Broken Halos

By Bobby Neal Winters

Life is a classroom. If you keep your eyes open, you will learn.  Sometimes the process takes repeated applications. You go around in a circle and see the same thing over and over and each time you pick up something different.

For example, I’ve been listening to Don Mclean’s song American Pie literally for decades.  I think I probably heard it first when it was first out on the radio.  At first it was just the chorus.  It has a wonderful chorus.  You can sing along with it and have fun without understanding it, without knowing the slightest what the song is about.

Then you learn about Buddy Holly and the plane crash in which he, The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson, jr.), and Richie Valens (Richard Valenzuela) died on February 3, 1959. You learn about the Rolling Stone’s songs “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” You learn about the Beatles’ politics. You learn about Bob Dylan (the Jester)  and Janice Joplin (the girl who sang the blues).  

And I could go on, but you get the idea.  It’s a song about the history of rock music.

But there’s more. 

You come back to it, and there are multiple interpretations. That’s the magic of poetry: You look at it from one angle and it’s one thing; you turn it slightly to another angle, and it’s something different.  But if it’s true, it holds together as a whole.

I was listening to it yesterday, and heard the last line again, that I’d heard for thousands of times, but it was like I’d heard it for the first time:

And the three men I admire most/

The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost/

They caught the last train for the coast/

The day the music died

The plain reading of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost refers to the Christian God, but within the context of the song, these are interpreted as Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens.  Them catching the “last train for the coast” is their death.

However, if you refer to the part of the song just before this you have

I went down to the sacred store/

Where I'd heard the music years before/

But the man there said the music wouldn't play/

And in the streets the children screamed/

The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed/

But not a word was spoken/

The church bells all were broken

If you go back in the history of music, there was a time when gospel was a big market.  People who sang country also sang gospel; people who sang folk, also sang gospel. People who sang country would also sing rockabilly; people who sang folk would also do the same.

But at some point, gospel music got pushed out of the mainstream market.

While “the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost” was code for those killed in the plane crash that day in February, it can also be read plainly as a reference to what the philosophers and theologians refer to as the “Death of God.”

The Death of God is a phrase I’ve struggled with over the years.  It makes me mad.  

It was meant to.  It was meant to get attention.

Once you get past the anger, you can figure out that the “Death of God” is not about God, it’s about a change in society.  Nothing has happened to God, but society has pushed him away.

My two keys to understanding the change that has taken place have been from a miniseries taken from a book. The title of both was “The Pillars of the Earth.”  The second key was Ellis Peters

Cadfael books (also a miniseries), but the book “A Morbid Taste for Bones.”

These works give you an idea of a society in which the only way of knowing anything comes through the church and through holy scripture.

The thing to understand is that however pious you are, however much you believe in God, you don’t believe as much as they did.

While there has been a gradual change from that medieval state of mind due to the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation, it accelerated in the 20th Century and was going forward with the pedal all the way to the floor in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Positive references to God and Jesus gradually disappear from popular culture.

You don’t have to take my word for it.  Get on Spotify, Amazon Music or whatever, and listen to the popular music of those decades.

But...

But they never entirely died out.  It was always there in Country Music.  Sometimes it was below the surface, but it was there.

I heard Chris Stapleton sing about “Broken Halos”; I heard Jellyroll sing about being a “Son of a Sinner.”

God is there. Humans are broken, but God is there.

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.

 You Gotta Have Rules

By Bobby Neal Winters

We like rules.  Regardless of what we may say otherwise, we like rules.  Some people like to follow them; some people like to beat other people over the head with them.  

Some people like to break them; they go to the boundary and they put their toe to it.

But that’s just it: Rules provide boundaries. They provide a lattice for growth.  They give us something to argue about, and you can’t overstate the importance of that. Sometimes the arguing over the rule, the discussion of the purpose of the rule is more important than the rule itself.

Rules in whatever form for a reason, and knowing that reason can be a guiding light.

I’ve been working in the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Pittsburg State University for the last 18 years. There will be students starting at Pittsburg State this fall who were just a gleam in their papa’s eye when I began that job. As I’ve thrown out my files--carefully shredding all the sensitive stuff--I’ve thought about the nature of the job I’ve been transiting out of.

One of my duties has been handling substitutions for general education.  It is something I never thought about much before taking the position.  It occurs to me that very few of you are aware of this aspect of education.  Please allow me to enlighten you.

Consider the following case study. Johnny has been following his dream of going to rodeo clown school down at Hay University in Bugtussle, Oklahoma. He fell in love with a girl who was pre-med at Pittsburg State which she chose because of our great record of preparing students for medical school.  Not wanting to be separated from his love, he put aside his dream and decided to follow her to Pittsburg State.

While he’d been at Hay U, he had taken a course in Advanced Fertilizer Management, where it was a part of their general education package.  He took it in good faith for that purpose, and in spite of its odd title, it is quite a rigorous course.  It is taught in the Life Sciences Department and connects with many environmental issues in a very robust way and is quite demanding.  When he transfers in: Does this course count for general education credit, and if so, in what category?

Of course, the specifics are all made up and are purposefully ridiculous--other than the great pre-med program--but I hope you get the idea. We have rules in place. Well-written, precise rules. But as hard as you work, as smart as you may be, situations will arise that cannot be foreseen. 

Now, as you might imagine, from time to time patterns emerge even from such random occurrences as this, and as the process of individually approving/denying substitutions is cumbersome, rules are made to aid in smoothing out that part of the process.  This is done with the full knowledge of everyone involved that you can’t think of everything, and someone will have to look at individual cases and approve or deny substitutions. We like to call it job security.

But you gotta have rules, right?

This last spring I led a Bible Study over the Book of Genesis at my church. I noticed a pattern that occurs not only in Genesis, but throughout the rest of the Bible and, indeed, from there into history. It starts in Eden when God gives the one rule about not eating from the Tree of Knowledge. It continues after the Flood when God gives some more rules out. 

The rules are about more than what you can eat and what you can do. There is a point when Jacob comes to a parting of the ways with his father-in-law Laban.  They make a big pile of rocks and make the rule that one will stay on one side of the pile and the other will stay on the other side, but Laban’s daughters--Jacob’s wives--can pass back and forth. It’s a rule about a peaceful parting of the ways.

These examples are the ones in Genesis. In Exodus, we see rule-making go big time when Moses passes along God’s rules while they are wandering in Sinai.

In the New Testament, there are new rules given out at the Council at Jerusalem in the Book of Acts.  There was discussion and a decision. This process continued through the history of the Church through a number of important church councils. By studying the process, we know not only what we believe, but why.

Rules such as these are often broken; they are sometimes set-aside; but they provide a framework on which the organization can organically grow. They are like a trellis for a rose bush.

They give it a shape.

One last thing about rules: They provide targets.

If God hadn’t told Adam and Eve not to eat the Fruit, they might never have eaten it.  If you don’t see that the speed limit is 80, you might drive 70 to be on the safe side instead of kicking it up to 85 because you want to go just a little faster.

But you gotta have rules.

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.

From Woodworking to Teaching: Transferring Skills and Embracing Mistakes

 From Woodworking to Teaching: Transferring Skills and Embracing Mistakes

By Bobby Neal Winters

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I will be transitioning from administration to teaching starting in early June.  God put me on this Earth to be a teacher; a teacher is what I am meant to be.  I still have something to do in the classroom.

There are many different styles of teaching.  I like to teach students basic, solid truths on which they can plant their mental feet, as it were, and from there find other truths.  If they know the basics, and if they truly want to learn, they will eventually not need a teacher anymore.  

I won’t always be there with them.

(As I wrote that last sentence, I remember my father saying the exact same thing to me. It was as if he were right in front of me. He was right.)

As part of teaching, I keep learning myself, but not only the material I am going to teach in the classroom.  Those of you who have been following this space at all during the last couple of years know that I am learning the honorable practice of woodworking. This activity helps me in numerous ways.  Hammering on a mortice is therapeutic; hammering on tenured faculty is a felony. (It’s a joke. Never crossed my mind. Really.)

One of the principles I’ve picked up in woodworking that transfers nicely to the academic classroom is this: You are going to make mistakes, so set up your system to take this into account.

Before I go off into detail, let me mention the woodworker on YouTube from whom I’ve learned the most: Paul Sellers.  He’s a good model for a teacher.  He’s endlessly patient, realistic, and skilled.  He not only talks the talk; he walks the walk.

I like to hand cut dovetails, and I follow Paul Seller’s method.  He uses a chisel as opposed to a coping saw to cut out the bulk of the material.  The coping saw is--perhaps--faster, but it is also easier to make an unrecoverable mistake from.  With the chisel which is--perhaps--slower, one can order one’s work in such a way as to make your mistakes recoverable.

How does one recover from a woodworking mistake?  What would make a mistake unrecoverable?  Well, here’s the thing, if there is too much wood left, you can always take it off.  If you cut the wood too short, there is no putting it back.  If you cut it too short, you can patch it somehow, maybe.  But the wood is gone.

With a coping saw, it is very easy to cross from the part of the wood you are trying to get rid of into the part of the wood you want to keep.  When you use a chisel, you can make what’s called a knife wall to keep you from accidentally cutting into the wrong part of the wood. This cannot be done with a coping saw.

The basic technique of making a knife wall transfers into other areas of woodworking other than just cutting dovetails.  The idea of leaving the wood just a little bit long and “sneaking up on the cut” transfers as well.  I often find myself saying (outloud even) as I cut, “Cut what you are going to keep a little fat.”

As you gain in skill, the amount of room you leave for error can shrink, but I don’t think it will ever disappear. 

Not only does this transfer from one part of woodworking to another, it transfers to just about any other area.  We are imperfect creatures; we make mistakes.  Whenever possible, we need to think about what happens in the endgame when we make mistakes, when we are wrong.

As a teacher, the students learn from everything I do.  If I am late to class, they will learn to be late. If my class is disorganized they will learn from that.

In organizing my class, I can do so with the idea that I might make mistakes and in my design, make it possible to recover from those mistakes.  I can also take into account that the students will make mistakes and in my course design make it possible for them to recover. (The students who learn the most from you are the ones who make the most mistakes. Your A students are doing their learning on their own.)

My transition from administration begins soon.  As you think of me, think of me standing in front of a classroom with chalk dust on my fingers and sawdust in my hair.

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.

Metric Grief

By Bobby Neal Winters

If you talk to men of a certain age, you will run into a lot of strong opinions concerning the metric system.  To keep you from dying from suspense let me tell you now: They don’t like it.

Words get used. Certain words that at my house we call “magic words.”  They may be called that because they make women and children disappear.

For my part, I’ve tried to retain a neutral stance.  This is because I’ve taken quite a few science classes in my time and the metric system is there.  The metric system was designed by scientists for scientists.  The basic unit for length was originally defined in terms of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. (I guess they were thinking about Santa Claus taking a tropical vacation.) 

With scientific precision, they didn’t define units for weight. Instead they defined measures of mass, which is related to weight but does not depend on the strength of the gravitational field.

And everything is based on 10 to make the mathematical calculations easier. Everybody wants to make math easier, right?

These are all good things.

For years I’ve listened. For years I’ve wondered why all the emotion.  

One reason is that people just don’t like change.  And I agree here: Change is Bad.

There is another reason to intensify the first: The change has been slow.  There is wisdom that goes all the way back to Machiavelli at least.  He said that if you are doing something that the people like, do it slowly, but if they don’t like it do it fast.  Kind of like when Michael Corleone took care of family business. I’ve heard mom’s put it this way: You’ve got to pull off the band-aid.

But we’ve done the change-over slowly, and now we have two competing systems at work in the workshop: Metric and American. (And I use American instead of Imperial because while they are similar, they are different.)  When I go to deal with a nut, if it is metric, I will only have my American tool, and if it is American, I will only have my metric tool.  (And don’t tell me to have both open, because they are like USB plugs. Even if you are right the first time, you are wrong.)

This part of it causes the most noticeable grief.  It is what evokes the most magic words.

There is another, deeper problem that we slipped right past. It is taken as a given that basing everything on 10 makes the math easier.  While it does for scientists and engineers, it does not in the woodshop.

Here I will use my standing as a mathematician cum woodworker to state that base 10 is not the best number system to use in woodworking.  To begin with, we only use 10 as a base anyway because we have 10 fingers.  It’s only divisible by 2 and 5.  This means we can tell if a number in base 10 is divisible by 2 or 5 by just looking at the ones digit. By way of contrast, 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which would make that task twice as easy.  

Not that I am advocating for change.  Change is bad.  Just think about the magic words that would be used during that changeover.  No, we will stick to base 10 in writing our numbers.

However, in woodworking, we often take half of something or a third of something.  This makes using a foot-ruler handy because you can take a half or a third of a foot quite easily.  More importantly, while metric rulers are calibrated in tenths, American rulers are calibrated in halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteens.  

There is nothing about the inch that demands that rulers be calibrated this way, but it’s the way it's done.  It’s the way we think about it.

One could take a metric ruler and mark it in centimeters, half-centimeters, quarter centimeters, and so forth.  (And we do mark five millimeters which is half a centimeter, but that is as fine as is gone in that direction.)  That isn’t done because the point of the metric system is to be in tens.

There is not as much metric grief in the woodshop as, say, the auto shop, because after a certain point measuring isn’t done with rulers. Instead of relying on rulers and numbers, we transfer measurements directly.

Eventually, all this will be behind us. After many magic words are uttered, metric will win.  This is inevitable.  But until then we will proceed and inch, a half-inch, or maybe even a sixteenth of an inch at a time.

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.

 Simple Gifts

By Bobby Neal Winters

My current woodworking project is the construction of a “Shaker” cabinet.  I’ve gone and put quotes around the word Shaker there. It is because I am not a Shaker.  If you are not aware, the Shakers are (are, not were, there are still a couple) a religious sect.  

They are a branch of the Quakers.  They are not just nice people who make quality Olde Style furniture. They’ve got their own hymns.  If you’ve ever heard the song “Simple Gifts,” you know one of them.

They have a theology that seems kind of weird to me.  On one hand, they are egalitarian and give equal status to men and women; on the other hand, they don’t have sex and as a consequence don’t have babies.  This is why there aren’t many of them left, and why not very many want to join them.

Even though I do find them odd, I do respect them. I do find parts of their practices worthy of emulation.  They believe in simplicity, beauty, and excellence as a part of their devotion to Jesus Christ. I like that.

So when I say I am making a “Shaker” cabinet, what I mean is that I am making a cabinet using solid wood--no plywood because it is deceitful--using only hand tools as much as possible.

I have used power tools for certain things.  I started off with construction lumber from Home Despot [sic].  I used my table saw to recut it, rather than using a hand saw.  My table saw still makes straighter cuts than I do.

I then used my DeWalt planer to smooth it out.  I am still putting together a collection of hand planes and--more importantly--still learning to use them.

But I’ve been cutting my dovetails, cutting my dados, and cutting my grooves with hand saws and chisels.  I’ve been shaping my panels to fit into the dados and grooves with rasps and hand planes.

It takes time.

It would all definitely be faster if I used my router table to cut the dados and grooves. It might even make a better end product. And...wait for it...it might even make a less expensive product.

But that is not the point of this activity for me.

My goal is to learn a skill--a skill set, rather--and to use that skill set to make something beautiful.

I’ve been making boxes for a while now. I’ve gotten better at it. I’ve made some boxes that are beautiful from the right angle, beautiful from the right perspective.  I am improving.  I’ve not made a perfect box, and I never will.  What would that even mean? But I need a break from boxes so I can use my techniques on something else in order to grow a bit.

As I mentioned earlier, I am using construction lumber that I’ve recut, resized, and remilled.  It is not the prettiest wood in the world. Indeed, at one point, I became discouraged that, however well I might do my joinery, it might all be for nothing because the wood was just ugly wood.

Then something happened.

I did a dry run on putting it together, which is to say no glue. When I took it apart, I decided to rub it down with boiled linseed oil.

Oh, my. What a difference.

The oil made it shine, of course, but it also accentuated the grain of the wood. It allowed me to see how smooth my plane work was, how straight my chisel cuts were.  I could see some mistakes I’d made better, as well, but in a way to highlight this was handworked by a human being who was made in the image of God.

Once the pieces were oiled, I set them aside so that the oil could soak-in overnight.  I might have to apply another coat today.

Putting the finish on takes time.  It takes an hour and three days.  What I mean is that it is about an hour of work total, but because of drying it must be spread over several days.

When I am done with this cabinet, I will look it over, find someone to give it away to, and then start on another one using better wood.  I’ve got some cedar; I’ve got some walnut.  

We shall see.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free /

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, /

And when we find ourselves in the place just right, /

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight. /

When true simplicity is gained, /

To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, /

To turn, turn will be our delight, /

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right

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

 The Phoenix and the Other Side of the Ashes

By Bobby Neal Winters

A Phoenix is reborn out of its own ashes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Biblical idea is tied up with a new beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s not that simple.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 NALM and changing times

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I mow them down.

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

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

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

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

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

So to speak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we could use some more rain.

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

Something God Knows

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

Here we go.

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

I use them in cutting dovetails.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am delighted to be able to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Man and His Symbols

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. No. Not clearly.

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

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

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

It is interesting stuff.  To me, at least.

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

 Higher Mathematics

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

Time is a teacher.

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

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

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

The portion of interest goes like this:

Amarillo by mornin'

Up from San Antone

Everything that I got

Is just what I've got on

I ain't got a dime

But what I've got is mine

I ain't rich

But Lord, I'm free

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll never know any of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Give a little bit

Oh give a little bit of your love to me

I'll give a little bit

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

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

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

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

 Daylight Saving Time and Self interest broadly defined

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know.

Then what do we do next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Binding and Loosing while the rain pours down

Binding and Loosing while the rain pours down

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

Well, Jesus was a carpenter. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The carpenter is telling the fisherman to build a boat.

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

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

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

 Trees, Wells, Forks in the Road

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is a good language to speak in.

But it’s not the only language.

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

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

“OH. One of those,” you say.

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

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

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

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

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

All of that, in a symbol.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ark of the End-table

The Ark of the End-Table

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An enmity grew between me and my end table.

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

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

The answer may seem obvious: Just finish the project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is good.

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

Fire and Rain

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

Mother Teresa took a shine to me. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She loved learning.

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

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

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

Time took a toll.

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

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

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

Then word came that she had passed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Arduino and Nicodemus

 Arduino and Nicodemus

By Bobby Neal Winters

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

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

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

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

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

I am using an Arduino Uno microcontroller to do this. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless, I am having a ball.

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

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

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

And I stepped out and walked toward the front.

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

But it’s time to turn the page.  

Only 126 more days.

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