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.