Happy Easter in Ice Cream

 Happy Easter in Ice Cream

By Bobby Neal Winters

A vision can keep us together when nothing else will.  A vision can foster Hope and Hope is one of the strongest forces there is.

In this year of COVID along with all of the unrest of the summer and the contentious presidential election, there was a vision that kept our small town together.  It was the vision of a better town.  It was the vision of a town that was better equipped to face an uncertain future.  It was the vision of a town unlike any town the world has ever known.

It was the vision of a new Dairy Queen just south of the Sonic.

Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars.  This was more like bulldozers and rumors of bulldozers.

“When are they going to start?”

“Have they started?”

“I think they are going to pull out.”

“I saw that they’d mowed the lot.  I don’t think they’d’ve mowed the lot if they weren’t goin’ to do anything.”

“I saw a for-sale sign on the lot.”

I must admit, that when I heard the last one, I actually drove by the lot to see if there was in fact a sign, and there was...not!

Since then, every time I run up to the big WalMart to do a grocery pick up I look at the lot.  A few weeks ago I was rewarded with the sight of actual bulldozers and actual dirt being moved.  A hymn began to burst forth from my heart:

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight /
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll /
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend /
Even so, it is well with my soul!”

Believe me when I say that I look now every time I go by to gauge the progress.

In the 21st Chapter of the Book of Revelation, we are given something similar. It is a vision of a new heaven and a new earth and a vividly drawn picture of a New Jerusalem,”coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” 

There, John, the author of Revelation, is trying to describe his vision with the best words he has.  He makes use of light as a metaphor.  Light is symbolic of wisdom.  In this new heaven and new earth they will use the light of Wisdom to guide themselves.  John makes a statement that sounds like nonsense: “The Lamb is the light.” Had he been writing in English we would think he might’ve made a typo, writing Lamb for lamp.  But as Christians, especially after Easter, we know that the Lamb is Jesus and that the wisdom of Jesus will be the light in this New Jerusalem coming down from heaven.

And it is here that another hymn bursts into my heart:

“In Him, there is no darkness at all /
The night and the day are both alike /
The Lamb is the light of the city of God /
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus”

Even while there is that hymn in my heart, I have doubts like with the construction of the Dairy Queen.  Is there anything happening?  Is it going to appear in stages?  There is so much evil in the world, why has he made us wait so long.

But in the vision is hope.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

NALM and the New Normal

 NALM and the New Normal

By Bobby Neal Winters

‘The first mowing of the new lawn year is fast approaching, and it is time to look ahead to that new year.  Because of COVID 19, last year brought about a lot of changes.  That’s right, not even mowing escaped.

You may recall that last year I made the switch from my ICE (internal combustion engine) mower to a battery-powered mower.  This was a big game changer and won me some points with NALM, the National Association of Lawn Mowers.  NALM is incredibly woke.  They are rooted in that old, northeastern establishment elite.  They are dominated by a small group that is similar to the Skull and Bones Society. It’s called the Gopher and Grub Society.

While the Skull and Bones Society promotes a “new world order” with a “thousand points of light,” the Gopher and Grubs shoot for a “well-edged world” with a “trillion blades of grass.”  And they want those trillion blades to all be exactly alike.

I didn’t know this when I got into NALM  I just wanted to make myself a better person by having a better lawn.  But I got into this an inch at a time, and I don’t know a way out.

Anyway, NALM likes battery-powered mowers because they are more eco-friendly than ICE mowers and they are quieter.  And I do too.  I will admit I bought my electric mower of my own accord, and only found out later that NALM approved.  In any case, those two factors are not an issue with NALM.  

NALM is an organization that is deeply divided over a question that is of a lot of interest to most of us mowers: How short do you mow your grass?

This is very contentious.  On one hand, if you mow your grass short, say almost into the dirt, then you don’t have to mow it as often.  This means you will use less energy and will put less carbon into the atmosphere.  On the other hand, if you keep your grass long, then the carbon stays sequestered in the grass.

The Cut-it-short group fears that if the Long-grass group gets their way, folks will take it to the extreme of not mowing at all.  We will have acres and acres of grass in city after city, just growing and going to seed.

The Long-grass group fears if the Cut-it-short group’s point of view is taken to its logical conclusion that people will just pave over their yards.

There was a big video conference this winter where partisans for each point of view squared off over the issue.  It began civilly enough, but by the end the exchange had degenerated to:

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

One side of the issue will start the rumor that a member of the other side has dandelions in their yard or has at some point in the past.  This is a serious thing in NALM, especially among the elite. 

For my part, I keep my head down and try not to get noticed.  I’ve got so many dandelions in my lawn, I am thinking of using them as a food source.  I remember that aphorism, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. ”

That is about all that can be done in this sort of atmosphere.  I will keep my lawn mown short enough to keep the snakes out, but not so short as to cut the dirt.  I will try to make the weeds in my yard as attractive as possible.

That’s about all anybody 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. Search for him on YouTube. )

Shameless Self-Promotion

Shameless Self-Promotion

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have a channel on YouTube.  I have had it for at least 14 years, and it kind of surprises me that I’ve had it so long.  During the time I’ve had it, I’ve worked at it more intensely at some times than at others.  I’ve used it mainly for mathematics, though I have put some videos on it to share it with my extended family.

Over the past year, I’ve used it a lot more as I have put some content for my classes online.  I’ve also put up a few videos in an attempt to help my colleagues learn about Zoom and Microsoft Teams.  I don’t know if I was successful, but some of them were kind enough to thank me.  (You are welcome, by the way.) 

A week or so ago, I decided to get back into my channel and to try to do it in a semi professional way.  By semi professional, I don’t mean to semi make money on it, rather I mean to try to copy what my favorite channels do.  I have an “intro” and an “outro.” I show my face and talk to the camera to introduce the topic.  I break it up into segments.

Before anybody rushes out to look up the channel, let me warn you that it is all math and is likely to stay that way.  There are a few math channels: StandUp Maths, Mathologer, 3Blue1Brown, and UpAndAtom.  They all do math and they are all much, much better than mine.  They are slick, and I suspect they have professionals to do their writing and editing.  They are all smarter than me.  They are all much better looking...

I’d better stop going down this road because it might make me sad.

It does raise the question: Why bother?

To be up front about it: It is something I enjoy doing.  I like the act of thinking about a nice bit of math.  I like the act of making it into something someone else can understand.  I like making the pieces of the video and then putting them together.  It is my hope to put out a new video every week and to get a little better at it over time.

If I ever make a dime on it, I might just fall over dead.  That having been said, I am willing to take the risk. 

But my thinking is this.  We are going into a new future.  This year of living remotely has had an effect on us.  We’ve discovered new things. We’ve not been able to reach out in the normal ways, so, like water when one path is cut off, we’ve found new ways.  We need help on a homework problem, we don’t go to Poindexter down the block.  We go to YouTube and search. (If you want to find my channel, search my name. There are only two people by that name on YouTube so far.)

If I can help a kid with his homework at sometime in the future by doing what I like to do now, why wouldn’t I?  I am--at the very core of my being--a math teacher.

I am still finding my feet.  I’ve improved the graphics in my videos. (Improved is a relative term.) I’ve added some sound effects to my intro and I might improve my outro as well.  At this point with my most popular video having received 16 views, I don’t have to please anyone but myself.  If more people watch, I will probably become more self-conscious.

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

Sam I Am

Sam I Am

By Bobby Neal Winters

I was a picky eater, and it drove my parents to distraction.  In a vain attempt to fix this, one of the first books they read to me was “Green Eggs and Ham.”

Let me tell you, I rocked that book.  I got to the point where, in the words of my mother, I knew it by heart.  I can still quote vast pieces of it. “I do not like it here or there. I do not like it anywhere.”

It didn’t cure me of being a picky eater.  And--entirely unintentionally--gave me a better vocabulary to talk about it.

I almost wrote that we are living in a strange time, but then I thought it’s probably no stranger than any other.  The biggest difference is that we are the ones living through it. I was going to use that as a segue to talk about the latest tempest in a teapot over Dr. Suess. 

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t know anymore about the goings on here that anyone else.  Will Rogers used to say that he only knew what he read in the newspapers.  I’m not as well-off as that: I only know what I see in social media.  

But I do know this: Controversy draws reporters like cow flop draws flies. New innovations come along in how to generate it.  Right now there is a machine out there that uses words like Social Justice Warriors, Woke, and I am sure there are a few others, but you can go a long way on just those.  They are used as cuss-words and insults by some; by others they are worn proudly by others.

We hear about “cancelling.” While right now the right wing is telling us that it is something the left wing is doing, you might remember it as something that was done to “The Dixie Chicks” for some political comments they made.  

In my opinion, “cancelling” is a very un-American thing to do, but it has been done by many Americans.

Here’s the thing.  It is a weapon that is most effectively used against one’s own people.  The Left couldn’t cancel Rush Limbaugh because they were not his market; the Right cannot cancel Rachel Maddow for the same reason. However, if a member of your group does not toe the party line, then you can come down on them like a hammer.

This is not healthy, but it does explain some of what is going on in this country.  We get in our own bubbles, our own echo chambers.  It all starts feeding back on us.  And if anybody in our bubble says that maybe someone in that other bubble has a point, they get kicked--or cancelled--right out of the bubble.

The bit with Dr. Seuss is kind of instructive. Perhaps we’d better pause here to learn all we can from it.  My first reaction to this controversy was, huh?  This is Dr. Seuss who wrote about the star-bellied sneetches and the great controversy about sneetches whose bellies were plain and the ones with stars upon thar’s.

Then I used my old friend Google to find some of the pictures. Oh. My.

There are quotes by Theodor Giesel that are anti-Japanese, for instance. Quite frankly, you can’t twist it enough to clean it up. This was during WWII and that was the way we were “supposed” to think then, just as there are ways we are “supposed” to think now.  Over the course of time, his thinking changed.  He was able to see the unity of the human race in Horton Hears a Who writing: “A person’s a person no matter how small.”

Maybe the lesson here is to judge individual works on their own intellectual merits and not dismiss all of someone’s work because you don’t like some of what they did.  Maybe the lesson is to sharpen your own thinking and to resist being herded by what the group is thinking.

If you do, you might just find out that you like green eggs and ham, or you might find out they are gross, regardless of what they are pressuring you to think.

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. )

In Defense of Algebra 2

 In Defense of Algebra 2

By Bobby Neal Winters

I attended McLish High School in Fittstown, Oklahoma.  It was a small school at the time, and since then it has been consolidated with our neighboring school Stonewall, but it served me well.  I was always lousy with arithmetic, but when I got to algebra, something clicked with me.  I think this was because the arithmetic in algebra is easier.  When I got into geometry, I caught on fire.  

I took these courses as a freshman and a sophomore.  When I was a junior, there was a crisis.  Trigonometry and Algebra 2 were both being offered.  Trigonometry wouldn’t be offered again while I was in high school because it was only offered every other year, but Algebra 2 is a prerequisite for Trigonometry and for good reason.  I talked it out with the teacher (Mr. Hoyt Sloan) and administration (Billy R. Scott, in pace requiem), and they let me take both.

I hunkered-down and I did it. I worked every homework problem twice. Seriously.  There were nights doing my homework when I literally cried. But I did it.  Having gotten my Algebra and Trigonometry out of the way, I was able to start college in the mathematical sciences on the right foot.

These days, I spend way too much time on Facebook.  I do it because you can keep up with your friends and not use much of your brain.  If you’ve been there, you know there are other people who are not using much of their brain either. (Rim shot)

That having been said, sometimes you see things that are well-meant, put up by good people with the very best of intentions, but are in need of, shall we say, a bit of nuancing.  The one I have in mind begins, “It’s 2019...get rid of Algebra 2 in high schools and replace it with Finance Fundamentals. Teach kids about careers (not just college), salaries, credit, budgeting, money management, taking out a loan, buying a house, filing their taxes.”

As you can imagine given my history, this makes me set my jaw.  This was a course that I suffered to take.

Let’s take a look at this and dissect it a bit.  It starts with an attack on Algebra 2.  Does everybody have to take this class?  I don’t think so. It has been put there for a couple of reasons.  

It gets the reader’s attention and puts them on the writer’s side. Everybody hates algebra.  The students hate learning it, and their teachers hate teaching it.  It requires patience.  It requires building the capacity to abstract.  It requires attention to detail.  Very little of this comes naturally to us.  It can be very frustrating.  Whatever we math teachers may say in jest, we don’t enjoy making students suffer.  (Well, not all of them.)

Algebra is taught because it is a foundational skill for physical science and engineering. If you are going to be in any of those disciplines you need to have Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and a whole lot more.  In my personal opinion, teaching Algebra 1 in middle school is too early, and while we are at it, I don’t think Calculus should be taught in high school at all, but that is just as I said, my opinion. 

Not everybody is going to be in the physical sciences or engineering.  This is understood.  There are reasons for taking Algebra besides this.  It does require the building of the abilities I described above, which are useful in other areas.  I use the ability to be frustrated every single day of my life; Algebra 2 ain’t nothing compared to some of the stuff I put up with, but I digress.

The suggestion in the meme is to replace Algebra 2 with Finance Fundamentals.  It sounds like a good class, but this isn’t an either/or thing.  While I absolutely don’t think everyone will specifically use the knowledge they learn in algebra, students in high school take 6 classes a year for 4 years.  That is 24 classes.  You can go wild and take Math, Science, and English every year and still have 12 other classes wherein that Finance Fundamentals class can be fit, just sayin’. 

Having wrestled with writing this column--and I have wrestled with it--it seems the central issue is college preparation. I will stipulate the following: If you are not going to college, the probability you are going to need the subject matter in Algebra 2 (or Algebra 1) is vanishingly small. So this is really a meme about college tracking versus non-college tracking.

Did you know what you were going to do with your life when you were 14 or 15 years old?  

I was still in the process of figuring it out. To be honest, I did know I wanted to go to college and because I took algebra, I learned I could make it in a mathematical scientific area. Let people like me have the chance.

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. )

Disjointed thoughts on aging and words

By Bobby Neal Winters

After a certain age, old men start learning anatomy. This is not the crude anatomy of their youths when they referred to family anatomy in Anglo-Saxon words, but a more refined anatomy using Latin words and acronyms for Latin phrases like meniscus and ACL.  Those who are interested in sports might learn these earlier, but these words come to all of us eventually.

We have conversations with our friends and when we talk about the nerve bundle that is being pinched around L5 and S1, our friends either nod knowingly or listen intently, trying to prepare themselves for the days to come.  There are some that even talk with authority about surgeries, having pins put in their C4 or C5.

Jesus said that the very hairs of our head were numbered, so that is surely so, but our vertebrae most assuredly are. 

We learn about what interests us, and we talk about it, and to talk about it we have to have the language.  That last clause is worth repeating even though it's obvious:  We have to have words if we are going to talk about something.This goes for anatomy, science in general, mathematics, music, and so on.  Anything you talk about you’ve got to have the words.

God has his words for things, but God’s words are the things themselves.  We as humans make our words to talk about his thing.  We want to talk about vertebrae, so we separate them into categories depending upon where they are in the body: cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral.  Then we number those. Our ability to name things is something we have in common with God.

Numbering is a very scientific thing to do.  When we number something, it just sounds more scientific.  The numbering on the vertebrae is all about order rather than quantity.  The C1 vertebrae is at the top and the C7 is at the bottom; they could’ve named them C-Sunday through C-Saturday and it would have accomplished the same purpose, but then they would’ve had to come up with 12 things in order for the thoracic, so forth.  So numbers.

Having named a thing makes us feel like we’ve got a handle on it.  We can talk about it; we can use our words to make plans: “We are going to go in and trim that bone spur you got down around L5 and S1.”  But with humans the words are not the thing itself.  I cannot just fix my back by talking.  Someone with knowledge--and probably a big boat moored a short distance from his lake house--has to go in and fiddle with the actual thing itself. 

Some folks are so good with manipulating language--have such “verbal virtuosity” in the words of Thomas Sowell--they forget there is reality. Reality is a place that has consequences.  You can say that you can fly, but if you jump off the top of a skyscraper in only your street clothes you will make the headlines but not like Superman.  You can say you are a bird, but that doesn’t mean you can fly.

Human language has its limits, but those limits are blessings because they forced us as a species to create art. There are movies that can portray what words cannot convey. Music can transmit feelings over distance and time.  Poetry can capture reality in ways that straight-forward prose cannot.  These are all forms of language, but we struggle within them. 

They can be powerful, however. Metaphor--to a prepared mind--can convey in a short phrase what would take reams of paper to tell otherwise, e.g. “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching , covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”  We have there in a few lines a full portrait of the man.

Sometimes we talk around the things that we cannot say out loud because we think life is too short to spend it arguing.  We speak out little truth and leave it to the wisdom of the listener--or the reader--to figure it out. 

Well, it is time to get on with the rest of the 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 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. )