Happy Easter in Ice Cream

 Happy Easter in Ice Cream

By Bobby Neal Winters

A vision can keep us together when nothing else will.  A vision can foster Hope and Hope is one of the strongest forces there is.

In this year of COVID along with all of the unrest of the summer and the contentious presidential election, there was a vision that kept our small town together.  It was the vision of a better town.  It was the vision of a town that was better equipped to face an uncertain future.  It was the vision of a town unlike any town the world has ever known.

It was the vision of a new Dairy Queen just south of the Sonic.

Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars.  This was more like bulldozers and rumors of bulldozers.

“When are they going to start?”

“Have they started?”

“I think they are going to pull out.”

“I saw that they’d mowed the lot.  I don’t think they’d’ve mowed the lot if they weren’t goin’ to do anything.”

“I saw a for-sale sign on the lot.”

I must admit, that when I heard the last one, I actually drove by the lot to see if there was in fact a sign, and there was...not!

Since then, every time I run up to the big WalMart to do a grocery pick up I look at the lot.  A few weeks ago I was rewarded with the sight of actual bulldozers and actual dirt being moved.  A hymn began to burst forth from my heart:

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight /
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll /
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend /
Even so, it is well with my soul!”

Believe me when I say that I look now every time I go by to gauge the progress.

In the 21st Chapter of the Book of Revelation, we are given something similar. It is a vision of a new heaven and a new earth and a vividly drawn picture of a New Jerusalem,”coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” 

There, John, the author of Revelation, is trying to describe his vision with the best words he has.  He makes use of light as a metaphor.  Light is symbolic of wisdom.  In this new heaven and new earth they will use the light of Wisdom to guide themselves.  John makes a statement that sounds like nonsense: “The Lamb is the light.” Had he been writing in English we would think he might’ve made a typo, writing Lamb for lamp.  But as Christians, especially after Easter, we know that the Lamb is Jesus and that the wisdom of Jesus will be the light in this New Jerusalem coming down from heaven.

And it is here that another hymn bursts into my heart:

“In Him, there is no darkness at all /
The night and the day are both alike /
The Lamb is the light of the city of God /
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus”

Even while there is that hymn in my heart, I have doubts like with the construction of the Dairy Queen.  Is there anything happening?  Is it going to appear in stages?  There is so much evil in the world, why has he made us wait so long.

But in the vision is hope.  Come, Lord Jesus!

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. )

NALM and the New Normal

 NALM and the New Normal

By Bobby Neal Winters

‘The first mowing of the new lawn year is fast approaching, and it is time to look ahead to that new year.  Because of COVID 19, last year brought about a lot of changes.  That’s right, not even mowing escaped.

You may recall that last year I made the switch from my ICE (internal combustion engine) mower to a battery-powered mower.  This was a big game changer and won me some points with NALM, the National Association of Lawn Mowers.  NALM is incredibly woke.  They are rooted in that old, northeastern establishment elite.  They are dominated by a small group that is similar to the Skull and Bones Society. It’s called the Gopher and Grub Society.

While the Skull and Bones Society promotes a “new world order” with a “thousand points of light,” the Gopher and Grubs shoot for a “well-edged world” with a “trillion blades of grass.”  And they want those trillion blades to all be exactly alike.

I didn’t know this when I got into NALM  I just wanted to make myself a better person by having a better lawn.  But I got into this an inch at a time, and I don’t know a way out.

Anyway, NALM likes battery-powered mowers because they are more eco-friendly than ICE mowers and they are quieter.  And I do too.  I will admit I bought my electric mower of my own accord, and only found out later that NALM approved.  In any case, those two factors are not an issue with NALM.  

NALM is an organization that is deeply divided over a question that is of a lot of interest to most of us mowers: How short do you mow your grass?

This is very contentious.  On one hand, if you mow your grass short, say almost into the dirt, then you don’t have to mow it as often.  This means you will use less energy and will put less carbon into the atmosphere.  On the other hand, if you keep your grass long, then the carbon stays sequestered in the grass.

The Cut-it-short group fears that if the Long-grass group gets their way, folks will take it to the extreme of not mowing at all.  We will have acres and acres of grass in city after city, just growing and going to seed.

The Long-grass group fears if the Cut-it-short group’s point of view is taken to its logical conclusion that people will just pave over their yards.

There was a big video conference this winter where partisans for each point of view squared off over the issue.  It began civilly enough, but by the end the exchange had degenerated to:

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

One side of the issue will start the rumor that a member of the other side has dandelions in their yard or has at some point in the past.  This is a serious thing in NALM, especially among the elite. 

For my part, I keep my head down and try not to get noticed.  I’ve got so many dandelions in my lawn, I am thinking of using them as a food source.  I remember that aphorism, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. ”

That is about all that can be done in this sort of atmosphere.  I will keep my lawn mown short enough to keep the snakes out, but not so short as to cut the dirt.  I will try to make the weeds in my yard as attractive as possible.

That’s about all anybody can do.

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 on YouTube. )

Shameless Self-Promotion

Shameless Self-Promotion

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have a channel on YouTube.  I have had it for at least 14 years, and it kind of surprises me that I’ve had it so long.  During the time I’ve had it, I’ve worked at it more intensely at some times than at others.  I’ve used it mainly for mathematics, though I have put some videos on it to share it with my extended family.

Over the past year, I’ve used it a lot more as I have put some content for my classes online.  I’ve also put up a few videos in an attempt to help my colleagues learn about Zoom and Microsoft Teams.  I don’t know if I was successful, but some of them were kind enough to thank me.  (You are welcome, by the way.) 

A week or so ago, I decided to get back into my channel and to try to do it in a semi professional way.  By semi professional, I don’t mean to semi make money on it, rather I mean to try to copy what my favorite channels do.  I have an “intro” and an “outro.” I show my face and talk to the camera to introduce the topic.  I break it up into segments.

Before anybody rushes out to look up the channel, let me warn you that it is all math and is likely to stay that way.  There are a few math channels: StandUp Maths, Mathologer, 3Blue1Brown, and UpAndAtom.  They all do math and they are all much, much better than mine.  They are slick, and I suspect they have professionals to do their writing and editing.  They are all smarter than me.  They are all much better looking...

I’d better stop going down this road because it might make me sad.

It does raise the question: Why bother?

To be up front about it: It is something I enjoy doing.  I like the act of thinking about a nice bit of math.  I like the act of making it into something someone else can understand.  I like making the pieces of the video and then putting them together.  It is my hope to put out a new video every week and to get a little better at it over time.

If I ever make a dime on it, I might just fall over dead.  That having been said, I am willing to take the risk. 

But my thinking is this.  We are going into a new future.  This year of living remotely has had an effect on us.  We’ve discovered new things. We’ve not been able to reach out in the normal ways, so, like water when one path is cut off, we’ve found new ways.  We need help on a homework problem, we don’t go to Poindexter down the block.  We go to YouTube and search. (If you want to find my channel, search my name. There are only two people by that name on YouTube so far.)

If I can help a kid with his homework at sometime in the future by doing what I like to do now, why wouldn’t I?  I am--at the very core of my being--a math teacher.

I am still finding my feet.  I’ve improved the graphics in my videos. (Improved is a relative term.) I’ve added some sound effects to my intro and I might improve my outro as well.  At this point with my most popular video having received 16 views, I don’t have to please anyone but myself.  If more people watch, I will probably become more self-conscious.

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 on YouTube. )

Sam I Am

Sam I Am

By Bobby Neal Winters

I was a picky eater, and it drove my parents to distraction.  In a vain attempt to fix this, one of the first books they read to me was “Green Eggs and Ham.”

Let me tell you, I rocked that book.  I got to the point where, in the words of my mother, I knew it by heart.  I can still quote vast pieces of it. “I do not like it here or there. I do not like it anywhere.”

It didn’t cure me of being a picky eater.  And--entirely unintentionally--gave me a better vocabulary to talk about it.

I almost wrote that we are living in a strange time, but then I thought it’s probably no stranger than any other.  The biggest difference is that we are the ones living through it. I was going to use that as a segue to talk about the latest tempest in a teapot over Dr. Suess. 

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t know anymore about the goings on here that anyone else.  Will Rogers used to say that he only knew what he read in the newspapers.  I’m not as well-off as that: I only know what I see in social media.  

But I do know this: Controversy draws reporters like cow flop draws flies. New innovations come along in how to generate it.  Right now there is a machine out there that uses words like Social Justice Warriors, Woke, and I am sure there are a few others, but you can go a long way on just those.  They are used as cuss-words and insults by some; by others they are worn proudly by others.

We hear about “cancelling.” While right now the right wing is telling us that it is something the left wing is doing, you might remember it as something that was done to “The Dixie Chicks” for some political comments they made.  

In my opinion, “cancelling” is a very un-American thing to do, but it has been done by many Americans.

Here’s the thing.  It is a weapon that is most effectively used against one’s own people.  The Left couldn’t cancel Rush Limbaugh because they were not his market; the Right cannot cancel Rachel Maddow for the same reason. However, if a member of your group does not toe the party line, then you can come down on them like a hammer.

This is not healthy, but it does explain some of what is going on in this country.  We get in our own bubbles, our own echo chambers.  It all starts feeding back on us.  And if anybody in our bubble says that maybe someone in that other bubble has a point, they get kicked--or cancelled--right out of the bubble.

The bit with Dr. Seuss is kind of instructive. Perhaps we’d better pause here to learn all we can from it.  My first reaction to this controversy was, huh?  This is Dr. Seuss who wrote about the star-bellied sneetches and the great controversy about sneetches whose bellies were plain and the ones with stars upon thar’s.

Then I used my old friend Google to find some of the pictures. Oh. My.

There are quotes by Theodor Giesel that are anti-Japanese, for instance. Quite frankly, you can’t twist it enough to clean it up. This was during WWII and that was the way we were “supposed” to think then, just as there are ways we are “supposed” to think now.  Over the course of time, his thinking changed.  He was able to see the unity of the human race in Horton Hears a Who writing: “A person’s a person no matter how small.”

Maybe the lesson here is to judge individual works on their own intellectual merits and not dismiss all of someone’s work because you don’t like some of what they did.  Maybe the lesson is to sharpen your own thinking and to resist being herded by what the group is thinking.

If you do, you might just find out that you like green eggs and ham, or you might find out they are gross, regardless of what they are pressuring you to think.

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 Defense of Algebra 2

 In Defense of Algebra 2

By Bobby Neal Winters

I attended McLish High School in Fittstown, Oklahoma.  It was a small school at the time, and since then it has been consolidated with our neighboring school Stonewall, but it served me well.  I was always lousy with arithmetic, but when I got to algebra, something clicked with me.  I think this was because the arithmetic in algebra is easier.  When I got into geometry, I caught on fire.  

I took these courses as a freshman and a sophomore.  When I was a junior, there was a crisis.  Trigonometry and Algebra 2 were both being offered.  Trigonometry wouldn’t be offered again while I was in high school because it was only offered every other year, but Algebra 2 is a prerequisite for Trigonometry and for good reason.  I talked it out with the teacher (Mr. Hoyt Sloan) and administration (Billy R. Scott, in pace requiem), and they let me take both.

I hunkered-down and I did it. I worked every homework problem twice. Seriously.  There were nights doing my homework when I literally cried. But I did it.  Having gotten my Algebra and Trigonometry out of the way, I was able to start college in the mathematical sciences on the right foot.

These days, I spend way too much time on Facebook.  I do it because you can keep up with your friends and not use much of your brain.  If you’ve been there, you know there are other people who are not using much of their brain either. (Rim shot)

That having been said, sometimes you see things that are well-meant, put up by good people with the very best of intentions, but are in need of, shall we say, a bit of nuancing.  The one I have in mind begins, “It’s 2019...get rid of Algebra 2 in high schools and replace it with Finance Fundamentals. Teach kids about careers (not just college), salaries, credit, budgeting, money management, taking out a loan, buying a house, filing their taxes.”

As you can imagine given my history, this makes me set my jaw.  This was a course that I suffered to take.

Let’s take a look at this and dissect it a bit.  It starts with an attack on Algebra 2.  Does everybody have to take this class?  I don’t think so. It has been put there for a couple of reasons.  

It gets the reader’s attention and puts them on the writer’s side. Everybody hates algebra.  The students hate learning it, and their teachers hate teaching it.  It requires patience.  It requires building the capacity to abstract.  It requires attention to detail.  Very little of this comes naturally to us.  It can be very frustrating.  Whatever we math teachers may say in jest, we don’t enjoy making students suffer.  (Well, not all of them.)

Algebra is taught because it is a foundational skill for physical science and engineering. If you are going to be in any of those disciplines you need to have Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and a whole lot more.  In my personal opinion, teaching Algebra 1 in middle school is too early, and while we are at it, I don’t think Calculus should be taught in high school at all, but that is just as I said, my opinion. 

Not everybody is going to be in the physical sciences or engineering.  This is understood.  There are reasons for taking Algebra besides this.  It does require the building of the abilities I described above, which are useful in other areas.  I use the ability to be frustrated every single day of my life; Algebra 2 ain’t nothing compared to some of the stuff I put up with, but I digress.

The suggestion in the meme is to replace Algebra 2 with Finance Fundamentals.  It sounds like a good class, but this isn’t an either/or thing.  While I absolutely don’t think everyone will specifically use the knowledge they learn in algebra, students in high school take 6 classes a year for 4 years.  That is 24 classes.  You can go wild and take Math, Science, and English every year and still have 12 other classes wherein that Finance Fundamentals class can be fit, just sayin’. 

Having wrestled with writing this column--and I have wrestled with it--it seems the central issue is college preparation. I will stipulate the following: If you are not going to college, the probability you are going to need the subject matter in Algebra 2 (or Algebra 1) is vanishingly small. So this is really a meme about college tracking versus non-college tracking.

Did you know what you were going to do with your life when you were 14 or 15 years old?  

I was still in the process of figuring it out. To be honest, I did know I wanted to go to college and because I took algebra, I learned I could make it in a mathematical scientific area. Let people like me have the chance.

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. )