How to use a shovel

By Bobby Neal Winters

My dad could use a shovel, and he taught me how to use one too.  He’d started work in the oilfield when he was a boy, when they were first starting oilfield production in Oklahoma. They used horses and mules before trucks and bulldozers came in.

Dad and his twin brother Dave worked as a pair.  A man with an ax chopped down the brush; Dad and Dave dragged it away.  They were still boys and hadn’t yet worked their way up the ladder to be allowed to use an ax.  

There is a hierarchy.

Once the brush is cleared, you start digging ditches.  You breach the ground and dig down.  Once you are deep enough, you need someone in the ditch to shovel the “crumbs” out.  There are different shovels that one uses to dig-down and to crumb-out.  Neither looked like the standard shovel we use in the garden, except in the way all shovels look alike.

There is a hierarchy here too, about who digs down and who crumbs out.  I am not sure which direction it goes, but I do know it is considered bad form to shovel into the ditch more than you have to.  You don’t want to make unnecessary work for the fellow who is crumbing.

Dad was a master.  I wouldn’t call him an artist, but he did care about the craft.  Would “artesan” be the right word? 

Our house had been built in an area subject to water run-off.  He spent his leisure time with a shovel, sculpting the land to direct the water away from our house.

He taught me (and my brother) this fine art by what the education theorists call “the Discovery Method.”  In his case, it was implemented as follows: “Boys, the sewer ditch has filled up.  Clean it out.”

It was June; it was Oklahoma; it was humid; we were in the sewer.  It wasn’t the nastiest thing I’ve ever had to do but I won’t say more.

This summer and fall I’ve thought about Dad and the shovel many times during my “Summer Stay-cation.”

As you know with the Pandemic and all, there has been much less travel.  I’d wanted to go to Paraguay; I’d wanted to go to Scotland.  Well, no.

But there is only so much sitting on my backside, watching Netflix that even I can stand.  Our beloved dog Charlie passed-away and I (against standing advice from my personal physician) buried him.  In doing so, I remembered I knew how to use a shovel.

After that, I found a paver sidewalk in my backyard that only went about as third as far as it needed to.  I redid it and redid it right while I was at it.  

It was at that point the trips to Home Despot started.  I started buying pavers, gravel, weed cloth, and sand to haul them home in the back of my CRV.  Jean, my better half, was there with me to do anything that required bending and to call 911 if necessary.

Then I finished it.  And like God did after he made the Seas, I looked at what I’d done and saw that it was good.

Having done that, Jean and I made a fire pit and had a Halloween weenie-roast with the grandkids.

Dad, I never thought I’d say this, and I am sure you never thought you’d hear it, but thanks for teaching me how to use a shovel.

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. )

Against the Grain

 Against the Grain

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am someone who actually cares about the Bible.  I like Genesis, in particular.  Genesis does a lot of things for us, but one of those is to offer us a lense on history from those who were living through it, or living a lot closer to it, at least.

They lived differently than we do.

Abram--before he’d earned the name Abraham--was from Ur of the Chaldeans, which was an ancient Sumerian city in Mesopotamia.  This was the cradle of civilization. God told Abram to leave his country, leave his extended family, and leave his daddy’s house and to go someplace else.  God promised he would show it to him.

I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’ve finished an audiobook called “Against the Grain.”  It is by a fellow named James C. Scott.

Scott is interested in how states formed, and he’s not talking about Kansas and Missouri.  He’s talking about the ancient civilizations. Sumer, Egypt, and all of the other ancient civilizations. The idea is that at one time we all lived “in the wild” making a living by hunting, fishing, and gathering like the indigenous tribes in America were when the Europeans arrived, but at some point things changed and we started having to pay taxes.

How did that happen?  Was it a good thing?

Scott takes the point of view that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  He points out that the change from hunting and gathering to farming didn’t bring individuals a lot of benefits.  Early hunter gatherers were healthier than early farmers.  (Here I have to think of how the offering Abel, the hunter-gatherer, made to God was accepted but Cain’s was not.)  

Scott notes that a lot of the wars fought in those ancient days were not to capture land, but to capture people to use as slaves.  This was because a lot of people chose to leave the ancient city-states when given a chance.  People didn’t like paying taxes anymore back then than they do today.  They had to be forced into giving up their mobility to become a part of a nation state.

Here I think of the Bible again, but this time it is Joshua, Judges, and the Book of 1 Samuel.  Israel didn’t exist as a kingdom at first.  They lived as a group of tribes connected by kinship wherein disputes were settled by charismatic individuals known as Judges.  “There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was good in his own eyes.”

But the people wanted Samuel to give them a king.  Samuel warned them that a king would do all sorts of nasty things to them, but they wanted one anyway. In the end, they got what they asked for.

Ultimately, the kingdom they founded was conquered by a succession of empires.  It always makes me think of a picture of a queue of fish, each poised to be eaten by a bigger one.

The Bible does not picture these empires as fish.  In the Book of Daniel and other places, the word “Beast” is used.  They never felt they got as much out of being in a state as they put into it, and being part of a bigger state wasn’t necessarily better for them.

This hadn’t changed by the time of the New Testament.  They didn’t want to pay taxes to Caesar.

Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar but to God what was God’s.  That was a nice way to not get caught in a pickle, but it also offers some practical advice.  We give to Caesar (the State, the Beast) through taxes. We give to God by helping his children: “to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

So you don’t like the way things are going?  It has never, NEVER, been any different.  But there is something you can do.

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. )

Pluto: A Planet or Not

Pluto: A Planet or Not

By Bobby Neal Winters

Is Pluto really a planet or not?  We are going to discuss that, but first a tangent.

I think I was in about the 5th grade--certainly no older--when my teacher started a discussion in my class about whether school buses were yellow or orange.  I don’t know if there was an educational point she was trying to make or whether she was just bored, but we argued over the question like hungry dogs fighting over the body of a squirrel.

At the time, we had neither the linguistic skills nor the intellectual framework to discuss the matter which is kind of complicated.  First is to say that the perception of color is subjective.  We perceive color through structures in our eyes called cones.  There are different types of cones that give different singles to the visual cortex of our brains.  There is a certain amount of variation in the relative number of cones everybody has, so there is variation in what we perceive.

In addition to this, I can’t see through your eyes and you can’t see through mine, so when we see orange we might be--and I would say probably are--having completely different experiences.  I point at something and say “orange” and you nod in agreement we’ve created a word in the common language between us.  This agreement is pretty solid on the color of pumpkins, but it gets wobbly when we get to 5th graders discussing school busses. 

Let me stop before I start talking about wavelengths of photons and how Chickasaw and Scotts Gaelic will use a single for green and blue.  How boring I can be is unbounded below.

Because I am here to talk about whether Pluto is a planet. 

First off, this isn’t really a scientific question.  It is a fight over nomenclature where science speech meets the world of popular speech.

We get the word “planet” itself from the Greeks.  With TV thousands of years in the future, they sat staring at the sky and looking at the stars.  Most of the stars stayed put in relation to each other from night to night, but they noticed that some of them moved slowly with respect to the others.  They called these “wanderers,” but because they were Greek they used their own language and called them “planetes.”  The Greeks named the following as planets in this sense: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  

This definition of planet worked for a long time.  Then the telescope was invented and over the course of time astronomers discovered Uranus, Neptune, bunches and bunches of asteroids, and our little friend, Pluto.

We can start talking about composition, shape, whether an object has “swept out its orbit,’ and so on, but before we do, let us make note of the fact we have gone a huge distance from the Greeks.  They were looking at the skies with their bare eyes and noticed something.  We’ve brought in lenses, mirrors, radar, and robotic spacecraft.  

We’ve seen the things the Greeks called planets and can talk with much more nuance about what they are.  Mercury and Mars are balls of rock almost devoid of atmosphere, relative to earth.  Venus is a bigger ball of rock with a hellish atmosphere.  Jupiter and Saturn are huge balls of gas that have balls of rock circling them; some of the things circling Jupiter and Saturn wouldn’t be out of place in a line up with Mars and Mercury. 

Of the stuff we’ve found and catalogued since the Greeks, Uranus and Neptune are like Jupiter and Saturn, and the rest of it is just rocks of various sizes.  Earth is the biggest of these rocks (we’ve started thinking of our home as just another astronomical object!) and the rocks go down in size to specks of dust.  

The argument wound down to where do you draw a line between Earth and a grain of sand on the beach to planets on one side and non planets on the other.

Some of us are sad that Pluto wound up on the wrong side of the line.  This is because Pluto was discovered by an American and that makes it special to us. But, you know what, it can still be special to us regardless of what name is slapped on it.  We’ve sent the New Horizons probe by it and took some awesome pictures in 2015. It’s quite a place.

Whatever it is called.

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. )

The Battle of Evermore

 The Battle of Evermore

By Bobby Neal Winters

Queen of Light took her bow

And then she turned to go,

The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom

And walked the night alone.

--Led Zeppelin

Today, as you read this in the paper, it is Election Day.

If you’ve been living in a cave you might’ve missed that.

This Election Day has the hopes and fears of all the years--to coin a phrase--pinned on it. The fate of the Whole World, Existence of the Earth its very self, hangs in the balance.

Well, not really.  

Not that you shouldn’t vote--I sure am--but the fact of the matter is that whoever is President of the United States isn’t going to make as much difference as you might think.  

The Apostle Paul said: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Led Zeppelin said: “The Skies are filled with good and bad, and mortals never know.”

What I am saying, in my probably over-dramatic way, is that the truth of what is done by our leaders is far beyond our reach. What is the Truth? What’s a Cover-up?

I just don’t know.

I worried about it a lot.  I’ve cared about it a lot.  But I’ve gotten tired of being angry all the time.  It’s time for me to quit worrying about saving the world and begin working on saving my soul.

That’s probably over-dramatic too.

What can I do?

As I cannot save the world, I can become a better person.  And this is not limited to me, it is something anybody can do.  The great thing about this is that the worse you are now, the more opportunity you have to improve yourself.

When I was a boy, it was normal for people to throw trash out of the window of the car as we went driving down the road.  That is unthinkable to me now.  However, I still see trash along the side of the road.

If you are doing that and you want to really improve the world, you can stop doing that.  It’s a small thing, but it’s a thing you can do.

Another thing, which isn’t so small, actually, is to get to know yourself. Think about what you do and why you do it.  Have a talk with yourself about it or have a trusted friend you can talk about it with.  Figure out what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.  Just knowing can sometimes help.

Once you get a measure of control over yourself, it can open up a new world about making yourself a better person.  If you make yourself a better person, guess what, you’ve made a better world because you are part of the world.  

Maybe others will see your example and follow it.  Maybe they won’t, but at least you will have done something.

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. )

The Door Frame

 The Door Frame

By Bobby Neal Winters

Some of my more dedicated readers may recall that in October of 2017 I wrote an account of a mysterious document I found which had been written by a former member of the faculty to whom I referred to as “The Librarian.”

The Librarian had come to our university from Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts.  He was a refined man of much learning with interests ranging throughout the arts and sciences.    What I hadn’t realized at that time was that there were a group of faculty on campus who’d migrated here from that very same university around the same time as he had.  They were an important part of a circle on campus who met for study and fellowship.

One of the group was a scientist of some renown.  In my research on this, I’ve not been able to discern whether he was a biologist, chemist, or a physicist.  The documents that have come into my hands suggest that he was all three, much like the scientists one finds in a certain type of literature.

In going through his papers, I came upon a reference to a device of his construction.  He referred to it as a “chronoport.”  It had been originally in a building on campus that had been demolished before my time.  The purpose of the device wasn’t clear, but it was very expensive.  I know this because among his papers this man--let’s call him “The Scientist”--had kept the receipts for its components.  I converted the dollars from his age to ours to account for inflation and came up with a ridiculous number.  He somehow had access to a lot of money.  A lot.

I was about to go on to other matters, when I came upon one of his old notebooks.  He dated the entries in it as one does in a journal.  It was from exactly one hundred years ago.  One entry read as follows: “Saturday, October 16, 1920.  Work on the chronoport is finished.  Tested it on a cat this morning.  It went through with no ill effects.  Had to use a can of tuna to lure it back through because I didn’t want to follow without knowing it was possible to return. Being satisfied that it is safe, I will try it on myself.”

The next entry is rather more mysterious and confusing.  It reads: “Saturday, October 17, 2020.  I’ve gone through the chronoport and I find myself in a different place.  It is rather disorienting.  I am in a cluttered room on an upper floor of what appears to be an entirely different building.  While I can see the street, there is very little traffic; I attribute this to the day of the week.  Looking across at the football stadium, I see it is larger than the one I am used to.  I would like to go exploring, but all of the doors are locked.  I am afraid that if I propped the doors open behind me, they would be closed by an alert custodian.”

The date on the entry was ridiculous.  I might’ve taken it to be a typo, but it was hand written in a very clear, steady hand.  The paper in the notebook was old so as to be consistent with the 1920s.  I did a google search and found out that October 16 did fall on Saturday in 1920.

The October 17 entry goes on at length to describe landmarks he can see through the window.  By his description, I was able to discern approximately where on campus the room he had to be.  By luck I have keys to the building, so I decided to have a look, but not before I read the next entry.

“Monday, October 18, 1920.  I will wait until tomorrow to use the chronoport again.  If I did today, I would be there on Sunday and find all of the doors locked as they were before, so I wouldn’t be able to explore.”

Needless to say, I was very curious.  I found time on Monday, October 19 to go to the building I believed the Scientist described and made my way to the 4th floor which is out of the way during the best of times and completely deserted now.  But it wasn’t then.  That day when I came out of the elevator on the 4th floor, I saw a man with a beard and a tweed jacket come out of one the rooms we use to store old scientific equipment.  He then disappeared down the stairs.  

I went into the lab whence he had emerged and found a door frame there that was glowing.  I reached out to touch it.  This was a mistake because I received a shock from it.  It caused me to reflexively jerk and knock a piece off, which fell to the floor and shattered.

After that, the door frame went dark with a smell of ozone in the air.

I returned to my office to examine the Scientist’s notebook and saw that the entry for October 18 had been his last.

So if you see a man with a beard and a tweed jacket who appears to be lost--and I know this doesn’t narrow it down much--you might direct him my way.  We need to talk.

Happy Halloween.

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. )

Grasshopper Metamorphosis

 Grasshopper Metamorphosis

By Bobby Neal Winters

In one of the last conversations I had with my mother while her mind was still lucid she told me, “You’ve probably figured out that we go through phases in our life.”

Not long thereafter, she passed into a phase where she no longer recognized me.  She’ll have been gone a decade this coming New Year.

This is a time of year at my home when we are constantly thinking of metamorphosis.  My wife is a butterfly lady.  By this I mean she raises butterflies.  She encourages milkweed in the yard upon which Monarch Butterflies lay eggs.  She then finds the eggs or even the caterpillars and feeds them until they grow up and form a chrysalis. They change--metamorphose--in the chrysalis and emerge as butterflies.  

It is quite a dramatic change and has been used as a metaphor for the Resurrection.

Like butterflies and moths, grasshoppers also undergo metamorphosis, but it isn’t so dramatic.  They start as an egg and then are born as a nymph.  The nymph will begin growing until it becomes too big for its exoskeleton. At this point, it will shed its exoskeleton. Its new exoskeleton becomes hard and it will start growing again.  

They go through this process several times before they finally emerge as an adult that can fly and reproduce.  Only about half make it, the rest become food for those higher on the food chain.

I love the butterfly metamorphosis metaphor, and there are certainly places where it fits, but I’ve been more of a grasshopper in my life.  Maybe most people are.

Like my mother said, we go through phases.

Like the grasshopper, we have a shell around us, for all the world looking like we are done.  We feel safe in our shell.

But inside, we are changing.  We grow until we find our shell is too confining, so we push it off and face the world with new skin.

And a lot of us become bird food along the way.

Those who are lucky enough will eventually get their wings.

I’d best not press the metaphor too far, because it is in the adult stage that, under certain conditions, the adult grasshoppers can form groups and become locusts, denuding the countryside of its foliage.

We humans go through our stages: learning to walk; learning to talk; learning to ride a bike; learning to read; falling in love; having children; having grandchildren; getting sciatica; getting a CPAP machine.

I’ve gone through these stages myself, but I’ve yet to learn to fly.

My mother went through all the changes of a grasshopper--the phases she told me about--but in the end she was a butterfly.  She wrapped herself in a chrysalis at the end, and then went to sleep to meet her Lord.

One day she will emerge with a new body...and meet her son, the grasshopper.

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. )

Red Dirt Boy

 Red Dirt Boy

By Bobby Neal Winters

She said, "There's not much hope for a red dirt girl
Somewhere out there is a great big world
That's where I'm bound
And the stars might fall on Alabama
But one of these days I'm going to swing my hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm going to make a joyful sound"
--Emmylou

My brother reminded me yesterday of the birthday of a mutual friend that was coming up.  It was his friend really, because he is my big brother and the friend was in his class, but I got to share him from time to time.

He was a musician.  And music keeps talking to me about him from time to time. In the song “Good ol’ Boys Like Me,” (written by Bob McDill) there is a couplet: “When I was in school I ran with a kid down the street/ But I watched him burn himself up on bourbon and speed.” Emmylou Harris’s song “Red Dirt Girl” expands on a similar situation with a finer focus.

Neither of these discuss my friend's situation exactly, but in the realm of poetry they are about him.  That is very fitting because it was in that realm that his story belongs.

He was cursed with being an artist, a musician.  He was cursed in being in a place just a little too far for him to connect with a community of people some of whom would have been able to understand him.  

He was like a butterfly being born in a jar when there was no one around to take the lid off.

Artists are the ones who truly come closest to being prophets in the Old Testament sense.  Prophets are like people who are tuned into a radio station no one else can hear. It is often speaking a language they cannot quite understand, and they do their best to translate.

Some of them are able to do this in a way they are able to connect with those of us who do not bear this curse.  To the luckiest ones, this provides a balm.

Many--most?--are not.

The signal keeps coming in and no one listens.

Some of them are raving lunatics; they turn their frustration outward and it eats up their connection with society.

Some of them, however, turn it inward.  They protect those around them as much as they can, but it still comes at a cost.  It doesn’t eat up their connection with society; it eats up themselves.  Saying “their selves” is more accurate, but not good grammar. 

Artists brighten our existence with beauty in music, painting, poetry, and literature.  They also make our existence more meaningful by portraying our pain--with their pain.  

“Red Dirt Girl” and “Good Ol’ Boys Like Me” ease my pain.  Did they ease Emmylou’s and Bob McDill’s?  What about Lillian and the boy down the street? 

My soul medicine was bought at a price: “One thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got em / You keep on fallin’ cause there ain't no bottom / There ain't no end. / At least not for Lillian.”

I am crying as I write this.  You need to know that.  I’m not crying for my brother’s friend--for my friend.  I am crying for us.  We lose too many of these folks way too early.  They have to suffer too much.

But now the suffering is over.

We miss you.

Happy birthday.

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. )

It’s all about the braise

It’s all about the braise

By Bobby Neal Winters

I don’t talk about sports.  This is a handicap of mine.  Everybody needs something that you can talk about that at the end of the day there is not going to be blood lost over.  We rule out politics and religion as topics for polite conversation in broad groups.  This leaves sports.  You can talk about sports if you are a genius or if you are not a genius. I have listened in on these conversations when both ends of the spectrum were represented and neither end had an advantage over the other.  It is democratic.

I have developed a couple of areas that I can go to if I am forced to talk to people:  Netflix and Barbecue.  As not everybody has Netflix, I wind up talking about Barbecue a lot.

Those of you who are broadly traveled will realize this is not as safe as it might sound.  There are schools of barbecue, and, while I do not have an exhaustive knowledge of these schools, I am aware that there is quite a bit of passion associated with some of them.

Full disclosure: my favorite kind of barbecue is whatever is in front of me.  After we’ve talked a little longer, I will give you a more direct answer, but we need to lay a framework first.

Speaking broadly, I am familiar with Southern-style barbeque, Texas-style barbecue, Brazilian barbecue, and Kansas City barbecue.  These are listed in order of familiarity.  Of these types, I have only run into fanatics among proponents the first three. By “fanatic” I mean someone who will say “Only my barbecue is really barbecue.”  And those who say it say it in the same tone a religious fanatic will say “You people are all going to Hell!”

If you have ever been part of one of these conversations, you know that what I say is true.

For the people who take this attitude about southern barbecue, it is all about the meat.  In their metaphysics, one cannot barbecue beef.  Barbecued beef is simply something that does not exist. Barbecue is about pork and chicken.

Texans, by way of contrast, do recognize beef as a barbecue-able meat.  They have some things to say about the sauce and some things to say about the sides. However, in my humble opinion, it is because it is Texas-style that makes it best and they would defend eating human-flesh if that were the Texas-style.

Some Brazilians will dig their heels in about the sauce. “Good meat does not have to have sauce,” they will say. They don’t seem to appreciate that no meat is so good that a good sauce won’t make it better. (That having been said I have eaten some Brazilan picanha that was so good that it made me want to kiss the cow, the only sauce being its own warm blood.)

There are those among the Texan and Southern camp that are militantly against any sweetness in the sauce.

Now I said earlier that my favorite barbecue is whatever is in front of me.  This raises the question, what if there isn’t any barbecue in front of me?

Kansas City.

If Kansas ever has a war with Missouri, it should be to secure all of Kansas City within our borders so that we can claim Kansas City Barbecue as our own.  Burnt ends, in particular, would be worth the bloodshed.  Kansas City-style barbecue is ecumenical enough to embrace all of the other styles I have mentioned.

Within that Kansas City style, I favor Rosedale Barbecue if I am by myself or just with the missus and we are just running in and out. I like either Jack’s Stacks or Smokehouse Barbecue if I am with a group. Jack’s Stacks coleslaw is life-changing. Life-changing.  Formerly Oklahoma now Kansas City Joes is good, but it’s not as good with the standing in line part factored in.  Gates is quite good.  Arthur Bryants is the most overrated but it is still wonderful.  And then there is Q39....

The best thing about people who like Kansas City Barbecue is that the ones I’ve met don’t feel obligated to disparage anyone else’s favorite.  We all worship in our own way: Some with burnt ends and some with pulled pork.

Come to think about it, maybe politics and religion is safer.

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. )

This really isn’t about math I promise

 This really isn’t about math I promise

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been buying books lately by a man named Donald Knuth.  Before you go out and buy any of these yourself, you might ought to talk to me.  The books are a series of books called the Art of Computer Programming.  They aren’t about art.  Some might argue they aren’t about computer programming.  I look at them and think the title is perfect.  They are art..of a kind.  They are computer programming...from 30 thousand feet.  They are math.

Donald Knuth is an artist if that word has any broader meaning beyond “a painter of canvases.” He’s done much that has shaped computing and through it the modern world we live in.  When he first wrote The Art of Computer Programming, he wrote it out on yellow pads.  When he got the typeset version, he didn’t like the way it looked so he designed an entire new way of typesetting mathematics.  We still use it.

In my life, I’ve been undisciplined.  This is my biggest fault, my biggest sin, my tragic flaw. Two years from now--just a tic and a toc--I will be 60 years old.  They don’t give you black balloons on your sixtieth birthday.  At three-score, you are just a bit too close to the three-score and ten for that.  No, they start telling you--hey, you’re looking good.

Yes, medicine is getting better, and yes we’ve got people in the university who keep working into their seventies.  But that’s not the point.

I’ve been learning the value of discipline.  I look back over my columns.  If was first an occasional drip; then more than occasional.  Now it seems that it is turning into a steady shower: I am preaching on the virtues of discipline. 

Lately this comes from getting serious about computer programming.  I started programming when I was in high school.  McLish public school bought a TRS-80 microcomputer even though it couldn’t be used for sports in any conceivable way.  No one knew how to use one.  Then Mr. Sloan, my math teacher, came to me with the manual for it in his hand and said, “Learn how to do this.”  

And I did.

I’ve only ever had one class, but I’ve returned to programming every few years since. Always in the same spirit: It was something to be learned on one’s own.

I want you to know that I do think the ability to do this is one of my strengths.  I am not afraid to knock things together and figure them out.  Indeed, if no one’s done it before, they don’t know that I’m doing it wrong.

But I guess that in getting closer to 60, creeping closer to that age when my time will be etched unchanging on marble, I’ve realized that I can’t always just figure it out by myself.

And I am looking at my grandchildren, my grandsons though maybe someday there will be granddaughters too.  I got my strength of figuring it out on my own because there wasn’t anyone in the family who knew any differently. When my daughters were growing up, I was still figuring this out. (Something self-referential there.)  

But now with the grandchildren.  Can they be taught it?  What is the best way for them to learn it?

One has to be careful.  Much of the destruction that came from the Sixties was from young people who were rejecting what I consider to be the most wonderful discovery of my...uh... middle age.  Children of men who had learned the value of discipline in WWII, they rejected institutions, threw away discipline, and began hammering on the pillars of the earth.

No.  It is something they will have to choose. 

I am now segueing into my grandfatherly role.  I repair my grandchildren’s tows.  I have projects in the yard that I plan and carry out in stages.

And I buy books.  Books that I will try read but I will never finish.  They will be there when I am gone if my grandchildren want to look at them.

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. )

The Length of the Hypotenuse

 The Length of the Hypotenuse

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is all about language.

And I guess I ought to expand that “it” a little to better make my point.  “It” is “what we know” and “how we think.”  It is all about getting the right words and the right share experiences to go with those words.

This may sound strange coming from a mathematician, but mathematics is just language.  It is a peculiar language with very strange words.  Some of these words we refer to as numbers.

This revelation hit me about the time my oldest grandson was learning to count.  The counting numbers were words that all just came out in the same order: one, two, three, four, and so on.  Whenever grandson stopped counting, it wasn’t because he didn’t understand the math; it is because he didn’t know the next word.  For some it comes after 29 and for others after 999,999,999,999. 

Language has pressure on it to become more nuanced as our experience of the world gets greater.  One can count out pies as one, two, three, but when it comes to dividing the pie, the world gets a little more complicated.  If you have one pie to go among 5 people, what do you do?  Well, you could cut it into fifths--if you are that good with a knife.  More likely you will cut it into eight pieces so that there will be three pieces left over you can sneak back after later in the evening.  But I digress.  You have to invent fractions.

At that point, we have a subtle shift of our mental context.  We shift from looking outward in an unbounded way to looking inward in an unbounded way.  You can cut a pie in half; you can cut the halve in half to get quarters; you can cut the quarters in half to get the eighths I was talking about.  While in practice you will soon get pieces too small for a hungry stomach to work about, in principle this can go on forever.

The Greeks shifted from thinking about pies (or maybe moussaka) to line segments. They were big on geometry as you recall.  They did--in a way a bit different from us--associate numbers to geometry.  To put it in a modern way, they thought about the lengths of lines.

Then one day they started thinking about the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle whose legs had length one.  They used the mathematical language differently than we do, but when you translate it, they discovered that you cannot express the length of that hypotenuse as a fraction of whole numbers.  New words had to be invented.

The Greeks and the rest of the world for most of human history suffered under the handicap of not having a good way to write numbers.  It was embarrassingly late that the decimal way of denoting numbers turned up in the West.  The change for math was like when we changed from writing words as hieroglyphs to writing them in the letters of an alphabet.

When we refer to our number as the square root of two, it is not only precise, it is exact, but it is not very useful in many contexts.  We can say 1.4, but that is about 2 one hundredths too small; we can say 1.4142136 that is just a tiny bit too big.  But either of these ways of presenting the number will be more useful in a particular context than just saying the square root of two.

Ultimately the most honest way we can present a number like the square root of two is at an estimate plus or minus a margin of error with the margin of error as small as we can get it.  For example, the square root of two is 1.4142 plus or minus 0.00002,  

It is not exact, but it is true in the sense we are letter people know we are off by a little bit.  We are using our language to point at the truth as precisely as we can while letting the world know where we are uncertain and by how much.

This system of language was created by human beings struggling with Nature in order to determine Truth.  It relies not only on ever more precise words but honesty not only to others but most importantly to oneself.

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. )

The Algorithm

The Algorithm

By Bobby Neal Winters

They call it the Algorithm.  By "they" I mean those who watch YouTube and by the Algorithm I mean the computerized way YouTube decides what videos it suggests that you watch.  I have to say it does a fairly good job of picking out stuff for me to watch.

I like to watch videos about science, math, and computers.  This is pretty much what it brings me; those along with some videos on film criticism.  (Please don’t judge.)  But occasionally, the Algorithm will take a notion that I need to watch videos about the Flat Earth.  These aren’t videos about people trying to convince you the world is flat: These are videos about people who spend their time criticizing the Flat Earthers.

And it is my own fault.  I’ve sat through quite a few of these.  I am quite frankly curious about why the Flat Earthers think the way they do.  I’ve tried listening to the Flat Earthers themselves and they are really long-winded.  They truly love the sounds of their own voices and it takes them forever to get to the point.  Those who choose to critique the Flat Earthers condense it down to the point the Flat Earthers are trying to get at.

It makes an interesting study on the limitations of argument in making a point, because...here’s the thing: We’ve been to space; we’ve looked at the Earth; we’ve taken pictures of it.  

It is a ball.

If you are going to ignore the pictures from space; if you are going to ignore the fact that all of the other planets are balls; if you are going to ignore that the moon is a ball; the sun is a ball; then you are not going to pay attention to my arguments at all.  And I am not going to argue with you.  As Tracy Chapman says, “...I'm too old to go chasing you around / Wasting my precious energy.”

I find it peculiar that there are those who do choose to spend their precious energy on the argument.  One could think they were just trying to provide some educational service, to save some brands from the burning.  But often there seems to be a bit of pleasure taken in showing someone to be stupid.   

I guess I have to admit to the fact that I recognize this because I’ve done it myself.  I’ve attempted to show myself superior by showing someone else to be stupid. I suppose I could also reflect now whether I am trying to show myself superior to those who critique the Flat Earthers by writing this.

I will have to think about that.

Thirty years ago when I arrived in town there were debates on The Theory of Evolution still.  Maybe there still are but they are going on out of ear-shot.  In any case, at that time I met a man, a physicist.  He was more actually: He was a musician, a historian of science, a Renaissance Man.  Those who know me will know who I am talking about.

He was burdened by the fact that, after more than a century, the Battle for Evolution had yet to be won.

He’s gone now and has been for many years, but that thought he planted in my mind remains.

It’s more than the Battle for Evolution or the Battle of the Round Earth.  It is the Battle for Handwashing; it is the Battle for Not Throwing Trash on the Street; it is the Battle for Being Faithful; it is the Battle for Being Kind.

These all have to be fought with every generation.  We have to teach our children; we have to teach our students; we have to teach those who watch our behavior rather than listen to our words.

Our Algorithm as humans is to find the True and the Good and take it forward to the next generation.

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. )

C plus plus programming and other negative effects of the pandemic

 C plus plus programming and other negative effects of the pandemic

By  Bobby Neal Winters

They say that Isaac Newton invented calculus and put together his theory of gravity during a pandemic.  I learned another computer language and beat the peg puzzle.  Here is how that goes.

You might have seen the peg puzzle at a pizza place or a bar.  It is typically a small piece of wood that is an equilateral triangle if you ignore its thickness.  It has holes drilled in it and the holes are arranged in rows.  In the top row there is on hole; in the second two; this goes on down to the fifth row which contains five holes.  All together, there are 15 holes.

Into these holes, you put 14 pegs.  Usually you fill every hole but the middle hole in the third row.   The idea is that you jump pegs and remove them and you try to get to as few pegs possible.  If you only have one peg, you win.

I’ve got one that was given to me by my father-in-law.  I’ve got it sitting on my computer to my right as I write this.  I don’t remember how long ago he gave it to me, but I do know he’s been dead for 13 years.  I suspect he gave it to me with the expectation that since I am a math guy, I would solve it.  

Well, I have but that has been more than a decade in the making.

The story goes like this.  I cleaned out my garage this summer as a part of my COVID cleaning.  Not being able to go anywhere led to me having a bit of pent up energy.  Couple this with the fact that I decided to get a freezer for my garage to put a beef in (whenever the local butchers catch up that is!) and the garage got cleaned more deeply than it had for a long, long time.  

In my cleaning and rearranging, I found the puzzle.  There it was, unconquered. It had a decade worth of dust and spiderwebs on it.  But it made me remember.

What happens next might not be what you expect.  I put it on the back porch to let it get rained on for a while, and I came into the house and started the process of writing a computer program to solve it.

I’ve been learning C++.  There aren’t many of you out there who really care about computer programming, so I will speak in metaphors.  Have any of you seen the old PBS show “The Wheelwright’s Shop”?  The guy makes furniture, and when he is going to make a chair, his first step is to take an iron fencepost to the forge and make a tool with it that he will eventually use to shape an old log he found in the woods.  

That is what programming in C++ is like: You have to make the tools before you make the pieces, and then you put it together.

This is what I began the process of doing.  For those of you who are interested, I modeled the game with a 15 bit binary number.  There are only certain ways you can move between the numbers.  You program the computer to make the moves and then you stop when you can’t move anymore.  Then you check how many pegs are left.  If there is only one, you win; otherwise, backup and do it again, keeping track of the ways that didn’t work.

For those of you who are interested, there are 89 different ways that the game can end.  There is exactly one of those where a single peg is left.  Moreover, there are a lot of different ways to get to each of the 88 ways that are losers: more than 130 thousand.  

So what I could do would be to memorize the 13 jumps it takes to win, but that doesn’t seem right.   I suppose the best way would be to learn strategy.

That might have to wait for another pandemic.

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. )

September Song

September Song

By Bobby Neal Winters

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

--Maxwell Anderson

I am a watcher of the sky, a follower of the Sun.  Were I not a Christian, I would no doubt be a follower of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.  I keep track of when it rises in the morning and sets in the evening.  While the days have been getting shorter since June 21, we’ve only been able to notice it much more recently.

This is only going to get worse.

About the 20th of September the nights will be longer than the days and we will keep losing light until just before Christmas, but by Halloween it will be just about as dark as it's going to get.

But we are now in a period where we know the darkness is coming, but there is still enough light to work.  We can’t put in crops; that has already been done--or better have been.  But if we are going to do anything more, waiting is not going to help.

This reminds me of my stage of life.

I’ve got a birthday coming up in a couple of months, but it’s not a big one with a zero on the end or anything, but most of the people in my life are already beyond 60.  Many of them well beyond.  Even when age comes gracefully things happen.

There is the energy thing.

When I am at my energy peak, I am sharper than I ever was.  This is because I’ve done a lot of stuff and thought about a lot of stuff just because I’ve had longer to do it than I ever have before.  That sort of goes without saying, but I think there are some folks who might need to hear it.

The problem comes when I am off my energy peak.  When the batteries are charged, I can learn Spanish and Russian, Python and C++; I can think about the best examples to talk about algorithms and finite state machines.  When the batteries go down, don’t even ask me to do arithmetic.

The brain is still there along with everything that is stored in it, but sometimes I don’t have the amps to light up the little leds.

I notice that among some of my longtime friends.  Some of them have become good stewards of their energy.  They work and study and think, but are careful not to run the battery all the way out.  They take care of the physical so that the mental will stay as sharp as it can for as long as it can.

My mother had Alzheimer’s.  Her world became smaller and smaller.  She spoke with fewer and fewer people until she only spoke to her ancestors.  I don’t know that she ever could’ve done anything any differently.  That is one of the facts of life: No matter what you do there are no guarantees.

But a little exercise ain’t a-gonna kill ya.  Take a walk to keep your blood flowing to your brain; do Sudoku; learn Spanish. Love your neighbor as yourself.

The days grow short when you reach September.

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. )

  

A Quintessence of Dust

 

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

--Hamlett, Act II, Scene II 

There is a story in the Bible about a mighty General Naaman who was a leper.  He was directed to the Prophet Elisha for a cure.  Elisha directed him to bath himself in the River Jordan seven times to rid himself of the disease.  Naaman was indignant, replying more or less, “Aren’t the rivers around here better than the stinky old Jordan?”  To which his servant replied, “You know, Boss, if he’d asked you to do something hard, you would’ve done it.”

A pair of tightly woven but seemingly contradictory truths emerge from the current crisis.  A paradox, if you will. 

Truth number one: People want to be taken care of by their government, by each other, by Big Brother, or by someone else besides themselves doesn’t matter who.  

Truth number two: People don’t like being told what to do and by and large won’t do it.

One might argue that there are two different groups within the population with one typifying one attitude and one the other, but I’ve been paying pretty close attention.  There are two groups, but the overlap within the two groups is quite high.  I believe it is a majority.

Let’s talk about the mask thing.  Maybe they work, maybe they don’t.  I’ve not seen the numbers; I’ve not read the studies. Since I try to cover my nose and my mouth with a handkerchief when I sneeze or I cough, having what is essentially a handkerchief strapped in place seems like a reasonable solution; it keeps me from being caught unaware.  

I think that I might keep the practice of wearing a mask whenever I have a cold from this point on out; it strikes me as being a considerate thing to do, now that I think about it.

But wearing one makes my glasses fog up.  My glasses are not optional; I’ve got a card in my pocket from the state of Kansas that says so.  So it is annoying to wear the mask. Sometimes I forget and suffer the terror of having a finger wagged at me.  The horror.

But wearing one is not a big deal.  I will put it on top of the stack of all of the other things I do because I am trying to be a good citizen: putting gum wrappers in my pocket; not throwing fast food sacks out the car window; not passing gas in the elevator.

However, I am not shocked that people don’t want to go along with this.  Religion--not only Christianity, any religion that has been good enough to survive for generations--has offered a set of principles about behavior.  They are largely in agreement, shockingly so.

Yet the phrase “You can’t legislate morality” comes quickly to the lips and trippingly on the tongue.  The fact is you can legislate morality; we do it all the time.  Sometimes it’s simply the devil to enforce.

I am about to tell a disturbing story; gentle souls might want to  tune out for a paragraph.  Jeffry Dahmer captured men.  He killed them and had sex with their corpses and then ate them, storing body parts in the refrigerator. He always wore a condom. (As one stand-up comic opined, “Somehow THAT message got through.”)

The point of that story is that people are more keyed-in to taking care of themselves than they are to taking care of others, though this is an extreme case.

In the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin and Jason Robards, Robards’ character had a ne’er do well son (played by Tom Hulce) who had gotten into trouble with the mob.  Robards’ character had put together a plan that would have saved his son’s life, but would’ve required his son to change, to live life in a way other than the way he planned to live it.  The son replied, “That’s a great plan, but let me put a twist on that ...”  

The twist was not to do the plan.

As a species we don’t like being told what to do, but the Nazi’s still managed to convince the soldiers in the camps to six million Jews.  

We are a paradox, I tell you.

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. )

Owning your years

 Owning your years

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve almost finished my 58th year of life.  In English I will say, “I am fifty-eight.”  In Russian, this is said, “To me fifty-eight summers.”  And in Spanish it is, “I have fifty-eight years.”

Anything but your own mother tongue sounds odd, of course, but I like the way it is expressed in Spanish.  Let me explain.

The English way of expressing it makes it a state of being. It’s like “I am a rock; I am a hedgehog.”  This is the way it is and that is all there is to it.  My age is a defining quality.

The Russian makes it sound like the years just happened.  They were a train and I was standing by the tracks, and they just rumbled past me.

Both of these ways of describing it do capture a certain facet of the truth.  They represent different mindsets.

But I like the Spanish way.

My years are things that I own.  Did I take care of my years?  Have my years taken care of me?  DoI treasure them?  Do they provide me comfort?  Do I look at them as if they were a basement that’s filled with rotting refuse?  It depends on the year.

The last week before faculty were set to report back to the university, I took Friday off.  Which is to say, I took it off in whatever way we can take days off after we learned to work from home.

In any case, I took the day off, and I worked on the garage door.  Our new garage is getting close to thirty years old, and even though the opening mechanism has been replaced.  It is the same door.

Our garage door is connected to the garage by rails.  There are wheels on axles that connect the door to the rails.  The wheels fit within grooves on the rails and the axles are attached to the door through hinges.  The hinges are bolted to the door and the axles fit freely through holes that are parallel to the door itself.

I said all of that to say that a few weeks ago, one of the wheels popped out of its groove in its rail.  This caused the door to be stuck open.  At that time, I went out and fixed it.  It wasn’t too bad.  By this I mean there was no blood.  I used my socket set and while the hinges kept wanting to fall off because I was working arms length over my head, I managed to get them back on.  

When I was done, I noticed two things:  One, if I had used clamps, there would’ve been no trouble with the hinges wanting to fall off; and two--duh duh duuuh--the hinge I put the axle through had *two* holes parallel to the garage door.

When I was done, the door closed; the door opened again. Unit test: Passed!

Time passes.  Then comes the last week I will have any flexibility until Thanksgiving, and a wheel pops out of a groove on my garage door.

This was a different wheel on the opposite side.

This time I was prepared. I used my clamps, took off the hinge, reinserted the wheel in the grove, bolted it all back on. I closed the door, and it went down nicely.  

Then, like you do, I opened it again.

And an entirely different wheel popped out of the groove.

This is where we go back to the “duh duh duuuh.”  If there are two holes you can put your axle through, you will invariably put it through the wrong one. I went back over the job and made sure all of the axles were where they needed to be.

Why did I share all this?  It is because there was a time when there would’ve been blood.  There would’ve been trips to the hardware store and, perhaps, to the emergency room.  But “Tengo casi cincuenta ocho anos,” I have almost fifty-eight years.  My years are my asset, and I have taken care of some of them. I’ve learned a thing or two.

Some may have gone passed like a freight train.  Some of them are just me. But I’ve owned some of them and treated them well. 

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. )

Ruminations on Civilization and Back-to-School

Ruminations on Civilization and Back-to-School

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is not good for Man to be alone.

That’s what God said.

And it was true, but we all got off behind our cell phones, crouching behind our prejudices, huddling behind our opinions, and we forgot.

We  broke our molecular bonds and became atomized.  At first it was by choice.  People can be difficult.  

As this appears in the paper, the university will be starting next week.  

To say that life has been interesting since back in March is to be hilarious by understatement provided you have a broad enough definition of hilarious.  Statements are made and then, in the twinkling of an eye, common sense turns to idiocy.  We have to change; we have to regroup; because we are all trying to do the best we can but we just don’t know.  

A civilization is made from connections.  It is not enough for one person to learn how to make an arrowhead from flint; he must teach other people how to do it.  It is not enough for one person to learn how to weave cloth; she must teach other people to do it.  By sharing our knowledge, by sharing ourselves, we become a part of others.

It is not good for Man to be alone, God said. “I will make an help meet for him.” 

Adam and Eve got busy and made Cain, Abel, and so forth.  You know the story: Just like real life.  So there was a family.

Families are good.  They are the bricks of civilization.  The most basic ways your children learn of how to deal with other people they learn from you in your family.  It is terrifying, I know, but that is just the way it is.

Families are the bricks of civilization, but just as a collection of bricks is not a house, a collection of families is not a civilization.  Just as mortar binds bricks together in buildings, you need something to tie families together in civilization.  There need to be connections between the families.

Something like church provides a good way to do this.  You have regular meetings where you get together and take part in a common activity. There is time before and afterward to meet with other families, with other individuals and catch up.

If I am going to keep pressing my analogy with making a building, the churches we belong to, the churches which determine our values, are where we make our load-bearing walls.

You can live in a house that only has load-bearing walls, I suppose, but the purpose of load-bearing walls is to support other things.  It is all right there in the name.

To be beautiful, we must have ornamentation.  We must put other walls in.  The various practices we have are those walls.  In my analogy, the universities are such walls.  Given my profession, it is very tempting for me to say that the universities form a load-bearing wall, but I cannot support that.  Historically, the universities arose from the Church back in the days when it was singular and capitalized.  That having been said, they still add a lot:  Biology and business; chemistry and construction; music and mathematics; physics and psychology; theater and teaching.  

We impart a lot of knowledge, but we also provide connection.  Each of the students are connected to the university through the faculty, but the university also provides a crucible where they become connected with each other.  Often they find mates at the university, which brings us back to Adam and Eve.

Here we are about to start it all again.  One day a time; one step a time.  Lift your foot; place it down carefully; make sure your footing is solid and only then take another step.

We will also make frequent glances into the blackness in front of us, looking for that pinpoint of light.  We will keep our ears open, listening for the train whistle.

School’s about to start; let’s get back to work.

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. )

The Word

The Word
By Bobby Winters
I get on the computer and do Duolingo every morning: Spanish, Hindi, and Russian.  I also like to learn programming languages: I spent a few years learning Python and now I am learning C++.  The two activities are connected by similar tastes and similar aptitudes.  I also, as those of you who are here reading this know, spend a certain amount of time writing, looking for the right word.  (Digging out that word aptitude above makes me kind of proud.)
Words are important.
Words are important for communication, but words are also important for thinking.
In mathematics, we have demonstrated this better than elsewhere.  We define our terms precisely; we distill our ideas to their sharpest form.  While we cannot capture all truth (and we’ve even proven that!) what we say is true.  That is the quintessence of mathematics.  We can be sure of our propositions because of the care we take with language.
These ideas are not new with me.  I can point to the first verse of the Gospel of John in the New Testament: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  Here they are translating the Greek “logos” as “word”; logos can also be translated as “holy wisdom” but that just goes to show how important words are.
In communicating, there is an art in exactly how much precision one needs to use.  That verse from John is a good example.  One can fill libraries with what that means, but the reader will have neither the patience nor the lifespan.  Sometimes the best choice is to leave something for the reader to work out for him/herself.
In this, I’ve come to appreciate how the electrical engineers communicate.  Like mathematicians, they have special symbols that they use. I am speaking, in particular, of logic gates.  These are symbols that are denoted by the words and, or, not, nand, xor etc.  These symbols, which are used in electronic diagrams, stand in for hideously complicated configurations of transistors, diodes, resistors, switches, and so on.  They mask out the complication so that the reader may more quickly grasp the point.  Once the diagram is understood at this level, the reader can then proceed to learn at a greater level of detail.
Communicating with clarity requires the proper level of detail.  I’ve a friend and former coworker who likes to joke by stating things in a very precise way. For example, he might ask, “Are you enjoying your caffeine laden particles suspended in a solution of hydrogen dioxide at a temperature of 80 degrees centigrade?” instead of asking, “Do you like your coffee?”  He does this for humor, but it makes an excellent point.  Detail does not mean effective communication.
Communicating is teaching.  Teaching about a subject is like this.  You first draw a big circle and say the thing is in here.  There might be exceptions, but the circle captures the essence.  When the student gets it, you then draw a smaller circle inside the big one and so forth.  Each time you capture the essence of the concept but you get closer than the time before.  Then you must stop at the right time or the forest disappears behind a tree.
When we are teaching our children about the sexes, we talk in cloudy but accurate ways:  That is Jane’s mommy; that is Jane’s daddy.  That is a momma dog; that is a daddy dog. While--to be sure--sex is a lot more complicated than that, this way of speaking captures something that is essential to the workings of human life.  If one pushes too deeply, one can lose the whole world behind a chromosome.
There is something holy about language. Sure we need to be, uh, judicious in our use of profanity, and “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.”  But dare I say, more importantly even than that, we need to take care in speaking both truly and kindly. Sometimes it is best not to speak at all.
Here is an exercise.  Take a period of time, say a day or week, and during that time only say things that are both true and kind.  If you are in politics, you might want to start in five-minute intervals. And all of us will have longer periods of silence while we think about what is true and kind.
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. )

July, Josey Wales, Frito Pies, and Parables

July, Josey Wales, Frito Pies, and Parables
By Bobby Neal Winters
It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.
--Ten Bears in “The Outlaw Josey Wales”
Here we are in late July.  
For the last couple of years, we’ve had wet summers with rain on a sometimes shockingly regular basis. It had looked early on that might happen this year as well, but in June someone turned the faucet off and here we are.
I mowed my lawn last week out of boredom rather than any sense it needed it. When I was done I felt secure that I wouldn’t need to mow it again until late August or may September, after the start of school.
This time of year is traditionally very quiet in our sleepy college town, but the quiet is different this year.  It has been this quiet since mid-March.  Sure there have been some times during the past four month when it was more deeply quiet than others.  There were times when you could hear the crickets at noon, as it were.
The quiet you hear now is different from the quiet of any other late July.  
Late July most years is when many folks would take their last chance for a vacation.  I know that last year my family went to Colorado.  We rented an Airbnb up the mountains and revelled in the lack of electronic connection to anyone.  We lived on hotdogs and s’mores.  It was a good time.
Not this year.  While I’ve not canvased my fellow faculty, the impression I get is that this year is very different.
Do you remember that movie The Outlaw Josey Wales?  Near the end of the movie Josey and his ragtag group were holed up in a cabin believing the Comanches would be coming at them.  They were fortifying the cabin and loading their weapons and planning contingencies.   Then Josey went and talked with Ten Bears and everything was settled.
Well, it is like that at the university.  We are in our cabins getting ready for the Fall Semester.  The good news is that we have our equivalent of Josey Wales.  The bad news is there no equivalent to Ten Bears in COVID 19.
We have to be prepared for anything.
It has become clear to me over the course of my 32-year career at Pittsburg State that we have to make a place for more online courses.  It has also become clear that, while online courses have a place, in many cases there is just no substitute for being face-to-face.
Let me be like Jesus for a minute and explain it in a parable.  A comprehensive university is like unto the Coney Island on the Washington Street Strip in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Every Thursday, I would go with a group of companions to Coney Island.  They served hot dogs, of course, but they also sold Frito pies.  They had chili, onions, cheese, and mustard for the hot dogs, so all they needed for the Frito pies were Fritos.  And they probably had Fritos as a healthy side-dish anyway. Ye who have ears to hear, let them hear that online courses are like unto Frito pies: they can be made from things we have on hand and some people will buy them.  They are one of my favorite foods.
But we didn’t go to Coney Island for the food even though it was...filling. Coney Island had a pinball machine.  We took turns at the pinball machine and enjoyed each other’s company.  We could’ve gone to places with cheaper food; we could’ve gone to places with more nutritious food; we chose to go to Coney Island because we could play pinball with other young people of similar interests and start working on a life-long case of acid reflux.
But I digress.  
We are preparing a metaphorical meal for our students this Fall.  It has to be like a four-course banquet that is being held in the out-of-doors when there is a threat of rain.  There must be nutritious food of every type.  But we need to be able to disassemble it quickly so it can be eaten under the shelter of the trees should the storm come.  Maybe hot dogs or Frito pies would be a good choice.
In any case, I’ve never been prouder to be connected with any group of people ever.  They truly amaze me.
We are ready, Josey Wales.
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. )

The God of this Place, revisited

The God of this Place, revisited
By Bobby Neal Winters
Twenty years ago I spent the month of June on a Rotary Group Study Exchange in Siberia. It changed my life. 
People say that a lot, maybe it is true when they say it.  I know it is true when I say it.  There is a before and an after.  It was one of those experiences that if I knew what it was going to be like before I went, I never would’ve gone, but now I wouldn’t take for it.
It was bought at a price.
When I got back, it took me a while to recover.  There is a 12-hour time difference between here and there, and I was jetlagged beyond jetlagged when I got home.  I would be sitting in my chair in the middle of the evening apparently fine and would suddenly just tip forward asleep in my chair.  I call that being 58 now, but it was jet lag then.
But it was more than that.  This was all before I started writing my column, but at some point it came upon me to start writing this up.  I wrote my experiences in different articles.  I showed them to the then editor of the Morning Sun Cindy Allen.  She liked them and published them.  Printers ink has been in my veins ever since.
One of the articles was called “The God of this Place.”  It has been years since I looked at it.  I will try to bring it up on my blog for those who are interested. 
As we were driven through the countryside, we kept seeing places where there were strips of cloth tied in the limbs of trees.  We asked what they were, and we were told they were prayers.  They were usually in trees that were at the crest of a hill.
Trees are a bridge to God.  Their roots are in the ground, but their limbs reach toward heaven. The crest of a hill is a place where the earth itself is reaching toward heaven, and it is also a boundary between one side of the hill and the other.  Boundaries are magical places. 
What better place to put a prayer?
Once we visited a Buddhist Temple.  We walked around the grounds.  There were shrines to various gods.  People would come in to pray to one or the other and leave a few coins as an offering.  We noticed there was a little dirty-faced girl who came after the coins were left and took them.
We were told by the priest that she was getting them to buy ice cream.  At that point, those of us from the group--composed of Baptists and Methodists--began leaving coins at the altars of pagan gods.
This girl would’ve been about seven, I think.  She is now in her late twenties.  I hope she’s still alive.  The world is a hard place for children that have to get their ice cream money from the mouths of the gods.
Excuse me, I had to pause a little.  I was back there for a moment looking into the eyes of that little girl, wondering about the woman she has become.
While my trips to Paraguay have scratched the itch somewhat, I’ve never attained that level of adventure again.  It changed me.
All human beings, all over the world are connected.  We leave our pitiful offerings for the gods, for God, and it doesn’t seem like much, but if they can be brought together to put ice cream in the stomach of a little girl, that makes it better. 
Maybe this is what the gods want?  Maybe we turn from the gods to God by realizing that we all have the same God.
The God of that place is the God of this place.
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. )

The God of this Place (from 2000)

The God of this Place
By Bobby Winters

The Buryats are a people who are native to Siberia.  They are not ethnically Russian, and they are not Mongolian.  However, I grew up in Oklahoma surrounded by Chickasaws, and they would pass for Chickasaws in my book.
We met religion among the Buryats a number of times on our trip.  Our first day in Ulan-Ude we made a trip to the Buddhist Temple just out of town.  Since this was my first visit to such a temple, everything was new, and I did not take in very much.  One thing that I did notice, however, were strips of cloth tied on the branches of the trees just outside of the monastery grounds.  We were told that these were prayers.
We were led through the temple by a guide.  We went around the grounds clockwise.  We were invited to turn the prayer wheels, but I did not.  I was uncomfortable with the idea of praying to any deity other than my own.
While this guided tour did help lay a foundation for learning about the local beliefs, it is not the best way to learn about the religion of people.  The best way is out in the natural habitat.
We got another dose during our stay in Ulan-Ude on an excursion to Lake Baikal.  We started out in the morning and proceeded for a while down a beautiful mountain road.  The driver of the car that I was in liked speed, and soon we were well out ahead of everyone.
When we stopped on a mountain summit and got out to let the rest catch up,  I noticed that there were strips of cloth tied in the branched of trees by the side of the road.  Prayers like we had seen in the temple.
Then the rest of the group caught up with us, and our driver called us over to form a circle.  He got a silver goblet out of the van along with a bottle of vodka and filled the goblet.  Then he wet his fingers with the vodka, flicked it out in a spray, and he took a small drink.  It was more than a sip but less than a shot.  He then poured a similar amount out on the ground and said something in Russian.  The translator said, "For the god of this place.” After this he passed the cup to the next person in line. 
This reminded me of the baptism ceremony, and as the cup was passed from person to person my mind whirled, as I began to see a connection between this religion and my own.  In the days of Noah, God cleansed the world by water. And using Moses at the Red Sea, God had saved the children Israel by water.
All through the Bible there is all of this wonderful symbolism with water in the stories of Noah, Moses, Joshua, Jonah and others in the Hebrew Bible.  In the New Testament this is played out in the stories of John the Baptist baptizing in the Jordan, Jesus walking on the water, and Paul shipwrecked at sea. 
Add to this the fact that the Russian word for water is "voda" which differs only from "vodka" by a single letter.   All this was too much for my melodramatic nature.
My turn came.  I sprinkle the vodka and said, "Remember your baptism."  I drank a small portion, and I poured a libation saying, "For the God of this place."
After the ceremony, we continued on our way.  We crossed a river by a ferry and made our way to Lake Baikal where we took a very nice Banya, a Russian steam bath, showered in western style showers, and took a boat ride on the Lake.
We met the religion of the Buryats a last time on a trip while we were in Chita.  We went from Chita down to Aginskoye which is in a predominantly Buryat sub-region of Chita Oblast.  A few miles before we got to Aginskoye, our van broke down.  We got out while the driver looked over the engine and walked back about a quarter of a mile to a roadside shrine like the one we had drunk our libation at on our Baikal trip.  Then we turned and walked back. 
The driver had found the problem.  The radiator was leaking water.  He took a five-gallon jug that he kept in the back of the van and walked a half a mile ahead to a creek, filled the jug, and walked a half a mile back.  He filled the radiator, and we continued on to Aginskoye.
While we were in Aginskoye, we visited another Buddhist temple.  As we entered the grounds by a gate, I noticed a pair of ethic Russian children with dirty blond hair climb over the back wall.  We proceeded around the grounds of temple in a clockwise fashion. 
I turned the prayer wheels this time.  As I did this, I noticed that our guide was putting coins as offerings to the god of Wisdom among others.  The children followed us. When we had almost completed our circle, I finally realized that these children were taking the coins that our guide was leaving and that our guide was unconcerned.
I walked over and nonchalantly laid a one-rouble coin on one of the altars.  I hope the altar of the God of Wisdom.  I nonchalantly walked away.  The coin disappeared into the hand of a dirty-faced little girl.  Another member of the group, who had looked at me strangely when I did this, had a light dawn in his face.  He walked over and put two roubles in the same place.
After supper we began back to Chita.  Our van ran out of water every fifteen minutes.  Our long-suffering driver stopped and refilled it and stopped at every river that we crossed and refilled the jug.
And we returned safely to Chita.

For What It’s Worth

For What It’s Worth
By Bobby Neal Winters

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down--Buffalo Springfield

I am writing this on the Fourth of July.
A few months ago I remember thinking--I and think I even said it out loud--that this would all be over by the Fourth of July.  I’d grill up some small filets from Beck and Hill, Jean would cook some corn on the cob, and then we’d sit on the driveway and shoot off some fireworks to celebrate “it all” being over.  
Well as the lady said, “God made the world round so we couldn’t see too far ahead.”
Little did we know.
Little did we know that COVID 19 was just like the drum beat in Fleetwood Mac’s song The Chain.  It laid down a rhythm that other elements would be worked into.  Slowly racial unrest began to build. Then the statues etc.  
And all through it the COVID 19 keeps beating like the drum.
And the long, hot summer lay ahead.
I’ve spent a good deal of time cleaning, putting things in order so that I know where to find them.  Throwing other things away.
For many years, I’ve thought about the cleaning of the Temple during the time of Josiah whenever I do a deep cleaning.  When Josiah cleaned the Temple, they discovered that they lost the Bible.
Cleaning and putting things in order is an act of creation.  It involves finding things that have been neglected and putting them in a place where they won’t fall out of our attention.  It involves finding things that are dirty, torn, broken, and useless and throwing them away.
And if you are married or doing this in partnership with others, it involves a lot of conversation about which of these is which.  Which of these piles of paper is the Holy Bible and which is a file of cancelled checks from a bank account you haven’t had for 30 years?
Sometimes we have saved things that are very meaningful for us but are very upsetting to others.  Those we save, but we put away quietly. We give them the special honor of mothballs and a cedar chest.  Either there will be a day where they can be appreciated by others or they will be forgotten about entirely.  Time decides which and it has the final say.
Right now I am looking at a porcelain statue of a donkey that I had on my desk as a graduate student at Oklahoma State.  I am not sure where I got it from, but I seem to remember my Aunt Anne who died last year gave it to me.  She passed away a couple (a few?) years back.  It pleases me to think of it that way, but if someone were to tell me differently and had a convincing argument, I would have to believe them and change my thinking.
This is because above all sentiment and feeling we should seek the truth, even if it is among the debris of our memory.  We’ve been told we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. 
Because this is the Fourth of July and our freedom is what we are celebrating.
But the drum is still beating.  It’s hot.  And I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
But I think it will get better.
For what it’s worth.
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. )