JOY ALONG THE WAY: STAYING COOL WITH THOUGHTS OF THEORIES

Sunshine flooded my living room. No shade closing or drapery pulling 'round here. I love the summer brightness that bumps against the brass clock hands, the brass rabbit book ends and the gold lined teacups hanging all in a row, seeming to pour out this re-routed sunshine. The air conditioner was doing yeoman duty. A ceiling fan was whirling happily. A glass of tea, tinkling as the ice cubes melted, was within arm's reach.

I propped up my feet, spread the daily paper before me and began to search for nuggets of news that would further brighten my day.

Soon I came to Paul Greenberg's column. It is tempting for me not to turn to it first. Writing for the Arkansas Gazette, Greenberg's columns are so down-home, yet scholarly written. He gets to the core of a matter with clarity and well-chosen, thought-provoking words. Sometimes he strays from weighty political matters and treats us to a commentary on more lightsome matters.

This sunshiny summer day the title of his column was "Fifty Ways to Stay Cool," so fitting for the heat wave we've been enduring. I thought I had already solved the problem for myself, but knowing how felicitous is his writing, I read it anyway. There were the usual things he suggest we think about -- ice cream, shade, cool creek water, glaciers, penguins, icebergs, etc., but there, buried in the middle of his suggestions was "The cool, crystalline beauty of the Pythagorean theorem." Say what!

The rest of the paper slid from my lap as I started to think about this supposedly cooling thing. First, I enjoyed the words "cool" and "crystalline." The icicle-like prisms that hang from my candelabra and the cool frost crystal ferns that grown on my wintertime windows in unheated upstairs came to mind.

Eventually I got to the Pythagorean theorem itself. Sure, I had heard about it, way back in high school geometry. Seems to me that I didn't stay cool in that class, but sweated through all those Euclid and Pythagorean theorems. Old Greeks. So long ago. Would I ever use this ancient knowledge?

The memory pods of my ever-turning mind carousel were slow to come into focus so I expended the energy to get up and fetch the proper book from the encyclopedias. Right there on page 2930, in italicized lettering, it said that this theorem was, "The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its other two sides."

Well, of course! I've known that for years. An old friend re-visited. For some reason I felt vindicated. For what? For remembering? I don't think I've ever consciously used that theorem to bake a pie, sweep the kitchen floor or plant lettuce seeds. But one great purpose for teaching geometry, so "they" say, is that it provides excellent material on which to practice reasoning. So, unconsciously, when I bake a berry pie, reason tells me that I must add so much sugar, heat the oven to a certain degree, set the baking time for so many minutes. So, step by step, I reason my way ahead without having to memorize anything again and again. But, oh, how the scientists and constructionists have used this theorem to make life easier for me!

Back to its clear crystalline beauty that Greenberg likes to think of on hot days. The theorem is straight-lined, simple, a mathematical law just drifting free, unbodied, in the air. No one can amend or erase it. It is as sure as the promise, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease." Yeah, that's pretty cool to think of something like that on a hot summer day.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.