Death by the Numbers

Death by the Numbers
By Bobby Neal Winters
My education is in math.  I like to program computers. I’ve been learning how to use software that allows me to tabulate data.  And I have access to the internet.
This is a deadly combination especially these days.
You can access the COVID 19 data the New York Times tabulates with ease.  They keep the data on a county by county basis and this allows me to put it together in ways that are interesting to me rather than to the folks at the New York Times.  
For example, they’ve been keeping a cumulative account of cases and deaths.  I am interested in the new cases and the new deaths.  This is easy to get: You subtract yesterday’s totals from today’s.  
I do this and I graph it, and when I am in the mood, I share the graph with my Facebook friends.  It is an interesting exercise because real data is ‘spikey.’  The people who get the disease react as individuals and some get tested sooner, some get tested later.  This means that people who get exposed at the same time might get tested sooner or later than the rest of the group.  This means there might be fewer people tested on one day and more on another.  As a consequence there is either an increase or a decrease in the numbers.
As a cure to this, there is a standard technique for smoothing the data called a running average or a rolling average.  I calculate a running average for the previous seven days.  It brings the high numbers low and the low numbers high, smoothing things out.  The result of this is that you can spot trends.  
It doesn’t make for good headlines, though, because you can’t point to a single data point to say either “The number of cases is dramatically up” or “The number of cases has fallen drastically” for a single day.
I can also look at the data for Kansas City as a whole, rather than just the Kansas or the Missouri parts.  In addition, I can look at our area as a whole.  I do this two ways: A nine-county region and a 22-county region, both centered at Pittsburg.  In both cases, the numbers are relatively small.  In the 22-county region, there was one day with 3 deaths.  Yes, even one death is too many, but there is no comparison with the 1500 some deaths they had in one day in New York City.
To those who say, yes, but New York City has a higher population, proportionally they have had 1500 deaths per million population while the 22-county region surrounding us has had 28 deaths per million population.  They have had it much, much, much worse than us.
The next is a sensitive topic. COVID 19 has affected the elderly much worse than the young.  I came upon some CDC data that breaks it down by age.  Using data from the last week in May, one-third of the deaths have been people over the age of 85; almost 60 percent of the deaths are people over 75; 80 percent, people over 65; 92 percent, people over 55; 97.5 percent, people over 45.  
The flip side of this is that only about 2.5 percent of the people who have died are under the age of 45. (While this is a small percentage, over 2000 people in this age group have died in the US.)
Here is where I need to be very careful, and you do too because there are a lot of numbers here. If you are in your 20s, you consider anyone over 45 to be old.  I live with twentysomethings, so I know.  If you as a twentysomething know anyone who has died, that person--in your mind--has lived a good long life of at least 45 years.
This is what is called conditional data.  These are percentages of people who have died. For New York, which is the easiest to calculate, if you got the disease, there was about an 8 percent chance you died.  For people under 45, this would work out, roughly,  to about 2 in a thousand. That sounds small, but if you were going to a football game that 10,000 people were attending and you knew a gunman was going to kill 20 of those, would you go to the game?
But here’s the thing.  They aren’t planning to “go to the game,” i.e. get sick.  The disease itself is invisible and, because the people who get it are quarantined, we don’t see the effects. Young people especially.
So the previous four paragraphs are there to help you understand why there are people partying out on Lake of the Ozarks while the rest of us are scandalized by it.
After all these numbers, what do I mean to say?  Out here in the middle of the country we’ve been spared so far. Those of us who are older are relatively more at risk.  Beyond that my basis for saying anything becomes shaky. 
Be safe.
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 report on the NALM Battery-Powered Mowing initiative

By Bobby Neal Winters
I have in this space before alluded to the fact that I have purchased a battery-powered lawnmower. It is a Ryobi 20-inch, 40-volt mower.  At the time I first told you about it, I was just getting started with it.  For the last 5 or 6 weeks, I’ve been mowing with it as part of a NALM-funded initiative to determine the efficacy of battery-powered lawn mowing.  (For the uninitiated, NALM is the National Association of Lawn Mowers.)
I was chosen for this initiative because NALM recognized in me a dedication to traditional lawn mowing as a practice.  NALM is dedicated to the personal mower, those mowers who wish to have a better lawn and to do it themselves rather than to hire professionals who can do it more regularly, effectively, aesthetically, and probably at a lower overall cost.  I have never hired a professional to mow my lawn: When forced to let someone else do it because of injury or travel, I’ve always hired a neighbor boy or a daughter’s boyfriend to do it.
I now mow my lawn in two parts: Front yard on one day a backyard on day two.  The front yard ordinarily takes about 30 minutes  and the backyard ordinarily takes 45.  The word ‘ordinarily’ is there to account for those occasions where ‘events’, usually rain, keep me from mowing on my spring schedule of once a week.  When that happens, the backyard can take an hour or more to mow.  This is germane to my report on my part of the initiative which follows.
My battery-powered Ryobi is lighter than my gas-powered mower.  This is because it’s frame is made of hard plastic.  It is plastic, but don’t think of the plastic your grandchild’s toy car is made out of.  This is more like a lighter bakelite;  it is rigid and not soft, but like I said, not as heavy as metal would be.
This brings up a point that will be an issue for many of you. When I got my Ryobi and discovered that you start it with the touch of a single button, I was thrilled. As you know, there are those days when you have to jerk multiple times on a mower with an ICE (internal combustion engine) to get it started.  For those who are getting older or of a smaller frame, this can be an issue.  The touch of a button to start the mower removes that problem with...uh...the touch of a button.  
I had hopes that my wife and mother-in-law would make use of the new mower because of this feature.  Sadly, that was not to be.  The plastic construction has put it into the category of one of my new toys, and they are terrified to touch it.  A  likely story.
I don’t know much about the specs on the motor.  One might be tempted to say that it is of a new, modern design, but I don’t believe that is necessarily the case. The bottleneck to increased use of electric motors in such application has been the relative low energy density of batteries to that of gasoline.  While there are electric motors and electric motors,  it is the higher energy density of lithium batteries that is enabling the increase in battery-powered mowers--and cars for that matter.
I paid $300 for my Ryobi.  It came with one 6ah battery. (The ‘ah’ stands for amp-hour.) Such a battery you can run at one amp for six hours or six amps for 1 hour.  It will run my mower for about 45 minutes, so the motor as I use it is drawing about eight amps.  For comparison, your washing machine draws 10 amps.  I wasn’t content with having just one battery, so I bought a spare 6ah battery for about $150.  From this, information we can derive the following. The electric motor is the cheap part of the mower.  Ryobi is not going to make it money from the mowers, but from the batteries. (The Japanese have learned a lot from us, haven’t they?) 
I have only had to use my second battery two times.  The first time I mowed the backyard, it was very tall.  It was so tall I had to readjust so as to not mow so close. (This is a very easy thing to do with the Ryobi, by the way.)  Nevertheless, the grass was so thick and tall it sucked one battery dry.  There was one other time I was forced to do the same thing because there had been an extended period between mowings because of the rain.  Neither of the two times did I use the second battery for more than 15 minutes. Lesson: I could have used a 5ah battery for my second battery.  They are much, much less expensive.
Because the mower is lighter, I am not as fatigued after mowing. Because it’s not run by an ICE, it is quieter.  It is not perfectly quiet, but it makes the noise of a very loud electric fan whose blades are hitting grass.
There is no oil to change.  This isn’t really a big thing to me. I’ve never changed oil in a mower: I’ve only added more.  But this is over in any case.  Because there is no oil or gas or any fluid of any kind, you can fold it up and store it vertically.  You’ve just got back 4 square feet of floor space in your potting shed.
For now it is working out well, I will share more as time progresses.
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. )

Only I will remain

Only I will remain
By Bobby Neal Winters
I rewatched the movie Inside Out last night.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, it is a Pixar production.  The story is centered around the personified emotions of a pre-teen girl who has moved with her family from Minnesota to San Francisco. The emotions are Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear.   They are set into a crisis by the move because Joy is the girl’s dominant emotion and Joy attempts to repress Sadness.
I watched--for the second time--and I was moved.
“Moved” might not be strong enough a word.  At one point one of my daughters asked whether I might not need some Gatorade. The implication being that I was in danger of becoming dehydrated by my tears.
I confess it.  I can be sensitive.  When I was growing up, my dad said I was “tender-hearted,” but my big brother, using the honesty for which big brothers can be relied, called me a “bawl bag.”  
Those who know me well, know that I am not a sad person.  It is just that, with me, most strong emotion--Joy, Anger, Sadness--is expressed in tears.  That is the mechanism that my body uses for it.  I don’t have a choice.  That is to say, I don’t have a choice other than to try to repress any strong emotion.
I relax that repression when I watch the movies with my family. So my daughters think I’m something of a bawl bag too.   I need the release.
I’ve been repressing my emotions during the COVID Pause as well.
I don’t think that is a bad thing.  In the novel Dune, George Herbert has a character whose mantra is this:  “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
This quote isn’t about repressing fear, exactly.  It recognizes that the fear is there, but fear is not allowed to be the master.  The emotion of fear if not controlled does impair clear thought.  Yet the energy that is imparted by fear cannot be denied. Controlled, it can sharpen focus.  Repressing fear is not the answer.  Disciplining oneself so that one can properly harness the resources released by fear is.
I think a lot of people have trouble doing that by themselves.  In my opinion, that is why we have traditionally had strong leaders in battle.
In the book “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne, it is recounted how incredibly fierce the Comanche were in battle.  They were fearless.  That is, they were fearless until their chief was killed, then they ran.  They fought with the strength of his “medicine.”
I cast no aspersions on the Comanche here. This is a real thing for all people.  We need a leader we can draw strength from.  Someone who recognizes danger, but can control his (or her) fear. Someone who will not fall victim to the “little death” but will use the energy to act rationally with great focus.
We are programmed to work this way.
We need all of our emotions.  They are God’s good gift to us.  But He gave us rational minds to discipline our emotions.  May we be able to find the leaders He has sent us to help us control our fear.
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. )

In the Twinkling of an Eye

By Bobby Neal Winters
On the day this is set to appear in the paper, I have an appointment to get a haircut.  As I write this, it is still not legal to get a haircut in our state, at least not from someone you are not living with.
I reread that paragraph and it makes me wonder.  What would I have thought if I’d been shown this one year ago. No, what if I’d been shown this three months ago.  Klara Blixen, the Danish author, said that God made the world round so that we never be able to see too far down the road.  Thank you, God.
I was going through emails yesterday because I need to have my facts lined-up nice and straight.  It took me back to the beginning of the semester and through mid-March.  The rapidity of the change reminded me of one time when I was coming back from Kansas City with almost all my family in the car.  It was late and it was dark.  The car in front of me hit a deer and had to stop, so I had to stop.  Looking at the emails reminded me of that.  
I’ve been having scripture running through my head: “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the last trumpet has blown. (For poetic purposes, I almost used trump in that sentence, but too many people would’ve read it as Trump.  It opens a whole can of worms.) But doesn’t this metaphorically describe what has happened? In the twinkling of an eye, we’ve all been changed.
I have a broad range of friends on Facebook from the Rabid Right to the Looney Left.  Not everyone can be perfect like me and you.  Some people are very eager to get out of isolation. There are some who honestly don’t believe this has ever been a threat.  There are others who I believe would be happy to live in isolation forever and would want to keep others in isolation too.  This pandemic has changed them; they are more who they were than ever before.
I’ve read somewhere, and maybe I’ve mangled it, that some believe that the fires of hell are just the light of God’s Eternal Truth.  The Truth burns away what is false within us and leaves our real selves behind. 
The Truth is not what we hear in the media, neither Fox nor MSNBC. The Truth is spoken in God’s language: In Nature, in our actions, in reality.  This Fire of Truth begins now and goes on long after we are dead. Do we let us consume us or do live in such a way to be in harmony with it?
That is a long way from getting a haircut.  But our lives are constructed from such things as getting haircuts like the drops of water in a river.  Right now a haircut would be to me like a drop of water on the tongue of a man in hell.
Well, maybe that is over-stating it a little bit, but you get the idea.  I’ve got an appointment.  Keep your fingers crossed.

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. )

Time Out

Time Out

By Bobby Neal Winters

A vision has been slowly forming in my head.

I get up every morning without the aid of the alarm, just as the light of the sun makes it possible to walk easily across the floor. Exercise;shower;breakfast.

Then I sit at my computer with the spring breeze cooly blowing across my head, neck, and shoulders.  I look out the north window to the oak tree I planted myself.  Its leaves have been getting bigger as the season progresses.

Most years I’ve had snap shots of this. Most years this has been my saturday.  This year, or should I say, THIS year, it has been everyday.

Usually when I arrive at work at the university, I turn to the east and get a picture of the sun rising over the library. Since mid-March, I’ve walked to the street in front of my house and have taken a picture of the sun rising over the Lady Violist’s house.  Rest her soul; we have lost her.

The street is quiet.  It is quiet even in normal times, but these days I don’t even look.  I trust my hearing.  I step into the middle of the street and take my picture.

We have so many trees in my part of town.  This is part of my vision.  It’s like we are not an ordinary town where we’ve banished trees, where we force them to live in columns like soldiers.   We treat them as children, or better, as brothers as sisters.  They are siblings of ours, having the same Mother--the Earth--and the same Father--God.

We were the last born of their children.  The last born is favored over the first born in Biblical tradition to be the organizer.  Our trees, our plants are organized in my part of town, our part of town. Not regimented: Organized.  They are trimmed and cleaned (this is the word the King James uses). 

And there are animals.

We have at my house--I believe--a family of racoons.  I’ve never seen them; I’ve only ever heard them.  But I’ve seen their tracks. There is also a family of foxes that lives just across the way.

So my vision is that we are not in a town.  We are in a tamed forest, a garden.

We live among the raccoons, the foxes, the snakes, the squirrels, the birds, and the bees.  We live among the Oaks, the Sweetgums, the lilacs, the azaleas, and the forsythia.   In the quiet of the morning there is the sound of the breeze through the soft spring leaves harmonizing with bird song.  Later the sound of the lawn mowers join the symphony modulated by distance and direction with the occasional freight train to bring in dissonance in a minor key.

We’re in a good town, my friends. We are in harmony.

Yes, the world will be shifting to a faster gear soon.  Yes, we all need to start making money again.

But do we have to be in such a hurry?

“Be still and know that I am God.”

As much as parents love their children, sometimes they need to discipline them.  Putting them in time out is usually the most gentle step.  If the children don’t listen, there are steps beyond this.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Turn off the TV; take the earbuds out of your ears; listen.

Do you hear it?

“Be still and know that I am God.”

We do have our work to do, but do we have to go at it so fast?  Do we have to make so much noise that we can’t hear the whispers of Mother Earth?  Do we have to drown out the still small voice of God?

It’s there as the breeze stir the leaves.

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. )