Building Wall

 Building Wall

By Bobby Neal Winters

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’

--Robert Frost

My driveway is parallel to my neighbor’s property.  There is a strip of land a few feet wide between the drive and where his lot begins.  His lot is a few feet higher than mine, and in the past there was a tendency for soil to wash from the higher ground onto my driveway.  This was just nature: gravity and water.

I forget when it was, so I am going to say it was twenty years ago, I built a retaining wall out of landscaping timbers. I did this without a plan, without advice.  Then I filled the area between the drive and the wall with brick, flat against the ground to keep grass from growing there.

And it worked...for a while.

Recently, however, it has become a mess.  Weeds have grown up through it and it is difficult to mow around.

I decided that something needed to be done.

The first step was to take out the old wall.  This was kind of an education. My mantra has been that it is easier to tear down than it is to build up, but I need to remember that is a relative statement. Tearing down was a sweaty job, and I never actually tore down the wall I’d made with landscaping timbers. Those timbers are there even yet. 

The hard part was the bricks. I’d used about 100 bricks to fill the area between the landscaping timbers and my drive.  They are sitting stacked neatly on my driveway even as I write this. Digging them out with a shovel, bending over my belly to pick them up, and then stacking them neatly in a pile required considerable effort. Thankfully Jean was there to help.

In the two decades since I built my old retaining wall, I’ve learned a lot of things. One of those things is that I am stupid; I can’t just make stuff up as I go along and expect it to go well.  Because of this, I got on YouTube and found a video--several actually--on building a retaining wall.

You should have a base of gravel of a certain depth, so I dug a ditch as long as my wall and filled it with gravel.  The gravel needs to be tamped down, so I bought a tamper and tamped it. As you lay your blocks, you need to tamp them down with a rubber mallet.

My neighbor came over about this stage of the process to see what I was doing.  He was curious because seeing me do anything physical is something of a novelty.  I brought him up to speed on it and we talked about our luck, or lack thereof, on such projects.

Once you get your first course of blocks laid on the gravel base, it is like putting together Legos, forty-pound Legos, but Legos but Legos nevertheless. 

When the wall is up, you need to fill in between the dirt and the wall with gravel so as to allow the water from the higher level to flow down.

I still need to do that part, so I will be making trips to Home Despot for gravel today.

Is the wall perfect? No, but it doesn’t look bad and it suits the person who paid for it: Me.  It will be easier to mow around and easier to keep presentable.

At least that’s the plan.

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. )

Battery-powered mowing: One year after starting

Battery-powered mowing: One year after starting

By Bobby Neal Winters

Last year, as the attentive reader may recall, I made the switch from ICE (internal combustion engine) mowing to battery-powered mowing.  I gave periodic reports on that last year and it all went great, as experiments like that always do.

When you make a switch to something it is because you want it to work.  You think that it is cool and everything you do is colored by the glow of your desires.  This is why the scientific method was developed: We know that we lie to ourselves, so we set up a structure to try to keep us honest.

I didn’t do any of that when I got my new battery-powered Ryobi mower. It was 2020 and I had absolutely no desire to take the glow off of anything. I needed all the glow I had, as I am sure you did too.

Now we’ve had winter; I’ve been fully vaccinated; the mask mandate has been lifted. There ain’t nothin’ but blue skies ahead now, Bro.

How is the battery-powered mower holding up now?

I believe I can be objective now because the shine has literally been worn-off of it. It is plastic so that means instead of scratching the paint you scratch the plastic.  And it has scratches.

But nothing has broken so far.

It is lighter than a metal mower and I do believe that has reduced the fatigue factor involved in mowing.

I absolutely do not miss the gasoline aspect.  It was awkward to go get gas for my gas mower.  In my dad’s day, that was easy. You filled up your car tank and then filled your mower using a siphoning hose.  Get ready to mow and gargle with gas at the same time; the chick’s really dug it.

But I found having to put a gas can in your car, schlepping it to Casey’s, filling it up, and then schlepping it back to be inconvenient.  

Now I have two batteries and I keep one of them charging all the time.

I have been asked whether I have to have the two batteries.  This is to say, can I finish daily mowing without changing the battery?

Let’s put this in context.  Back in the day when I was young, and my heart was an open book, I used to mow my whole lawn, front and back, in one go.  In those days, I would stop after the front was mowed and refill the mower with gas; this is the moral equivalent of a battery change.  But this ever-changing world in which we’re living made me older, so I now mow the front yard one day and the backyard the next.

When I did that, I didn’t have to stop to refill anymore.  Now I can mow the front yard with one battery and it is not even close.  The backyard is a closer thing.  When I do the first mowing of the year, the grass is very thick, so in the two season inaugural mows, I’ve had to change the battery both times.  

Last year, the first mowing was the only mowing I had to use two batteries.  This year the rain has mixed things up.  The first mowing, as I said, required both of my batteries, but then I went a few mowings with just one battery. Yesterday, the rain had forced me to go nine days instead of seven or eight.  And the grass was wet.  I had to use the second battery for just a few minutes.

Are battery-powered mowers a panacea?  No, no they aren’t.  You do have to modify the way you do things.  But they are quiet; they are convenient; there is less upkeep.

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. )

Landscaping as a Means of Grace

 Landscaping as a Means of Grace

By Bobby Neal Winters

John Wesley would say that God is continually improving us through his grace if we do what He says. James the brother of Jesus said, “Faith without works is dead.” Home Depot says we have that on sale.

Last summer during the lockdown, I became reacquainted with my shovel. The first thing that happened was that our dog Charlie died and I had to dig him a grave.  He was a biggish dog so I had to dig him a biggish/deepish grave, and in doing that I discovered that the shovel was comfortable in my hand.

I topped the grave off with a couple of pavers so that we wouldn’t lose Charlie.  His buddy Obidiah is barking at thin air, so his days are numbered on this earth.  It would be disturbing to find Charlie while burying Obie; therefore we mark his grave.

Pavers, as it turns out, are not all that expensive.  We had a path we continually used across the back yard that was a muddy mess whenever it rained. As a solution to this, I made a nice walkway with weed cloth, sand, pavers, and river pebbles.  (How do I know they were river pebbles? It said it right there on the bag in both English and Spanish.)

It is a thing of beauty, let me tell you.  After having finished that, I decided I wanted a fire pit.  There was a place in my backyard that had been a continual source of problems. These were mainly problems caused by us: We stack rocks there; we stacked brush there; the good folks at the City would occasionally write us nice letters about it.  

We decided to cure that problem by building our firepit there.

Now, I’ve called it a fire pit.  It is actually a tiny patio where I can put a metal contraption that Home Despot calls a fire pit.  Pits are on the ground; barbeque grills are in the air; this is between.

This allowed me to reorder a lot of other landscaping elements to this tiny patio.

And I looked at what I had done and saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were November, so I stopped for the year.  My family complained it was too cold to use the fire pit. How can it be too cold to use a fire pit?  You got fire right there in it.

But now spring has sprung.  There had been an old picnic table in the back yard that Charlie had used like Snoopy’s dog house, but as I mentioned earlier, Charlie is no longer with us.  Obie is too blind and senile to even find a table.  The table itself was broken.  The metal had rusted so as to render it only safe enough to be a dog’s fantasy airplane.

Because of this, I borrowed my youngest daughter’s boyfriend’s angle-grinder, and took it apart, leaving the wood in nice shape.  I didn’t even know how expensive wood was at the time.

I then, using the skills I’d honed to perfection earlier, made a little patio where the table had been.  I am looking for a second hand garden table to put on it.  The folks at Home Despot are mighty proud of theirs.

The yard looks a lot better, and I feel like a better person.

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 Mercury Tracer

By Bobby Neal Winters

Those of you who are old like me will remember the days when there were Fords, Mercuries, and Lincolns.  They were in a continuum like that.  You started out with a Ford and as you climbed the ladder you would get a Mercury and when you had climbed to the top you would get a Lincoln. I don’t think I am going to use this as a metaphor in the rest of the column, I am just trying to jog your memories a bit because they don’t make Mercuries any more and I will need you to be thinking about Mercury automobiles.

Just before Jean and I got married, Jean’s mom Janet got a brand new Mercury Tracer.  A Mercury Tracer.  See, I said it twice, and you still didn’t recognize it as a type of car.  You might’ve thought it was some special kind of glowing ammunition.

Back in the day, the Tracer was Mercury’s version of the Ford Escort.  You need to further understand that in the 1980s, the Ford Escort was not the palace on wheels that it eventually came to be.  It was still quite small, and the Mercury Tracer was as well.  It was exactly like the Escort with a somewhat nicer trim.  I drove it from here to Tulsa once and had to rub my shoulders with vaseline to get it.   It is a four-on-the floor standard transmission with no AC. (I don’t think it has AC. You’d have to turn it on to know.)  It would go from 0 to 60 in...we will tell you when it happens.

It was Janet’s car until the day she died.  

The paint is faded by the sun, and it’s battery died this winter when the polar vortex hit, but I think of it as Janet’s new car.

We had Janet’s funeral yesterday as I write this.  She was not a person to force herself on anyone.  She was not one to force her opinions on anyone. She was a modest person, with modest needs, who took care of the people around her in a modest, steady way.

The human species is a strange thing.  While we--especially in our modern world--have a tendency toward individualism, we are in fact a social animal.  We talk like we are Paul Simon “I am a Rock, I am an Island,” in truth we are John Donne “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...”.  Our individuality is played out as being part of the group.  

I went to Rotary President Elect Training a number of years back.  There you find yourself surrounded by what I’ve come to think of as “Main Street” type people.  These are fine people.  They come at the world through a different set of metaphors than I do, so sometimes it takes me years to understand them.  What they make of me, I can only guess.  Anyway, one of the speakers posed a means of evaluating members by the question: “Are they a work horse, or are they a show horse?”

After years of mediating on this simple question, I’ve come to realize this isn’t really a scale with one end high and the other end low.  It is a classification of necessary types.  The human race needs the show horses as well as the work horses. We need those gleaming people who are bright and shiny and can make us feel good just by smiling at us, just by deigning to notice us.

But they are really very expensive and very high-maintenance so we really can’t afford many of them.

We really need more of those people who will quietly get in and do the jobs no one else really wants to do.  We need those people who will be the first one in the field to work in the morning and the last one to leave in the evening and then cook a meal and do dishes before bedtime.   

The people who get a new Lincoln every year are fine.  I admire the ones for whom a Mercury Tracer every four decades is enough.

We will miss you Janet.

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. )

Dear Graduates

 Dear Graduates

By Bobby Neal Winters

You are now graduating from college in the time of COVID.  Nothing is normal; neither New Normal nor otherwise.  But there are some eternal things that are happening now: Your parents are proud; your grandparents' hearts fill their chests; you are going off to start on something new.  

And if you are like I was, you don’t have a clue.  Even though you might be highly educated, there are some things that you may still need to learn.

One of these things--and the quicker you learn it the better off you will be--is how to separate money out for a particular purpose and pretend that you don’t have it until you use it for that purpose.  

Get a flower pot or a mayonnaise jar and put your pocket change in it.  If you get the urge to buy a lottery ticket, put the money in your flower pot instead. If you get the urge to buy a pack of cigarettes, put the money you would’ve spent in that flower pot.

When you get so much, you are nervous having it in the house, put it in the bank.  When you get tired of not drawing any interest on it, buy some stock. Whatever.  Develop the habit of putting money aside for a fixed-purpose and stick with it. It will work better if it is a small amount done on a regular basis.

Exercise on a regular basis.  Not strenuously for hours once a week because you won’t do it.  Do twenty minutes a day.  Every day.  Make it a thing. You don’t have to buy any equipment; you don’t have to get a membership at the Y, although that is a fine thing if you actually use it.  My personal choice is walking. Walking is free by the way and you get to keep engaged with your surroundings. But do a little bit everyday.

You only get one body. That is it.  You really need to take care of it. Regardless of how well you take care of your body, you will die one day.  That can’t be helped.  But your body needs to be used.  Think of it as being an old car for which they no longer make parts. You have to take care of the ones there are.

Negotiate for yourself.  This doesn’t mean to be a jerk.  Indeed, the best negotiations are done civilly. Pick the words that fit your style, but engage in give and take.  This might come naturally to you, but most likely it won’t.  Ask questions.  Don’t be afraid to look stupid.  Actually, try to give up being afraid just as a matter of course.  

Don’t be afraid to turn and walk away.  This part is easier if you’ve taken my first bit of advice about saving money.  Know yourself; know what you can do.  Know your own value.

There are lots of other things that you don’t know, but if you can do even one of what I’ve said, you will be better off.

Go forth and be a good person.

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. )

No easy answers

 No easy answers

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been listening to so many people that I’m beginning to lose things I used to understand. (“The more I know, the less I understand / All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again.”)  I don’t know what rights are anymore for example.  We talk about rights to healthcare, rights to cable to tv, rights not to wear a facemask during a time of global pandemic.  

I think I know what goods are, so let me think on paper about that.  A good is something that is, well, good.  We can be concrete and talk about canned goods, like pork and beans or whole kernel corn.  These are things that can keep you alive.

In the context I am thinking about, it is meant more abstractly.  Health is a good. Education is a good. Having a means of transportation is a good.  

I am healthy; that is a good I have. I’ve been privileged to go to school; that is a good I have.  I’ve got a car; this is a good I have.

Those were all statements of my own personal goods.  But I drive my car on roads that were built by various states sometimes with the aid of the federal government.  I attended schools that were paid for by the government.  I am healthy because I go to physicians who have to meet standards laid down by their associations and who are licensed to practice medicine by the government.

I have my own personal goods, but so many--and perhaps all--are supported by institutions that were created for the Common Good.  I come from plain people who have been plain all the way back as far as we have knowledge. I have an interest in supporting the Common Good.  Supporting the Common Good supports my personal interest.  It is a very seductive idea, but as beautiful as it is we got to be careful.

Suppose there are three people who are going to die shortly:  a person who needs a heart, another who needs a liver, and another who needs lungs.  To make it interesting, say they are important people who contribute to the Common Good in some way.  Now suppose there is a vagrant who steals and makes messes in the public square but nevertheless has a healthy heart, a healthy liver, and a sound pair of lungs and happens to be a tissue match--the ONLY tissue match--to the three worthy individuals mentioned before.

Do you use his parts to save them?

If you say, no, he has a right to live.  Don’t the three individuals also have a right to live?  Why does his right to live override their rights to live? There are three of them and they are better people.  Not only do they match him in rights, keeping them alive supports the Common Good.

I know my answer. We don’t kill people for such things because it is just...wrong.  But how do I justify that in absence of my personal religious beliefs. I don’t want to be ramming my religion down someone else’s throat, right? (“I am so sorry you are being vivisected, but it is wrong for me to impose my religious beliefs on others.”)

This started out to be a column in support of the Common Good, but I got lost along the way by thinking too much.  Sorry, I will try not to let that happen again.

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. )

 Pee Mud

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am back from my cousin Karen’s funeral.  Strictly speaking, she wasn’t my cousin; she was my cousin’s wife.  But there are some relationships that are so long standing time erases the difference between blood and non blood.

Suffice it to say that I never didn’t know Karen.  She was there in my earliest memories.  I look now at the relationship between my youngest daughter and my grandsons and say, yes, it was like this.

She gave me one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.  It is an image of myself--I tried to type that as “my self” but my grammar corrector wouldn’t let me; damned machines.  So often people who’ve known us a long time will remember scenes that we have forgotten because we were so young when they happened.  This I remember myself.

It was a hot summer day in Oklahoma.  I was sitting in a part of our yard where the grass was dead because it was on a path between our house and my grandparent’s house.  It had been dry for so long that the ground was dusty.  I was three years old.

Karen came up to me and asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m making mud pies!” I replied with glee.

“Making mud pies?” she asked with some confusion. “How can you make mud pies? There’s no mud!”

Whereupon, I stood, peed in the dust as little boys in the country are wont to do, and made mud from the dust.  Thence I began to make mud pies.

Any gift someone gives you is a mixture of them and you.  It is a reflection of you in them.  Sometimes it is more of them; sometimes it is more clearly of you.  To me, this is one of the most accurate reflections of myself that I have seen.

I could attempt to elevate this, and talk about Jesus curing the man from blindness.  He spat in dirt to make mud and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes.  In this, he used the mystical elements of water and earth along with his own divine essence to give the gift of sight.

I didn’t do any of that.

This is a strange self-image for someone who has gotten a PhD in mathematics, who’s been an academic for more than thirty years, who has traveled the world to London, Moscow, and Sao Paulo.

Karen repeated the story to me many times at transitions in my life when there may have been a danger of me forgetting who I really was: graduations, marriage, jobs.

In some sense, the story serves the same function as God telling Adam, you were made from dust and to dust you shall return.  I am, and always will be, that little Okie boy in the dust, wanting to make mud pies.

Remember your origins.  Remember the people who’ve always been around you.  Never forget who you are.

I can always make my own fun.  I can always make do with what I have.

There are times that, when I am making do, I make other people shudder.  That is their problem.

Thank you, Karen, for helping me remember who I am. Because of this I will never forget you.

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

  Is Cat Physics Broken?

By Bobby Neal Winters

You may recall that I have developed an intricate theory of cat physics.  There are more details to it than this, but it developed out of the phenomenon that my family always has three cats.  If one of our cats passed away, another cat would turn up from nowhere to take its place to maintain the number three.  If an extra cat turned up when we already had three, then something untoward would happen to one of the three we already had.

This phenomenon was stable for years.  It did require a little fudging from time to time.  We would have an extra cat around for a while, but would then discover that it belonged to the Lady Violist who lived on the corner.  

This caused me to discover cat-sharing and the cat-e-cule wherein a number of houses can share cats amongst them, and the movement of cats from house to house would allow a greater total number of cats to be supported than could be supported by the houses individually.

Last summer, this theory appeared to be shattered.  It was like James Taylor’s Flying Machine, in pieces on the ground.

This disaster was presaged by the appearance of Goldie.  Goldie at the time was a female kitten no larger than a brick, brick covered with nettles as it were.  It was clear from the first that she would be an outdoor cat.  (Her later tendency towards weapon-zed flatulence confirmed this.)  While her battles at the beginning with our outdoor Tom’s were uncertain, nevertheless she persisted.  

I thought we should’ve named her Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but by then she had already been Christened. 

By my theory of cat physics, one of my cats should have died or disappeared. For a while, we thought it would be Mischief because she began to shed fur and throw up a lot.  Indeed, if she had continued to throw up on my stuff (always MY stuff), cat physics may have received a little artificial help.  Thank goodness, her health rallied, but cat physics remained shattered.

I couldn’t call upon the cat-e-cule to save cat physics, because the dear Lady Violist had passed-away.  What could be done?

I had no answer until last night. 

Last night a racoon roughly the size and shape of a bean bag chair turned up eating cat food at our kitchen door.  The creature was of such size that all of our outdoor cats--even the ferocious Golden--yielded their food without complaint or even remark.

Seeing this creature, I could find no explanation for its existence.  Then in the night, it came to me.  I had an explanation that covered everything.

Last summer, shortly before Goldie arrived, our dog Charlie had passed away.  Typically, conservation laws of the dog world and cat world do not interact, but our region was in an odd state.  The loss of our cat-e-cule had weakened the barrier between the dog-o-sphere and the cat-o-sphere.  This weakened barrier had allowed for the decreasing number of dogs to be compensated for an increased number of cats.

I had thought this at the time, but I couldn’t account for the extra mass.  The theory of such cross-space interactions requires the conservation of both number and mass.  The extra mass was poured out into the rotund racoon because racoons span the void between the cat-o-sphere and the dog-o-sphere.

So my fear of cat physics being broken was unfounded.  Indeed, it has emerged from the crisis stronger than ever.

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. )

A Whole New World

 A Whole New World

By Bobby Neal Winters

It’s spring and flowers are popping out.  The State of Kansas has opened up the COVID vaccine to everyone.  We are primed to begin again, to build a New World for ourselves.

God created the world from nothing and then he began moving things around to put it into shape.

Each of us makes a world for ourselves, but we don’t get to start from nothing. We have to use whatever there is around us. Knowing what there is to work with is the problem. We spend our lives looking around the world’s cupboard, the world’s workshop, the world’s potting shed trying to figure out what ingredients there are.

Ever since I turned 25, I’ve been looking back and thinking what an idiot I was five years before.  All of the things I know now that I didn’t know then.

After a certain point it becomes ridiculous. You finally figure out that you are a fool and beat yourself up for that.  Then that gets ridiculous as you forgive yourself.

There’s not a rewind button, but you can take notes.

How do you build a world?  What is a world?

A world is the people you know and the things you do.

The first step in building a world by meeting people and getting to know them. 

I am not good at this part.  For the most part, I don’t like to force myself on people, and I think this is because I don’t like people to force themselves upon me.  I like to spend a lot of time in my head.  My way of reaching out to connect is writing.  I can’t force my writing on you.  If you don’t like it, you can put it down at any time.

The second step in building a world is by doing things. 

Get up in the morning; shower-shave-shoot your breakfast. Do some Bible study; learn a language; go to work and do the best job you can.  If your job is cleaning toilets, make those toilets shine.  If you work with people, treat each person you meet as if that person were Christ.  Do this even with jerks; do this especially with jerks.

You can combine steps one and two. You can do stuff with people; you can do stuff for people; you can combine these two.  

The last of these is the best.  The people you work with who want to help others inevitably make you better.  They aren’t perfect, but their imperfections are in places where you might be pretty good already. If you concentrate on where they are good, you can pick that up from them.

And, here’s the thing, you can always find people who want and need to be helped.  Jesus said this.  He said, “The poor will always be with you.”  He didn’t lay that out for you to use as an excuse not to help. He was simply stating the fact that there will always be people that you can build your world by helping.

So to build a good world for yourself, join something where you can help others: a church, a Rotary Club, or even...the Kiwanis.

Build yourself a New World, a good one, one that is full of love.

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. )

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. )