The Phoenix and the Other Side of the Ashes

By Bobby Neal Winters

A Phoenix is reborn out of its own ashes.

I’ve been thinking about this image, this symbol, as our own civilization goes to ashes. I’ve also been thinking about what it means for the world to come to an end.  What is the End of the World?

The world ended twice every Sunday for a while when I was growing up.  The Last Trump was going to blow (hmmm); Jesus would Rapture his people to heaven; there would be seven years of Tribulation; then Jesus would come and establish God’s Kingdom.

And I believed.  I was terrified, in fact.  What if the Trump sounded and I was left behind to go through The Tribulation alone?

I remember one occasion when I was by myself, and I heard something like a trumpet sound multiple times--it could’ve been seven times.  I was all alone. Alone, out in the country. I was sure my whole family had been raptured away.

Turns out, I hadn’t actually heard a trumpet.  It was a bull talking to his harem.  If you say that a bull doesn’t sound like a trumpet, well...I’d never actually heard a trumpet before.  Anyway, the family got back from buying groceries...or wherever...and my heart started beating again.

Let’s return to the question stated near the beginning of the article: What is the End of the World?

In recent history, Science has come in with certain end of the world scenarios.  The Earth could be hit by a planet-killing asteroid.  It would pierce the atmosphere; send up a plume of ash; bring on an ice age. There would be starvation and war.  Nations would fight for an increasingly limited number of resources until those nations were no longer able to fight.  They would themselves dissolve leaving their citizens as roving packs of animals, fighting for the last crumbs of food.

Rapture before The Tribulation doesn’t look so bad now, does it?

If it's not an asteroid, it could be a Supervolcano. 

Or the CO2 in the atmosphere tips us into a runaway greenhouse effect.

I think the Biblical idea of the End of the World is less final, more hopeful than any of the scientific ones. 

The Biblical idea is tied up with a new beginning.

While it’s not a Biblical image, the Phoenix is an excellent metaphor. Let’s compare it to the biblical story of the Flood. In that story, the world ended; they took just what they needed to start over; then they began again.  God gave them a new covenant.  

The survivors brought a new way of doing things to the new world.

So--even though it was water that destroyed things--the Old World turned to ashes and the New World was born from within those ashes.

Right now--even as the world comes apart--the seeds of the new world are already there. 

Someone is asking, Okay, Bud, what are they?  What are the seeds of the future?

The simple thing to say would be that the seeds are our children.  People would nod and smile; they would take the cliche; they would put down the paper and go on with the rest of the day.

But it’s not that simple.  

Our world is made of people but that’s just a part of it.  It’s the connections between people.  We are connected to each other; we are connected to our families.

We are connected to the past, bringing traditions from our parents, but we are guardians of the world for our children.

Let me shift metaphors again.  We are a tapestry.  We are woven from threads that go not only around the planet, but through time--into the future and into the past.

Those who survive will be the children of those who taught them best how to survive, how to live, how to flourish.

Look around you now.  You can probably see them even if you can’t recognize them.

Oops.  I hear something blowing. See you on the other side of the ashes.

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.

Parallelograms, Taxes, and a General Rant about the Decline of Civilization

 Parallelograms, Taxes, and a General Rant about the Decline of Civilization

By Bobby Neal Winters

There’s a meme that goes around on social media.  There are variations of it, but it goes something like this: “Why did we waste so much time learning about parallelograms when we could have been taught how to do our taxes.”

If I’ve learned one thing from the Internet over the last 25 years or so, it’s that you aren’t going to change the people’s minds who post this stuff by arguing with them directly.  The ego gets involved, and there are very few people--very few--who have the strength of character to say: You are right; I am wrong; I will change the way I am thinking. (Those who do have that strength of character will win the big game in the end, but it comes at the price of eating a little crow in the meantime.  But I digress.)

There is a larger issue here, but I will deal with the details of this particular meme.

First off, we really don’t waste a lot of time learning about “parallelograms.” I assume they really mean the subject of geometry, and that referring to “parallelograms” is simply a way to trivialize the subject.  Geometry is useful. You need geometry to build buildings.  While there is a lot of stuff taught in a geometry class that can’t be put into direct use measuring, the total knowledge imparted is scaffolding for the knowledge that will actually be used. 

Knowledge is connected together like the two-by-fours in the framing of a house. Each piece helps keep the others in place.

Second, this is not an either or situation.  I learned about geometry in school and I learned how to do my taxes in school.  I did this in different classes. Mr. Sloan taught me geometry; Mr. Scott taught me how to do my taxes.  It may have actually been during the same year.  But it was in different classes.

So the meme presents us with what is known as a false dichotomy. (I sometimes get accused of making my readers run for the dictionary, but I am just repeating that this is not an either or, but in more pompous language.)

I’ll now give the creator of the meme a little credit.  As I shifted “parallelograms” to “geometry,” let’s now shift “doing taxes” to “financial literacy.”

It only took Mr. Scott a few class periods to teach us how to do our taxes. (We were only plain,country folk. There’s not much to learn when you don’t have money.  If you do have that much money, maybe you ought to hire someone to do them.) He also taught us how to write checks, the difference between a debit and a credit, and the basics of bookkeeping, as it was a course in bookkeeping.)

Having now spent about 500 words to refute 21, let’s get down to the real question: The state of education as a part of the state of our civilization.

Education starts in the home.  When a woman with her man has a baby, that is the beginning. That is the foundation of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. What happens within that family unit, and family units collectively, determines what happens in our civilization.

At one point, we had a system where woman and man would stand before God in the presence of their families and loved ones, and pronounce their lifetime commitment to each other. They would then begin to build a life together as a partnership.   As a natural part of that partnership, children would arise, and the children would be cultivated, groomed, and generally prepared to enter into the world.

This still happens sometimes, and when it does you can tell the difference, but too often the children are--I was going to say treated as pets, but you train pets to some degree--treated as some wild animal that just turned up at the door: they throw food at them occasionally and just hope they grow up.

Raising a child is a hard thing, especially if you do it by yourself. But here’s the thing: You are part of a family.  If you have a committed relationship, you’ve got a partner.  If that commitment was made in front of your family, you are a part of a family. If it was done in a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, then you are part of a community. You don’t have to be alone.

But if a child has a good start at home, the rest is easy.  We can learn about parallelograms and taxes. It can be done.

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 changing times

By Bobby Neal Winters

We come to April and the season for mowing has begun.

Well, it has kind’ve/sort’ve begun.  The sun is up higher in the sky. It’s getting warmer. Saint Patrick’s Day has past; Spring has arrived; we’ve celebrated Easter; but the season just hasn’t hit its stride yet.

According to the ancient fonts of wisdom, this is because we’ve had a dry winter.

And that is true.  While we’ve had some rain recently, I’m told that if you dig down beyond the surface the ground is dry.

As of this writing, I’ve only mowed once and only part of my holding.  I’ve done the perimeter of the backyard.  For some reason, the “grass” around the perimeter of the backyard grows more quickly than the rest of the lawn. I’ve put quotes around the “grass” in that last sentence because it’s not grass strictly speaking.

My lawn in an amalgam of plants native to this region of the world.  They are survivors of the plains and prairie.  These plants are what remains after multiple attempts at murder by a brutal climate.

The plants around the edge of my lawn have learned that if you don’t get in your licks early in this part of the world, you might as well forget it.  Summer’s gonna kill you.

And I mow them down.

It just doesn’t seem right, does it?  But it is the way.  Maybe, by dent of evolution, they will eventually learn to duck.

By the summer, it will eventually settle down and look like a normal lawn, but my days of a peaceful membership in NALM (the National Association of Lawn Mowers) may be in jeopardy.

There is new leadership in NALM.  Previously, there had been tolerance for a lawn like mine. In the far past, it was a cheerful tolerance.  There was a memory that at one time all lawns were like mine: mown weeds.

But we’ve got a new breed of leadership coming into NALM. They’ve got their studies, their models, their ideas of the way a lawn is supposed to be. Their ideas come from the theorists, theorists who’ve gazed at their own navels for incomprehensible periods of time, thinking about the “Ideal Lawn.”

They believe a lawn can be more than what it has been.  We simply have to organize it in the right way.  Letting it proceed organically just isn’t good enough. There has to be design; there has to be a plan; mowing your weeds just ain’t gonna cut it.

So to speak.

There have been fads coming through before. Ambitious leaders with agendas have come in before.  Leaders promoting edging; leaders promoting pavers; leaders promoting watering, plugging, reseeding.

In response, we’ve edged for a while; we put in a few pavers; we watered a while and reseeded. (They never got us to plug.) But after a while, they’d put some items on their CVs and went away, and we proceeded in our own organic way: keeping what worked, and forgetting the rest.

We’ve worked with the grass God has given us, and we’ve made it look better than anybody ever thought it could.

This feels different.  Something might have to give this time.

While a higher percentage of NALM members are keeping up the NALM standards, there have been a stream of members opting to leave. Most people who mow their lawns today don't belong to NALM. It’s just too much of a headache. They do as they please. They don’t choose to benefit from the advice that NALM has to offer.

The lawn world is becoming like Israel during the days of the Judges, everyone does what is good in his own eyes.

There is benefit to your lawn from being accountable to others, to interacting with peers and gaining insights from them.

Therefore, I continue with membership in NALM even though the winds seem to be changing, even though I am old and NALM seems to be going in a direction away from me.

My lawn is not what it could be, but it is my lawn. I will look at the suggestions NALM sends my way, and I will make the best use of them I can. But my lawn is what it is. Henbit and dandelions need a home too.

And we could use some more rain.

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.

Something God Knows

By Bobby Neal Winters

My formal education is in the topology of 3-manifolds. You don’t need to know what any of that is, but let’s just say that I spent a lot of my time seeing things in my head and a lot more time trying to explain those things to other people like myself without using pictures because the pictures can’t really be drawn. I did research in that area.  I learned things that only God knew before I did.

I am older now, and the topology of 3-manifolds is a part of my past--that was hard to write--but I find myself in a similar position.  I “see” things, but I need to try to explain them to someone. I don’t even know who.  If you are my audience, maybe you can tell me what I am trying to get at, but if you aren’t you might enjoy it or learn something.

Here we go.

I own some Narex Richter Chisels.  A couple of them.  This won’t mean much to most of you, but they are quickly becoming some of my prized possessions.  

I use them in cutting dovetails.  

Cutting dovetails is a process.  And it’s more than just cutting the dovetails. “Cutting Dovetails” is like “Doing Dishes.” You don’t just do the dishes. You have to clean the countertop, wipe down the stove, clean out the sink, put the clean dishes out of the dishwasher, put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. 

And more. My wife will tell you I know most of this by observation from a distance, and that’s fair.

A chisel is a piece of sharp metal with a bit of wood on the end.  It is a knife you can use a hammer on. If someone didn’t know about chisels and woodwork, they might well take a chisel and use it as a sinker on a trotline. (Shudder.)

There was a song I remember hearing when I was small.  It had a religious tone to it.  Folks in the Northeast would say that it’s schmaltzy, but we’d have to say it’s corny, because we don’t know what schmaltz is.  

Anyway, the song is called, “Touch of the Master’s Hand.”  It was about an old violin going up for auction.  It was not attracting many bids until an old guy from the audience came up, tuned it a little, and then brought a beautiful song from it.  No one recognized its value until “the touch of the master’s hand.”

I learned what chisels are good for from an old guy named Paul Sellers who teaches woodworking on YouTube.

As with everything, there are schools of thought in cutting dovetails.  Some use a router to do it.  They do a good job of it too, probably better than me.

I belong to the hand tool school. But even in the hand tool school there are divisions. How do you make your marks? Do you use a jig or a t-bevel?  What do you mark with? Do you use a pencil, a pen, or a marking knife? What kind of a saw do you make your cuts with? A gent’s saw or a Japanese pull saw?

What do you do when it comes time to cut your waste off? Do you use a coping saw or a chisel?

While there are many who use a coping saw, I use a chisel.  A Narex Richter Chisel and a wooden mallet. In this, I follow the master Paul Sellers who I mentioned above.

So, while a chisel could be used by a toothless Redneck as a sinker for a trotline, there is this whole realm of human activity that makes it something more.

I am in the process of making a box at the behest of a girl I knew in school.  We are having our school reunion this summer; she’s seen my boxes on Facebook; she wants a couple for the silent auction.  

I am delighted to be able to do it.

She has asked in particular that I carve an oil derrick on one. This is not a political statement.  We were the McLish Oilers.  The oil derrick is the symbol of our school. 

I am in the process of making one right now.  The glue is dry as I write.  I need to sand it, shellac it, cut off the top, and then put on a hinge. The top and bottom are made from some leftover piece of pine pickets that I used to fix my wife’s porch swing.  The sides are made from some very nice wood that my father-in-law left when he died.  I don’t know what kind of wood it is, but I cut my best ever dovetails from it.

I am now in a place where I see things in my head, but I can make some of those things exist in the real world.  I can talk about them to a less select audience than I did when I was doing research in 3-manifolds.  When I do make the things I see in my head, I can share them with friends.  I can give them away. 

I can give my thoughts away.  I can give pieces of myself away. Giving things away to people who enjoy those things has always made me the happiest.

I guess that’s one of the most important things I’ve learned in my life. God knew that before I did.  I think some of you know that too.

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.

 Man and His Symbols

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve recently read a book by Carl Jung et al called “Man and His Symbols.”  I say “read,” but I mean “listened to” because I’ve got it as an audiobook.  There is a difference. Written books are better, but you do what you can.

Anyway, Jung was a Swiss psychologist who’d been a student of Freud’s but then he had some ideas that differed from Freud so Freud broke it off.  These ideas had to do with the unconscious mind.

Here is a place we want to be careful about nomenclature.  In Jung it is “unconscious” mind not “subconscious” mind. There is no assumption made about the conscious being in charge.

Before I get too much further in, I want to say something because some of you might be interested in reading or listening to this book, and that’s fine, but you need to know something first.  Whenever I am listening to people who talk about Jung’s ideas I get the impression I’m talking to people who are very smart (smarter than me at least) who also might be a little crazy.

I am okay with that.  Dealing with such people at times constituted the majority of what I do.  Anybody who works with me, might also say the same thing, if you know what I mean. But, anyway, I just thought you might need to know before you got started on a book.

Jung was interested in symbols. Jung was interested in dreams. It makes sense that Jung was interested in symbols in dreams.

If I understand it right--and quite frankly if someone comes to me and says it all means something quite different than what I say, I can’t argue back--but if I understand it right, everybody you meet in your dream is an aspect of your unconscious mind.

There are times when these unconscious parts of yourself are trying to communicate with your conscious mind, and one of the means the elements of your unconscious use to communicate is dreams.

I do believe in the unconscious mind. There are a lot of things that each of us do without thinking.  We don’t have to think when we walk--at least when we are healthy.  We don’t have to think about picking up the left foot and putting it down, and then picking up the right foot and so on.  Our unconscious mind does that for us.  Right now as I type, I am not thinking about typing.  I am not thinking about spelling words. It just happens.  As I go back rereading what I’ve written, it becomes apparent that my unconscious mind is a really bad speller.

That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

I think most of us my age or better have had the experience of seeing someone you know and not being able to come up with their name until an hour, a day, or a week later.  That is the unconscious mind at work.  It keeps digging through your pile of memories until it finds something.

So the existence of an unconscious mind does make sense.  The unconscious trying to communicate through dreams also makes sense.  I mean, it’s there in your head, what else could it be, right?

When we get to the point of interpretation of dreams, there’s where it becomes more of an art.  

One of Jung’s co-authors--part of et al--was describing the analysis process a young man was going through. After hearing a brief description of the case, the part of my unconscious mind that sometimes speaks in my dad’s voice said, he needs to stop thinking so much and get himself a girlfriend. My dad’s voice used earthier terms.

The book described the young man’s dreams and gave them interpretation.  This was a process that went on for months.  Towards the end, there was a dream that is described at length.

This is toward the end of the book so I was trying to apply what I’d learned along the way to give my interpretation.  The author gave theirs--totally different than mine saying, clearly.

No. No. Not clearly.

But in any case the course the young man chose to take was to stop thinking so much and get a girlfriend.  

I think the young man knew unconsciously this is what he needed to do.  I think everyone in his life knew this is what he needed to do.  If anyone had just out and out told him, he would’ve pushed back, because we are all kind of hard-headed.

I think he needed the process in order to come to this. It may have been that his therapist needed a boat, as there are a lot of beautiful mountain lakes in Switzerland. (I jest.  I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting therapy. I’ve known too many people who it has helped. Would that a few more got it.)

It is interesting stuff.  To me, at least.

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.

 Higher Mathematics

By Bobby Neal Winters

I started studying mathematics at the college level in 1980. I’ve studied a number of places.

Time is a teacher.

During the early 1980’s I worked as a paper-grader/office-worker in the Department of Mathematics at East Central State University in Ada, Oklahoma, for the amount of $3.10 per hour.

As a perq, we got to listen to the radio as long as it was country. One of the songs I remember hearing was “Amarillo by Morning” as sung by George Strait, who didn’t write it (Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser did) but did sing the defining version of it.

It is about the life of a rodeo cowboy.  In that part of the world, this was not a foreign notion to me. While I never, ever aspired to that life, to my 20-year-old mind the song painted a romantic picture.

The portion of interest goes like this:

Amarillo by mornin'

Up from San Antone

Everything that I got

Is just what I've got on

I ain't got a dime

But what I've got is mine

I ain't rich

But Lord, I'm free

Let us now go forward to 1988. Wikipedia says George Strait came out with his version in 1982, so this would’ve been six years later.  I am at that point working on my doctorate in mathematics and am visiting Austin, Texas for a year.  I’m married and the father of a small child.  At that time I rode on the bus back and forth to the University of Texas every day so that I could work with my advisor who was on sabbatical there.

I rode the bus because the bus was cheap.  The homeless people rode the bus because it was cheap and warm.  I am a listener, and I always have been. It’s a big part of who I am, so I listened to the homeless people.

There was one homeless man who was relating a conversation that he had with his girlfriend.  She’d said, “You love that bottle more than me.” He affirmed it. But he also added that he was happy with that.  She wasn’t his boss. No one was his boss. He’d always done everything his own way.

He seemed quite pleased to be able to say that.  Then he got off the bus and went to go live in a culvert somewhere in Austin.

Looking back, I believe he was in his sixties.  About my age.

Where is he now? I presume he is dead.  Did he die under an open sky?  Was he buried?  Is there a stone with his name on it above his head?

I’ll never know any of that.

I know that he did things his way and that he said he loved his bottle more than his girlfriend.

There is a price to be paid for getting one’s own way.  It’s usually paid in the currency of relationships with other people.

There is another country song that pops to mind right about now. The chorus goes like this:

I'd start walkin' your way, you'd start walkin' mine

We'd meet in the middle, 'neath that old Georgia pine

We'd gain a lot of ground, 'cause we'd both give a little

There ain't no road too long, when we meet in the middle

The idea of meeting in the middle is cliche. It’s utterly simplistic. One person in the relationship almost always gets their way more than the other. But it’s also what we do in most relationships.

To get something, you give up something.  I’ll step out of country music for a minute and quote Supertramp:

Give a little bit

Oh give a little bit of your love to me

I'll give a little bit

I'll give a little bit of my life for you

As men, we give up our freedom; we give up our lives. We do this in exchange for love. In my opinion, we get the better end of the deal.

I did, in the end, get my doctorate in mathematics. The most important thing I’ve learned is that one plus one is bigger than two if you give up having your own way.

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.

 Daylight Saving Time and Self interest broadly defined

By Bobby Neal Winters

The switch to Daylight Saving Time annoys me.  This used to be simply because I am a morning person and it takes away an hour of daylight from the morning. (That’s right: No daylight is saved; it’s just moved.) Then I had the realization that Standard Time was the true time: it’s set up so that the sun will be at its highest at noon, the way God and Gary Cooper meant it to be.

But an overwhelming reason to be annoyed hit me the other day.

We move to Daylight saving time when the days are getting longer anyway.  If we remained on Standard Time, we would still have enough time to do yard work in the evening during the summer.  However, the politicians “give us” an extra hour during the time of greatest change in order to take credit for it.  It looks like they are doing something for us, but they really aren’t.

It kind of sets your jaw on edge, doesn’t it?

I don’t know what bothers me more: The fact that they do it or the fact that we fall for it.

As Pogo observed, and as has often been repeated, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Let’s now turn from Pogo to Churchill to recall that he said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time...” The genius in the phrasing is not to say that democracy is good, but that it’s the least bad among a lot of bad alternatives.

We don’t like to be governed.  Not in general.

There are people who call themselves anarchists who advocate for no government and call it anarchy.  “Anarchy” is from the Greek, and if you break it down it means “no leader.” The thing is, if we made all governments disappear today, there wouldn’t be “no leader”; there would be lots of leaders and all leading in different directions, and those directions would be in conflict.

We had that situation once, back in the mists of time, and it brought us to where we are today.

We are a social, hierarchical animal.  We like to follow a strong, charismatic leader.

The trick is finding the right strong, charismatic leader.  How do you do it?

I don’t know.

Then what do we do next?

It starts by looking in the mirror and asking some questions. Am I as good a human being as I can be?  If the answer to that is no--and for most of us it likely is--then we need to ask another question: What do I need to do to change?

For most of us, we need to embrace the concept of “self-interest, broadly defined.”  We need to take care of ourselves as much as we can, but it can’t end there. However good you are at taking care of yourself, you don’t live alone in the world. There are times when you will need a little help, and there are times when those around you will need a little help.

So with self-interest broadly defined, take care of yourself; take care of your family; take care of your neighbor; take care of your neighbor’s family. Taking care goes out like ripples from a rock that hits the water: bigger in the middle be going out into circles of larger radius.

If there are enough people around us who do this, we’re strong; we’ve built a strong family; we’ve helped to build a strong community.

I believe we’ve built a strong community here in Pittsburg. We’ve got good people with good heads and good hearts.  I think the idea of self-interest, broadly defined, is broadly practiced.  We love our God; we love our neighbor; we take care of our families; we take care of ourselves.

We could do better, but we try to do better all the time.

And with the switch to Daylight Saving Time, there will be a little less light in the morning for us morning people to do it.

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.

Binding and Loosing while the rain pours down

Binding and Loosing while the rain pours down

By Bobby Neal Winters

Jesus gave Peter the power to bind and to loose.  A lot of time has been wasted by Protestant and Catholics over what that means and its scope.  Before there were even Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox argued with the Catholics over it.  There have been enough people arguing over it for a long enough time that clearly I am not needed. 

What I am curious about though is the particular phrasing: binding and loosing. Jesus was speaking metaphorically, but metaphors refer back to concrete objects.  What sort of concrete objects pop to mind, if Jesus were talking to someone like this.

Well, Jesus was a carpenter. 

My avocation of woodworking is not far from that.  I use wood glue to put boards together.  A lot of folks use screws, but I am not sure there were even screws back then.  If there were, they would’ve been expensive.  There were nails, but all of the nails were individually made and quite expensive.

However, one thing was much less expensive and widely available: rope.  You could cut your joinery with such tools as they had available, and tie the pieces of wood together.  So Jesus could have been referring to a familiar image from his own profession.  Peter, you are building a church. What you put together will be put together; what you take apart will be taken apart.   

I will come back to this later, but in the meantime let me talk about Noah, that is to say, the story of Noah and the Ark.

Those of us who went to Sunday School as children are quite familiar with this story.  Sunday School teachers love it.  It’s got animals in it; it’s got drama. There is a rainbow at the end.  They always--and I do mean always--skip the bit after the rainbow, but we can too.

Even though I’ve been through this multiple times over the course of my 6 decades of life, I noticed something new this time.  In the creation story, God creates the Cosmos by separating the waters from the waters.  At the end there is the water above the firmament--in the sky--and the water beneath the earth.

While it did rain for forty days and forty nights, the Flood consists of more than rain. It was more than rain coming from above the firmament.  Water billowed up from below as well.  In effect, God undid his creation.  It was the end of the world.  But then the waters went back from whence they came, so the world was created again, created anew.

At that End of the World, God went to Noah to build the Ark. God had created the world, he was certainly capable of building an Ark for Noah, but he chose Noah to do it. So God gives us the information and the inspiration to help ourselves if we are obedient to him.        

But it occurred to me that this makes Noah a carpenter. A carpenter like Jesus.

The first Christians, called the Church Fathers, thought of Noah’s Ark as a symbol of the church.  In our baptism ceremony, this is referenced to God saving those on the Ark through water.

So it occurs to me--and please talk to me privately and correct me gently if I am wrong--that Jesus talking to Peter is very much like God talking to Noah. Jesus is saying, build the boat; put the church together.  However you build it, that’s the way it’s going to be done. 

The carpenter is telling the fisherman to build a boat.

While we might disagree on manners of worship and church organization, I bet a lot of us can agree that it’s raining in a metaphorical sense and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop even after 40 days.  

Well.  Time to go back to the woodshop and get some more glue on my hands.

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.

 Trees, Wells, Forks in the Road

By Bobby Neal Winters

Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

If you go over that sentence, parse it carefully, and analyze it, you will wind-up frowning with your whole face.

I understand it perfectly however.  That is to say, I’ve got my own interpretation. “If you come to a place where there is a choice to be made among multiple alternatives, make a decision and proceed apace. Don’t suffer from paralysis by analysis.”

That way of saying it is more amenable to pedantry, but it doesn’t pack the rhetorical heft of the Yogiism.

True, there might be other interpretations of what Yogi said, but that just makes it better. 

That’s because there are ways of thinking and there are ways of thinking.

Right now we are in the age of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  They like to call it STEM. We do love our acronyms in this age.  We love the precise, mathematical language.  We love to reason with axioms. We love to reason with data.

And it’s good. Logic and math, science and technology, have cleaned up the water supply, cured smallpox, given us central heat, provided us with little boxes to stare at over dinner instead of talking to family members.

It is a good language to speak in.

But it’s not the only language.

There is another language that is ancient and far more ingrained in us: let’s call it the language of stories.

We could also call it the language of dreams, but that is going to turn off my audience.  You hear “the language of dreams” and you heave a sigh so heavy as to knock down trees and take the roofs off houses.  

“OH. One of those,” you say.

And I get the point.  The people who talk only in the language of dreams are every bit as tedious in their own way as those who speak only in the language of logic.

I understand because I have heaved my share of heavy sighs.

Yet, I’ve come to admit there is something there, and my reason for saying so is that it has improved my reading of the Bible, it has enhanced my enjoyment of literature.

I’ve said it’s the language of stories and the language of dreams, but perhaps it’s best described as the language of symbols. Let me give you an example.

In “A Christmas Carol,” Dickens describes Scrooge as being “as solitary as an oyster.”  Certainly, an oyster is alone within its shell. Oysters don’t share shells.  But the oyster is a symbol. The shell is hard; it offers protection; it keeps the oyster from being hurt. Scrooge has cut himself off from the world because he doesn’t want to be hurt. He’s been hurt by people before, and he doesn’t want it to happen again.

All of that, in a symbol.

We run into all sorts of symbols in the Bible.  Let’s keep it simple to begin with, and if you have the sense of humor of a middle school student, I ask you to put it in a box for the next few minutes.

Trees and poles are masculine symbols. I don’t think I need to put a finer point on it as it were.  Wells and bodies of water are feminine symbols. That is fairly clear as well, but in addition to whatever else you might be thinking, water is the stuff of life. It gives life just as women produce life.

In this way of thinking, the feminine is creative and the masculine is structured.  The two are necessarily complementary; they are parts of a greater whole.

In the Old Testament, you have a lot of men meeting their wives at wells. If we carry this to the New Testament, it brings a new lens to the story in the Gospel of John where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well.  We later read that the church is the bride of Christ, we could interpret that the church is made up of sinners such as this woman.

When Jesus is crucified, the women are at the foot of the cross. The Cross is a masculine symbol, and the women at the base are a feminine symbol.  From this we can interpret that something new, a new world, is going to be born from this.

As I’ve said, this is not everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s real. It has opened up a new level of interpretation to me. And the thing is, it’s not new. This is the way the Rabbis interpreted scripture before Christ; it’s the way the Church Fathers interpreted scripture.

And it’s an Art: I make no bones about that. It’s not STEM; that’s for sure. But keep an open mind, not to let your brains fall out, but to let some beautiful light in.

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 Ark of the End-table

The Ark of the End-Table

By Bobby Neal Winters

God told Noah to make an Ark 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. Because of the context, we might think an Ark is a boat, but later, God instructs Moses to make an Ark that is 2 and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits tall.

An Ark is a box. When you work with wood, just about everything is a box.

I’ve been working on a box.  A big box.  I’ve just finished it, but it took on a life of its own.

Since just after Thanksgiving, I’ve been working on an end table for my brother.  We’d gone down to see him the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and I saw a table he had in his living room.  I determined to make him an end table to match it.  

If any of you have seen “Lonesome Dove” it was like when Captain Call determined to take Gus’s body back to Texas, but I didn’t recognize it at the time.  I was put on a path.

The key thing that set this path for everything that followed was that the legs were to be made from a four by four. Everything was on rails from that point on.  

The table needed to be two feet tall. (I don’t work in cubits.) Therefore, the end table was destined to weigh at least as much as an eight-foot four-by-four.

If there are any young men reading this, they might not get it.  If you are reading this and have never personally wrestled with a four-by-four, you might not get it.  However, if you are a man beyond a certain age, I believe you will understand.  There is a certain amount of heft involved. You can carry them yourself; and if you’ve taken care of yourself, you might do it easily; but you don’t do it thoughtlessly.

I will say this.  When you cut an eight-foot four-by-four into four pieces, it does reduce what physicists refer to as the “rotational moment of inertia,” but the weight remains. Every darn bit of it.

As work progressed, my project became approximately a 2-foot-by-2-foot-by-2-foot cube.  That is bigger than it sounds, especially when it’s heavy and is gradually growing in weight.  

I started with the legs, and then chiseled out the mortises. (It loses a little weight. Yea.) Then you put in stretchers made from scrap 2-by-4s. (And it gains quite a bit more weight. Boo.) 

All the time, it’s taking up space. What’s more, it’s taking up working space.  And did I mention that it’s heavy.

There are spots on the floor, here and there, where I could put it, but it got to be so darned heavy that moving it back and forth got to be quite a chore.

An enmity grew between me and my end table.

I am not quite sure enmity is the right word there.  I was annoyed at it.  It was in my way.  There are all the other things I wanted to do while the glue dried, but I couldn’t because the carcass of the end table was in my way.  

Carcass.  That is the word that is used.  Like the dead body of an enemy that you’ve killed.  Some ancient furniture maker understood.

The answer may seem obvious: Just finish the project.

Ah, but the project was getting so big that it was getting in its own way.  

I’d made the carcass, but I needed to make the drawers, and there the carcass was right where I needed to be to glue-up my drawers.  

I cleaned a spot on the floor; heaved the carcass off the work table; did the drawers.

Then I needed a top, but where to put the drawers then?  

Okay, I could slide the drawers into the carcass which I did.

When I made the top--again trying to match the piece that my brother had--I put a frame around a piece of plywood and then used mortar to attach porcelain tiles to it.  Then I grouted between the tiles.

At this point, I’d kissed trying to make this table lighter good-bye a long time ago.

Every step of the construction was hindered by its bulk and weight.

I slapped some shellac on it and declared it finished on February 8.

When the shellac dried, I could take it out of my shop.  But I needed help.  With the Ark, Noah had the waters of the flood there to move it.  All of his neighbors are dead, but the thing is moving, right? With the Ark of the Covenant, there were pairs of rings on each side to help them move it with poles.  

I didn’t have any of that, but I do have a loving and helpful wife who lovingly helped me.

The Ark of the End-Table now awaits my next trip to my brother's house, and I’ve got a lot of workspace back.  

Life is 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.

Fire and Rain

By Bobby Neal Winters

Her name was Teresa Massa, but I called her Mother Teresa, and she thought that it was funny.

There are people on Earth whose job it is to clean up messes that other people have made.  They go by different names in different places. The mob calls them “cleaners”; many businesses call them HR.  When I was president of the university chapter of the KNEA, I called them the “Men in Black.”  This in spite of the fact that the one in charge was a woman.

I called them the “Men in Black” after the movie.  According to the movie, there are a lot of things going on in the world that need to be taken care of that the vast bulk of the people of the world are better off not knowing.  The same is true at any big organization including the university.

Mother Teresa was in charge of the “Men in Black” back in the day and that day was almost 20 years ago.

Mother Teresa took a shine to me. 

I am a person who does not like conflict.  I have an accommodating personality type.  I like to make people happy.  I will twist myself into a pretzel to make people happy. (Until I get to my breaking point, and then I am DONE. But that is a story for another day.) As I said, I got to know Mother Teresa as union president during a time of conflict.  When I went to the “dark side” in administration afterwards, she took me under her wing and taught me some administrative basics.

We would meet in her office, drink our respective hot beverages, and talk.  She told stories of her time at the university.  She talked about the characters she had known.  She talked about personalities she had met.

She knew the people from the Age of Giants.  Perhaps she was a giant herself.  Though the Greeks spoke of an age of giants--the Titans--this was followed by an age of gods.  Perhaps Mother Teresa belonged to that latter age.  Time will tell.

From her I learned there are two sides--at least two sides--to history.  I’ve come to call them the PR side and the HR side.

The PR side is what you see in the papers. It is glossy and smells like perfume.  Events progress neatly from A to B to C and all the way to a glorious Z without any friction.  The PR side is boring.

Then there is the HR side. There is not a bit of gloss to the HR side. I’m not going to say what it smells like, but it’s not perfume. Earthier than that. Let’s say it smells like un-painted reality.

The HR side is Truth, and I meant that capital “T”.

Mother Teresa had seen the dirt and smelled the smells, and she still loved the university.  

She loved learning.

She loved history and art.  She loved conversation about cultures and religions.  She reached out an open and helpful hand to our teachers from foreign countries and learned about them.

She was an Okie, just like me. She was of the first generation in her family to go to college, just like me.  In her retirement, she and her husband Richard established a scholarship for First Generation students. 

She was particularly interested in the students who were barely making it.  They were financially on the edge and they needed the help.  When she and Richard first established the scholarship, there would be a luncheon where she gathered the recipients together to meet them.  It made them feel special.

Time took a toll.

Richard’s health began to fail, and he wouldn’t be able to attend.  Then he passed.  Time exacted a toll on Mother Teresa as well.

She had treated my wife and me to a nice lunch at the 609 Club in Joplin a few years ago.  She’d had her 7&7.  I’d always intended to reciprocate, but time, events, life didn’t cooperate.

Then I got an email from our mutual friends in Advancement: Mother Teresa was ill and wasn’t going to make it.

Then word came that she had passed.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again.

May I be as good a help to others as she was to me.

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.

 

Arduino and Nicodemus

 Arduino and Nicodemus

By Bobby Neal Winters

When we are making big changes in our lives we ask ourselves, am I doing the right thing? After we’ve made the big changes in our lives and it’s too late to go back, we ask ourselves, have I done the right thing?

Sometimes we get an answer, oh yes, and not a moment too soon.

First off, I am not retiring; I am leaving administration.  It will feel like I am retiring.  During my dad’s later years, when he was working as a truck driver, whenever someone asked him about retiring, he would say, “I retired when I stopped pushing that rod and tubing.”

This was his way of saying that his transition from oilfield construction to hauling bulk cement was a happy one.

As of the day I am writing this, I have 126 more days in my administrative position.  I will then transition to teaching full time. As our new Computer Science major is growing by leaps and bounds, I am preparing myself to teach courses within it.  I mentioned in a previous column that I am learning assembly language programming as a part of that.

I am using an Arduino Uno microcontroller to do this. 

Here I want to shout out to all of my friends in the Republic of Frontenac.  Yes, you read that correctly: Arduino.  It is Italian.  Get on the internet and google Arduino, and you will find a whole new world.  The Italians have done an excellent job designing a support network for learning how to use this particular family of microcontrollers. Leonardo da Vinci would be proud of them.

I’ve been tinkering around with Arduinos for a while, but always at home, never at the office.  Home is home; work is work, except when I take work home. 

I have a table in my office that I’ve used to keep magazines off.  This week I went in, and put all of the “Physics Today” magazines on it into the recycle bin; I moved the hot pot that I use to heat water for tea to a spot on the floor beside my bookshelf; I then started putting my tools--wire snippers, wire strippers, LEDs, breadboards, copper wire--onto the table.

I began working on a little machine. I am starting small because at the end I want something that I will be able to teach to beginners. I want something that will be able to display numbers sent to it by the Arduino.  I am using something called a 7-segment LED.  You’ve seen one even if you don’t know what it is.  Remember the old-style calculators where everything came out in red squares.  We used to amuse ourselves by making them spell “b00biES.”  Each of those digits was on a 7-segment LED.

One of those requires 8 wires to control, and I will be wanting to display more than one digit, so I am figuring out a way to toggle through one digit at a time.  I’ve figured out a way to display the digits; I’ve figured out a way to toggle through some choices; I will now be moving on to a way to do it all at the same time.

When I am done, I not only will need to know how to do it myself, I will need to know how to explain it to 19 and 20-year-olds.

I have purchased quite a few books at this point.  Let me just say that I can tell that some of these folks have never been in front of a classroom.  Let me continue to say that some of those who have, well, I know what their student rating forms look like.

Nevertheless, I am having a ball.

Any moment that is not occupied by listening to students complain about faculty, listening to staff complain about faculty, listening to faculty complain about each other (and it’s not even noon yet, folks!) I steal the opportunity to work on my wiring, to work on my code, to learn about the software tools so that I can teach them to my students.

Nicodemus asked Jesus, “How can a man be born again when he is old?”

I feel like I’ve been born again.  I feel like I am living the computer science version of John 3:16.  The pianist was playing “Just as I am,” the preacher was urging sinners to walk the aisle, to “listen to that little voice in your heart.”

And I stepped out and walked toward the front.

I am looking forward to the rest of my career, to the rest of my life.  Everything I’ve done is a part of me and has made me who I am, and I regret nothing.

But it’s time to turn the page.  

Only 126 more days.

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.

 Assembly Language

By Bobby Neal Winters

I almost began this piece by staying, “Humans run stories like computers run programs.” It gets toward my point, but it falls into some dangerous territory. Please allow me to explain.

It’s fashionable to say that “human bodies are machines” or “human brains are computers.” The truth is that humans created machines; humans created computers. One might, and I mean might, truthfully say that there is an abstract concept of which both human bodies and machines are instances of; and one might say a similar thing about brains and computers; but don’t actually know that. And--even if it’s found out to be true--statements such as these lead us toward treating humans like objects.

Because of this, I will begin instead by saying that language, stories, and narratives are very important to human well being.

These thoughts come at a time when I am simultaneously putting together a Bible study on the book of Genesis and learning assembly language for a microprocessor.

There is a common thread between these two: Interpretation. 

Before we get too far into the weeds, there are people who say that Genesis doesn’t have to be interpreted. It’s just there.  Read it; it’s a historical account; that’s the way it happened.  The devil tempted Eve with the apple and she made Adam eat it.

Well, it doesn’t say “devil.” It says “serpent.” You’ve just done some interpretation.

The whole story of the Fall, for example, is just loaded with ambiguity. From just reading the text, you can’t tell whether Adam is standing right by Eve when the Serpent is encouraging her to take the apple.  We assume Eve is alone with the Serpent because that’s the way it feels, but it’s an assumption. We interpret it that way because of our experience of the way operators like the Serpent do things.

But it’s an interpretation.

Okay, so let’s now go to connect this with assembly language.  I won’t get technical.  However technical what follows seems, trust me, I am sparing you extraneous details.  

Really.

To make it simple, let me say that your computer, down in its heart, has memory (which humans chose to name that way) and a processor.  I like to think of the memory as a stack of rows of pigeon holes.  Some of that memory--some of those pigeon holes--are special.  We call them “registers.” Think of a register as a row of pigeon holes.

Each pigeon hole in a register will either contain a one or a zero.  In reality, it is either voltage written HIGH or voltage written LOW.  For the sake of simplicity of language, we say one and zero.

Programming in assembly language consists of writing programs that copy the contents of one register to another and modify the contents in various imaginative ways. (Do not ask me to unpack that last clause unless you are ready to take a course.) 

I was careful not to refer to the contents of a register as a number.  Doing that is an interpretation.

A register can be a number; it can be a collection of logical units; it can be a letter of the alphabet or other alphanumeric character.

In the course of programming, it can be useful to make one of these interpretations or another, but for the most part, it’s just easier to think about moving the contents of pigeon holes around.

I am writing functions in assembly language that I then access from a higher level language (for you geeks out there it’s C).  That higher level language needs to know what to expect.  It needs to know the type of information coming out so it knows which and how many registers to look at for the answer.

The higher level language needs to interpret the registers to know what their contents mean.

The preacher, the teacher, the reader must interpret the words of the story to know what they mean.  Whatever interpretation given is going to depend a lot on the inner life of whoever is doing the interpretation.  Their personal experience will color it.

This is why we need to be guided by the thoughts of others, by the wisdom of the Saints, and, dare I say, by the Holy Spirit.

Just as the human body is not a machine; the human brain is not a computer; the stories in the Bible are more than just words written one after another. They are the path to meaning.

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.

 Bubba and Taylor Swift

By Bobby Neal Winters

I got a call last week from my old friend Bubba from back home.  He’s the one that lives just the other side of Wapanucka.  We passed and repassed but, almost inevitably, the subject of politics came up.

Being quite forward, he asked, “So who are you for?”

“None of them,” I said. “Neither of the presumptive nominees is very attractive.”  I thought he was going to ding me for using the word “presumptive,”  but he let it go.  Instead, he came back sounding cheerful.

“Well, if you just stick with what the system brings you, you are bound to be disappointed. I’ve got someone better.  Someone who can lead the country into the future.”

“Oh, pray tell, who? Don’t keep me in suspense.” 

I am afraid I sounded a little grumpy.

His answer was not grumpy.

“Taylor Swift.”

There was a longish moment of silence.  This was quite unusual because Bubba tends to fill all the silence.  But after a moment, I responded as intelligently as I could.

“Wha-a-at?”

“Not what, who,” he said. “Taylor Swift.”

“Okay, who not what, but why?” I asked.  I ended on a pronounced upward inflection because I was incredibly confused.

“Well,” he said evenly, “look at the two main candidates and why people are for them or against them, and then look at Taylor.

“Taylor is a billionaire. She did it on her own. She’s not bought and paid for on day one.”

“Okay,” I was nodding even though he couldn’t see me. “I’ll grant you that.  Go on.”

“She’s a tough negotiator.  She’s gone head to head with the music industry. She’s got the rules changed.  She did it in such a way as to help her fellow artists as well.”

“Okay,” I couldn’t deny that.

“She’s got moxie,” he continued. “When she didn’t have the rights to her own albums, she recorded them and told her fans to buy the new ones.  It was Kelly Clarkson’s idea, and she always gives Kelly credit for it.”

I was about to acknowledge that, when he continued.

“While I am at it, let me say that Taylor always takes care of her own.  It’s not one minute a person is the best in the world and the next minute they are a loser.  She doesn’t throw her friends under the bus.”

“O...,” I began, but before I could get out my “kay” he pushed on.

“And she’s not as old as Methusalah.” 

“Certainly not,” I said, but then a question quickly presented itself to me. “But is she even old enough to be president.  There is a limit to how young you can be.”

It had been a while since I’d taken civics, but I remembered that.

“Well,” Bubba drawled, “I am ahead of you there.  I googled it.  You have to be 35 years old to be President of the United States.  Taylor is 34 now, and she will turn 35 in December of this year.  She would be 34 on election day, but she would be 35 when she took the oath of office in January.  She would be in under the wire by a little over a month.

“Some might say that’s a-cuttin’ it a little close, but to me that looks like a sign from God.”

By this time my mind was confused, and I started grasping for reasons.

“But she’s had a number of boyfriends that she’s had very public breakups with. Wouldn’t that be a problem?”

“The democrats haven’t cared about a candidate’s love life since the late 1990s and the republicans stopped caring in 2016.  And none of them even wrote songs about it.”

I was worried.  I was worried because in the context of what people seem to care about when voting for president I couldn’t find a counter argument.

Finally I asked, “Anything else?”

“Sure,” he said, “One more thing.”

I waited.

“She looks better in a miniskirt than any of the rest of them.”

“Goodbye, Bubba,” I said and hung up the phone.

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.

 Percy Jackson and Stephen Fry

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been watching the series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” on Disney Plus with my family.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Percy Jackson, he is a creation of the author Richard Riordan who has written a series of Percy Jackson books in addition to other books which are based on the Greek myths, Roman myths, and Egyptian myths.

He may have explored other mythologies as well, but I’ve got a day job and I just can’t keep up.

If you’ve seen the movie and not been impressed, don’t let that dissuade you from this series.  It takes its time and follows the books more closely.

The principal characters are the half-blood children of the gods born mainly to human mothers.  They are modern teenagers who are trying to make sense of their lives in the modern world.

Not so long ago, I listened to a book called “Mythos” by the English actor and entertainer Stephen Fry. You may be familiar with Fry from “Blackadder” and “Jeeves and Wooster.” The audiobook is read by the author, and it’s worth it for the accent alone.  He also provided his voice for the audio versions of the “Harry Potter” books.

As one might guess, “Mythos” is Fry’s exposition of the Greek myths from Ouranos and Gaia on down.  I look at that word “exposition” and have my doubts.  I might want to say “interpretation” but that almost goes without saying. There are multiple versions of many of the stories that have been interpreted by various authors over the millenia. 

Fry has combed through these on his own--and I get the impression on the original languages. If so, wow. Regardless, he’s picked out his own path and created a harmonization of these stories as near as possible.

The Greek myths have never really gone out of fashion entirely, and you might very well be familiar with some that you read in grade school or in high school, if that was your last exposure, but be warned that the versions you read may have been cleaned up a bit.

They probably left out that Zeus, the king of the gods, was extremely libidinous and went after anything in a skirt--or trousers for that matter--that tickled his fancy.  His having affairs and his wife Hera wreaking vengeance on those with whom he had affairs--and any progeny that resulted from those affairs--is a recurring theme.

Each of the gods/goddesses has their realm of influence; each their personality; each their set of shifting alliances. While each is the personification/idealization of some realm of human experience, e.g. erotic love, art, music, mechanical arts, and represents some sort of perfection within that realm, each is also deeply, deeply flawed.

They are powerful, magical entities, but for someone who comes up through the Judeo-Christian tradition, they are really not God-like at all.  They are more like comic book superheroes than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

All of that having been said, there are certain points of similarity among the stories of Greek mythology and the Bible.  For example, according to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman.  She was given a jar which--unknown to her--contained all the troubles of the world.  She was told not to open it, but her curiosity made her open it.

Compare this with Eve who ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil after having been told not to.  

Now, the similarity is there.(You can check out an article “Eve, Pandora and Plato: How Greek Myth Shaped the First Christian Woman” by Katie Brown on thecollector.com.) But Pandora was created by the gods as a punishment for man while Eve was created by God for Adam as a helper.  In the story of Eve, her part in the Fall is much subtler. I would say that Adam bears the blame rather than Eve.

While it is no surprise that I come down on the side of the Bible, the Greek myths are a treasure as well. Without these in combination, we wouldn’t have western literature.  The whole world would be poorer.

Our literature is important.  It is an important part of the glue that holds us together as a civilization. Whether we get it through novels and poems; comic books and country songs; or scripture and psalms: it is our roadmap for living. 

That being said, we need to be familiar with our roadmap.

Last night while watching “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” I noticed that the half-blood children judge their divine parents through a modern lens. The image that lens gives is not flattering.  It occurred to me this critique of the Greek gods is a Judeo-Christian perspective, one literature interpreting the other.

I can recommend “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” to people of all ages and “Mythos” to the mature. Great stories all around.

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.

 Save a Few for Lefty Too

By Bobby Neal Winters

We always pray for the victim. It’s easy.  They are sympathetic.  They’ve got tears rolling down their faces and snot coming out of their noses--or blood coming out of their noses. Or, there’s no crying, no sound at all and they are lying on the floor in a pool of their own blood.

Prayers aplenty, then.

But what about the villain? The bully? The traitor? Do we pray for them?

“Pancho and Lefty” is a song written by Townes Van Zandt.  It tells a story, and while others might differ in their interpretation--and that’s the wonderful thing about poetry, lots of room for interpretation--Pancho was an outlaw whom Lefty either assassinated or betrayed for payment.  I base this on the line “The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty’s mouth.” (That could also mean Lefty was a song writer and wrote about it. You can be both a song writer and an assassin, but I digress.)

It continues to say, “The day they laid poor Pancho low /Lefty split for Ohio / Where he got the bread to go / There ain't nobody knows.”

We the reader are meant to infer some sort of causal connection here. The infamous Pancho, who is romantic and exciting, is dead and that shifty-looking Lefty just disappeared.

Lefty is either a killer or a fingerman.  He’s not dashing.  He’s not romantic.  He is not a hero or an anti-hero. He does his business and then runs from Mexico to Cleveland with his thirty pieces of silver.  

Cleveland for heaven’s sake.

Given all this, Van Zandt (through Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in the most famous cover of the song) implores us to pray: “Pancho needs your prayers, it's true /Save a few for Lefty too / He just did what he had to do /And now he's growing old.”

Here, within a cowboy ballad, sung by a pair of country music’s outlaws, we find a seed of the gospel.

While Jesus was being crucified between a pair of thieves like Pancho, He called out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  

I think we can assume Jesus was asking for forgiveness even of Judas.  

We can take Christ’s example and see Van Zandt applying it here between sinners.  Sinners like us.

I was once told that everything happens for a reason. I’ve meditated on that for at least ten years.  It has power.  

People have their reasons.

“[Lefty] only did what he had to do.” He had to because he needed the money.  It was either him or Pancho.  Pancho was going to die anyway. He was a bandit.  He deserved it.

So traitors have their reasons.

Bullies also have their reasons.  I’ve dealt with a few.  If you open up their heads, they have a justification for their actions.  Indeed, if you look deeply enough, they believe themselves to be the victim.

Humans are messy.

It is captured nicely in a song that Jelly Roll sings, ”'Cause I'm only one drink away from the devil /I'm only one call away from home /Yeah, I'm somewherе in the middle /I guess I'm just a littlе right and wrong.”

This all having been said, let’s not go too far.  In a lot of situations, there is clearly one party that has been wronged more than the other. Often they are the ones that I described in the first paragraph with tears rolling down their faces and blood coming out of their noses.

And this is where Van Zandt’s poetry gets it right.  They need our prayers, because they have been wronged, but the person who did it is also one of God’s children.  They need a few prayers to help with whatever made them do this.

And in the toughest situations, prayer is the only thing we have.

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.