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.

 Assembly Language

By Bobby Neal Winters

I almost began this piece by staying, “Humans run stories like computers run programs.” It gets toward my point, but it falls into some dangerous territory. Please allow me to explain.

It’s fashionable to say that “human bodies are machines” or “human brains are computers.” The truth is that humans created machines; humans created computers. One might, and I mean might, truthfully say that there is an abstract concept of which both human bodies and machines are instances of; and one might say a similar thing about brains and computers; but don’t actually know that. And--even if it’s found out to be true--statements such as these lead us toward treating humans like objects.

Because of this, I will begin instead by saying that language, stories, and narratives are very important to human well being.

These thoughts come at a time when I am simultaneously putting together a Bible study on the book of Genesis and learning assembly language for a microprocessor.

There is a common thread between these two: Interpretation. 

Before we get too far into the weeds, there are people who say that Genesis doesn’t have to be interpreted. It’s just there.  Read it; it’s a historical account; that’s the way it happened.  The devil tempted Eve with the apple and she made Adam eat it.

Well, it doesn’t say “devil.” It says “serpent.” You’ve just done some interpretation.

The whole story of the Fall, for example, is just loaded with ambiguity. From just reading the text, you can’t tell whether Adam is standing right by Eve when the Serpent is encouraging her to take the apple.  We assume Eve is alone with the Serpent because that’s the way it feels, but it’s an assumption. We interpret it that way because of our experience of the way operators like the Serpent do things.

But it’s an interpretation.

Okay, so let’s now go to connect this with assembly language.  I won’t get technical.  However technical what follows seems, trust me, I am sparing you extraneous details.  

Really.

To make it simple, let me say that your computer, down in its heart, has memory (which humans chose to name that way) and a processor.  I like to think of the memory as a stack of rows of pigeon holes.  Some of that memory--some of those pigeon holes--are special.  We call them “registers.” Think of a register as a row of pigeon holes.

Each pigeon hole in a register will either contain a one or a zero.  In reality, it is either voltage written HIGH or voltage written LOW.  For the sake of simplicity of language, we say one and zero.

Programming in assembly language consists of writing programs that copy the contents of one register to another and modify the contents in various imaginative ways. (Do not ask me to unpack that last clause unless you are ready to take a course.) 

I was careful not to refer to the contents of a register as a number.  Doing that is an interpretation.

A register can be a number; it can be a collection of logical units; it can be a letter of the alphabet or other alphanumeric character.

In the course of programming, it can be useful to make one of these interpretations or another, but for the most part, it’s just easier to think about moving the contents of pigeon holes around.

I am writing functions in assembly language that I then access from a higher level language (for you geeks out there it’s C).  That higher level language needs to know what to expect.  It needs to know the type of information coming out so it knows which and how many registers to look at for the answer.

The higher level language needs to interpret the registers to know what their contents mean.

The preacher, the teacher, the reader must interpret the words of the story to know what they mean.  Whatever interpretation given is going to depend a lot on the inner life of whoever is doing the interpretation.  Their personal experience will color it.

This is why we need to be guided by the thoughts of others, by the wisdom of the Saints, and, dare I say, by the Holy Spirit.

Just as the human body is not a machine; the human brain is not a computer; the stories in the Bible are more than just words written one after another. They are the path to meaning.

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.

 Bubba and Taylor Swift

By Bobby Neal Winters

I got a call last week from my old friend Bubba from back home.  He’s the one that lives just the other side of Wapanucka.  We passed and repassed but, almost inevitably, the subject of politics came up.

Being quite forward, he asked, “So who are you for?”

“None of them,” I said. “Neither of the presumptive nominees is very attractive.”  I thought he was going to ding me for using the word “presumptive,”  but he let it go.  Instead, he came back sounding cheerful.

“Well, if you just stick with what the system brings you, you are bound to be disappointed. I’ve got someone better.  Someone who can lead the country into the future.”

“Oh, pray tell, who? Don’t keep me in suspense.” 

I am afraid I sounded a little grumpy.

His answer was not grumpy.

“Taylor Swift.”

There was a longish moment of silence.  This was quite unusual because Bubba tends to fill all the silence.  But after a moment, I responded as intelligently as I could.

“Wha-a-at?”

“Not what, who,” he said. “Taylor Swift.”

“Okay, who not what, but why?” I asked.  I ended on a pronounced upward inflection because I was incredibly confused.

“Well,” he said evenly, “look at the two main candidates and why people are for them or against them, and then look at Taylor.

“Taylor is a billionaire. She did it on her own. She’s not bought and paid for on day one.”

“Okay,” I was nodding even though he couldn’t see me. “I’ll grant you that.  Go on.”

“She’s a tough negotiator.  She’s gone head to head with the music industry. She’s got the rules changed.  She did it in such a way as to help her fellow artists as well.”

“Okay,” I couldn’t deny that.

“She’s got moxie,” he continued. “When she didn’t have the rights to her own albums, she recorded them and told her fans to buy the new ones.  It was Kelly Clarkson’s idea, and she always gives Kelly credit for it.”

I was about to acknowledge that, when he continued.

“While I am at it, let me say that Taylor always takes care of her own.  It’s not one minute a person is the best in the world and the next minute they are a loser.  She doesn’t throw her friends under the bus.”

“O...,” I began, but before I could get out my “kay” he pushed on.

“And she’s not as old as Methusalah.” 

“Certainly not,” I said, but then a question quickly presented itself to me. “But is she even old enough to be president.  There is a limit to how young you can be.”

It had been a while since I’d taken civics, but I remembered that.

“Well,” Bubba drawled, “I am ahead of you there.  I googled it.  You have to be 35 years old to be President of the United States.  Taylor is 34 now, and she will turn 35 in December of this year.  She would be 34 on election day, but she would be 35 when she took the oath of office in January.  She would be in under the wire by a little over a month.

“Some might say that’s a-cuttin’ it a little close, but to me that looks like a sign from God.”

By this time my mind was confused, and I started grasping for reasons.

“But she’s had a number of boyfriends that she’s had very public breakups with. Wouldn’t that be a problem?”

“The democrats haven’t cared about a candidate’s love life since the late 1990s and the republicans stopped caring in 2016.  And none of them even wrote songs about it.”

I was worried.  I was worried because in the context of what people seem to care about when voting for president I couldn’t find a counter argument.

Finally I asked, “Anything else?”

“Sure,” he said, “One more thing.”

I waited.

“She looks better in a miniskirt than any of the rest of them.”

“Goodbye, Bubba,” I said and hung up the phone.

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.

 Percy Jackson and Stephen Fry

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been watching the series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” on Disney Plus with my family.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Percy Jackson, he is a creation of the author Richard Riordan who has written a series of Percy Jackson books in addition to other books which are based on the Greek myths, Roman myths, and Egyptian myths.

He may have explored other mythologies as well, but I’ve got a day job and I just can’t keep up.

If you’ve seen the movie and not been impressed, don’t let that dissuade you from this series.  It takes its time and follows the books more closely.

The principal characters are the half-blood children of the gods born mainly to human mothers.  They are modern teenagers who are trying to make sense of their lives in the modern world.

Not so long ago, I listened to a book called “Mythos” by the English actor and entertainer Stephen Fry. You may be familiar with Fry from “Blackadder” and “Jeeves and Wooster.” The audiobook is read by the author, and it’s worth it for the accent alone.  He also provided his voice for the audio versions of the “Harry Potter” books.

As one might guess, “Mythos” is Fry’s exposition of the Greek myths from Ouranos and Gaia on down.  I look at that word “exposition” and have my doubts.  I might want to say “interpretation” but that almost goes without saying. There are multiple versions of many of the stories that have been interpreted by various authors over the millenia. 

Fry has combed through these on his own--and I get the impression on the original languages. If so, wow. Regardless, he’s picked out his own path and created a harmonization of these stories as near as possible.

The Greek myths have never really gone out of fashion entirely, and you might very well be familiar with some that you read in grade school or in high school, if that was your last exposure, but be warned that the versions you read may have been cleaned up a bit.

They probably left out that Zeus, the king of the gods, was extremely libidinous and went after anything in a skirt--or trousers for that matter--that tickled his fancy.  His having affairs and his wife Hera wreaking vengeance on those with whom he had affairs--and any progeny that resulted from those affairs--is a recurring theme.

Each of the gods/goddesses has their realm of influence; each their personality; each their set of shifting alliances. While each is the personification/idealization of some realm of human experience, e.g. erotic love, art, music, mechanical arts, and represents some sort of perfection within that realm, each is also deeply, deeply flawed.

They are powerful, magical entities, but for someone who comes up through the Judeo-Christian tradition, they are really not God-like at all.  They are more like comic book superheroes than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

All of that having been said, there are certain points of similarity among the stories of Greek mythology and the Bible.  For example, according to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman.  She was given a jar which--unknown to her--contained all the troubles of the world.  She was told not to open it, but her curiosity made her open it.

Compare this with Eve who ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil after having been told not to.  

Now, the similarity is there.(You can check out an article “Eve, Pandora and Plato: How Greek Myth Shaped the First Christian Woman” by Katie Brown on thecollector.com.) But Pandora was created by the gods as a punishment for man while Eve was created by God for Adam as a helper.  In the story of Eve, her part in the Fall is much subtler. I would say that Adam bears the blame rather than Eve.

While it is no surprise that I come down on the side of the Bible, the Greek myths are a treasure as well. Without these in combination, we wouldn’t have western literature.  The whole world would be poorer.

Our literature is important.  It is an important part of the glue that holds us together as a civilization. Whether we get it through novels and poems; comic books and country songs; or scripture and psalms: it is our roadmap for living. 

That being said, we need to be familiar with our roadmap.

Last night while watching “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” I noticed that the half-blood children judge their divine parents through a modern lens. The image that lens gives is not flattering.  It occurred to me this critique of the Greek gods is a Judeo-Christian perspective, one literature interpreting the other.

I can recommend “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” to people of all ages and “Mythos” to the mature. Great stories all around.

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.

 Save a Few for Lefty Too

By Bobby Neal Winters

We always pray for the victim. It’s easy.  They are sympathetic.  They’ve got tears rolling down their faces and snot coming out of their noses--or blood coming out of their noses. Or, there’s no crying, no sound at all and they are lying on the floor in a pool of their own blood.

Prayers aplenty, then.

But what about the villain? The bully? The traitor? Do we pray for them?

“Pancho and Lefty” is a song written by Townes Van Zandt.  It tells a story, and while others might differ in their interpretation--and that’s the wonderful thing about poetry, lots of room for interpretation--Pancho was an outlaw whom Lefty either assassinated or betrayed for payment.  I base this on the line “The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty’s mouth.” (That could also mean Lefty was a song writer and wrote about it. You can be both a song writer and an assassin, but I digress.)

It continues to say, “The day they laid poor Pancho low /Lefty split for Ohio / Where he got the bread to go / There ain't nobody knows.”

We the reader are meant to infer some sort of causal connection here. The infamous Pancho, who is romantic and exciting, is dead and that shifty-looking Lefty just disappeared.

Lefty is either a killer or a fingerman.  He’s not dashing.  He’s not romantic.  He is not a hero or an anti-hero. He does his business and then runs from Mexico to Cleveland with his thirty pieces of silver.  

Cleveland for heaven’s sake.

Given all this, Van Zandt (through Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in the most famous cover of the song) implores us to pray: “Pancho needs your prayers, it's true /Save a few for Lefty too / He just did what he had to do /And now he's growing old.”

Here, within a cowboy ballad, sung by a pair of country music’s outlaws, we find a seed of the gospel.

While Jesus was being crucified between a pair of thieves like Pancho, He called out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  

I think we can assume Jesus was asking for forgiveness even of Judas.  

We can take Christ’s example and see Van Zandt applying it here between sinners.  Sinners like us.

I was once told that everything happens for a reason. I’ve meditated on that for at least ten years.  It has power.  

People have their reasons.

“[Lefty] only did what he had to do.” He had to because he needed the money.  It was either him or Pancho.  Pancho was going to die anyway. He was a bandit.  He deserved it.

So traitors have their reasons.

Bullies also have their reasons.  I’ve dealt with a few.  If you open up their heads, they have a justification for their actions.  Indeed, if you look deeply enough, they believe themselves to be the victim.

Humans are messy.

It is captured nicely in a song that Jelly Roll sings, ”'Cause I'm only one drink away from the devil /I'm only one call away from home /Yeah, I'm somewherе in the middle /I guess I'm just a littlе right and wrong.”

This all having been said, let’s not go too far.  In a lot of situations, there is clearly one party that has been wronged more than the other. Often they are the ones that I described in the first paragraph with tears rolling down their faces and blood coming out of their noses.

And this is where Van Zandt’s poetry gets it right.  They need our prayers, because they have been wronged, but the person who did it is also one of God’s children.  They need a few prayers to help with whatever made them do this.

And in the toughest situations, prayer is the only thing we have.

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.

In the Details

 In the Details

By Bobby Neal Winters

Have you seen the meme of the Venn Diagram with the three overlapping circles? There are a number of variations of it. In one the three circles are labeled respectively “Bank Robbers,” “DJs,” and “Preachers” and the region of overlap is labeled “Raise your hands!”

I propose yet another variation on this.  Label the circles as “Good Teaching,” “Good Writing,” and “Good Story-telling.” In this case the common overlap would be “The Right level of detail.”

I’m a big fan of the series Derry Girls on Netflix.  It is set in Northern Ireland during the troubles in a Catholic girls school.  It is hilarious.  It is also irreverent and crude. Neither of those words were chosen lightly, so if you decide to watch it, please keep that in mind.

That having been said, there is a character named Colm who I feel like I know.  Indeed, I suspect that we all know him.  When we are introduced to him, he tells a story about being kidnapped by the IRA and having his car stolen. And he manages to make it boring.

Seriously, the story is torturous. It is about a subject that one would think to be objectively exciting. The characters and the subject are both dramatic, but in telling his story, Colm puts in such a level of--and this word is important--extraneous detail that you find yourself screaming, “Get to the bleeping point!”

If you are a fan of the old TV series “Monk,” Monk’s talkative neighbor Kevin Dorfman provides us with examples of this as well.

Of course, the writers of these series provide them for the sake of humor.  It is funny to watch polite people suffer impatiently while these people get their stories out, but it is a mirror for me.  When am I doing the same thing?  Something to think about, but not too much because I might stop talking entirely.

This happens in writing as well.

For many years, I edited a newsletter which often included items from scientists.  As with Colm who was mentioned above, they would often have a story that was about an objectively interesting topic but insist upon a level of detail that would put off the reader. 

One that I recall was about work the particular scientist had done on a topic connected with clean energy. The newsletter was for a general audience, but in his write-up, he had included graphs.

As the editor, I went through and I took his graphs out.  Having done that as well as some other editing, I sent it back to check if the new version was still accurate.  He put the graphs back in.  I took them out again and didn’t let him look at the final version.

This highlights an important aspect in finding the correct level of detail: audience.

You have to consider who your audience is.   When you are writing for a scientific journal, you need the graphs, you need the tables, you need the jargon. When you are writing for a general audience, you need to boil your story down to its quintessence. Just the cracklings, no more fat than that.

Now we come to what got me started thinking about this: teaching.  I have started to put together a course on low-level programming. In this context, low-level does not mean easy.  It refers to programming a computer closer to the nuts and bolts (closer to the circuits would be more accurate, but it’s not as familiar a metaphor) of the computer.

At its very base, computer programming is herding a bunch of varying voltage levels back and forth through the circuits of the computer.  In the old days, they used machine language and flipped physical switches.  Then they invented something called assembly language which allowed the programmer to get away from flipping the switches. After that came higher-level languages like C, Basic, Cobol, Pascal, Python, etc.  (That “etc” is doing a lot of work.)

The vast majority of programming is done in the higher-level languages, but they are all built on what went on below.  They are easier to learn because they encapsulate much of the detail in memorable ways.

The other day I was discussing boring story-telling with some friends of mine at Signet. Someone there pointed out that some writers could make having a high level of detail workout for them. I have to concede that--even after all I’ve written, but the detail has to be encapsulated in memorable ways. 

To be able to do that is an art.

I will be thinking about all of this as I put my new class together.  I don’t want to be a bore, but considering the subject, I might have to become an artist.

We shall see.

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.

 Auld Lang Syne

By Bobby Neal Sinters

We are at the turn of the year. In fairly short order, three things happen.  First, we have the Winter Solstice, where the north pole is pointing away from the sun and for us in the northern hemisphere it is the darkest time of year.  Second, we have New Year’s Day which is the day we choose to mark the starting of a..new year.  Third, not noticed by anyone nor marked in any special way, the Earth passes its closest to the sun on January 2 this year.  

So we begin ascending from the darkness, turn a page on the calendar, and begin a new orbit around the sun.  

It is a time to remember.

I was walking in the evening a short time ago when I made my final turn south. The sun had set and it was inky dark even though it was only approaching 6pm.  I looked ahead and saw Christmas lights one block ahead of me.

My mind went through a series of restarts in the following order. Oh, my mother-in-law has put up lights. No, my daughter has put up lights; my mother-in-law is dead and has been dead for over two-and-a-half years.

I walked past the bright Christmas lights--powered by solar--and crossed the alley.  My mind was taken back to the period during which my mother-in-law was dying.  

Those were different times.  The times of the lockdown. She fell ill on Boxing Day and was terrified it was COVID. This was not an unreasonable fear: I lost a good friend to COVID on the very day we had to rush her to the hospital.

After a month in the darkness of January, they released her into hospice, and my wife went to live with her in order to take care of her.  I would go to have supper with Jean, and then walk home afterwards.

That night after I’d put the Christmas lights behind me, the street seemed to me exactly as it had those years before. The time had disappeared.  I thought about my mother-in-law Janet.  I thought about my friend Steve.  I was back there in time.

I walked in the past in darkness for two blocks.  Then I arrived back home and stepped into a bubble of light.

On January 1, 2011, my mother passed away.  It was a bright, cold, sunny day when my cell phone rang and my brother told me the news.  It was not unexpected.  She hadn’t known me for quite some time.  One of the last times I saw her and she could still talk, she didn’t recognize me. I told her I’d spent $25 on a shirt and she was horrified by the notion.  She didn’t know my name, but she was still scandalized.

She’s gone now.

I relive it every New Year’s Day.

I am not writing any of this for people to feel sorry for me.  My holidays are not ruined by this. Death is a part of life.  Everyone who is as old as me has their own list of people dear to them they have lost.  If they are lucky, it is a long list. And I do mean that.  Statistically speaking, some of those will pass away--or begin down that path--on the holidays.

I am happy to have known my mother-in-law.  I am happy to walk the same streets she walked.  I am proud of my wife for having taken care of her the last few months of her life. It was a hard time.  A hard time.  But we honor hard times by remembering them.  We honor our loved ones by remembering them.

We love our sugar. We love our sweets. We would eat them until our teeth were rotten.  But there are many worthwhile things that have a bit of salt or sour or bitter in them.

Even sweet lives are seasoned with the salt of tears, the sourness of dissatisfaction, and the bitterness of loss. It all comes in the same package.  And we would choose none of it ourselves. None of the loss, none of the disappointment. But it’s given to us anyway.

As I write this, I know that some of you who read this have either experienced or will soon experience loss.  I am not saying this is a good thing.  I am saying that in the years to come, when you remember, let the tears flow.  Feel your feelings. If you hurt a lot, that means you loved a lot. 

Love. That’s what it’s all about in the end.

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.

 Sharing a Moment of Their Lives

By Bobby Neal Winters

I had the privilege of standing in for my dean for some ceremonial duties during commencement this year.  I say privilege because it was.  Any other time, in regard to positions in academic administration, I will try to emphasize that it’s not an honor to be wallowed in, it’s a job. It’s not a trophy to be put on a shelf; it’s a job.  It’s not a medal to be worn around one’s neck; it’s a job.

But on the night of commencement, even though putting on commencement is a lot of hard work. To be there for the student is a privilege. 

I will explain.

If you are an administrator, most of the students don’t know who you are.  They interface with the university through the staff--who work very hard to help them--and through their professors with whom they share a wide variety of experiences.  This is what the university looks like to them.

That is except for the one special night of commencement.  During commencement, the world--their world--is brought together is a small neighborhood of spacetime.  It is gathered together from the county, the state, and, in some cases, the world.  And for a very short interval of time their world is tightly focused on them.

If you are there on that stage at that moment, you have the privilege of being at the center of their universe with them. You get to share that crowning moment.

Many, perhaps most, will forget about your part in it before they clear the stage.  A lot is coming at them. They’ve got their families there; they’ve got their spouses; they’ve got their friends and lovers.

But for that one narrow instant of time, you get to be a part of their triumph.

Think about someone who has spent weeks, months, and years hearing complaints, mediating disagreements, listening to whining, and generally solving problems that people could’ve solved for themselves had they simply been interested in doing so. Then that person gets to be with the people who they’ve spent their career helping at a memory-moment of their lives.

That is a privilege. 

It’s also work.

You have to realize that you are not a human being to these students.  You are a symbol.

They have a space in their head--probably a very small space--that you inhabit.  Small in volume; small in time.  But during that miniscule bit of spacetime, you are the whole university to them.

I’d never done this before so I was nervous. 

I had a--thank God very small--speaking part.  Don’t get me wrong; I love to speak. The sound of my own voice is honey in my ears, but this is different.  I wasn’t there to be me.  I was there to be the mythical entity these students needed me to be. My normal way of speaking is to ad lib to lighten the mood, but given the moment of the occasion for our students, this would have been totally inappropriate. 

Without having humor as a tool, I had to fret and strut my hour upon the stage. (Hour? No. More like five seconds.)

I was helped along by pros who were used to it. Thanks to all, you in particular, Melinda. 

I will say that I enjoyed it very much after I got the rhythm.  Apologies to the first few students that I learned on.  I figured out that even though--or because--this was such an important moment in their lives, they just wanted to get it over with.  They would’ve sprinted across the stage if they could have.  

I was handing out diplomas and getting them to pose for the various photographers.  I told many of them to take a breath.  I tried my best to get them to stop for just a second to experience this moment.  And--at the suggestion of my provost--to keep them from falling off the stage. (It’s important that they don’t break their necks at this important point in spacetime.)

Next year at this time, I will be ready to complete my transition back to faculty with a full load of classes in Spring of 2025.

Right now, I am basking in the glow of being with these students at their special moment.

It was nice.

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.

Amanda, Getting Old, and Haskell

 Amanda, Getting Old, and Haskell

By Bobby Neal Winters

Country singers can explain who we are much quicker than writers like me can.  So let’s get some help.

Bob McDill wrote the song Amanda that Don Williams and Waylon Jennings both covered.  Each has a slightly different interpretation of it.  The lines in question from Williams point of view:

I've held it all inward, Lord knows I've tried

It's an awful awakenin' in a country boy's life

To look in the mirror in total surprise

At the hair on your shoulders and the age in your eyes

Jennings did this part differently. It was “The hair on my shoulders, the age in my eyes.”

To recognize that someone dear to you is getting older and that you yourself are getting older are two different things.  Which of those two awakenings is more awful depends upon who in particular is being awakened.

For me, it wasn’t looking in the mirror where I had my eyes opened, but looking though the document camera. Not at my hair--the Winters go prematurely gray; not my eyes--I don’t particularly look at my eyes. It was my hands.  If I looked at them directly, they looked normal, but if I was adjusting some document on the document camera that I was showing to a class, I saw my hands on their own.  I looked and asked, who do those old man’s hands belong to?

They were mine.

In the song, we might well laugh because this insight of aging is being had by a 30-year-old.  I myself am surrounded by people who tell me, hey at 61 you’re still a kid.

They are beginning to die off, however. 

The folks who are in good shape seem to follow the Triad: Physically Active, Mentally Active, Socially Engaged.  Keep your mind busy; keep your body moving; be around people, however much they annoy you.

So I’m doing my woodworking.  I’m attempting to increase my social reach in certain ways.

And I am trying to learn the Haskell computer language.  Those of you who dutifully follow this space may remember that a few years ago I took up the Python computer language.  If you do, that marks you as being kind of a nerd.  

That’s okay.  We are organized now. You can come to the meetings.

But I’ve learned the Python language.  I can do pretty much what I want to do in it.  True, the “what I want to do” is a pretty big constraint, but still I feel happy with it.

Haskell--I am finding--it a totally different kettle of fish.  While Python possessed many new features that made a lot of things that used to be quite laborious easy, Haskell is the opposite.  It not only lacks those extra features, but they’ve taken away a few more.

I will avoid going into more detail.  If you aren’t into it, I’ve probably told you more than you want to know. If you are, then either you already know or you can ask me: I would love to off load.

What I’ve learned in my 61 years of life is that (1) I am a pretty smart cookie; but (2) there are a lot of people who are a hell of a lot smarter than me; and additionally (3) I am a bulldog in that when I get my teeth into something I don’t turn it loose.  

Together, this is a gift.  What I can do is learn what the smarter people have done through pure stubbornness, translating it from their brilliance into language more humans can understand.

My mental teeth are now sunk into Haskell. 

I’ve recently read that the way the casinos get you hooked on slot machines is to let you win a little every once in a while.  The random shots of dopamine into your brain are addiction itself.

I’ve found the same with Haskell.  I beat my head against the wall for an hour or two being completely mystified, and then something works, and I get a rush.  I find out that I just understood something or I just made something happen by accident. 

One reason I am finding it to be attractive is its connection with mathematics.  It is a very mathematical computer language. Very.  I would say more, but I need to gnaw on it some more so that I can explain it better.

We’re coming to a close, so I need to refer back to the beginning.  I would be nice to say my hair might be gray, my eyes might be old, my hands are a 61-year-old train-wreck, but my mind is still young.

That’s not the case.

My mind is old too. If I don’t watch myself, working on this will give me a migraine. But 21-year-old self wouldn’t’ve known that.  My 21-year-old self wouldn’t’ve had the self-discipline to stick with Haskell and learn as much as this 61-year-old self has.

Change in the verse below, change “hillbilly band” to “learning a computer language", correct the ages, and make it rhyme, and you’ve got what I’m trying to say:

Well a measure of people don't understand

The pleasures of life in a Hillbilly band

I got my first guitar when I was 14

Now I'm crowdin' 30 and still wearing jeans

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.

 Ring a Bell; Be awake

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been reading a book entitled “To Govern the Globe,” by Alfred W. McCoy, who is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

It is both interesting to me as history and disturbing to me as history.

He begins with the history of how the Portuguese got into the slave trade. While this is a gross simplification--if you want more details read the book--the Portuguese handed it off to the Spanish, the Spanish handed it off to the Dutch, and the Dutch handed it off to the English.

At each hand-off, it seems like each of these countries added its own evil little twist.  The English basically became drug pushers for a while by selling opium to the Chinese.

And to make it all the more disturbing, they all came up with religious reasons that these crimes they were committing against their fellow children of God were actually good things: They were doing the people they were making into slaves and working to death a favor.

Yep.

I just have to sit back and think about it.  This is history.  This happened. 

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for a few minutes trying to figure out where to go next with this.  So much of what is going through my head is trying to find some justification for all this. “They would’ve done it to us if positions had been reversed.” “That’s just the way things go when civilizations come into contact.” And so on.

That may even be true.

But what do I know? What is true? Or, as Pilate put it, “What is Truth?”

The truth is people are all the same.  We don’t improve as a species in time.  The changes that come do so because we are capable of learning.  This is hard because it is hard for one generation to change its idea of what is true.  This usually has to wait for the next generation.  And you have to pray that the next generation doesn’t lose some of the truths picked up along the way or learn some new “falses.” 

We have learned that slavery is wrong.  It’s still here.  We call it human trafficking now.  (Any day I expect someone to say that we need to make human trafficking legal so we can regulate it and tax it: “We can use the money for the schools! It’s for the Children!”)  

The truth is we need to be alert.  Those of us who are religious need to be mindful of the fact that there are those who will continually try to use our religion to manipulate us.  This is true regardless of whether you are Protestant or Catholic; whether you are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Jew. 

The truth is that, in spite of being as alert as we can be, those who would manipulate us will succeed at least some of the time.  That is because we are trying to live our lives among our fellow humans, and “They” are trying to manipulate their fellow humans for profit and power.

The truth is that I can’t comfort myself by saying I wouldn’t’ve been part of all the wrong that was done.  This is something that is taught to me by my religion. One year during Holy Week we had a Tenebrae Service.  The pastor asked us whether we could have abandoned Jesus like the disciples. Would we have denied him like Peter? Would we have betrayed him like Judas?

I can’t say that I would’ve done better than either one.

Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve participated it the slave trade. Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve sold opium to the Chinese. Neither can I say I wouldn’t’ve dropped the atomic bomb on Japan or taken part in the Holocaust. 

I can look at myself now and ask if there is anything I ought to stop doing and if there is anything more I ought to do.

I was ringing bells for the Salvation Army yesterday. I was there for an hour.  Different women, my age or older, would get their carts to a particular spot and poke around in their purses for a few minutes and bring out some change or some cash.  They would put the money in the kettle and say--they all said it--sorry this is so little.

Having seen dozens go by not putting anything in, I thought if everyone did as much as your little, a lot of hungry people would be fed, a lot of naked people clothed.

So, given the knowledge of all of the sins of my forebears, what do I do? 

Love my neighbor, love my enemy. Put a quarter in the kettle.  

Ring a bell. 

Be awake.

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 Bois d’arc shibboleth

 The Bois d’Arc Shibboleth

By Bobby Neal Winters

A shibboleth is a test of whether you are part of an in-group or not. It comes from a story in the Bible where people were asked to pronounce it.  There were two groups: One pronounced it with an shi at the beginning and the other with an si.  This difference separated the two groups from one another.

I have a shibboleth for identifying Okies--at least my brand of Okies.  The question is what is the name of the thorny tree that produces a large, yellow-green fruit with lots of seeds in it and has a hard wood.

Folks around here say hedge; some, many of them of a more refined sort, say Osage Orange. My people--my kind of Okie--says bois d’arc.

I spelled it correctly, as it is French, but that is not how it’s pronounced.  As I said it’s French, it almost goes without saying that it’s not pronounced the way it is spelled, but we don’t even pronounce it the way the French would. 

The French would say “Bwah dark.”  You see, bois (the bwah part) is French for wood.  And d’arc means “of the bow” as in a bow and arrow.  They named it that because the indigenous peoples of North America made bows from the wood of this tree.

We pronounce it by way of what is called a folk etymology. That is we let what the word means direct the way we pronounce it even though our pronunciation is off the mark.  We say “Bow-dark.”  We know that bows were made from it; hell, it’s right there in the word.

Bois d’arc is almost mythical for me.  The elders held it with great respect.  You could make a fence post out of it and it would last and last.  You might laugh, but fencing was important.  

Fences separated my land from your land, my cattle from your crops, my chickens from your dogs.  Fences built the Old West; fences ended the Old West.

It came into my mind that I needed some bois d’arc for my woodworking.  It is a long story, but I’ll tell you anyway.

There is a man named Paul Sellers who teaches woodworking with hand tools on YouTube.  He’s either an Englishman or a Welshman. I apologize to both for not knowing.  They have some way of telling that I don’t understand.

Anyway, he’s been around a bit in his day and lived in Texas for a while.  In one of his videos he showed how to make a woodworker’s mallet out of, you guessed it, bois d’arc.

Having seen this, I put in on my list of things to do: I had to make myself a woodworker's mallet with a bois d’arc head.

There are those of you who are reading this who--even if the idea were to appeal to them--don’t see it as a big deal. You’d go out your back door and cut a largish limb off a hedge tree or Osage Orange tree and proceed from there.  I’m not in the same position. I don’t have any growing in my yard, and, in a certain sense, it wouldn’t be the same: I needed something from my native soil.

I put out word to my brother: Keep your eyes peeled for some bois d’arc for me.

My brother lives in the country, in the same house where we both grew up.  We went to visit him the weekend before Thanksgiving and had lunch with him on Sunday at the Catfish Roundup which is about 7 miles north of Seminole, Oklahoma just south of I-40, which separates Oklahoma into north and south.

To work up an appetite for that, my brother’d found some bois d’arc in a little patch of woods in his backyard. He had a nice pruning saw that he loaned me.  He pointed me at the tree, handed me the saw, and said to have at it. He stood on his mown lawn and watched me in the woods that are almost too dense to walk in as I sawed through the bois d’arc tree.

It took me three cuts: one through the trunk and two through limbs that were holding it in the canopy of the woods.  Like I said, my brother has woods in his backyard.

Somewhere in the process, I scratched my arm on some thorns and started to bleed.  My old skin is so thin a barrier anymore that it breaks if I walk within twenty feet of a rose bush, so bois d’arc thorns don’t have any bragging rights here.

I got about 4 feet of straight trunk that was between three and four inches thick and branches into a Y on the end.

So far I’ve made two mallets.  It turns out that making the heads is easy because the wood is green.  Making the handles is harder.  They keep breaking as I hammer them into the heads. Really. Bois d’arc is hard and dense.

I plan to continue to make heads as long as I have the wood and as long as it’s green enough to cut a mortise in, but I need to figure out a better way to do my handles.

So I have a bois d’arc mallet that I made myself now. It separates me from most of the rest of humanity.

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 Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl

By Bobby Neal Winters

It’s getting colder as is normal for this time of year.  We are going into the holiday season: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years to mention the ones most of us pay attention to. Those of us who God has blessed have to worry about eating too much.  

Some folks take this time of year to think about giving to others.  This has been going on a long time.  In a Christmas Carol, you may recall, Scrooge was visited by gentlemen who were trying to raise money for the less fortunate. Recently I received a call from a fellow Rotarian who was raising money for the Lord’s Diner.

It’s hard to turn down a fellow Rotarian, especially when he’s volunteered for something you’ve decided to skip.

But there are other things to do.  I’ve signed up to ring bells for the Salvation Army through Rotary.  We do it at Ron’s. It’s good, inside work with no heavy lifting.

We do it this time of year because those of us who are Christian’s mark Jesus’ birth by giving gifts.  Jesus was a gift to us.  It’s not difficult to pair giving a gift for the use of the poor with giving a gift to Jesus.  I am not overstating this.  He actually said, “Whatever you have done for the least of these you’ve done for me.”

He included food, clothing, and visiting people in prison in this: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

We often hear of “the deserving poor,” but as I scan through these, I don’t see any indication that they have to be nice, clean, or particularly deserving.  The uniting theme seems to be need.

Christianity can be a radical faith.  While some balk at the notion of a man rising from the dead, someone turning water into wine, someone causing five loaves and two fishes to be turned into enough to feed five thousand people, all of those pale in believability next to the ideas that we should forgive each other and help the needed.

Some writers have the ability to tap into our sentiments in order to help us follow these radical beliefs.  I’d mentioned “A Christmas Carol” written by Charles Dickens.  There is also the story “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen.

The little girl is out in the cold trying to sell matches and is afraid to go home because she hasn’t sold any and because of that will be beaten.  But she’s so cold...

So she strikes a match.

The match provides a little warmth for a little while.  A little light for a little while.

There have been radicals over the years who would like to eliminate poverty.  I guess we all would in some sense, but this can be a monkey’s paw type wish: You eliminate the poor by rounding them up and shooting them all in a Stalinesque fashion. 

While I am an ivory tower academic, in my time I have seen some of the world.  I’ve spoken with the poor and the homeless.  

There are some of the poor who if given a million dollars today would be in the exact same place--or even worse off--tomorrow.  There are those among the homeless who truly want to be as they are.

Do we let them starve? Do we let them freeze? Do we let their clothing rot off their bodies? 

No. 

We feed them; we try to provide some means where they can stay warm when it is bitterly cold; we give them clothing.

At least that is what my religion says.

We light a match.

We try to provide a little light and a little warmth for a little while.  We are not going to cure poverty; we are not going to end homelessness.

We are going to try to be the “salt of the Earth,” something that makes the simple act of living palatable.

So as it gets colder and darker and you get achier and grumpier. Try to do a little something for someone else.

Light a match.

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.

 Bossing your space

By Bobby Neal Winters

I have a very accommodating personality.

I say this neither out of brag or shame, but just as something I have learned about myself.  I consider myself to be easy to get along with.  (My wife’s eyes just rolled as she read that.)

I like other accommodating people.  Who wouldn’t?  They are so...accommodating.  They don’t have to have their own way.  This means that if you hang around with them you will occasionally get to have your way.

Yet...

Yet I have come to appreciate bossy people.

That word appreciate is carrying a lot of nuance along with it, but let me continue.

Sometimes you are in situations where the dumpster that you are stuck in is on fire.  You and your accommodating friends are all huddled together asking, “What do you want to do?” and answering “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” 

Then a bossy person comes along and says, “Okay, guys, this is the way the corn is going to be shucked. You do this and you do that, he’ll do the other thing, and I will coordinate, and we will get this fire put out.”

They might not say it quite so nicely; they might talk loudly because they have to be heard over the sound of whining; but I can appreciate them as long as the fire gets put out.

To get a task done, there must be control. It would be easy to proceed from here to write an essay about the danger of drifting into Fascism.  That’s just a bit too heavy.  I will let someone write a letter to the editor about it.

Instead, I want to write about the need to take control at certain points.

This first one is for students (and their teachers).  When students do their homework, they need to get control of their environment.  They need an ordered space in which to work.  If they are working at a table or desk, the aforementioned work surface needs to be clear of clutter.  Anything needed for the task--paper, writing implements, books, calculators--need to be at arm’s reach.  The surrounding space should be as free of disturbance as possible.  This means turn off the music and TV.  You say you work better with music on.  I reply with something that comes out of the backside of a male bovine. You need order; you need to be the boss of your environment.

This might involve inconveniencing your family, your roommate, or your spouse.  But here I think I can speak with authority. I’ve been dealing with students who’ve had problems with school for well over a decade now.  Not having stability at home is a very common problem.  Stability isn’t having total control on the environment all the time; it’s having it when you need it.

This next example is where I get to brag about my workshop.  I’ve got the best wife in the world who let me turn our garage into a workshop.  From this, I’ve discovered that if you have a workshop you can do all sorts of things easily that were impossible before.  A workshop, however, isn’t just a room with tools in it.  You have to know where the tools are. You have to know what they do. You have to have your workspace clean and in good order. (All of this for the price of a few honey-dos that you would’ve done anyway.)  

As you see, this is a lot like the way I view doing homework. You have to take control of your environment.  

For accommodating types like me--and maybe you too--this can be difficult.  I’ve never liked to put people out.  It always feels uncomfortable to discover that I have.

The insight that has come with age is that it is okay to make other people accommodate you sometimes.  Indeed, there are some who make others accommodate them all the time and are quite successful and don’t seem to mind being bossy.  As I said at the beginning, they have their uses.

For us accommodators, we don’t ask for much.  We have the right, the need, the obligation to ourselves, to carve out a little space around ourselves every once in a while to control it in order to do what we need to get done.

It’s okay.

You might annoy someone, but they’ll get over it. You always get over it when someone annoys you, and you’re a better person for it.  Give someone else a chance to grow every once in a while. It’s good for them; it’s good for you; it’s good for everybody. 

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.