The Final Frontier

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been excited watching SpaceX, exploding rockets and all.  It is capitalism being directed toward space.  Yes, I am a geek/nerd/whatever label you want to affix to me.  I watched Star Trek in the early 1970s; I watched Star Wars when there was still just the one movie.  So you can dismiss me if you want to.

But there is money to be made.  If history teaches us anything, it is this: If money can be made it will be.  You could even sing it: “Ain’t no mountain high enough, and no valley low enough..” to keep entrepreneurs away from profit.

Where, where is this money in space you ask?  Are there banks filled with it out there?  Are there little green men with checkbooks? That I will answer by saying who knows.

The money is in mining:  Mining the moon; mining asteroids.

Mining is a nasty business.  There is the aesthetic aspect; open pit mines are ugly.  Here in southeast Kansas we know that strip pits will fill with water and make a nice little lake for the doctors and the lawyers to build houses on, but that is not the image they have in many places. Then there is the chemical aspect where heavy metals are released into the environment.

All the above lead to regulation, and regulation puts pressure on entrepreneurs to find another way to make money.  It is at this point, the entrepreneur puts his finger to the wind and finds it pointing to space, the Final Frontier.

For those who don’t like regulations, frontiers are very attractive places.  Frontiers tend not to have very many regulations to begin with, and those few regulations they do have don’t have very many people around to enforce them.  Maybe Marshal Dillon and Festus, but that’s it.  They didn’t manage to enforce the regulations on Miss Kitty, did they?

They are already studying asteroids.  Some of this is being done in the name of making us safe from planet killers like the one that got the dinosaurs, but don’t fool yourself.  It’s all about the Benjamins, Baby.

This will take a long time.  I will not live long enough to see anybody make a dime from asteroid mining directly.  Elon Musk will make a lot of money on the ramp up because there is a lot of money to be made in satellite communication.  He’s building a network of satellites that has the potential to make every person in the world potentially connected to every other.  

This being said, I don’t think he will live long enough to make a dime out of asteroid mining because it is going to take a long time to get the infrastructure ramped up.  This is the thing that all science fiction misses: Infrastructure takes time.

But given the need for things that are mined, there will be added pressure to do this.  

Right now, we are worried about climate change and we are looking for alternatives to oil. That puts pressure on renewable/low carbon sources of energy, and  consequently, there is pressure to produce more batteries.  Batteries require ingredients that have to be mined.  As has been pointed out, mining can be nasty, so this encourages mining in space.

So we have a place where those who are concerned about the environment have a natural alliance with those who wish to become as rich as Croesus.  This kind of makes me want to reach for my tinfoil hat, but let’s push on.

This sort of synergy argues for mining in space.

In addition to mining, you could move dirty industries to space.  No regulations for them either.  A lot of the work would be done by robots, but there would be people too.  And they would have to move there because the jobs they used to do on earth would be gone.  There are people to whom the nasty work of mining looks like opportunity, my father and his father and brothers to name a few. 

Instead of going to the east Texas oil fields or off shore or Alaska, they would go to space.  Eventually, they will build space habitats complete with company stores, mark my words.  And you think Las Vegas is wild or that Old Dodge City was.  You haven’t seen anything yet.

It’s not going to be as utopian as Star Trek.  Think Firefly or the Expanse.

I don’t see it, but maybe my grandchildren’s grandchildren.

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. )

Testing

 Testing

By Bobby Neal Winters

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.

Matthew  8:14-15

My online Bible Study Group has been going though the book of Matthew. We did the Lord’s Prayer as a part of that; it took us three weeks and we could’ve done more but the teacher told us we had to go on.  

Those of you who know the Lord’s Prayer know the line “lead us not into temptation.”  This always causes discussion.  How could God lead us into temptation?  

One answer is this: The word translated as “temptation” can also be translated as “testing.”

My wife’s mother is very sick and has been so since the day after Christmas. I’ve not written about it until now because she’s a private person and never seeks to call attention to herself.  She always very quietly does what needs to be done.  

Our lives have changed.  Jean, my wife, is living with her mom now and has been since she got out of the hospital.  We are lucky that Jean’s mother only lives two blocks from us.  She moved to town two months after my second daughter was born almost thirty years ago.

She has been a godsend to us. She helped when our second daughter was a baby and our third one. She’s helped with the grandsons.  At the same time, she helped in her church, she helped with the Red Cross, she helped in random ways. No one asked her to do anything; she just did it.

Then she got sick.

The members of her church have sent her cards. Her neighbor girl has reached out and helped in numerous ways.

Jean is there with her, doing for her mother the things her mother has done for us.

The order of the family has changed.  She who used to take care of all of us must now be cared-for herself, and Jean, my wife, her daughter, is doing that.  My daughters and I must care for Jean.

Nobody asked anybody to do anything. It just happened.

There has been a reordering.  We reordered my mother-in-law’s living room into a hospital room. We reordered my kitchen and pantry from something only my wife could understand to something the rest of us could understand.

We are raised by our parents and we raise our children. We always wonder if we’ve done a good job. Did we raise our children to be adults?  Will they be good people?  

My dad never got to know; my mom did a little.  

My mother-in-law knows for sure, and my wife and I do too. 

Would we have wanted this to happen? No.  We pray that it doesn't everytime we pray the Lord’s Prayer, just as Jesus taught us to pray.  The time of testing comes regardless.  The time of testing is built-in to the fabric of life itself.

We ready ourselves for it the best we can.  Sometimes we have a good example to follow.

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. )

Gone

 Gone

By Bobby Neal Winters

A little over a week ago as I write this, I lost my wedding ring.  I was sitting in my office having a Teams meeting with two colleagues; I felt my ring finger like I do out of habit; and it was gone.

I may have exclaimed something at that point, but I will leave it to either of my two colleagues to say what.  Those who know me best might make a quick guess.

I’ve gotten a lot of advice about how to look for it.  I’ve alerted the custodian and campus police to be on the lookout for it in Lost and Found.  I’ve checked my pockets, retraced my steps, dumped out my various pencil holders.

Nothing.

If you find a rose gold, nugget shaped ring somewhere around the circle of Pittsburg I frequent, please let me know.

This is not a ring of great material worth.  I think it cost several hundred dollars 30 years ago in that jewelry store on Main Street in Stillwater, Oklahoma where we got it.  There is a great deal of sentimental value that goes along with it, of course, but that’s not the reason I am missing it.

I miss it because I feel naked without it.  When I say that, I am not speaking figuratively.  I mean that I feel like I’ve stepped out of the shower to discover I am at the corner of 4th and Broadway.

I tried to explain this to one of my daughters and she said, “Oh yeah, Dad, you’re such a chick magnet.”

Even though she’s brilliant, had great ACT scores, and is highly educated, she doesn’t quite get it.

Such was my discomfort, that within 12 hours of losing my ring, I’d gotten on Amazon and bought a new one.

While doing that, I made a discovery, maybe several.  First: you can buy a wedding ring on Amazon.com.  Second: They don’t cost that much. Third: You can order one on Friday evening and have it on your finger before that time on Monday.  Fourth: You can do that for about $20.

So as I type this, I do so with a $20 ring on my finger that is made of tungsten carbide.

It’s not as attractive as the one my wife got me.  It doesn’t have the sentimental value.  It doesn’t have the monetary value.

But I don’t feel naked anymore.

I squeeze my left pinkie and middle fingers against it, and I think about my wife.  I feel it, and I know my wife is about in the world, and that I am not alone. 

And my heart is at ease.

Again, if you find a ring of the description above, contact me through Facebook.  There’s no reward other than the good it will do your soul, but I will appreciate 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. )

Living on

 Living on

By Bobby Neal Winters

So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.

--1 Kings 2:10

The Bible says very little about what happens to us after we die.  What it does say, it says in metaphor:  “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

We communicate in metaphor, when either we don’t have the words or our audience doesn’t have the words.  Death is a wall between us and something else.  Fools ignore it; the Wise prepare; Jesus explained, but he knew we just didn’t have the words.

I’m not going to improve on Jesus, so I will leave that aspect of the Afterlife to faith.  Let me now explain what I know for sure the best I can.

Here on earth, each of us is connected to a lot of other people: Fathers and mothers; sisters and brothers; daughters and sons; friends and neighbors; co-workers; people we pass on the street.

Each one of those people is an opportunity. Every single one of them has a soul that is a part of the breath of God.  When we interface with them, we leave a little of ourselves with them--and they leave a little of themselves with us.

In this way, over the course of our lives, we build something in the world of humans that has our shape.  This Thing we have built will live on after we have died.  

Here I will resort to metaphor.  Life is like a soup.  The world is the water; some people are salt or spice and will mix in and not be noticed; some are like chunks of meat and potato.  While you might not know the name of the grain of salt or the fleck of spice, their presence makes life more palatable for everyone. 

My father was not a perfect man, but he did have a respect for women, and that lives in me. I believe that Dad’s gone to be in one of the many mansions Jesus promised, but I know that part of him lives in me.

My mother was not a perfect woman, but she did have the ability to love and be loved by people no one else loved.  I hope that this still exists in me.

I had teachers who taught me skills that I’ve had the privilege to pass on to my students.  My teachers exist in me and I in my students.

There are huge men who’ve helped fallen children, and tiny women who’ve wiped away their tears. They will live on in those they’ve helped.

And there are those who live on in us in the form of scars, but life is too short to dwell there.

When one of us passes, we cry for ourselves.  There is a Thing shaped like them left in the world.  It is not a hole, not a vacancy.  They are still among us, but we’ve lost a certain eminent aspect of them.

We’ve lost people; we are losing people.  The pain we feel about this is evidence they exist still.  Our pain is a measure of how much they’ve given of themselves.  As much as it hurts, we wouldn’t want any less.

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. )

Mother Abigail and Wisdom

 Mother Abigail and Wisdom

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been watching The Stand on CBSAllAccess. While I think it was an interesting choice to air a work centered on a devastating plague during a time of pandemic, I have been enjoying it.  I especially like Whoopie Goldburg as Mother Abigail.

For those of you who are not familiar with The Stand, it was originally a book by Steven King.  It was made into a miniseries back in 1994. I’d enjoyed that at the time, so I’ve been looking for it on streaming media since that became a thing.  I hadn’t found it until this new version appeared.  The Stand is an apocalypse.  The world is destroyed by a plague.  Those few who survive gather themselves into two separate locations: The good in Boulder, Colorado and the evil in--where else--Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mother Abigail personifies wisdom and is the spiritual leader of the Boulder group.  Having an elderly black woman as a symbol of wisdom is a trope in American literature.  There are truths that we can hear from this archetype that would simply sound out of place anywhere else.  I don’t know whether that is racist, sexist, ageist, or all three.  All I know is that it is something I’ve seen.  

But Wisdom being personified as feminine goes back farther; it goes back thousands of years.  Biblically, in both Hebrew and Greek, the words for wisdom are feminine in gender.  This doesn’t necessarily mean much, but when hymns to Wisdom are written in those languages, it is quite natural to use the feminine personal pronoun.

But in Proverbs Chapter 31, verses 10 through 31, there is a word portrait of a virtuous woman.  Those of you who haven’t read it, should.  Those of you who have, know it to be a litany of the activities of a virtuous woman and the benefits accrued to her family because of them.  It gets pretty dense at certain points.  I remember as a youth listening to it and inserting “She spot-weldeth.”

There are women who react negatively to this with: “You men think women are only good for what they can do for you.”  I am not going to argue with that.  I will say that--in my family at least--there aren’t too many men who would fit the person described, but there are a number of women.

It has also been pointed out to me recently that the virtues described for a virtuous woman in these verses describe a personification of Wisdom.  Wisdom in the feminine. 

Here those of us who seek to be wise--whether we are male or female--are given this feminine archetype to emulate.

The qualities included are planning ahead, not wasting time, handling responsibility, and looking to the needs of others while still taking care of oneself.  This is a text that will preach and reach the listener in a practical way.

One can get off on a tangent arguing about whether this image is natural or cultural or whether those two words can even be separated in this context.  Many hours and many pages could be filled with this discussion, some it possibly fruitful.

But, regardless, there it is.

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. )

Difficult and left untried

 Difficult and left untried

By Bobby Neal Winters

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is an ancient Christian text called the Didake (did-ahk-ay) that begins with these words: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways.”  

The document then goes on to describe the Way of Life.  To say that the Way of Life is not an easy way might be something of an understatement.  I was going along reading it sentence by sentence saying, Preach it, Brother, Preach it, but it didn’t take too many sentences before I read one that made me say, Ouch!  

The thing is, there is nothing there that is not in the New Testament or in the Gospels.  The Didake just condenses it down to the essentials.  It’s like chewing salt from a block rather than just eating it dusted on your popcorn.  It’s the same stuff, but maybe a gallon of soda pop would help it go down.

The New Testament itself, Jesus tells the rich young ruler:”If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

To this we reply, the whole perfection thing sounds really great, but I have so very nice things.

We fall short.

I’ve come up with a solution to this that makes me feel more comfortable.  I should become a self-help guru and sell it to you, but I will give it to you for free. Here goes.  Jesus knew we were going to fail, but he set up the teachings to point us in the right direction.  If we fall short of these very high ideals while striving toward them, then at least we’ve made progress.

I think that last paragraph has some truth to it, but there is a tiny voice in the back of my mind that is trying to say something else.  The voice is calm and insistent but there is a chorus of other voices that are trying to shout it down. 

My head can sometimes be very noisy.

A good question to ask would be, why would I care?  The Didake is just a dusty old scroll; the Bible is just a dusty old book.  Jesus didn’t even have a car, much less a computer. What do they know anyway?

I was raised being taught these things were right.  I’ve grown up, looked around the world, and I’ve not found anything better. It doesn’t teach pursuing money; it doesn’t teach pursuing power.  It teaches that our pursuit should be in helping our fellow human beings whether they suffer from a lack of food on their tables or love in their hearts.  It teaches a way of ordering your personal life that is in harmony with these aims.

Jesus tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light, but maybe we have to put down some other things first. Maybe Bob Dylan was right, “If you ain’t got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.” 

I don’t have a sweet answer.

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. )

An Early Ash Wednesday

An Early Ash Wednesday

By Bobby Neal Winters

A Facebook Friend of mine asked in her status for people to share their favorite verse from the Bible.  I don’t think I have one.  I am not sure why, but I will think about it.  I did have a verse that popped to my mind: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

It’s there in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis.  I am far from the first to suggest this, but it does seem to capture Man in two parts that are held in Cruciform tension as they say:

You are made of dirt;

You’ve been filled with the spirit of God.

I need to be reminded of both of these from time to time.  To be reminded of the first, I go with some friends of mine to Ash Wednesday Services at Our Lady of Lourdes.  They meet at Oh dark thirty, and that is a time when you are very receptive to the dirt message.

There are times, however, when I need to be reminded of the second.  This comes from two different directions.  I need to know that I have been filled with the spirit of God, and I need to be reminded that you have been filled with the spirit of God.  This is all part of the deal.

I am supposed to love you.  Regardless.

“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

Here Jesus was quoting ancient Jewish teaching.  In the Sermon on the Mount he pushes it further: “ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

In my youth, I used to think this was a way He was telling us not to have enemies.

No, that is not the case.

You are going to have enemies.  This is beyond your control.  There will be people who will hold your existence in contempt. You are to love them.

At some point, I heard the voice of Inigo Montoya, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

Love is not a feeling.  It is accompanied by many feelings, but it is not a feeling.  It is something beyond.  It is something we can do.  It is something we may choose to do, but it is like math or chess or pushups or whatever, you have to work at it.

That person in front of them. The one you disagree with; the one who is working against everything you believe in; the one who challenges you: You are to love him.

As inhumanly difficult as that may be, that is the easy part.  The hard part is how that love is to be manifested.  

Giving them their way is not necessarily the answer.  And quite frankly, it can’t be roadmapped out. But remembering that your love for them must be the center of 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. )

An abacus, reading, laying concrete, and tossing pebbles

 An abacus, reading, laying concrete, and tossing pebbles

By Bobby Neal Winters

I got my grandsons an abacus for Christmas.

Well, that’s not true, actually.  I bought myself an abacus for Christmas, and I used my grandsons as an excuse to do this.  For those of you who know about such things, it is a Soroban, that is to say, a Japanese-style abacus as opposed to a Chinese style one.

I’ve gotten to be almost sixty years old and a math teacher no less without ever having learned how to use an abacus.

And there is something to know. It is not magic; it is a piece of technology.  Technological devices are fine things, but there is a two stage process involved with them.  First they are invented, and then you have to learn how to use them.  And the second part of this is the most important: Learning how to use it.

Think about the lever.  In some sense, it didn’t even have to be invented.  A level consists of a rock and a stick.  Rocks have been lying around literally since the Earth cooled.  Sticks have been around as long as there have been trees.  But we had to figure out how to use the lever.  We did. We refined it and invented the wheel from it; then gears and pulleys.  Now every toy monster truck that my grandsons go vroom, vroom, vroom with while smashing them against the living room floor in my how has wheels.

The children are exposed to them from before they can even speak.  They become an intuitive part of their lives.

This would be an example of a dissemination of technology that has worked.  We get the wheel; we get the lever.

I would like to think that reading is on its way to being this fully integrated.  It’s not quite, but we are working on it.  We are still having to teach that you need to read to your children.  All of the people in my circles do, but I recognize I am strange.  I get the feeling that reading books is not as ubiquitous as monster trucks, but I could be wrong.

Cultures that know about levers and wheels have possibilities open to them that those who don’t know do not. Cultures that know about reading have possibilities open to them do not.  If one or two people know how to read, they may have an advantage over others.  If everyone knows how to read it raises the baseline for everyone.

What happens in a child’s home has an out-sized effect on everything that follows in the child’s life.  My dad hauled bulk cement and helped build the interstates going though Oklahoma City and Dallas, and as a result I can’t walk past a pad of freshly poured concrete without thinking of him. A big slab of nicely worked concrete is a thing of beauty even though I’ve not been personally able to put this to use.

As a little boy, there were a lot of Chickasaws in my school.  They had a lot of throwing games where they threw small rocks and sticks.  They turned out to be the best at basketball and baseball, and I have to think it was because the technology of throwing was taught early.

A lot of what we do just comes to us as an accident of our history, but we do have the power to choose.  We can choose to make homes where learning skills is valued.  We can take the attitude that learning is a joy whether it is monster trucks, reading, laying concrete, throwing pebbles, or using an abacus.  It is a mixture of joy and discipline, and it pays off.

I’m done now.  I’ve got to go play with my abacus.

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. )

2AM--Just a Hick from Pontotoc County

By Bobby Neal Winters

My 35th Wedding Anniversary is the first week of the New Year.

I woke at two o’clock this morning thinking about Rev Tevye. I identify with him.  Both of us have a robust interior dialog. Both of us have a lot of daughters.

There is a duet that Rev Tevye sings with his wife called “Do you love me?” Within it he asks his wife that question, and she replies, “You’re a fool!”  To which he answers, “I know, but do you love me?”

Ultimately, she discovers that she loves him, which takes a little time because it’s not something she’s ever asked herself, but the part I like is the exchange: “You’re a fool”--”I know.”  This is where I identify with Rev Tevye the most. I know that I am a fool.

That was one of the things I was wrestling with at 2AM.  I am a fool; I have been a fool. 

I was thinking particularly about my time in grad school. I started working on my master’s degree when I was twenty years old. I was pure, 100 percent hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma.  The only contact with the outside world I’d had was through TV.  I was meeting twenty-somethings from middle class families for the first time. Though I was smart as heck--you could’ve just asked me--I was entirely ignorant of the world I was going into.  And, as I said, I didn’t know it.

Here’s the thing though.  Many of the people I met were teachers, and most of them--at least enough of them--knew where they were.  They knew what I was.  They did their job.

In a movie, I would’ve been given a Cinderella-like transformation.  As it was, they actually did better.  They gave me the means for going to the next step so that I could work on transforming myself.  

Life has been like that for me.  At every stage, I’ve found myself surrounded by my betters.  There has always been someone smarter; someone kinder; someone more graceful; someone more educated.  

Like a blind chicken, I picked up a grain now and then, and at some point I had my revelation that I am a fool.

But I am a fool who knows it.  I will cling to that nugget as the one thing that I do have.  I can carry that around in my rucksack like a piece of booty from Dungeons and Dragons.

The best thing I got from my time at graduate school wasn’t my education (eventually a PhD)--or even the introduction to a larger world: It was finding my wife and the mother of my children.

She has been more patient a teacher with me than anyone I ever met in the classroom.  Though I am a fool, I do know that.

I am also beginning to think--fool that I am--that while I did need, and do need, to learn a few things, being a hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma might be the best part of me.  

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

How I wish you were here

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

--Pink Floyd

By Bobby Neal Winters

I hear them say, I will be glad when this is over.

The year 2020 is about over.  This is something that has been looked forward to for many months now.  We’ve fantasized about the coming of the New Year as if the coming of 2021 would magically sweep all of our troubles away, as if it would sweep COVID away.  

But it hasn’t, and it won’t.

There are still lots of new cases.  There are still people dying.  It is still not over.

They do have a vaccine or two or three.  Those who want to get vaccinated will get vaccinated, me among them, and that is a good thing.

But if somebody could wave a magic wand and it were all over--if it were all wiped from our minds so that we were ignorant that those five letters could be put together in any meaningful way--it would still be something else.

Because that is the nature of life and living. 

There is always something going on somewhere.  There is always something happening.  There is always something we feel put upon because of.

Now it is COVID.

We’ve lost people to COVID this year. She has been capricious, our little COVID.  She has put me in mind of what Jesus said about the Coming of the Son of Man: “Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.”

There have been families where one was asymptomatic and the other has died. No rhyme, no reason; no trial, no jury. 

In this way, COVID is the perfect manifestation of our old enemy. You can do your best; you can wash your hands; you can wear your mask; you can avoid crowds and keep your distance.  It all helps. But there is no guarantee. 

I’m thinking about people I know who’ve died within the last few years, not of COVID. That eight track tape player in my head starts up with Pink Floyd: “How I wish, how I wish you were here.”

I lost Dad three decades ago;  I lost Mom ten years ago this coming New Year’s Day.  I’ve lost some of my dear cousins.  I’ve lost friends.  They are gone from me now everywhere but memory.

I would give anything for half an hour with any of them.

What I am trying to say is that I want to stop wishing things were over and to embrace the now.  I want to enjoy the people I have while I still have them.  The optimist says this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true; the realist knows that this is what we’ve got.  You’ve got to love each day as God’s gift.

I wish you all a joyous New Year.  

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. )

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas

By Bobby Neal Winters

The days have been getting shorter since late June.  At first we didn’t notice; then only a little bit;  then a little more.  By Halloween it was just about as short as it was going to be.  These days when I take my walk after work, I am welcomed back home by the stars if the night is clear.

One generation passes away, and another generation comes; /
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, /
And [hastens to the place where it arose.

But the earth abides forever. /

And Christmas is once again upon us.   This year we have the so-called Christmas Star.  What they mean when they say that is that Jupiter and Saturn are getting closer in the sky.  When I took my walk last night and got home, I put my hand up in front of me and covered them both up with my thumb.  They have been getting closer together in the sky for a while, and they have been setting earlier each day too, but if you go out to look--weather permitting--it’s a nice sight.  Jupiter and Saturn also came close in the night sky back in 7 BC and Johannes Kepler, who laid a lot of the groundwork for Isaac Newton’s theories of planetary motion, thought they might’ve been the Star of Bethlehem. 

Jupiter and Saturn were associated with the Greek mythological figures Zeus and Cronus.  Zeus was the king of the gods and Cronus was the father of the gods.  Zeus had overthrown Cronus as Cronus had overthrown his father, Uranus.  Given that, it makes a kind of sense that Zeus and Cronus would witness the birth of the One who would displace them from that part of the world.

And now they are looking down on us again.  Best not think about that too much.

We are going through times of change.  Things are always changing, sometimes more, sometimes less, but changing.  But things stay the same too, as the Preacher from the Book of Ecclesiastes observed. Man is still the same animal he was 2000 years ago, 6000 years ago, 30 thousand year ago, but we’ve been building something else within us.  To put it in techie terms, the hardware is the same, but the software is being updated.

Our software has become so sophisticated that we can delude ourselves that we aren’t animals anymore.  We’ve got a lot of knowledge, and we think we are superior, but we forget whatever we know was purchased by others with blood, sweat, toil, and tears.

At Christmas, on Christmas morning, we can get a reminder of what we’ve learned and what we’ve lost.  When our children or grandchildren toddle out of there beds to see what Santa has brought them, they *believe*.  Santa is as real to them as the stars in the sky are real to you and me.  

I view this quality in them with joy and sadness.  The innocence is to be treasured, but you don’t want them believing in Santa when they are thirty.  (I will leave a pause here for Republicans to make their own personal joke about Democrats.)  They need to learn the world is full of greedy, self-centered people. (Here is equal time for the Democrats to jab the Republicans.) 

We are stretched far from our natural state. The innocence of that state is attractive, but there is no going back.  We cry when they learn to ride the bike Santa brought them; we cry when they stop believing in Santa.  As did our parents for us, and theirs before them.  Around and around the sun we go.

Things do change. But they stay the same too.  I still look at the stars with wonder.  What I know they are has changed, but the wonder remains.

Regardless of all the changes, the wonder is still there.

Merry Christmas.

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. 

That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

 That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

By Bobby Neal Winters

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is my favorite Advent song.  Growing up, I didn’t know what Advent and had absolutely no idea there was such a thing as an Advent song.  They were all just Christmas songs to me.  Now every year I wait with great anticipation until I can hear those beautiful strains:

O come, O come, Emmanuel, /
And ransom captive Israel, /
That mourns in lonely exile here, /
Until the Son of God appear. /
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel /
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Israel was in Exile, has been in Exile, for longer than it existed, has existed, as a state. Indeed, the Children of Israel were in Exile in their captivity in Egypt.  Then they wandered in the Wilderness.  They had a Kingdom for a while and then they endured exile under a series of empires and continued to do so until this very day.

As Christians, we consider ourselves a part of that.  We are a people in Exile.  Our kingdom is not of this world.

This state of Exile is a hard thing to understand--or maybe not. This year with lockdowns and social distancing we might have some small idea of how that feels.

We are cutoff.  We are excluded. We are alone.  In so many cases, our connection to others is filtered through a computer screen.  While having that screen, that connection, is better than nothing, it is not the same.

We await a Savior.

Some thought it to be the President; some thought it to be his medical advisors.  Some said it would be Science; some are still saying that.

But if science gives us a solution that requires us to do something--and that is the only type that is being offered--and if we don’t do it, then we will not be saved.

It is as in the Days of Noah:  If the only way out of the way of the Flood is on the Ark and you don’t get on it, then you will be lost.

Science is now our Savior.

Emmanuel is God with Us.  As Christians we believe, Jesus was God with us, but God is also with us in terms of Wisdom.  It can’t be said often enough that Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge gives me the means of making bombs in my basement; Wisdom tells me not to.

O come, O Wisdom from on high, /
who ordered all things mightily; /
to us the path of knowledge show /
and teach us in its ways to go. /

We are in this coldest, darkest, loneliest part of the year, and we await a Savior.

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. )

YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

 YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

By Bobby Neal Winters

Life is complicated.

I looked at that sentence and said it deserved to be its own paragraph.  I figured it could also be an essay or a book, but let’s spend a few more words on it.

I woke up very early last Sunday morning.  I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want my tossing and turning to keep my wife awake, so I got up and moved through my daily routine which put me in front of my computer where I started watching and listening to YouTube.  I am surrounded by friends who were educated in philosophy while I am not, and I try to pick up a little here and a little there so that I am not totally lost when they start rolling.  As a result of this, the YouTube algorithm brings me videos on philosophy.

Last Sunday morning, the Algorithm brought me videos on Nihilism and Existentialism.  Somehow the Algorithm has figured out that folks who get up at 4am on Sunday morning might be in the mood for a little Nihilism. (You might not think that’s funny, but the philosophical types are rolling.)

It was 4am and I was in my sweatpants, so I wasn’t taking notes, but one of the Existentialists (it was either Camus or Sartre) was quoted as writing about the “terror of freedom.”  At that point, something clicked in my brain and I thought that I needed to write about it.  

So I am.

The human race has been changing for quite some time.  We’ve been moving toward individuality.  There is both good and bad with this. On one hand, I don’t have to be mad at you for something one of your group did to me if he did it as an individual.  On the other hand, I am on my own a lot more.  I have to make more decisions. Life gets more complicated.

There are a terrifying number of alternatives at every instance.  Do I get married? Do I have children?  Do I get a job?  Do I become a criminal?  If I think of myself as part of a tradition, these thousands of basic decisions are made for me.  I get married; when I get married, I don’t write my own vows, I let the preacher do the same thing he does for everyone else. I have kids if they come, and I get a job instead of going to prison. 

Any old tradition will have a decision tree that has more alternatives than what I’ve just described, but you get the picture: I can save my thinking for the important stuff that is peculiar to me.  

The rub is that when we yield ourselves to a tradition, we “give up our freedom.”

The YouTube Algorithm (maybe I need to genuflect when I write that down; my tradition doesn’t say) also brings me computer programming videos.  Some of my favorites are by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. One of his videos is about the trend in computer languages.  I am condensing it quite a bit, but he said that the first computer programs were written by flipping switches on and off. You could flip the switches in any direction that you wanted to.  

You had perfect freedom.

But this freedom was too much.  It was easier to do things that were destructive to the machine.  It was easier to write programs that just didn’t do anything.  And in spite of the ease of doing destructive,useless things, writing good programs was difficult.

Because of this, more advanced computer languages were invented that took away a lot of that random freedom.  These languages provided structure in which certain random, potentially harmful things were more difficult to do.  But this loss of freedom provided a means for more useful, long lasting programs to be written.

A religion, if you embrace it, can provide you the structure that will keep you from doing useless, destructive things.  While one can mourn the loss of freedom that comes from embracing a religion (e.g. I can’t have sex without being married, I can’t drink alcohol, I can’t have electricity in the house), the return--for most--is stability.

I put “for most” in there on purpose.  There are always the ones who struggle.  Always.  But sometimes the ones who struggle within the structure are the ones we remember; many of them are remembered saints.

Anyway, I had to write this.  I’ve got more to say, but I’ve imposed on you long enough already.

 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. )

Fresnel Lenses and Grandpas

 Fresnel Lenses and Grandpas

By Bobby Neal Winters

For preachers, light is a metaphor for wisdom.  For scientists it is a phenomenon of physics made up of photons which are sometimes waves and sometimes particles, depending on what needs to be explained at the time.  I am fascinated by it.

I have a fresnel (it’s pronounced fre-nel, those darned Frenchmen) lens the size of a sheet of copy paper.  It focuses light down to a fine point like a magnifying glass.  I got it because I wanted to show  my grandchildren cool stuff.  Like most such things, my grandchildren liked it for 30 seconds or so and I am still playing with it.

I burned down the bulk of a stump with it one day.  This is to say, I used it to catch a stump on fire and the stump burned over the course of the day.  It’s not a death ray--at least not this one.

I was playing with it yesterday.  I am trying to make a frame for it that will hold it steady so I won’t go blind while staring at a focused image of the sun.  While doing this, I noticed--it was hard not to notice--that even at noon the sun is almost hugging the southern horizon. I say hugging the horizon, it is just over 30 degrees above the horizon. 

It is that time of year. The rays of the sun don’t get a very straight angle on us and what they do get doesn’t last very long.  

Anyhow, as the angle of the sun changes throughout the year, I got to thinking I need to make a frame for my fresnel lens that will adjust as well.

When I was a boy, I didn’t know about fresnel lenses.  We had magnifying glasses and I was never able to start a fire with one of those.  I burnt holes in leaves and pieces of paper; I put black spots on wood; I sent any number of pillbugs to their heavenly reward; but I never actually caught anything on fire.

So this fresnel lens represents progress.

My grandchildren are really still too young for this, and they live in a different world.  They are being raised by gentler people than I was, people who won’t tolerate insect abuse.  Because of this, it will take them longer to get into the arena of burning up stuff.  When they do, they will find their grandpa has some tools made.

As I write this, I look back at the paragraph and worry.  Are they being protected too much by their parents?  Are they having too many hills made smooth by their grandparents?  The young need the struggle.  I believe that is true.

But I think it is also true that we seek out and find the struggle.  If I smooth out a hill, that means they will simply find the next, higher hill that much more quickly.  We need struggle, and life gladly provides it.

Those of us who are grandparents, are lenses for our grandchildren.  We gather the light of our lifetime and focus it into a bright spot for them.  The trick, it seems to me, is to get the focus right on the right spot.  

But then it occurs to me, is that my decision to make?  I am the lens, but only they will know where they need the light.  With that being the case, my best choice is to offer them as much of myself as I can, so they can take from me what they need.  Being an old man who plays with children’s toys with childlike joy, might be something they need some day.

 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 End of the World

 The End of the World 

By Bobby Neal Winters

Advent is that Season of the Church when we prepare for the coming of Jesus as the Infant, but also as The King.  I learned all of this as an adult.

I grew up in a dispensationalist church. “Dispensationalist” is a long word and you might not know what it means even if you are one.  What it boils down to is that when the world ends, the faithful will be raptured away before the time of trial, the Great Tribulation.  

I remember we had one preacher--he was a young man at the time--where the world ended twice every Sunday and eight times a week during revivals.  I was waiting for the Last Trump to blow, and sometimes when one of the local bulls was feeling frisky, I heard it.

My thinking along these lines has changed over the years.  You think about things differently when you are fifty-eight than you do when you are eight, or even eighteen.  I am in a Zoom Bible Study, and we are going through Matthew.  Last week we did Matthew, Chapter 3, which is John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus.

John the Baptist was preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and the clear implication in that chapter was that Jesus would usher that Kingdom in.

My thoughts when I was a boy weren’t very well developed, but my expectations were very concrete.  I expected the End of the World to be, well, the End.  Everything would be over, and and we’d all be in Heaven.  I can’t say that is what the preacher preached, but that is what I walked away with.  Having preached myself and having heard some interpretations get back to me, let’s just say that every sermon is a Rorschach Test. 

But my thinking has changed since I was eight, since I was eighteen, since I was forty-eight.  I believe the Bible, I believe in the Word, but I’ve learned of the limitation of “words.”  Transmitting a message is difficult when not everyone has the same lexicon. The way an itinerant preacher might convey a message is going to be different than the way an electrical engineer would.

There will come a day when it will all be over.  In the meanwhile, there are times when, for lack of a more precise phrase, the human race presses the reset button.  When the old way of doing things stops, and a new way of doing things starts.  As a more modern prophet with the unlikely name of Bob put it,

“Come writers and critics /
Who prophesize with your pen /
And keep your eyes wide /
The chance won't come again /
And don't speak too soon /
For the wheel's still in spin /
And there's no tellin' who /
That it's namin' /
For the loser now /
Will be later to win /
For the times they are a-changin' ..”

In a way, we can think of these changing times as an “end of the world.”  An old way of doing things passes away, and a new way starts.  Our lives are filtered by fire.  The things that we do, the ways that we think that can survive the flame make it through and the rest are burned away: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  

John’s way of putting this carries a lot more rhetorical impact that my milquetoast way of putting it.  

We are being winnowed by this Pandemic, not so much in terms of lost lives but in terms of how things are done. We’ve learned new ways of doing. Things will change.  Hold close to you the things that you want to survive.  There will be another side to this, but all will be changed. 

Let us prepare.

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. )

 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. )