In the Details

 In the Details

By Bobby Neal Winters

Have you seen the meme of the Venn Diagram with the three overlapping circles? There are a number of variations of it. In one the three circles are labeled respectively “Bank Robbers,” “DJs,” and “Preachers” and the region of overlap is labeled “Raise your hands!”

I propose yet another variation on this.  Label the circles as “Good Teaching,” “Good Writing,” and “Good Story-telling.” In this case the common overlap would be “The Right level of detail.”

I’m a big fan of the series Derry Girls on Netflix.  It is set in Northern Ireland during the troubles in a Catholic girls school.  It is hilarious.  It is also irreverent and crude. Neither of those words were chosen lightly, so if you decide to watch it, please keep that in mind.

That having been said, there is a character named Colm who I feel like I know.  Indeed, I suspect that we all know him.  When we are introduced to him, he tells a story about being kidnapped by the IRA and having his car stolen. And he manages to make it boring.

Seriously, the story is torturous. It is about a subject that one would think to be objectively exciting. The characters and the subject are both dramatic, but in telling his story, Colm puts in such a level of--and this word is important--extraneous detail that you find yourself screaming, “Get to the bleeping point!”

If you are a fan of the old TV series “Monk,” Monk’s talkative neighbor Kevin Dorfman provides us with examples of this as well.

Of course, the writers of these series provide them for the sake of humor.  It is funny to watch polite people suffer impatiently while these people get their stories out, but it is a mirror for me.  When am I doing the same thing?  Something to think about, but not too much because I might stop talking entirely.

This happens in writing as well.

For many years, I edited a newsletter which often included items from scientists.  As with Colm who was mentioned above, they would often have a story that was about an objectively interesting topic but insist upon a level of detail that would put off the reader. 

One that I recall was about work the particular scientist had done on a topic connected with clean energy. The newsletter was for a general audience, but in his write-up, he had included graphs.

As the editor, I went through and I took his graphs out.  Having done that as well as some other editing, I sent it back to check if the new version was still accurate.  He put the graphs back in.  I took them out again and didn’t let him look at the final version.

This highlights an important aspect in finding the correct level of detail: audience.

You have to consider who your audience is.   When you are writing for a scientific journal, you need the graphs, you need the tables, you need the jargon. When you are writing for a general audience, you need to boil your story down to its quintessence. Just the cracklings, no more fat than that.

Now we come to what got me started thinking about this: teaching.  I have started to put together a course on low-level programming. In this context, low-level does not mean easy.  It refers to programming a computer closer to the nuts and bolts (closer to the circuits would be more accurate, but it’s not as familiar a metaphor) of the computer.

At its very base, computer programming is herding a bunch of varying voltage levels back and forth through the circuits of the computer.  In the old days, they used machine language and flipped physical switches.  Then they invented something called assembly language which allowed the programmer to get away from flipping the switches. After that came higher-level languages like C, Basic, Cobol, Pascal, Python, etc.  (That “etc” is doing a lot of work.)

The vast majority of programming is done in the higher-level languages, but they are all built on what went on below.  They are easier to learn because they encapsulate much of the detail in memorable ways.

The other day I was discussing boring story-telling with some friends of mine at Signet. Someone there pointed out that some writers could make having a high level of detail workout for them. I have to concede that--even after all I’ve written, but the detail has to be encapsulated in memorable ways. 

To be able to do that is an art.

I will be thinking about all of this as I put my new class together.  I don’t want to be a bore, but considering the subject, I might have to become an artist.

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.

 Auld Lang Syne

By Bobby Neal Sinters

We are at the turn of the year. In fairly short order, three things happen.  First, we have the Winter Solstice, where the north pole is pointing away from the sun and for us in the northern hemisphere it is the darkest time of year.  Second, we have New Year’s Day which is the day we choose to mark the starting of a..new year.  Third, not noticed by anyone nor marked in any special way, the Earth passes its closest to the sun on January 2 this year.  

So we begin ascending from the darkness, turn a page on the calendar, and begin a new orbit around the sun.  

It is a time to remember.

I was walking in the evening a short time ago when I made my final turn south. The sun had set and it was inky dark even though it was only approaching 6pm.  I looked ahead and saw Christmas lights one block ahead of me.

My mind went through a series of restarts in the following order. Oh, my mother-in-law has put up lights. No, my daughter has put up lights; my mother-in-law is dead and has been dead for over two-and-a-half years.

I walked past the bright Christmas lights--powered by solar--and crossed the alley.  My mind was taken back to the period during which my mother-in-law was dying.  

Those were different times.  The times of the lockdown. She fell ill on Boxing Day and was terrified it was COVID. This was not an unreasonable fear: I lost a good friend to COVID on the very day we had to rush her to the hospital.

After a month in the darkness of January, they released her into hospice, and my wife went to live with her in order to take care of her.  I would go to have supper with Jean, and then walk home afterwards.

That night after I’d put the Christmas lights behind me, the street seemed to me exactly as it had those years before. The time had disappeared.  I thought about my mother-in-law Janet.  I thought about my friend Steve.  I was back there in time.

I walked in the past in darkness for two blocks.  Then I arrived back home and stepped into a bubble of light.

On January 1, 2011, my mother passed away.  It was a bright, cold, sunny day when my cell phone rang and my brother told me the news.  It was not unexpected.  She hadn’t known me for quite some time.  One of the last times I saw her and she could still talk, she didn’t recognize me. I told her I’d spent $25 on a shirt and she was horrified by the notion.  She didn’t know my name, but she was still scandalized.

She’s gone now.

I relive it every New Year’s Day.

I am not writing any of this for people to feel sorry for me.  My holidays are not ruined by this. Death is a part of life.  Everyone who is as old as me has their own list of people dear to them they have lost.  If they are lucky, it is a long list. And I do mean that.  Statistically speaking, some of those will pass away--or begin down that path--on the holidays.

I am happy to have known my mother-in-law.  I am happy to walk the same streets she walked.  I am proud of my wife for having taken care of her the last few months of her life. It was a hard time.  A hard time.  But we honor hard times by remembering them.  We honor our loved ones by remembering them.

We love our sugar. We love our sweets. We would eat them until our teeth were rotten.  But there are many worthwhile things that have a bit of salt or sour or bitter in them.

Even sweet lives are seasoned with the salt of tears, the sourness of dissatisfaction, and the bitterness of loss. It all comes in the same package.  And we would choose none of it ourselves. None of the loss, none of the disappointment. But it’s given to us anyway.

As I write this, I know that some of you who read this have either experienced or will soon experience loss.  I am not saying this is a good thing.  I am saying that in the years to come, when you remember, let the tears flow.  Feel your feelings. If you hurt a lot, that means you loved a lot. 

Love. That’s what it’s all about in the end.

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.

 Sharing a Moment of Their Lives

By Bobby Neal Winters

I had the privilege of standing in for my dean for some ceremonial duties during commencement this year.  I say privilege because it was.  Any other time, in regard to positions in academic administration, I will try to emphasize that it’s not an honor to be wallowed in, it’s a job. It’s not a trophy to be put on a shelf; it’s a job.  It’s not a medal to be worn around one’s neck; it’s a job.

But on the night of commencement, even though putting on commencement is a lot of hard work. To be there for the student is a privilege. 

I will explain.

If you are an administrator, most of the students don’t know who you are.  They interface with the university through the staff--who work very hard to help them--and through their professors with whom they share a wide variety of experiences.  This is what the university looks like to them.

That is except for the one special night of commencement.  During commencement, the world--their world--is brought together is a small neighborhood of spacetime.  It is gathered together from the county, the state, and, in some cases, the world.  And for a very short interval of time their world is tightly focused on them.

If you are there on that stage at that moment, you have the privilege of being at the center of their universe with them. You get to share that crowning moment.

Many, perhaps most, will forget about your part in it before they clear the stage.  A lot is coming at them. They’ve got their families there; they’ve got their spouses; they’ve got their friends and lovers.

But for that one narrow instant of time, you get to be a part of their triumph.

Think about someone who has spent weeks, months, and years hearing complaints, mediating disagreements, listening to whining, and generally solving problems that people could’ve solved for themselves had they simply been interested in doing so. Then that person gets to be with the people who they’ve spent their career helping at a memory-moment of their lives.

That is a privilege. 

It’s also work.

You have to realize that you are not a human being to these students.  You are a symbol.

They have a space in their head--probably a very small space--that you inhabit.  Small in volume; small in time.  But during that miniscule bit of spacetime, you are the whole university to them.

I’d never done this before so I was nervous. 

I had a--thank God very small--speaking part.  Don’t get me wrong; I love to speak. The sound of my own voice is honey in my ears, but this is different.  I wasn’t there to be me.  I was there to be the mythical entity these students needed me to be. My normal way of speaking is to ad lib to lighten the mood, but given the moment of the occasion for our students, this would have been totally inappropriate. 

Without having humor as a tool, I had to fret and strut my hour upon the stage. (Hour? No. More like five seconds.)

I was helped along by pros who were used to it. Thanks to all, you in particular, Melinda. 

I will say that I enjoyed it very much after I got the rhythm.  Apologies to the first few students that I learned on.  I figured out that even though--or because--this was such an important moment in their lives, they just wanted to get it over with.  They would’ve sprinted across the stage if they could have.  

I was handing out diplomas and getting them to pose for the various photographers.  I told many of them to take a breath.  I tried my best to get them to stop for just a second to experience this moment.  And--at the suggestion of my provost--to keep them from falling off the stage. (It’s important that they don’t break their necks at this important point in spacetime.)

Next year at this time, I will be ready to complete my transition back to faculty with a full load of classes in Spring of 2025.

Right now, I am basking in the glow of being with these students at their special moment.

It was nice.

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.

Amanda, Getting Old, and Haskell

 Amanda, Getting Old, and Haskell

By Bobby Neal Winters

Country singers can explain who we are much quicker than writers like me can.  So let’s get some help.

Bob McDill wrote the song Amanda that Don Williams and Waylon Jennings both covered.  Each has a slightly different interpretation of it.  The lines in question from Williams point of view:

I've held it all inward, Lord knows I've tried

It's an awful awakenin' in a country boy's life

To look in the mirror in total surprise

At the hair on your shoulders and the age in your eyes

Jennings did this part differently. It was “The hair on my shoulders, the age in my eyes.”

To recognize that someone dear to you is getting older and that you yourself are getting older are two different things.  Which of those two awakenings is more awful depends upon who in particular is being awakened.

For me, it wasn’t looking in the mirror where I had my eyes opened, but looking though the document camera. Not at my hair--the Winters go prematurely gray; not my eyes--I don’t particularly look at my eyes. It was my hands.  If I looked at them directly, they looked normal, but if I was adjusting some document on the document camera that I was showing to a class, I saw my hands on their own.  I looked and asked, who do those old man’s hands belong to?

They were mine.

In the song, we might well laugh because this insight of aging is being had by a 30-year-old.  I myself am surrounded by people who tell me, hey at 61 you’re still a kid.

They are beginning to die off, however. 

The folks who are in good shape seem to follow the Triad: Physically Active, Mentally Active, Socially Engaged.  Keep your mind busy; keep your body moving; be around people, however much they annoy you.

So I’m doing my woodworking.  I’m attempting to increase my social reach in certain ways.

And I am trying to learn the Haskell computer language.  Those of you who dutifully follow this space may remember that a few years ago I took up the Python computer language.  If you do, that marks you as being kind of a nerd.  

That’s okay.  We are organized now. You can come to the meetings.

But I’ve learned the Python language.  I can do pretty much what I want to do in it.  True, the “what I want to do” is a pretty big constraint, but still I feel happy with it.

Haskell--I am finding--it a totally different kettle of fish.  While Python possessed many new features that made a lot of things that used to be quite laborious easy, Haskell is the opposite.  It not only lacks those extra features, but they’ve taken away a few more.

I will avoid going into more detail.  If you aren’t into it, I’ve probably told you more than you want to know. If you are, then either you already know or you can ask me: I would love to off load.

What I’ve learned in my 61 years of life is that (1) I am a pretty smart cookie; but (2) there are a lot of people who are a hell of a lot smarter than me; and additionally (3) I am a bulldog in that when I get my teeth into something I don’t turn it loose.  

Together, this is a gift.  What I can do is learn what the smarter people have done through pure stubbornness, translating it from their brilliance into language more humans can understand.

My mental teeth are now sunk into Haskell. 

I’ve recently read that the way the casinos get you hooked on slot machines is to let you win a little every once in a while.  The random shots of dopamine into your brain are addiction itself.

I’ve found the same with Haskell.  I beat my head against the wall for an hour or two being completely mystified, and then something works, and I get a rush.  I find out that I just understood something or I just made something happen by accident. 

One reason I am finding it to be attractive is its connection with mathematics.  It is a very mathematical computer language. Very.  I would say more, but I need to gnaw on it some more so that I can explain it better.

We’re coming to a close, so I need to refer back to the beginning.  I would be nice to say my hair might be gray, my eyes might be old, my hands are a 61-year-old train-wreck, but my mind is still young.

That’s not the case.

My mind is old too. If I don’t watch myself, working on this will give me a migraine. But 21-year-old self wouldn’t’ve known that.  My 21-year-old self wouldn’t’ve had the self-discipline to stick with Haskell and learn as much as this 61-year-old self has.

Change in the verse below, change “hillbilly band” to “learning a computer language", correct the ages, and make it rhyme, and you’ve got what I’m trying to say:

Well a measure of people don't understand

The pleasures of life in a Hillbilly band

I got my first guitar when I was 14

Now I'm crowdin' 30 and still wearing jeans

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.

 Ring a Bell; Be awake

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been reading a book entitled “To Govern the Globe,” by Alfred W. McCoy, who is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

It is both interesting to me as history and disturbing to me as history.

He begins with the history of how the Portuguese got into the slave trade. While this is a gross simplification--if you want more details read the book--the Portuguese handed it off to the Spanish, the Spanish handed it off to the Dutch, and the Dutch handed it off to the English.

At each hand-off, it seems like each of these countries added its own evil little twist.  The English basically became drug pushers for a while by selling opium to the Chinese.

And to make it all the more disturbing, they all came up with religious reasons that these crimes they were committing against their fellow children of God were actually good things: They were doing the people they were making into slaves and working to death a favor.

Yep.

I just have to sit back and think about it.  This is history.  This happened. 

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for a few minutes trying to figure out where to go next with this.  So much of what is going through my head is trying to find some justification for all this. “They would’ve done it to us if positions had been reversed.” “That’s just the way things go when civilizations come into contact.” And so on.

That may even be true.

But what do I know? What is true? Or, as Pilate put it, “What is Truth?”

The truth is people are all the same.  We don’t improve as a species in time.  The changes that come do so because we are capable of learning.  This is hard because it is hard for one generation to change its idea of what is true.  This usually has to wait for the next generation.  And you have to pray that the next generation doesn’t lose some of the truths picked up along the way or learn some new “falses.” 

We have learned that slavery is wrong.  It’s still here.  We call it human trafficking now.  (Any day I expect someone to say that we need to make human trafficking legal so we can regulate it and tax it: “We can use the money for the schools! It’s for the Children!”)  

The truth is we need to be alert.  Those of us who are religious need to be mindful of the fact that there are those who will continually try to use our religion to manipulate us.  This is true regardless of whether you are Protestant or Catholic; whether you are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Jew. 

The truth is that, in spite of being as alert as we can be, those who would manipulate us will succeed at least some of the time.  That is because we are trying to live our lives among our fellow humans, and “They” are trying to manipulate their fellow humans for profit and power.

The truth is that I can’t comfort myself by saying I wouldn’t’ve been part of all the wrong that was done.  This is something that is taught to me by my religion. One year during Holy Week we had a Tenebrae Service.  The pastor asked us whether we could have abandoned Jesus like the disciples. Would we have denied him like Peter? Would we have betrayed him like Judas?

I can’t say that I would’ve done better than either one.

Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve participated it the slave trade. Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve sold opium to the Chinese. Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve dropped the atomic bomb on Japan or taken part in the Holocaust. 

I can look at myself now and ask if there is anything I ought to stop doing and if there is anything more I ought to do.

I was ringing bells for the Salvation Army yesterday. I was there for an hour.  Different women, my age or older, would get their carts to a particular spot and poke around in their purses for a few minutes and bring out some change or some cash.  They would put the money in the kettle and say--they all said it--sorry this is so little.

Having seen dozens go by not putting anything in, I thought if everyone did as much as your little, a lot of hungry people would be fed, a lot of naked people clothed.

So, given the knowledge of all of the sins of my forebears, what do I do? 

Love my neighbor, love my enemy. Put a quarter in the kettle.  

Ring a bell. 

Be awake.

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.