From the worlds navel to Pittsburg, Kansas

 From the World’s Navel to Pittsburg, Kansas

By Bobby Neal Winters

As I write this, it is my last day in Paraguay.  I arrived here one week ago, come 11pm tonight.  My flight will leave at 1:10am tomorrow morning, so I will have been here just two hours more than one week.

It has been recognized there are places where God seems closer to us than other places.  Jacob had a dream on a mountain top.  There are fortuitous encounters that happen at water wells.  These are places where the natural setting thins the wall that separates us from the divine.  

Asuncion is like that for me.

Perhaps it is the large number of trees in the city.  Perhaps the Jesuits who brought their missions here so long ago felt something special.  Perhaps the daily close encounters with death on the streets by motorists and pedestrians has worn the wall thin.

Who can say?

Regardless, I’ve sometimes felt God speak to me in his own coded, metaphorical language.

On our first day, we went to the Supermercado Real and bought fruit and crackers to have a picnic in the park that is just a block from our hotel.  We sat and ate among a few pigeons.  When I was close to done, I broke off a piece of cracker and tossed it among our feathered lunchmates.

We no longer had a few lunchmates; suddenly we had entered a Hitchcock movie.  We were surrounded.  I thought briefly about the piranhas in Paraguay River and wondered if pigeons were anything like those.  Would they find a pair of skeletons with US passports in a Paraguayan park?  Would there be YouTube videos 20 years from now pondering the mystery of our disappearance?

But no.  They ignored us.  The cracker occupied their entire attention.

The cracker was a problem for them.  So that you have the whole picture, you should know it wasn’t a saltine.  It was a very thin, very hard cracker with seeds in it.  The piece I had tossed out was too big for them to eat with a bite and too hard for them to break.  

This did not deter them from trying to eat it, however.  Indeed, while they couldn’t eat it, they could fight over it, and they did.

It was through this that God began to speak to me.  There was one telling point in the fight, when one bird had the cracker, another bird began fighting with him for it, and while the two birds were fighting, a third bird came along and stole the cracker piece.

The cracker piece eventually disappeared from view without ever having been usefully subdivided.

This has been bothering me during quiet moments ever since.  I’m bothered not because I have no interpretation, but because I have so many.

Are the pigeons the American people and the cracker corner tiny bits of largess the government tosses out for us to fight over?  Are the pigeons university faculty and the cracker issues that only an academic could care about?

I need a Joseph or a Daniel to unravel this for me, to tell me what this all means.

What it means in this place where I feel so very close to God.

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. )

Bread Crumbs and the Endorphin Rush

 Bread Crumbs and the Endorphin Rush

By Bobby Neal Winters

In my last column, I wrote that we resist learning.  In this one, I would like to continue in that same direction by talking about ways we combat that resistance.

The main perspective I can speak to this from is that of a math teacher.  While the resistance to learning I wrote about last week was with regard to topics other than skills, I do think I can add some value to the conversation.

Most people hate mathematics.  Indeed, it takes an odd breed of duck to love it. But it is useful and it is essential that at least a few people know it.  Within mathematics, our topics separate into two streams: techniques and problem-solving.  By techniques, I mean the mechanics of solving for x.  We call it “plug and chug” amongst ourselves. While most people find it difficult, it is not held in high regard amongst many in the practice of mathematics.

The ability to problem solve is much more prized, and much more difficult to teach.  It is a chicken-and-egg problem: We teach students to problem solve by having them problem solve. The best teachings do this by laying out bread crumbs for the students to follow.  

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the bread crumb metaphor, you should think of a trap having been set for a bird. Say, you have a box propped up by a stick.  You lay out a path of bread crumbs so that the bird will follow the trail and find itself under the box, and then wham! The box falls.

In math, we’ve no boxes and no bread. We have a problem we’ve solved ourselves, and we’ve broken it into pieces.  We then ask the student questions that will lead them to understand the pieces.  The trap slams shut when they put all of the pieces together to see the big picture.

This works because we like to solve puzzles.  Our brain gives us a little chemical reward whenever we solve one; whenever we come to the right conclusion ourselves.  So mathematical traps are nice; a box doesn’t fall on you, but you get an endorphin rush instead.  

Why do you hate us so?

We can learn other things this way as well. That is to say, we can come to it ourselves.

The poets figured this out a long time ago.  The poets, the good ones, visit truths for which they have no precise language, but lead us there anyway.  We spend an amount of time wrestling with their words that we would never spend on something that was written out plain.

If you don’t believe me, think about how much time you spent trying to figure out “The Hotel California” or “Stairway to Heaven.” (Or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” if you didn’t grow up with Rock Music.) There have also been untold thousands of hours spent wrestling with the symbolic language of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.

The best teachers won’t just give you the answer. The best teachers will put scaffolding in place and let you come to it on your own.  Give a man a fish; feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish; feed him for a lifetime.  Lead a man to a way to teach himself; and he will be able to eat things besides fish.

I fear for this method of teaching during a time when there are so many tests in school. (Though that trend seems to have abated somewhat.) Those who have money and power will have it for their children, but not so much for those who work in the factories they own.

But I’ve laid this out too plainly.  You won’t believe me.  You’ll not take it up as your own idea. I have failed.

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. )

Die just a bit, grow just a bit

 Die just a bit, grow just a bit

By Bobby Neal Winters

We resist learning.

I wrote that as  my first paragraph because some people say you should begin with an introduction, and I thought I’d give it a try.  I am not sure that it worked, so I will try it again.

We resist learning.

I do have a PhD, but I don’t have a doctorate of education.  This means that, while I’ve had the experience of delving into the Unknown and reducing its frontiers, I don’t know any of the language that describes learning. In spite of being in the field of education for over three decades, I’ve never picked it up. Because...

We resist learning.

Even a blind hen gets a kernel now and then, however.  There are different kinds of learning.  One one level there are skills: Mathematics, computer programming, languages, woodworking, cooking, talking to narcissists.  These are all bankable things. We resist learning these because they are hard.  

But there are other things as well.  There are things that aren’t hard; somebody says them, and it doesn’t take many words; but then they will deny the truth of it.  I am not going to give a specific example here.  If I did, there would be those who would simply deny it.  They would take the other side just to do it.

And some of you have done that very thing just now, which makes my point for me.  Got you!

Have you ever had an argument with someone--perhaps a civil discussion, but one in which there was a disagreement--and you made all of your points; you countered all of theirs; you ended with a QED which any neutral observer would grant that you were correct.  Maybe you even walked off thinking you had won.  And then you heard the same person saying the same things in the same way to other people.

Yes.  He didn’t learn anything...or maybe it was you.

When we change our minds on something we believe to be important, it is a little death.  We give up something of ourselves.

A really smart person told me something once that another really smart but much more famous person said. (Famous, but I can’t remember his name.) Losing an argument is much better than winning one.  If you lose an argument, and someone convinces you that you were wrong, then you have gained more than she has.  She has learned nothing, but you have learned something.  You’ve improved yourself, while she has not. (See, I’ve learned to use gender-inclusive language.)

We improve ourselves at the price of the death of a small part of our former selves.

There are all sorts of psychological/sociological reasons for us humans being so stiff-necked, but a practical reason for our resistance is simple.  We might be right: Every idea not only has to fight to get on the stage, it has to fight to stay there.

I’ve now written almost 500 words on this topic.  There will be those of you who have read this far, but still don’t believe me.  I am okay with that. Fighting the idea is apparently part of the process.

But you’ve made my case. ((Mic drop))

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 Time of Preparation

By Bobby Neal Winters

We are now in late April, and while I’ve already mowed my back yard for the first time, we are still in the time of lawn preparation.

The full value of preparation and planning has been a difficult lesson for me to learn. I suppose this is because of my heritage. When my father was born, his family were sharecroppers. There is an important difference between sharecroppers and farmers which is the ownership of the land. Farmers get to keep the improvements, but sharecroppers not so much.

Regardless of that, my father’s family transitioned from being sharecroppers to being itinerant oilfield workers.  And from that, my dad transitioned to being a truck driver who hauled bulk cement. (WWII was somewhere in there.)

My point being that while each of these modes of existence does require a certain amount of preparation, in the first two, especially, you need to be ready to see all you have prepared simply disappear.  The sharecropper is on the land at the pleasure of the landowner.  The itinerant oilfield worker will, by definition, have to leave very rarely with more than the clothing on his back.

But I get it now.  Preparation is the most important part of the job.  Indeed, with preparation done correctly, the rest of the job simply falls into place: ergo, preparation is the job.

Let’s talk about some examples.

We will start with painting. I thought I knew how to paint until a friend from church taught me how. You gather your supplies with painter’s tape among them.  Then you tape all of your woodwork. Having done that, you go around the edges with your brush and paint a margin round the wall.  This is your preparation phase.  The rest can be done by rollers.  I’d put off painting my dining room for ten years before learning this; after learning it, I painted it in a single morning.

Now, for everyone’s favorite: cleaning the kitchen. To be clear here, I am using the nomenclature “cleaning the kitchen” the activity some call “washing the dishes.” Cleaning the kitchen describes the activity much more accurately. Here I speak from a much more theoretical perspective having seen it done more than doing it myself, but again preparation is the key. 

Everything works much better when you start with an empty trashcan and an empty dishwasher (or an empty dish drainer if you are not there yet). To make the task of washing the dishes easier, it is better if you expand it to “cleaning the kitchen” so as to recognize the preparation as part of the process.

Programming a computer works better if you have thought the process through from beginning to end before you start the project. Here, I must confess, that I still mostly program as I go, but I’ve learned, when I do this, I will probably have to go back to the beginning and do it all over.

In my woodworking, the process is immeasurably more gratifying if I’ve thought the whole project through from beginning to end and have gathered all of my materials to the same place.

My writing--and here I am talking specifically about my mathematical writing--is better when I recognize that it is a process and the initial “putting it down on paper” is just a small part. You must first have something to say. Then you must figure out how to say it to yourself.  This is often done in pieces.  It is easier if you save these pieces on yellow paper in file folders, and keep the file folders in one of those brown folders.  Then you type it all in, but that is just the beginning.  You need to let it get cold and reread it in context and tie it all together.

That last bit might have to be done several times.

But now we come to the most important part: Mowing. Mowing is about to become the center of my universe for the next six months. One must first police the yard, i.e. pick up the stick and other sundry detritus; move all of the lawn chairs out of the way; make sure the battery is charged or the gas tank is filled.  

This year I am seriously contemplating putting weed-eating as a normal part of this.  I may have convinced myself that weed-eating serves the same function in lawn mowing, as painting-in does in painting.  I’ve eschewed it thus far as an activity more fit for the grandson of farmers than the grandson of sharecroppers, but perhaps it is time to throw that off.

We shall see.

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 Place to Make

A Place to Make

By Bobby Neal Winters

In my head I see a video of when I was in grade school.  It might’ve been in kindergarten or first grade, but certainly not later than that. A group of us was taken over across the road from the grade school side of our campus to the high school side.  They led us into the cinderblock building where the shop class was held.

There was a young man there.  (For the benefit of my old friends, he was one of the Reeves boys.  Not Roger, but the handsome one.) He was one of the high school students, the big kids; he was like a god to us. He showed us the equipment they had there in the shop.  I forget almost all of what he showed us.  Indeed, I only remember one piece: the band saw.  He impressed upon us how dangerous it was--how dangerous all the equipment was--and how brave he was for learning to work with it.  

We lapped it up like puppies. 

We looked forward to the day when we would take that class ourselves, and learn to use all of that dangerous equipment.

The day never came.

I don’t know why that was.  In our case, it may have been because that was a period in which the oilfield in which we lived was contracting, our population base was declining, and our school was getting smaller.  Regardless, we were part of a nationwide trend.

Most schools don’t offer shop classes anymore.  I don’t know why. It could be because shop classes are expensive to equip; it might be because shop classes are difficult to staff; it might be because shop classes are inherently dangerous and high school administrators nationwide are risk averse. Undoubtedly, it is a combination of all these things and probably some I didn’t mention.

It’s a shame. Shop classes taught skills that you could go out and earn a living with; skills that sharpen the mind as well as the hand; skills that open the door between the real world and the world of books.  Not only can these skills be applied to making a living, they can be used at home to reduce the expense of home repair and as an entree to a hobby. You can take these manual skills and--if you choose to--become an artisan. 

We could stop here and be regretful that things are getting worse, that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and it’s a handbasket that no one knows how to fix.

Or...

Or we can light a candle.

There is something in this country called the Makers Movement.  I’ve become gradually aware of it as I bounced about YouTube, learning about Arduino, Raspberry Pie, table saws, Python, robots, etc.

It’s pretty cool.

Associated with it are places called Maker’s Spaces. They are places that have equipment you can come in and use to make stuff.  They can provide venues for classes.  They can be places where you can bring your grandchildren things their parents don’t have time to because they are too busy earning a living.  Or you can make yourself available to teach other people’s grandchildren.

If only our community had such a place...

Well, it does. My Rotary Club met there a while back.  It’s located in Block 22, and the space is gorgeous. To my mind, we only need a few more things to be put in place before it provides a spark that will transform our community in a positive way.  I am excited.

I can see a day when kindergarten kids and first graders will be taken there and listen to handsome young people or colorful old people tell them about the equipment and how to use it safely for the betterment of their lives.

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. )