distinction. There are subway stations and there are railway stations. Yes, I know that subways are trains, but that is not a helpful way of thinking.  Think of them as hollow worms that you ride around in underground.

We were headed to York, so we needed to take a train that left King’s Cross Station. To get to King’s Cross we took the underground from Paddington Underground Station to King’s Cross/Saint Pancras Underground Station and then climbed up out of there to got to King’s Cross.  If you are tired and hungry by this point, there is a McDonald’s across the street from King’s Cross. No one will look askance at you if you get the Quarter Pounder.

These things all need tickets. You buy the Underground tickets at touchscreen kiosks.  Often there will be someone with a day-glo jacket about to help you. We found these folks to be very helpful.  Keep your tickets because you need them to leave the station.

I bought my train tickets online ahead of time.  I used this link.  You don’t buy your tickets directly from this site. It is a frontend for the different railways that serve the different parts of Britain. There is a different company that takes you to York, for example, than the one that takes you to Salisbury. Don’t worry, it all articulates nicely.

I got First Class tickets to take us to York. Best money I spent on the whole trip. We got to sit together as a family and they kept bringing us tea and the various accoutrements that are a part of that wonderful practice.  Tea, we discovered, has marvelous regenerative properties, as any fan of Dr. Who would know.

I am not sure that anyone looked at my ticket before we got on the train.  There were times when we needed it to get past a turnstile, but there were times when we didn’t.  On this first leg, I’d printed off the tickets, but on the rest of the trips, I used my printout to get them from the ticket office or my credit card to have them printed out from a kiosk. (Again, there are helpful agents that will direct you.)

When we arrived at the station in York, we got a cab. My plan had been to walk to the hotel because it looked like walking distance on the map--and it was walking distance--but after traveling for that length of time I, personally, get a little punchy.  I would suggest have the address of your hotel ready because they might not know where it is. There are so many bed and breakfasts it is not reasonable for any cab driver to know them all.

Another point is that you will not necessarily be able to navigate there in the way you do here. They give directions in terms of landmarks as opposed to intersections. Also their idea of what is short for walking is at odds with our.  They are a nation of walkers.  We began to tell each other to “walk like you’re English” whenever we needed to speed up.

Once at our bed and breakfast, we discovered a bus stop which we could use to get to where we needed. In our case, we just headed to the old city of York which is right next to the railway station.

One thing I did that didn’t work out well was to rent a car. I realize now that I was defeated before I began because I didn’t know what I was up against.  The problem is NOT driving on the left hand side of the road.  It is the road itself. None of the roads were designed with the automobile in mind.  It is a system left over from a gentler time when one could come to an intersection and pause to think for a moment.  Folks from the middle part of the country with the rural areas we have here have the wrong mental model to begin with.

You could with sufficient planning and forethought do it. I have confidence in you. However, you are on vacation, so act like it.  If you want to go to a smaller town you can still get there by train or by bus.  One of our more pleasing discoveries on the trip was the town of Knaresborough (nairs burro). It is the home to 14000 souls, but the train stops there.  Buses go to other small towns.  

It is not America: You don’t have to have a car!

The great thing about bed and breakfasts is they provide breakfast. Take the full breakfast because for all the walking you will be doing you will need it.

Eat in the Pubs, but remember they are not exactly like restaurants.  The ones we went to had menus on the table, but you had to go to the bar to place your order.  Try the cider. Get a pint of it if you are a man.

Find the tea shops and take tea.  As I mentioned earlier, it is wonderfully restorative.  And if it has been raining and in the fifties, the hot beverage helps.

If all else fails, there is American-style fast food.  McDonalds is almost exactly like here. KFC is trying to go native.  Beyond that I can’t say much because we tried to stick with the tea shops and pubs as we were able.

There is a lot to see in York and you don’t need my help to find it.

From York, we went to Stonehenge. This was the most poorly planned part of our trip.  You need to buy your ticket ahead for Stonehenge, but we hadn’t. We got lucky because the weather sucked in the early part of the day, so we were able to walk in.  

To get there, you go to Salisbury. We took the train from York to London King’s Cross, took the underground to Waterloo Station, and took the train to Salisbury.  Salisbury is the place you ought to stay because they’ve got a great cathedral and so forth, but we stayed at the Holiday Inn Stonehenge which is actually in Amesbury.  We took a cab out to Stonehenge from there and had a devil of a time getting one back.  I think it would be better to stay in Salisbury and take the tour bus that starts from the railway station there.

Okay, let’s talk about London.

London is expensive. The prices would be high even if they were in dollars, but they are in pounds.  There were 1.70 dollars to the pound when we were there. We left our bags at Left Luggage at Waterloo Railway Station coming back from Salisbury.  This was 10 pounds per bag for the time we left them.  We then operated with Waterloo Station as base.  It is right next to the London Eye and, in short, right in the middle of everything.

We were lucky and were able to get tickets for the London Eye on the day. I’d been trying for a week to buy them online, but my credit card company had been being difficult.  I bought a riverboat tour at the same time.  This was a mistake because I also bought a Hop-on, Hop-off tour bus ticket and they include a riverboat tour too.

The London Eye is an icon of the age and there is a nice view from there.  It is also important because you can almost always see it and it doesn’t blend in with the other buildings.  Keep it in sight and you will never be lost.

It is there on the south bank of the Thames between London Bridge and Westminster Bridge which is a happening place.  Quite frankly if you spent the afternoon there it wouldn’t be wasted.  There are street performers, cafes, and people from all over the world. We only had half a day in London, so we skipped all of the museums and simply toured it on the Hop-on, Hop-off bus. There is a blue police box right outside the Earl’s Court Underground Station, and we saw it, by gum. It’s about a 20 minute trip on the underground from Waterloo Station. You have to go to Green Court and change lines there.

English Vacation

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have minded the gap. I have ridden trains, underground and overground. I've been in train stations mighty and humble. I have waited on cabs at Stonehenge with people that I love. I've ridden in hotel shuttles with total strangers. I've driven a rented car on the left hand side of the road for one hour fifty-nine minutes of which I was trying to get it back to the place from whence I rented it.

I have stood on ancient walls and walked them.  I have stood within the walls of a church that was finished before my hemisphere was discovered and took longer to build that my country has existed.

I've drank proper Yorkshire tea. I've eaten the full English breakfast. I've had jacket potatoes and bangers and mash. I've eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken in twilight at 9pm in a place where I am not sure they know what Kentucky is. I've eaten a quarter pounder on the south bank of the Thames and was damn glad to get it.

I have scaled castles; have stood on queue; have paid to pee.

I've rented rooms, rides, and cars in a place that has been known to tax sunlight. I've bought chocolate, t-shirts, and thimbles in a place called a nation of shopkeepers.

I've been on tour buses, tour boats, and a giant ferris wheel across from a cathedral. Have listened to tour guides, both funny and dull.

I have heard people speaking my native language and have been mystified at times.

I have visited “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”

It was a good time.

NUC on Wood

By Bobby Neal Winters

A few years ago, I went through a period of building computers.  Built an Itty-bitty Ubuntu box and a media center, going through the process one piece at a time.  I liked the one piece at a time model.  You plan out your project; you order your piece for the week; you get it in the mail; then you order your next piece et cetera until it is done. Then you put it all together.

This was a great way to spread out both the expense and the joy.  And indeed as a big part of these projects are to keep my otherwise mischievous mind occupied, it was very effective. Something with four parts would take four weeks to complete and so keep me in a happy place for a whole month.

My path from computer building took me to Arduino and to Raspberry Pi. These categories are both amenable to the one piece at a time model.  

Then earlier this year I happened upon the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) computer.  This is a computer that has a tiny (four inch by four inch) motherboard but will support I3, I5, and I7 processors.  I thought that this would be great.  I could make one and put Ubuntu on it, I would have a Linux box small enough to sit alongside my Windows box but powerful enough to do something beyond the Raspberry Pi level.

And to cut to the chase, I’ve got something working. I got it all to work out today.  Let me go back to the beginning, though, and say some things that might (MIGHT) smooth the road for any of the rest of you who might want to trek down the same road.

The first thing is that I was not able to get the one piece at a time method to work out all that well. Let me explain. When you list out the pieces of a computer, what do you have:

• Case
• Power supply
• Motherboard
• CPU
• Memory
• Hard drive

I was not able to get those first four separately.  Actually, it’s not that simple. I bought the case. I have it sitting unused over to the side right now.  I wasn’t able to get a motherboard to fit it.  I looked my eyes out over the Internet, but the only ones I could find came in lots of 10.  I didn’t want 10. I wanted one.   Within my searches, I came upon a product that combined the first 4 of these.   This was a bit pricey, but it did include a lot.

Here is an opportunity to talk about the power supply.  When you make a computer--even an itty-bitty box with an ITX motherboard--you put the power supply inside.  With this type of machine it goes outside. You use the same sort of power supply that you use on your laptop, your printer, or on most of your peripherals. A mickey-mouse power cord (if you’ve seen one, no explanation is needed; if you haven’t none will do) goes into a transformer which will then connect to your computer with a jack.

Over the next couple of weeks I bought the memory and a solid state hard drive.  Okay, memory is boring.  The SSD is exciting and even--dare I say it--sexy. It was $75 for 120 GB which looks pricey if you compare it to the standard hard drive where the same money will get you 750 GB, but Lord have mercy this smokes.  You turn on your computer and your operating system is loaded.

In building computers these days, my observation has been that if it weren’t for the front-panel connections it would be as easy as putting Legos together.  This already had its equivalent of the front panel connected, so assembly was just snapping the memory cards and the solid state drive into place.

The challenge I had in putting my NUC box together came after the machine was totally assembled: installing the operating system.  As I said, the entire raison d’etre of this box was to run Linux. You can go to the Ubuntu page and download Ubuntu and even get instructions on how to install it from a USB stick. And it “installs” very quickly and easily.  The scare quotes are there because getting it to boot after you’ve gotten it installed is an issue.

I have succeeded in that.  I am not going to tell you the exact method because I am not sure it’s reproducible. It required Internet searches and fiddling with the BIOS.  Once I got it to boot, the fracking keyboard I have wouldn’t work.  I finally installed a wireless keyboard I have lying around and it worked.

I was able to get it to run headless by installing xrdp on it and using remote desktop from my windows machine to login.   At this point, I have no methodology to recommend more specific than some combination of stubbornness and patience.

Media

Media

By Bobby Neal Winters

At the hotel I stayed at in Rio, when the waiter came to fill up my cup with coffee, he knew I was a foreigner and would always ask, "Media?"  (pronounced meh-jee-a) in order to determine whether I wanted it half full with the other half milk.  This is because Brazilian coffee is strong.

I now approach "media" of my time in South America.  I will be home one week from tomorrow and this makes today effectively half-time.  There are some tentative plans, but there is no big half-time show in the works.  I would like to ride on the Sao Paulo subway, which I hear is clean and safe.  I'd like to kick around aimlessly. buying small items with the idea of improving my Portuguese.  Most of all, I need to rest a little bit because the second half is coming up as I leave for Asuncion in the morning.

Plans are (men make plans and God laughs) that I will meet the rest of the PSU-Paraguay contingent at the Sao Paulo airport tomorrow and we share the same flight to Asuncion.  We then will be together in Asuncion and I can show them the ropes, as it were. I always like to take the group to Shopping del Sol to get pineapple juice and chipa cuartro queso.  It is a great way to get calibrated.  Maybe we will dine at Bolsi? 

In any case, today I will recuperate and ready myself for the second half.

São Paulo novamente

São Paulo novamente

By Bobby Neal Winters

Today a bit after 1pm, I got on the fifth plane that I've been on since Saturday. Ordinarily, I sit silently, trying not to bother my seat-mate.  This trip the rule has been that I've sit by talkers.  Today followed the rule except that the talker was across the aisle from me.  The fellow was originally from Belgium, lived in South Africa for many years, married a Scot, and has moved back to Belgium.

Oh, yeah, and he's executive producer for the World Cup.  At least one of them.

Anyway, he kept me entertained on the flight.

Today, I finish the first quarter of my trip and I passed an important milestone I'd set for myself: Getting from the São Paulo airport to the Tryp São Paulo Paulista Hotel alive.  I took a cab.  I know the taxi Portuguese for this. It is: "Gostaria de ir para Tryp São Paulo Paulista Hotel.  However, the problem comes if the drive responds "Onde?" and wants you to give him the address.  With this very moment in mind, I got some 3 by 5 cards and wrote the address on one of them.

When I got to the airport, I took 300 reals out of the ATM and walked outside.  Much to my delight, I saw a cashiers desk with the word Taxi above it.  I went to them, showed them the card, and they directed me to a cab.  I showed the card to the cab driver, and he drove me to the hotel with Frank Sinatra playing on his stereo all the way here. It cost 126 reals. 

I am in a busy part of town. I am only two blocks off of Paulista street, which is one happening place.  There are two nice sandwich shops right next to the hotel.  Got supper for 18 reals. File mignon sandwich, batatas fritas, and a coke.  There is an ice cream parlor (a big one) across the street and a nice bookstore by it.  I bought an ingles Portugues dictionary.

I also did a bit of exploring. I walked over to Boteco, which is my favorite cafe in SP.  I will try to hit it before I leave, but you have to cross Paulista street to get there and that is a non trivial undertaking. 

I have a long day tomorrow. I will begin rolling to Sorocaba by 7am and have a full day there, getting to renew old aquaintances and create new ones.

Saida Caxias

Saida Caxias

By Bobby Neal Winters

Bob Walter told me this was a great city and he was right.  The area is wonderful.  And I love the campus.  I felt so at home there. I talked to an intercultural relations class on Monday night and had a wonderful time.  They are very curious about the United States. That is the nature of the class.

Yesterday I took part in orientation activities for the international students.  They had a Samba class for them as an ice breaker, but I didn't take part: I can't dance even in English.

Last night, Gustavo Pezzi, former student of mine, took me out for a wonderful dinner. Italian!  Great food, great wine; I ate too much. Again. We talked for hours.  

I am now packed and ready to head out to Porto Alegre and from there to São Paulo. Maybe I will add something to the blog this evening. 

Caxias do Sul

Caxias do Sul

By Bobby Neal Winters
This is my first full day in Caxias do Sul.  (If you are going to have any luck reading this, I need to tell you that Caxias is pronounced Ca-SHEE-us doo soow.  The x is pronounced sh except when it's not; they pronouce do exactly like we do; and l on the end of a word sounds like a w to my ear.)

I am just about as far south in Brazil as you can go.  This is that state of Rio Grande do Sul.  I flew into Porto Alegre and a driver brought me to Caxias.  A student who had been on exchange at PSU last semester and her family took me to the grand finale of the Festa da Uva (grape fesitval) last night.  They have quite an ethnic mix here: Indigenous Americans, Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Poles, and most recently Haitians and Sengalese.

This morning, after a nice breakfast with coffee that would put hair on your peito I went out and street-tested my Portuguese.  They can understand me and--within short boundaries--I can understand them.  I found o Banco do Brasil to use my ATM card.  (I'd tried one of the CAIXA machines to no avail.  They have consistently rejected my car in every city of Brazil, but they are conveniently located.)

My room does not have an air-conditioner, but the weather is pleasant enough that is not an issue.  The Universidade do Caxias do Sul will  pick me up at 1:30 and I will be at it until after 8.  Between now and then, I will go out and get a little lunch.  I might try a place where I bought a Pepsi.  I  "chatted" a bit there in "Portuguese" with an old guy who asked me if I were and American.  I said yes and he said he could tell because I was fat, "gordo." Nothing mean-spirited about it.  Facts are facts.  He was cooking feijoada and it really smelled good.

Speaker for the Dead

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am in the process of cleaning out my home office.  I refuse to speculate on how long it has been since the last time I did this, though an experienced archaeologist could probably make a guess.  

I proceeded in this enterprise in a methodical way.  I first took everything that had been on the floor of the office and put it out on the front porch, some of it spilling into the yard.  I then took everything that had been on my countertops and put it on the floor.  I then cleaned.

I found the bodies of dead insects;  I found money;  I  found 29 cent stamps.  I found electronic devices, writing implements, and ... cat puke.

Then came the process of putting it all back together, and as I did so I threw things away. And threw things away. And threw things away.

I am on the second day of this, and it promises to go into a third.

It has been an instructive process in discerning the things I toss away versus the things I keep.

I threw away many pounds of computer software that I’d spent a lot of money for.  This is software that I’d been storing reverently for a decade, give or take.  It’s useless now. Progress in computing has shifted it into obsolescence.

I kept DVDs, CDs miniDV tapes, and VHS tapes of family photos and movies.  I can pay people to bring the out of date stuff to the current model.

What is the difference between these two?  The software is a means to an end. The family photos and movies are an end of themselves. They are part of my memory, part of my self that I want to preserve.  In some sense, they are what I am about: my family.  Though, when pressed, I have to admit the means I use is a big part of me as well.

I just finished reading Speaker for the Dead.  It was the sequel to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. I’d seen the movie made from Ender’s Game and it inspired me to get an audiobook of the novel. Having finished the novel I had to rush to get a Kindle version of Speaker for the Dead.

In Speaker, Card continues with Ender has his protagonist.  Ender has started a quasi-religion based on speaking for the dead.  This is not given a eulogy (good word from the Greek) for the dead, but actually laying out the life of the dead person warts and all in such a way that you understood who they really were.

Ender goes through the process of sifting through the garbage of a man’s life and in doing so pieces together who that man was and presents it to the community in such a way that reconciliation is possible for him, even in death.

The novel has many mysteries and surprised that I will not even allude to. There are no spoilers in the sequel.  However, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer up Card for some praise.

Card has grasped in a way I’ve not presently so clearly elsewhere in science fiction the nature of man as a creature of the community.  Our communities create us and if we cannot find a place within them then we suffer.  (The language I grew up hearing to describe this is that we are lost.)

I believe that it’s Card’s experience as a Mormon which has given him this understanding of the importance of community.  He himself seems to have recognized this as a commonality with Catholicism, as the community in the book is a Catholic one.

Card has crafted little presents for those who like to find theological symbols in their literature.  I will not spoil them, but there are prizes to be found for those who know a little theology whether they be Catholic or Mormon.

In the end, whether you share his particular religious views or not, Card is a craftsman with a deep understand of human nature.  If you like science fiction, religion, and good writing, I suggest you give Speaker for the Dead a try.

The Old Man in the Cave

By Bobby Neal Winters

It’s happened.

They’ve taken over.

The computers, I mean.  They’ve taken over.  

I am writing this on a computer, so you might think that I’m being brave to call them out on it, but they are so ensconced they don’t care.  When the Nazis were in Paris did they mind it when the French acknowledged they were running things?  Of course not.  Same with the computers.  When you say they’ve taken over, you’re just giving them their props.

If you admit it early enough, they might let you live.

I’ve known for a while, but spending an hour and a half on Facebook this afternoon drove it home.

Ninety minutes of clicking on “Like” and sharing things my friends had put on their walls that no one I know had originated.  The question came to me whether anyone had originated them or whether they had simply bubbled up from the bowels of the Internet.

We’ve become Facebook fanatics, cellphone slaves, YouTube yutzes.

I am old, old enough to remember Star Trek the original series in new episodes.  There was a character named Harry Mudd who was a bit of a scoundrel.  He wound up on a planet that was populated by robots who were intent on taking over the Enterprise.  When asked how they would do that Norman, who was the robot leader, said, “We will help them.”

Computers are tremendous tools.  

There was a day when I had my lectures on notes and I taught by transferring those note to the board.  Then came PowerPoint and I put those lectures on PowerPoint.  Now I project them onto the screen rather than copy them to the blackboard.

One day I went into the classroom and the computer was down.  My first thought was that I would have to cancel class.  It was only after great mental effort that I was able to remember that I actually know this stuff.  I found the chalk and proceeded to lecture the class.

It was a powerful moment of self-discovery.

We are humans and one of our defining characteristics as a species is that we use tools.  Tools extend our reach.  We organize our activities and this extends our intelligence.  Yet there are trade-offs.

When travelling between airports in Latin America and the US, one notices a difference in the level of organization.  Airports in the US are much more user-friendly.  This is more than just a difference of language.  Airports in the US flow more smoothly from the point of view of the traveller. It is more relaxing because it requires me to use less of my own intelligence to get around.  The intelligence had been taken from the traveller and transferred to the design of the airport.  

This reduces stress, of course, and I am not going to suggest we make our airport less transparent.  But we’ve been giving things we know over to machines and environmental structures for years. We are living in a world where we require machines and organizational structures--that we don’t understand!--simply to exist.

Can you build a computer?  

Very few of you can answer that yes.

I can, but that is only true because others have organized a computers production to be as easy a putting together tinker toys.  

Those who can do that are ever more rare.

Are world is being designed by an elite that is getting rarer and more remote.  Our thoughts, our likes, our dislikes are being monitored, analyzed, and catalogued.  We are just the batteries that are running the Matrix, eh, Coppertop?

In the Twilight Zone, there was that episode about the old man in the cave who told the survivors of the nuclear holocaust how to live their lives.  When it was discovered that the old man in the cave was a computer, there was an uprising.

While that was an insightful series, that ending was false.  We’ve know the old man in the cave is a computer, and we’ve done nothing.

Odds are.  If you are reading this, it is too late.

The Grey

By Bobby Neal Winters

Mr. Virgil Gantt taught us in high school literature that there were three kinds of conflict: Man versus Man; Man versus Nature; and Man Versus Himself.  One might wonder whether they are all three aspects of the third or if there is a fourth all-encompassing Man Versus God.  Let’s leave that question, at least for now.

The Grey, a movie starring Liam Neeson, portrays all of these conflicts.  While Man does encompass male and female, in The Grey we might well forget that.  In my own personal taxonomy, it is what I classify as a Man’s movie.  

That part of it begins with the cast. Though women are important to the film, there are only two women in the cast who appear other than through memory or anecdote. One is a bartender and the other is a stewardess. The women who are otherwise present are wives, lovers, and daughters.  Their presence is as important to the story as that of the men, but they are present through a man’s perception of them.  They tell as much about the man as they do about themselves.

Liam Neeson plays John Ralph Ottaway whose job is hunting wolves for an oil company in a remote part of Alaska.   He is on the way out of the wilderness with a plane load of other oilfield men when the plane crashes in the mountains.  The group of survivors define axes that illustrate the masculine space: smart/stupid; aggressive/meek; spiritual/godless; wise/fool.

That which follows contains spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.

The could’ve written a movie wherein everyone immediately fell in behind Neeson’s character and after adventures he leads them to safety.  That has been done many times and isn’t bad, but this is not that film.  Most do follow his lead. The ones who don’t die quickly.  Those who do die less quickly.  After a certain point, one realizes that everyone in this movie is going to die. The question is how?

Just exactly like life.

In looking at the group dynamics of the survivors, we are asked to notice how much like wolves they are. They group together to survive; they fight each other for leadership; they establish a hierarchy.  The Romans said, “Homo homini lupus.” Man is the wolf of man.  (They might not have meant it in this sense, but I love the phrase so much, that I am going to keep using it until I use it correctly.)

All of the men carry around the women in their lives with them.  The better the man, the higher he esteems his woman, or is that vice versa?

Neeson’s character is continually flashing back to his wife who we learn through his internal monolog has left him.  We are confused because his memories contain no bitterness.  She is remembered almost as an angel of light and, much like an angel, continually telling him not to be afraid.  It is only in the very last moments of the movie when we see the IV drip and the hospital bet that we understand.

Each of the men meet death.  Neeson’s character the last.

Before his end, he calls to God and curses Him, berating him for a sign, for some help.  This being the movie it is, there is neither.  Neeson gets up then saying, “I’ll just have to do it myself.”

And at that, Neeson meets death remembering a poem taught him by his father, “Once more into the fray / once more into the fray / to live and die on this day / to live and die on this day” and using the skills he’d learned as a man.

Ultimately while this is a man’s movie about men and being a man, it is also about the struggle of life.  There is only one way out.  How do you face it?

Yerba mate

Yerba Maté

By Bobby Neal Winters

The mortar and pestle pounding the maté sounded like horses’ hooves on cobble stones as we walked past the corner and crossed Avenida Estigarribia. We then turned and headed east.

This is our last full day. Tomorrow we began travel home. As my cousin Mary told me, "No hay lugar como el hogar."  There is no place like home.

Asuncion downtown wakes slowly. This is the tropics, and the length of day and night vary only a little from season to season. We are still in winter, but the daily high is already in the 90s. At night it cools off a bit. At night you can move without the burning sun staring down at you. During the afternoon you retreat into the dark buildings with their high ceilings. At sundown, after six, you can emerge from protection and live again.

The morning is pleasant. There is a nice breeze and we try to stick to the north side of the street where the shade is. We are south of the equator and must adjust to our new reality.

Others do the same. And everywhere there are men with their guampas and bombillas drinking maté.  

Maté is made of herbs and drunk in a tea.  It is medicinal. It is ubiquitous. It is Paraguay.

We go to the sidewalk market around the Plaza to buy souvenirs. Jean gets a purse for herself and I get a mortar and pestle. We step out of the shade of the market and there is a teenage girl with a mortar and pestle crushing herbs into maté.

We walk past the fancy pharmacy with a large contingent of rent-a-cops and cross the street heading east. On the sidewalk in front of a fancy clothing store, there is a man sleeping in his own vomit on the sidewalk. No one seems to notice. No one seems concerned. None of the rent-a-cops are rousting him. Who is my neighbor?

We go on past.

We ultimately walk past him several times over the course of four hours.

We go to Plaza de Uruguayana and visit one of the bookstores there. We walk out the south side of the park and--of all things--there is a man with mortar and pestle grinding maté.

It is approaching noon now, we are getting hungry. We go seeking a place to get a lomito and succeed. It is good. It is a restaurant and so the lomito is not as good as the ones you get from street vendors who sell them. My rule of thumb is that if you are not a bit scared, then the lomito won't be as good.

We start back to the hotel and pass were the man had been sleeping. He is gone, but I know it's the right place because the vomit is still there.

We come back to the hotel, where the maté man is gone from his corner, retreated into the cool of some dark building.

We do the same.

On the Road

By Bobby Neal Winters

Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath's as hard as kerosene
Townes Van Zandt

I've been on the road for a couple of weeks. First Brazil, now Paraguay. Along with my wife, we are living out of suitcases. The hotels have been nice, so this has definitely not been a canoe trip down the Amazon, but when you are a homeboy, life on the road is a stress.
Currently the contents of my pocket is a mixture of dollars, reals, and guarani. In Brazil, pricing something was the exercise of dividing by two. Here in Paraguay, it means dividing by 5000. The rhythms of the road are different from place to place. Practices which are the law in the states might very well get you killed either here or in Brazil. You must keep you head about you.
In Brazil, the people on the street did not speak English and outside of airports and other tourist centered places, there was very little English; some in Brasilia, but it's a government city. If you know a little Spanish in Brazil, the best strategy is to extrapolate Latin from your Spanish and then imagine how the Portuguese ruined it. It also helps to imagine they ruined some things differently just out of spite. For example, they pronounce the letter r at the beginning of a syllable like an English h. So Renaissance sounds like Henaissance. This is so silly, you begin to think someone is just playing a trick on you, but they are deadly serious. When the plane landed in Río, they said welcome to Hee-oh. So if it is a trick, they really care about it and it's best not to call them on it.
Santo from Spanish is São in Portuguese. They say it is pronounced sow, but it you say sow they will shake their heads. The one thing I know from my reading is that it's not pronounced Say-oh, but if you pronounce it Say-oh, they are happier than if you say sow.
As I said above, there are different rhythms. They eat late here. When we eat ate American times, 6:30 or 7 pm, we have the restaurant to ourselves if the restaurant is even open. In Río and São Paulo, the student fairs went to nine, so we put off supper until then. We felt much less out of place, but eating that late is not really conducive to sleeping well for us.
We've had this weekend off in Asuncion, and I've taken a siesta each afternoon. I've been amazed at how easily that has come to me. The days have been hot, in the nineties. We've walked in the mornings, found lunch at noon, and then come back to the room to crash. It has been a glue that has held me together.
Today I have business. I need to be sharp. Tomorrow the same is true. Then the trip home on Wednesday. Students to teach, students to help, grass to mow, and my own bed.