Percy, Tyson, and Pepe La Pew

By Bobby Neal Winters

Many years ago I put forth my theories of “Cat Physics” and “Cat Chemistry.”  Every home has a cat number attached to it. The cat number of my house is three and the universe conspires in ruthless ways to maintain that number.  If a cat died, a new one appeared, and, by doing so, preserved the cat number. If a new cat turned up, then one of the old ones (or perhaps even the new one) would meet some sort of--sometimes grisly--end. 

You don’t mess with physics.

But time rolls on, and all sorts of things have happened. We are down to two cats (Tyson and Tubby) and one dog (Percy). This has been the case for so long a time now that I thought I would have to scrap the theory. However, events have transpired that have given me cause to believe the theory of conservation of cat number can be saved. 

Percy is a cocker spaniel, a black cocker spaniel with bits of white thrown in.  Percy is not the most aggressive of animals. This is a polite way of saying he is an absolute wuss. He’s scared of me; he’s scared of other dogs; he’s scared of children.

He is not, by way of contrast, scared of cats.

No.

Much the reverse.

Indeed, he is very much enamored of Tyson. Very much.  Very much and not in appropriate ways. At any opportunity, Percy will attempt to share with Tyson that “special hug” reserved for mommies and daddies in private.

Tyson (who is an outdoor cat) will for his part endure these attentions when the weather is cold. Whenever the door is open, he will rush into the house and put up with being pestered until he can find his special hiding place about the heating vent.

The interactions between these two bring to mind the old Merrie Melodies series of Pepe LaPew cartoons. (These are still available on Youtube, by the way.)

My younger readers may not have been exposed to these because they are far from being politically correct, so let me describe them directly.

Pepe La Pew was a skunk.  He was a French skunk, hence the name. In each of the cartoons, he fell in love with an American cat and would pursue her.  The pursuit was in spite of her--at best--indifference to him.  No, it was not indifference. The cat was always repulsed by and terrified of Pepe. He stank and was of a different species. She always ran in a complete panic.

The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons were ran over and over when I was a child, but now not so much. It is not difficult to see why they stopped being run. One can easily interpret Pepe La Pew as being a sexual predator and ignoring the “no means no” ethic of today.

Alternatively, one could regret that we've been robbed of a teaching metaphor.  Pepe was completely oblivious that his attentions were unwanted by the female in question. We’ve shelved a resource that we could refer to when a man is pursuing a woman who does not want to be pursued. 

Perhaps it’s just as well. I suppose that no man would want to admit to himself that he’s the human equivalent of a skunk.  The fact that Pepe continues in his pursuit because he believes the cat is just playing hard to get could be considered problematic as well.

With this background now established, let me now say that Pepe La Pew is being played out in my out in my house on a regular basis. 

It’s uncanny sometimes because we have hardwood floors. They don’t provide much friction for a fast start. Because of this, Tyson and Percy run in place for a while before their feet catch the floor, just like in the cartoons.

We try to keep Tyson outside, but he is black and blends in well with the shadows. When a door opens during cold weather, he is ready and makes the dash into the warmth, knowing that he will have to endure the unwanted affection from Percy.

Patience with this behavior is wearing thin. At some point, our dear Percy might make a trip for “elective” surgery that will put an end to this, once and for all.

In the meantime, I am living in a politically incorrect cartoon.

I suppose we all are.

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 Three-Body Problem

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve just finished going through the audiobook version of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen).  If you like hard science-fiction, I recommend it, but the word “hard” there carries multiple meanings. It is not an easy book.

It’s made me think.

There is a line from The Lord of the Rings that comes into my head periodically: “Some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth.”

We are in danger of forgetting that we are animals. We are, in fact, quite dangerous animals.  The error of forgetting that we are dangerous animals is self-correcting. When we forget, we are often reminded of it again in very concrete ways: the French Revolution; the Holocaust; the Cultural Revolution.

I mention the Cultural Revolution because it comes up in The Three-Body Problem. This is something most Americans are at best vaguely aware of. It is enough for us to keep track of our own atrocities. The TBP contains an account of a professor of theoretical physics who is beaten to death by a group of 15-year-old girls, who had been stirred into a frenzy of revolutionary zeal. 

I almost mis-used the word “righteousness” for zeal because this type of zeal is often associated with religion. While far too much blood has been shed in religious causes, religion does not have a monopoly here.

Part of forgetting that we are animals is the self-hatred that comes with it.  By self-hatred, I don’t mean to refer to a person hating himself, but to a person developing a hatred of the whole human race.

This is something that arises in the novel in connection with the Cultural Revolution but also in connection with the environmental movement.

I want to tread lightly here because I believe in taking care of the environment. In my personal interpretation of the scripture, I believe that Man was created to take care of the Earth--the plants, the animals, everything--for God, and that we are accountable to God for the job we do.   Even if we all agreed on that--and I truly doubt that we do--there is enough room for interpreting the details to keep us arguing for a long, long time.

Liu allows us to see that there are some among the environmental movement who hate the human race.  While they weep gallons at the extinction of a species of bird, they would not shed a tear if the human race disappeared forever. 

There are not many environmentalists like this, but they are there.

He also allows us to see that those who are too narrowly focused on the immediate needs of humans in the short-term can do needless, long-lasting damage to the environment. The thoughtless (read that word) exploitation of resources can be ultimately harmful to the human race.

There is a definite current in the TBP about the dangers of un-restrained zeal, whether that be in communism or environmentalism. We could no doubt add capitalism to that as well. 

For me, it took a while to figure out who the hero of this book actually is. 

The hero in a science fiction book is usually the first scientist who appears. Not so here.  It is a police detective named Da Shi who appears quite late. He’s crude; he’s obnoxious; but he saves the day and provides a ray of hope at the end.

There is not a shortage of villains.

The author has a warmth for the people in the country-side that shows through clearly, though he recognizes their foibles. He also recognizes the foibles and the fragility of intellectuals.

The title of the book, the Three-Body Problem, refers to an “unsolvable” mathematical problem. I put the quotes there because the solution requires a broadening of the idea of what a solution means.

The mathematical three-body problem is about the movement of celestial bodies. The two-body problem is solved: a planet circles its sun in an ellipse. It can be figured out with a formula. The general three-body problem cannot be solved in that way. It requires broadening one’s definition of what a solution is. One can know the truth, but that truth is no longer so specific as to be particularly useful.

Liu treats this part of the science in the book accurately. I was pleased as mathematics is not often dealt with in science fiction. In the tradition of all good science fiction, he science is accurate to the limit of current theories, though he does--in the tradition of the field--extrapolate to the point where the “science” is more like magic.

I’ll close as I opened.  I recommend this to science-fiction readers with the warning that it is challenging.

I understand that there is a series on Netflix...

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.

Feeling Like Seven

 Feeling Like Seven 

By Bobby Neal Winters

Christmas has passed and we have all exchanged our gifts.  As a grandpa looking at his, I delight in the childlike wonder my grandsons exhibit, especially the wonder shown by the youngest.  At seven the world is still full of magic.

What we are reminded of while watching our grandchildren is that humans are like trees: We grow outward as we grow older. A tree grows taller and adds layers to itself, but that sapling that it began as is still there in the middle.  Indeed, that sapling in the middle gives a basic shape to everything that follows.

My Grandpa Byrd was a carpenter. He was until the day he died.  He’d kept his good mind almost to the end, but, as he was in the process of passing, he spent a lot of his time in a dream that was taking him back over the events of his life. He lay in bed having conversations with former co-workers with whom he was building. He used technical carpenter language which I cannot share in a family publication.

He never lost the wonder.

My parents would buy educational things for my brother and me: Magnets; magnifying glasses; such as that.

Magnifying glasses make things bigger. You can start fires with them. You can kill slow-moving insects with them. Don’t ask me how I know that last one.

Magnets can make things move at a distance. As Bruce Daniel, Professor of Physics, now deceased, once said, “You’ll never get closer to magic than that.”

My parents would buy us these things, and we would naturally show them to our grandfather. More often than you would expect, he would obtain these exact same items for himself at the TG&Y there in Ada.

Though he had been a carpenter and a guard on a chain gang; had buried two wives and raised two families; that seven-year-old with eyes open in wonder was still within him.

What brings this to a sharp point at the current time is a gift that my youngest grandson received: It was a UV resin set.

It occurs to me that this might require a bit of explanation. A resin is an organic polymer. Resins can come from nature. Amber is a resin.  Synthetic resins are available and very useful. The idea is that at first they are in a liquid form (like tree sap) and then they become solid (like amber).

I’ve become familiar with them because I want to use them in my woodworking.  There are times when after having spent hours with your wood, sizing it, shaping it, sanding it, joining it you make a slip and a small piece of it falls out.  Sometimes you can glue that back; often you cannot.  If you can’t glue the piece back, it would be nice if you had something that would fill the void.

Resin looks like a good solution.  In particular, I’ve had hopes for epoxy resin. Epoxy resin comes in two components, each of which is a liquid. You mix them together and they harden after time.

That last phrase “after time” is key here. 

How much time? 

Sometimes I’ve put the mixture in the void and it has all leaked out and then got hard.  By way of contrast, there have been occasions where it has gotten hard as I was mixing it.  Indeed, it got hard so fast that I couldn’t get the popsicle stick I was stirring it with out in time.  I was left with an epoxy resin popsicle that had the shape of the paper cup I was mixing it in.

I’ve gotten epoxy resin to do what I wanted on exactly one occasion.

But UV resin is different. 

There is no mixing. You have resin in an opaque bottle. You then squeeze it out where you need it and shine some UV (ultra-violet) light on it.  After a couple of minutes, it’s hard. The UV light--that you can’t even see--begins the hardening process.  It is, in short, like magic.

Someone had gotten my seven-year-old grandson a UV resin kit for Christmas and left it under the tree.

No sooner had he shown it to me and explained what it did than I had my phone out and placed an order on Amazon.

I was being like my Grandpa Byrd, but I didn’t even have to go to TG&Y.

I’ve already used it to fill a void in a box I am making out of oak that I reclaimed from a palette. It worked like a charm. It worked like magic.

It’s great to feel like seven 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.

 Save Me

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been listening to music in my garage again. A song I’d heard before caught my attention in a new way.  It was the song “Save Me” by Jelly Roll, but the thing that caught my attention wasn’t that this was a song by Jelly Roll. It’s a duet. The other half belongs to Laney Wilson of “Wild Flowers, Wild Horses” fame.  The duet is an old art form which has a comfortable home in country music.

As practiced in country music, the duet explores the relationship between man and woman.  While I can’t say that it grows out of the tradition of the Song of Songs from the Old Testament which is written as a poetic dialog, it is definitely in harmony with that tradition.  The male and female voice each explores its own side of the same situation.

The relationship between women and men is a paradox. It is symmetric and asymmetric at the same time. There are two sides: male and female.  They are on one hand seeking the same thing; but on the other seeking something different. When their shared purpose is achieved fully, the human race continues one more round. However, once that new life is begun, there are asymmetrical consequences. The woman bears those consequences and the man must be convinced to share the burden.

Like the old joke about the bacon and egg breakfast: Both are necessary; the hen is involved but the pig is committed. 

A song which demonstrates this paradox of symmetric-asymmetry well is “Stay in the Truck” by Hardy, again with Laney Wilson.  It demonstrates it so well that you might miss that it’s a duet. This song explores dark, dark corners of the male/female relationship. In its harsh, earthy art, it opens questions that would be perhaps uncomfortable, perhaps unwise to talk about openly. 

But we need to ask them, at least to ourselves.

In the history of country music, there have been pairs of singers who were prolific in their production of duets. I used “pairs” instead of couples because I don’t think they were all romantically involved. Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty; Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers; Johnny Cash and June Carter; George Jones and Tammy Wynette. 

Even as I look through this list of names I see symmetric-asymmetry. One of each pair is almost always dominant: Loretta over Conway; Dolly over Kenny; Johnny over June. Of all of them, George and Tammy seem the most evenly matched.  

The duets they collectively produced run from the happy little throw away of “Louisiana Woman/Mississippi Man” by Loretta and Conway to the tragic “Golden Ring” by George and Tammy.

Having the advantage of this history to build on, it seems to me the duets of late have become more artful and nuanced in the exploration of the relationship.

“I remember everything” with Luke Bryan and Kacey Musgove is subtle. The language used is quite poetic, but the interpretation by the singers is masterful. This is a song that could be sung by one person. However, sharing the verses among the two brings new meaning as by application of their art each brings different nuances to the exact same lines.

Of all of the songs I’ve mentioned, “Save Me” brings a sacred perfection to the genre. Jelly Roll begins,

Somebody save me, me from myself

I've spent so long living in hell.

He’s not a knight in shining armor rushing to save her. He’s calling out himself for help, for salvation.

Laney’s verse begins,

What if the night sky was missin' the moon?

There were no shootin' stars to use wishin' on you

This seems different. In her interpretation, we hear her as a separate person, the more stable of the couple, but as the chorus comes we see she is broken herself. They are two people whose broken edges mesh with each other.

Like “I remember everything,” “Save Me” could be sung as a solo with a single voice.  The words would not need to be changed, but oh, so much would be lost.

Herein lies the perfect metaphor for marriage. I can’t explain what I mean by that. You either understand me or you don’t.

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.

 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.