Bud

For many years Bud Shankle had worked at Rutland College as a professor of mathematics. His students would laugh at his forgetfulness. There were days that they were sure that he had forgotten to go home. The slept in clothes and the bewildered look were just part of the clues. Forgetting what day it was caused many a chuckle. But he was good professor. He could show them relationships of numbers like nobody else.

He would enrapture his class in stories about numbers. There were days that the entire class would get so lost that time would dissolve for them as well.

 The most fervent stories were centered around a two digit word…

 Bud stood up with a looked at the circle drawn on the floor. 

    “Betty, measure its circumference”. 

    “Tom, measure its diameter”.

Bud stood at the black board and scribbled the numbers.

Divide the circumference by the diameter.

The answer you get is the same for any circle that you can ever draw, and it's a truly universal result. It's called pi.

Bud explained that pi was an extraordinary number because it was irrational and it was also transcendental. This means that it cannot be written as the ratio of two whole numbers and it cannot be the solution to any algebraic equation. Years of study had looked for significance in the number sequences. Was there a hidden message from God? The class played a neat game that involved searching a database of pi containing a sequence of 50 million digits. The database responded to every sequence search and was never once stumped even as they put in birthdays, populations or even the ingredients of grandma’s banana bread recipe.

These numbers appeared to be random…

Bud looked out across his class and asked if people believed in entropy and enthalpy? Although these were college kids he saw too many blank stares.

Slowly Bud smiled and asked,

    “Do you believe that life is a random occurrence?”

 Heads slowly shaking no made him push a bit further…

 “Numbers show you clearly that everything and everyone is connected. Everything is interrelated. Think of pi as the focal point of this interconnection. It represents the infinite ripples that are possible, occurred in the past, are occurring or have occurred in the future”

The last statement gave him a puzzled look and a raised hand by Martha, the class perfectionist.  Bud noted her hand and slowly shook his head. 

    “Martha, I meant what I said. It was not an error. You are inherently seeing time as a linear force and that we exist along its razor’s edge between past and present. Time is but the echoes of the singularity of life.”

     “Ok, not to go down a road that deviates from the mathematical, I was simply stating that pi being interrelated with so much of what we know it is difficult to believe that it is a random occurrence”

With a twinkle in his eyes, Bud winked at his class.

Bud was now standing where he once was sitting. Or was he? On the blackboard was a music score where there once was a logarithmic table. Or was there?  Bud was cradling a Selmer La Voix Alto Saxophone and was belting out a blues song that had tears rolling down the faces of his students. Bud dropped the reed of the saxophone from his mouth and said,

    ‘Now that is what I was talking about.”

 His students were smiling at him. Bud took a seat on a stool and started speaking to them.

     “Do you believe in entropy and enthalpy?” 

 Although these were college kids he saw too many blank stares. Slowly Bud smiled and asked,

     “Do you believe that life is a random occurrence?”

Heads slowly shaking no made him push a bit further…

Music may appear to be simply random frequencies strung together in a series. Musical notes show you clearly that everything and everyone is connected. Everything is interrelated. Each note resonates supplying ripples that touch the ends of the infinite universe…

    “Yes Martha. I meant what I said…”

(Note: This is another oldy but a favorite of mine.  I like it because it is whimsical but also involves deep concepts of life)