NALM, the Real World, and Rejoice!

By Bobby Neal Winters

Those of you who follow this space may have taken note of the fact that there hasn’t been a column on mowing this year.  This isn’t because I haven’t been mowing.  Indeed, I’ve been mowing and appreciating the act of mowing more than I have in years.

I do continue to mow.

The reasons for not writing about it are rather complicated.

In order to set the stage, let us all recall last year’s mowing season: It was a disaster.

While ordinarily my backyard sports what is known as the “Great Brown Spot” and is no doubt a mystery for astronomers on Jupiter, by the end of June last year, the “Great Brown Spot” extended from my backyard to Great Bend. Any mowing I did after the middle of June was just to cut off the tops of the grass in any portion of the lawn which had accidentally gotten water.

If we hadn’t’ve been between dogs at that time, I would’ve been able to pick out the spots where they liked to pee.  It was that dry.

While our drought had a big impact on lawns, it had a larger impact on the lawn mowing community as a whole, and, of course, on NALM, the National Association of Lawn Mowers.

Lawn mowing is big business, and I am not just talking about those plucky groups of individuals who go around town with mowers and weed-wackers in trailers doing God’s work on a lawn by lawn basis.

No. 

I am talking about the bloated corporate entities who sell mowers, weed-wackers, and all of the accouterments associated with them.  There is money being made from the sweat of the backs of honest, lawn-mowing, God-fearing Americans my friends. (Probably in the rest of the world too, but my reach is not that far.)

Just like in every other danged thing in the world, the money grubbing capitalist vampires have stuck their corporate fangs into...

But I digress.

NALM on its Facebook page posts its mission statement as follows: “We seek to spread the spiritual, health, and aesthetic benefits of lawn mowing to support our Nation.”

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I will say that is true, at least initially.

We live in a dark, old world, my friends.  A fallen world.

You grow up, go to Sunday school, learn about Jesus, and then they send you out into a world where everyone has sharp teeth and you look like filet mignon. You have to be as innocent as doves and as wily as serpents, let me tell you.

And NALM has been.  

It went out into the world with its ideals of saving the world through lawn mowing, but it has had to learn how to live in that world.

For example, it is an environmentally conscious group. It figures that it would be because lawns are part of the environment.  Because of this, it supported the use of battery powered lawnmowers. 

As a result of this, some of us switched over to battery powered.  However, this was a move fraught with controversy, and not just from the ICE (internal combustion engine) supporters.  No, the environmental wing of NALM is itself fractured.  Within it, there are those who say battery-powered is not going far enough.

There are those within the Mowing Community who believe we should abandon “power-mowing” all together and go back to push mowing.

I sense some knitted eyebrows out there.

Push-mowers are mowers that rely neither on electric motors nor ICE. You “just” have to push them. Most of the people who advocate such are either too old for anyone to imagine them mowing themselves or are individuals who give off kind of a “John Brown’s Body Lies a Moldering in the Grave” vibe.  You inch away from them after you begin to understand what they are saying.

There are even those who say you should just leave it unmown.

Balancing those out, there are those who say you should just concrete it over and paint it green.

NALM has to live within that world with all the rest of us.

To sum it up, I’ve not written about mowing so as to avoid controversy, but I avoid it no more.

While this summer has been hot, we’ve had rain. Not only have we’ve had rain, we’ve had it at the right time to keep the grass growing all summer long.

While a younger version of myself would be complaining, after last year’s drought, I will rejoice.  As I write this, I am planning to go out and mow my daughter’s lawn. (Okay, I have three daughters, two of whom have lawns in town. I’m only going to mow one of those. It’s not yours.)  Not only am I going to mow it, I am going to mow it with an ICE because her lawn is so nasty a battery just won’t do.

In any case, Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice. We’ve had rain and we can mow, so let us praise the Lord.

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.

 God’s Country

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is fitting, I suppose, that Christianity and patriotism often create a cruciform tension in our hearts.  Music is a medicine for the pain that is created by this tension.  I chose the word medicine carefully, but I chose it from the point of view of someone who equated medicine with merthiolate in his formative years.  Those of you of a certain age require no explanation.  For you young folks, let me explain: It burns.

I remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis back in 1980.  Perhaps the best piece of music to come out of that was the song “In America” by the Charlie Daniels band.  I don’t know that it’s aged well. It is jingoistic and crude; it is narrowly focused and parochial.  But it can reach down and grab you in your redneck gut.

Other songs of this same stripe are “I’m Proud to Be an American” by Lee Greenwood and “The Angry American (Courtesy the Red, White, and Blue)” by Toby Keith.  There has yet to be a time when I’ve heard Greenwood’s song when a tear hasn’t welled-up in my eye.  Greenwood doesn’t squeeze your heartstrings, he squeezes your tear ducts directly.

Toby Keith (a fellow Okie) doesn’t go after your heart or your tear ducts as much as your adrenal glands. You can--without any effort yourself--become angry during the course of this song. I will become aware of myself during the course of this song and find that my jaw is set: I am ready to go to war. It affects me that strongly on the emotional level.

In each of these, the music grabs your emotions.  They tie love of God and love of America together. They present an if you are not for us, you are against us picture.  It’s simple; it’s strident; it’s easy to just follow along.  

And this is all the more true because the United State of America is a great country.  Even now, I am still an American Exceptionalist. I do believe we, the United States, are the last best hope on Earth. 

But self-interest too narrowly focused leads to a fall.

We are living in a country now that is divided blue versus red right down the middle with a purple line of indeterminate thickness trying valiantly to keep it all together.  How long can it succeed?

We can contrast these songs with a hymn that can either be called “This is My Song” or “O God of all the Nations.”  Intellectually, it hits the right notes. I read it silently, and I don’t find much, if anything, to quibble with.  The music is a nice tune too.

But whenever I hear the introduction being played, I find myself involuntarily breathing a heavy sigh. It might be because it is often played on the Sunday nearest the 4th of July as a substitute for something more directly patriotic like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or “Our Country ‘Tis of Thee.”  

I know pastors are often walking a tightrope between two camps who have different interpretations of the separation of church and state, so this is not meant as a criticism of them. I mean this as an observation of my own emotions and my own inner divide.

The God I believe in is a God of all peoples, and not just the United States. But within that reality, we don’t simply surrender our existence. 

The existence of a group within a whole creates cruciform tension.  I am part of a family, but I am also me.  I am but one of God’s children, but I am myself too.

A song I’ve found as a medicine that doesn’t sting and helps to to integrate all of these threads is “God’s Country” sung by Blake Shelton with words and music by Devin Dawson, Jordan Schmidt, and Michael Hardy.

Shelton is not only an Okie, but he’s an Okie from my neck of the woods.  We grew up in the same county, separated in time by 14 years.  He sings of us as being from God’s country, growing up from the soil.  We are natives of God’s county.

The message is positive. There is no need to put down anyone else to assert that you are a child of God.  It is the song of one who feels blessed, who has a special relationship to God, but who does not seek authority over others. The song is rooted in Nature, in dirt and water.

It strikes a balance: The music carries your emotions, but the lyric stands on its own as poetry.

While there are a few references that particularize it to the United State--indeed the southern United States--it is broad enough that it could be sung by anyone, anywhere with only minor adjustments.

Thanks, Blake and company.  You done good.

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.

 Jolene

By Bobby Neal Winters

In the song “Hollywood Nights” Bob Seger refers to a beautiful woman and a man’s reaction to her:

She had been born with a face that would let her get her way/

He saw that face and he lost all control

Had that woman been born in the Tennessee hills, her name might very well have been Jolene.  We might recall, however, that Dolly Parton who wrote and sang “Jolene” was also in the movie “Steel Magnolias” where she said the line, “There is no such thing as natural beauty.”

I am sure that Dolly would welcome the friendly amendment that one is born with certain assets but can, through intelligence and effort, maximize those assets.

The song “Jolene” tells a story. A woman--let’s call her the Supplicant--approaches Jolene with a request: Please don’t take my man.

While the Supplicant does have affection for her man, in her application to Jolene, she is referring to him as her property. This is a sentiment that comes through loud and clear in country music from a certain era.  One might easily reference Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough.”

These songs reflect exchanges that are woman-to-woman.  If you listen closely, it comes through crystal clear: The man is viewed as the woman’s property. (I discussed this a few weeks back in a column about Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man.”)  We hear about this mostly from the man’s point of view with the woman as the man’s property; this is certainly not a very popular opinion.  However, if you read the epistles of Saint Paul, it is made explicit: Spouses in a marriage own each other. Marriage is a yoke that connects two individuals into one unit.

As mentioned, the Supplicant approaches Jolene with a humble request to not take her man.  The Supplicant is making this request from a perspective of weakness. Jolene is beautiful:

Your beauty is beyond compare/

With flaming locks of auburn hair/

With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green/

Your smile is like a breath of spring/

Your voice is soft like summer rain/

And I cannot compete with you, Jolene

[Given that this is an exchange between women who may, in fact, be hillbillies, one might expect to see a line: And good grief, you have an almost complete set of teeth, Jolene. But I digress.]

The Supplicant cannot compete with Jolene directly, so she seeks to ingratiate herself to Jolene through flattery.  She takes a humble posture and tries to appeal to Jolene’s better nature.

This is a contrast to “You Ain’t Woman Enough”:

Women like you they're a dime a dozen, /

you can buy 'em anywhere /

For you to get to him I'd have to move over /

And I'm gonna stand right here /

It'll be over my dead body, so get out while you can /

'Cause you ain't woman enough to take my man

Here Loretta--and it was Loretta and not an alter ego--is dealing from a position of power.  She has confidence that she would be chosen by her straying man were it to come to a confrontation. 

The Supplicant does not approach Jolene with anything near that sort of bravado. She is relying on her powers of persuasion.  She leaves the possibility that Joelene may actually love the man in question by asking, “Please don’t take him just because you can.”  

This opens itself to the interpretation that the Supplicant does not want to rob Jolene of true love, but if this is just a matter of sport, entertaining, or filling an evening, please let him go.

One thing these two songs have in common is that they are woman-to-woman.  The will of the man is not considered.

I have a friend which whom I discuss these matters, and he frequently refers to the song “If You Can Touch Her at All” by Willie Nelson:

Right or wrong a woman can own any man

She can take him inside her and hold his soul in her hand

Then leave him as weak and weary as a newborn child

Fighting to get his first breath and open his eyes

Women have more power over men that most men consciously realize.  Or maybe they do realize it and only Willie is honest enough to admit it.

While the Supplicant does not have as beautiful a face as Jolene, she has intelligence and grace.  Her only weakness is the fool she has for a husband.  Even if Jolene does not grant her favor, I have faith that she would not only love again, but more wisely.

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 Dance

By Bobby Neal Winters

God’s talking to us all the time, from many directions. Occasionally we are listening and hear Him from an unexpected direction, like Garth Brooks, for example:

And now, I'm glad I didn't know/

The way it all would end, the way it all would go/

Our lives are better left to chance/

I could have missed the pain, but I'd’ve had to miss

The dance.

This is from Brooks’ song “The Dance.” Garth Brooks hit it big during a period when I wasn't listening to country music or, maybe, any music at all.  So the other day when I heard this line, I didn’t even know who was singing.  I had to look it up.

There have been things in my life that had a quality that matched this.  There have been things that I’ve chosen to do that, had I known how hard they were going to be, I would not have done, but having done them, I wouldn't've skipped them.  In each case, there was a good deal of pain and discomfort involved, but, along with those, a great deal of growth.

I’ve written about the Rotary Group Study Exchange I took to Russia in the year 2000.  I’ve mostly written about the things that were heart-warming, thought-provoking, or humorous.  I left out the parts where there was discomfort, anger, fear, or culture-shock.  There were times when these were all going on at once.  Had I known only the feelings I was going to experience, I never would’ve gone.  

But that trip changed my life.  I started writing seriously because of that trip, and there have been few things--other than my marriage or the births of my children--that have changed and improved my life in such a positive way.

This brings to mind the 2016 movie “Arrival” which is based on Ted Chaing’s science fiction short story “The Story of Your Life.”  In it, the story's hero learns an alien language that rewires her brain so that she can remember the future in addition to the past.  She sees that she is going to have a wonderful daughter who becomes sick and dies at a young age.  She sees that the daughter’s father will become alienated from her and divorce her.  Nevertheless, regardless of these unpleasant truths, she goes ahead and marries the man and gives birth to the daughter who is doomed to die.

The message is that it is all worth it.

While presented in the science fiction format, it presents a truth. When you get married, either the marriage will end in a divorce or one of you is going to die.  There may be some exceptions I’ve not thought of like alien abduction, but that’s about it.  When you give birth to a child, that child will one day die. When you were born, the one thing that was certain about your life at the beginning was that one day it would end.

But we do it anyway: We marry and are given in marriage; we birth children; because there are precious moments in life, precious people who we meet that are worth it.

In C.S. Lewis' book “A Grief Observed” he says: “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.”  In the movie “Shadowlands” about the relationship between Lewis and his wife Joy, the dying Joy puts it this way: “It’s all part of the deal.”

Poets, even those of the country-western variety like Garth Brooks, are able to capture in a few lines what it takes hours in a movie, pages of a short story, or a whole book of theology to capture:

Holding you, I held everything/

For a moment, wasn't I the king/

But if I'd only known how the king would fall/

Hey, who's to say, you know I might have changed it all

Very few of us are like the translator in “Arrival” who chose the path knowing what it held for her.  The people who do that sort of thing are usually saints.  For the rest of us, there is ignorance and chance:

And now, I'm glad I didn't know/

The way it all would end, the way it all would go/

Our lives are better left to chance/

I could have missed the pain, but I'd’ve had to miss

The dance.

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.

 Math, Boxes, Knots, and True Love

By Bobby Neal Winters

When we are teaching a complicated subject, we break the subject down into bite-sized pieces so that the student can digest it.  This is especially true in mathematics.  The whole is incredibly complicated, so we find a piece--one simple piece--and start there.  We then continue adding small bits to the student’s knowledge.  

We hope that the student will master these little bits.  Good teachers will provide opportunities to review the previous little bits along the way.  But at the end, there comes an opportunity to bring it all together into a coherent whole.  We call this integration.

Here let me step out and remind the math teachers that are reading this that I am using “integration” in its educational sense rather than its mathematical sense.

When we teach the calculus sequence in mathematics--and this sequence begins in college algebra--we teach numerous techniques, and I do mean a lot of them.  But unless the student is an engineering major or a physics major they never know why.

That is unless they take a course called differential equations.  Differential equations is a course that stands out vividly in my mind. On one hand, I don’t believe I learned a single new mathematical concept in the course; on the other hand, I used every single mathematical technique I’d ever learned going all the way back to kindergarten.

Everything I knew was brought together in one place.  My mathematical knowledge was integrated.

Deeper in mathematics, the subject of knot theory is similar.  This is an area that not even many mathematicians know well. I became familiar with it while I was working on my PhD. It is an area that brings together many tools from higher mathematics: Algebra, topology, analysis, geometry.

The subject of knot theory is right there in the name: knots.  It is the study of knots in the mathematical sense.  Believe me when I tell you I am capable of taking you down the rabbit hole with this, but I will keep it simple. 

We represent knots with diagrams.  That is, we pretend that we’ve tied a knot in a piece of string that we’ve laid neatly down on the table, and we draw it.  Most mathematicians aren’t artists so we keep it simple.  The main points of interest are the crossings, that is when one piece of the knot goes over the top of another piece.  We draw our diagrams so that you can tell which piece is on top.

It is a fact that mathematicians don’t like reasoning with diagrams, and that is one of the reasons so many sophisticated mathematical tools are used: We use them to cover our butts, as it were.

Knot theory is a part of me, but it is a part of me I put aside years ago.  Books about it have been on my bookshelf occupying space. Memories of it have been in my brain doing the same.  It is now coming back to me in a surprising way. It is coming back through my woodworking.

I’ve been making boxes for a while, but they’ve been plain, unadorned boxes.  At one point, I made boxes for my grandsons and put their initials on the lids so they would know which boxes to fight over.  Then I made a Harry Potter magic wand box with the Deathly Hallows on the lid. Then I made a couple of Bible boxes, one with the Borromean rings and another with a trefoil.

At that point, a thought came to me. I make these boxes to give away because otherwise I will be buried under them. I need to craft my designs to be something to give away. This is an issue because there usually has to be an occasion for a gift such as the birth of a baby or a wedding. You need to give them away in such a way that they can’t give them back.  

I decided to craft my carvings with that thought in mind.

I carved a “Hopf Link” on the top of a box.  Those of you who are not burdened with my level of knowledge about knots might easily mistake this for linked wedding rings.

Having succeeded at this, I decided I would like to try something more challenging and nerdier.  I remembered having read about something called a “True Lover’s Knot.” 

I had to dig into my library, find a book I’ve had for 40 years, and look it up.  After I looked it up, I had to learn to draw it. This was a challenge because it’s an 8-crossing knot.  Every place where the knot crosses itself makes the diagram that much more complicated.

My first attempt at carving it into wood was a failure for a number of reasons. The knot was so complicated that it made carving difficult and in going too quickly I damaged it.

I glued up some new boards and started over. I sketch the knot on the wood in a way that was more spread out.  Then I began to carve in a deliberately slow, organized way. In doing something this complicated, I had to be much more intentional. I had to use a lot of techniques that I had learned about using chisels, gouges, and knives.

I had to integrate my learning.

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of it. This is because I will be gluing it into a box--integrating it, as it were--and there are all sorts of disasters that can happen along the way.

But it’s wonderful when it all comes together.

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.