A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal
By Bobby Neal Winters
We’ve all been part of an experiment.  I will leave it to the folks with the aluminum foil hats to determine whether the experiment was implemented by Big Brother or by Nature.  But an experiment it has been.
In this experiment, enforced upon us by COVID 19--All Hail COVID 19!--we’ve determined the things that can be done electronically--or I should say--differently with the aid of the Internet.
We can order food online and have it delivered--contactlessly--to our front door here in Pittsburg, Kansas, America.  We’ve done it ourselves.  We’ve also learned we can call it in and pick it up at the curb.  Both are steps forward, but here’s the thing: The calling it in part is awkward.  My time and the time of whoever I am talking to are tied up for the length of the call.  It is so much more convenient to have the option to put in the order on an app.  Yes, there is some continuing expense associated with it, but I think it will pay for itself.
During this crisis, there has been some occasion for Congress to do some work.  This has been strained because the nature of their work requires communication--presumably face-to-face--put the very thing they were fighting contra-indicated that they should be face to face lest they spread the disease.
Was I the only one wondering whether they could do it by Zoom meeting?  Seriously, they speak to empty rooms all the time, why can’t they just talk to their computer screen.
That having been said, with the sort of communication technology we have, do they really need to be personally in Washington at all?  Couldn’t they stay in their home districts spending more time rubbing elbows with the actual people they are supposed to represent?  Going into Washington, they run a risk of getting a disease far worse for America than COVID 19: Potomac Fever.
There have been numerous reports of how expensive it is for our representatives to live in DC so that you have to be wealthy to have the job.  What if they just visited DC periodically and lived in their home states the rest of the time.
Having said that, is there still a reason so many of the government bureaus have to be housed there?  Could we farm them out to the middle of the country? Those of us out here in fly-over country would get to see our federal tax dollars spent in our own states.  The people working in those offices would get to know this part of the country better.  Maybe they would view us with less contempt if they got to know us better and vice versa. 
This is actually a bigger idea than just government. Doesn’t our communication technology allow us to reconsider the idea of the big city?
Cities have been a paradox for Civilization from the very beginning. On one hand, they allow us to communicate better.  We exchange ideas. Idea is piled upon idea to come up with something completely new: I’ve got peanut butter; I’ve got chocolate--look a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
But cities have also been places where diseases were exchanged.  Long, long before there was COVID 19, there was smallpox, cholera, the bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and good old-fashioned dysentery.  They weren’t created in the City, but they came to the City in order to fester there and be distributed.
What if our cities were less dense because their populations had been distributed out to the rest of the country?  Folks from NYC could migrate to Kansas City, folks from Kansas City could migrate to Pittsburg.  Hey, for $70 a month, I’ve got smokin’ internet at my house. We’ve got three people working from home here and one day last week we were all three in Zoom meetings at the same time. (Actually, one Zoom and two Team, but you get my point.) Even here in a place where “this ain’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here” we are connected, running, and doing work.
This may happen organically because of two things.  The first is that this is not going to be the last time we have a disease like this jump out at us; the next disease might not be so nice.  The second is look at the difference in death counts and number of diagnosed cases.  There is no comparison between the big cities and the small towns in this one.  Yes, we have smaller numbers, but we also have a lower rate of spread.  We don’t have to rub up against each other on public transportation or as we walk down the street.
My modest proposal: Let’s start moving out to smaller towns.  Let’s distribute our capacities around the country as much as we can.  We’ve got our eggs in too few baskets.
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. )

You Were Meant for Me

By Bobby Neal Winters
I hear the clock, it's 6 a.m.
I feel so far from where I've been
Jewel
Science says man is a social animal.  God says, and He said it first, It is not good for man to be alone.
The folks who are worried about the health of the nation say for us to isolate ourselves.
There is tension.
Even if it weren’t for the economy, if it weren’t for restaurants closing down, if it weren’t for stores closing, if it weren’t for retirement account (OH NO, she’s gone, she’s gone), we would still be yearning to reopen the world because we--as humans--yearn to be around other humans.
We need the voices, we need the faces, we need to be able to touch, to smell (I’m thinking of you Joe Biden).  We need to be physically present with people.
I’ve been in Microsoft Teams meetings on a weekly basis.  If you have the software, you can schedule them on your Outlook Calendar. While they are set for a particular time, you can show up early and visit with people before the meeting, just like regular meetings.  And we do show up early.  We need to see faces; we need to hear voices; even of people who “just work with.” 
I’ve a couple of groups I meet with on a regular basis, one for Bible study and one to study secular books.  We’ve set them up to meet over Zoom.  These groups have continued in their particular ways.  We’ve held the groups together, preserved their continuity, kept the fire alive, continued spinning the thread.
And we keep up with each other.
But it’s not the same as face to face.
I’ve noticed something about meeting online.  We tend to stray from the topic less.  There are fewer bash Trump digressions; there are fewer humorous asides.  We tick our way down the agenda and get the work done.  What used to take an hour and ten minutes can now be done in 30.  Then we click off the screen and retreat back into the isolation of our own homes, our own offices, our own heads.
Fighting to get outside of ourselves is a battle we all fight.  I am an introvert by nature, but I still recognize the need for other people. The mythological symbol for Man freeing himself from his Mother is a battle with a Dragon, but that battle is manifest in many ways.  We are expulsed from the womb and we cry, missing that warm isolation.  But those of us who go on to be healthy individuals continually fight to break barriers to go further in the world.  While we will always want and need the warmth of a home, having tasted the wider world, having found Others in the world we’ve grown fond of, we miss our sojourns out of our homes.
My back is better.  I’ve lost the weight that I aimed to lose, and I can walk without pain now.  I can walk out into our beautiful--now empty--world.  I do see people out.  We keep our distance.  I raise my hand in the Vulcan salute of “Live long and prosper” and those who get it, smile back at me...from a distance.
We are not meant to be alone.  Like God said.  Like Jewel said, “You were meant for me, and I was meant for you.”
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. )

A Reflection on Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

I remember a sermon many years ago by Pastor David Weible.  He made a remark, that Jesus didn't have a girl friend but if he had had one it would've been Mary Magdalene.  I remember another sermon by Tedd Inman who'd said that many who were musically inclined didn't really think much of the hymn "In the Garden," but once one became aware that it was written to be through the eyes of Mary Magdalene as she encountered the Risen Christ, one was better able to make a connection with it and get past its putative defects.
But John's description of the Resurrection is different than, say, Luke's.  Luke went to the trouble of naming several of the women who found the empty tomb, but John only singles out Mary Magdalene. He leaves out the women's encounter with the heavenly beings and instead has the encounter of Mary Madgalene in the Garden with Jesus.
To appreciate this, one must be cognizant of the fact that John's Gospel is very metaphorical in the sense that he uses a lot of symbols. One can read his account of the Baptism of Jesus, as a recapitulation of the creation of the world.  I suggest you read it and the beginning of the book of Genesis at the same time to understand what I am saying.
So back to singling out Mary Magdalene. She is symbolic for the Church, the Bride of Christ.  Because she is going to do the work of taking care of the dead, she finds the empty tomb.  Through her sorrow by the side of the tomb, her tears are the waters of creation.  It is through her sorrow that she is rewarded by seeing the Risen Christ.
Mary Magdalene's suffering was rewarded by seeing Christ, however fleeting that was.  Let us reflect on that on this very, very odd Easter.

He is Risen!

What dreams may come?

By Bobby Neal Winters
I had a weird dream the other night.  I was in a house with my brother atop a small hill, more of a rise actually.  The grass was dormant and only a diffuse light came from the sky.  In the backyard, there was a ditch.  I call it a ditch not to call it a lateral line. There were two groups of people, one on each side of the ditch, and they were fighting each other with guns.  My brother and I joined the same side of the fray.  I had a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun that changed to a single-shot during the course of the fight in the manner of dreams.
Before this had gone too long, a group of Indian Princesses appeared on the scene. I know they were Indian princesses because they were dressed in the same manner as a sister of one of my school classmates (Harlan Shields) did when she was named Chickasaw princess.  The Princesses danced in a line which separated the warring parties.  Their dance and song told the story of their people and it made those watching weep and put down their arms.
I have no idea what that means.
Does it have anything to do with the current pandemic? Probably.  I’ve been and will be thinking about it.  I’ve got a lot of time to think.
I’ve been thinking about how disease is spread.  We have a six-year-old grandson who goes to school.  If there is a cold going around, he gets it.  He brings it to his house.  There he exposes his little brother, his dad, and his mom.  That family forms a small hub in a network.  If his little brother gets it, he’ll take it to his preschool; if his dad gets it, he takes it to his coworkers; if his mom gets it, she takes it to her workplace and exposes her coworkers.  This is a long way of saying they all take it to different hubs in the network.
In mathematical terms, we have a graph: People are the edges and locations are the nodes.  If you look at the Johns Hopkins map closely, you will see this. You have huge hubs of disease spread in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. These are connected to other places by the people who travel between those places.  
You can see Kansas City on the map.  There is a big dot on Johnson County. If you look directly south of Johnson County, you can see several dots all in a straight line.  That straight line is Highway 69. 
Our various networks are what make up civilization.  Commerce flows along the networks; knowledge flows along the networks; civilization flows along the networks.
But, sadly, disease also flows along the networks.
What we’ve been asked to do, is to pause our lives for a little while.  We need to slow exchange of face-to-face communication for a long enough time to give this disease time to die.  That is the best case scenario.  If everyone just stayed in their own little group, not making contact with any other group for a long enough time (a day wouldn’t be long enough, a year would be too long), this would be over.
But we cannot be that severe.  We have to have food; we have to have medicine.  So it is going to last longer.  We might have a halftime break over the summer with it starting up again in the fall.
In the meantime, did you know that you can have face-to-face group visits over Facebook Messenger?  If you’ve got a webcam your grandkids can see you and you can see your grandkids because they all have cameras.
If you don’t have the equipment, it might be time to upgrade.  It would help the economy: It’s patriotic. Order in some food from DoorDash; pick up a curbside pizza at Brick + Mortar; sleep in; mow your lawn.
Keep the faith.
Oh, and do you have any idea what my dream was about?
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. )