James M. Redwine

Authors

You Can Go Home Again and Again

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JPeg Ranch in Indiana. Photo by Peg Redwine

For many satisfying years Peg and I made our home in Posey County, Indiana among friends and family. During those years we were blessed with treasured visits from friends and family from out west, mainly my birth state of Oklahoma. Now that we have returned to make our home in Osage County, Oklahoma, as we reconnect with old friends and fond memories, we are occasionally blessed with visits from friends and family from southern Indiana. It is not frequent enough for us but is sweet when it occurs.

Therefore, we were pleased when we received an email from Mt. Vernon, Indiana high school senior, Carlton Redman, saying he had read our book JUDGE LYNCH! that we published in 2008, and for which my sister Jane nee Redwine Bartlett wrote the poignant Foreword. Carlton asked if I would participate in a Zoom call with his English class to discuss the book’s exposé of the long hidden horrific murders of seven Black men in Posey County in 1878; we were gratified for his interest. Carlton’s Redman family has deep roots in Posey County and his grandfather, Carl J. Redman, is an old friend of mine. Carlton’s uncle, Robert Redman, served as my court bailiff for several years. Another of Carlton’s uncles, Martin Ray Redman, was not only a fine public servant but also one of my best friends. Carlton’s cousin, Greg Redman, played baseball and graduated with our son, Jim, from Mt. Vernon High School. And, Dave Pearce along with his wife, Connie nee Redman Pearce, have carried my newspaper column, “Gavel Gamut”, in the Posey County News for many of the column’s 32 years and over 900 articles. In other words, unbeknownst to Carlton before he contacted me, the fine Redman family and my family have many pleasant connections and his aunt and uncle’s newspaper has often helped tell the story of the 1878 lynchings.

But that’s not why Carlton contacted me. He had been assigned by his teacher, Mary Feagley, to do a classroom project and he chose to investigate Posey County’s long and interesting history by reading our book and then having me appear in his class via the Internet on December 16, 2022 to discuss it. I was honored to do so as our son received a fine education from the Mt. Vernon school system and we have only good memories from his time there and our time in Posey County.

Photo by Peg Redwine

Gentle Reader, I hope you have read or will someday read JUDGE LYNCH! which is a historical novel, but refers to much of Posey County’s rich history. That Ms. Feagley has guided her students to know their own history gratifies but does not surprise me. Mt. Vernon High School has had several excellent teachers, such as Jerry King, who know our future is determined by our past and we need to know it, both good and bad.

In fact, Jerry and his wife, Marsha, appeared in the movie we made in 2011 about the murders of 1878. They reenacted General and Mrs. Alvin P. Hovey and even furnished their wonderful Pioneer Village for sets for the movie, for which my brother, C.E. Redwine, did the haunting music. Numerous Posey County and Evansville, Indiana residents volunteered their time and effort in the movie to help bring the previously hidden and forgotten terrible events of autumn 1878 to light. In fact, that movie premiered in my hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma at the Constantine Theater on June 11, 2011 at the First Ben Johnson Film Festival and has been shown several times in New Harmony, Indiana and elsewhere since then. JUDGE LYNCH!, its sequel, Unanimous for Murder published in 2021 that incorporates history from both Posey County and Osage County, and the movie are available at the Alexandrian Public Library in Mt. Vernon and Capers Emporium in New Harmony, Indiana. In Oklahoma they are available at the Pawhuska Public Library, the Osage County Historical Society Museum and Woolaroc Museum. And then, of course, from our website, www.jamesmredwine.com.

Carlton, his teacher and his classmates are helping the community remember what we must not forget, ignore or repeat. Thank you Carlton and Ms. Feagley. I was honored to serve forty years as a Posey County Judge and was honored to have JUDGE LYNCH! used to help preserve and expose our history.

Now that we live in Oklahoma we occasionally get to re-visit southern Indiana and see family and friends there. These times are rare but valued treasures, just as we used to feel when we lived in Indiana and visited Oklahoma. What Peg and I have found to our delight is that if one lives in both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, you have two homes and you CAN go home again, repeatedly.

“The Veranda” at JPeg Osage Ranch. Photo by Peg Redwine

Mom Knows Best

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Tom Nichols is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. In his opinion piece of August 15, 2022, Nichols asserted the United States is living in a “new era of political violence.” Nichols compared our current political climate to America’s Civil War and declared:

“Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.”

Of course, Nichols, as all of us do, meant those ideas he disagreed with. He wrote his article as a warning against “the random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes.”

While I believe Nichols falls victim to the kind of incitement to political violence he warns the rest of us to avoid, I agree with him that much of our poisonous political atmosphere is both created and exacerbated by “instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio.”

When I try to glean news from Facebook, MSNBC, CNN, FOX News and even sometimes NPR and the regular commercial news outlets, I spend a lot of my time hearing the echo of my Mother’s sage advice, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.”

In our current political discourse it seems almost every discussion has to first set forth the commentator’s pro or anti Trump diatribe then morph into the “real news.”  I keep trying, with little success, to block out the opening statements as I wait for any significant new facts.

This atmosphere of dueling slings and arrows, some of which are more than mere rhetoric, is the “political violence” Nichols refers to. People committing random acts of physical violence against complete strangers for no reason other than to attempt to give some meaning to their uninteresting lives. And as many of us have suffered through the discomfort, or worse, of political conversations with our friends and family these last few years, it is not just random strangers who have accosted one another with Nichols’ “New Era of Political Violence”. Long-time friendships and relationships have often suffered due to competing political views.

A large contributor to the current “Era of Bad Feeling” is the tendency to classify those who do not share our political views as holding “half-baked” or “wacky” ideas because, in Nichols’ view, they suffer from “a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives.” The sense I get from our current political in-fighting reminds me of the McCarthy Era from the 1950’s when Senator Joe McCarthy held hearings that ruined countless lives with accusations of Communistic leanings among American citizens. Sure, eventually we, as a democracy, saw through the “Red Scare” but it was too late to save many good citizens.

It feels to me now as those Red Baiting times felt. We seem to go immediately to anger when the “other side” speaks its views. Perhaps we could learn from our history instead of repeating it. As Mom would have said, “Just because someone sees things from their viewpoint doesn’t make them wrong. And just because someone else voices an opinion opposed to ours doesn’t mean they are bad.” It kind of goes back to that old advice, “If it ain’t good, don’t say it.”

That does not apply to real news, only personal character assassination. We need our democracy to have unfettered access to information about many subjects. That is, we need facts to make good decisions. What we do not need is vituperative personal attacks masquerading as evidence.

A Friend In Low Places

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Photo by Peg Redwine

The telephone call began ominously, “Mr. Redwine (?)” It is never a good sign if a professional office treats you as an equal. Usually such a call would start, “James, state your full name, your date of birth, social security number, and most importantly, scan in your financial responsibility history for the past ten years.” Now, that is more the attitude I would have expected.

 I responded, “Ugh, may I ask your name and why you are calling?”

“No, but feel free to contact your Congressional representative if you please, and good luck there too.”

The caller continued, “You were randomly selected for a couple of medical tests. Be at our office in Bartlesville Monday at 8:00 a.m.”

When I asked, “Can I ask …” all I heard was a click. I showed up Monday and followed orders. Tuesday, I received another call.

“Is this the party to whom I spoke last week?”

“Yes, may I ask …”

“No. We found a large kidney stone in your CT scan. It’s got to get crushed up and sucked out right now. Be here next Monday at 8:00 a.m. and no food or liquids after midnight the Sunday evening before.”

“May I ask …(click).”

I showed up Monday at 7:30 a.m. and the gate was opened at 7:55. A woman with a stack of legalese-clad releases asked me a series of COVID-19 related questions as she shoved the releases and a ball-point pen at me. I followed her unspoken directives and shook my head left and right as to COVID. Then, from behind her back she produced a LONG tube and told me to get undressed. I did and stood on the cold, tiled floor as she began to insert what felt like a fire hose into an area Mother Nature never intended to accept even a fine thread. By the way, a fine thread with a knot in it was attached to the tubing. From this point until about four hours later I have to hope someone knew what they were doing to me because I certainly did not. However, when I once again became aware of my situation there was an entire apparatus with tubing affixed to the apparatus Adam was made aware of when Eve coaxed him into taking a bite of forbidden fruit. Once the anesthesia wore off I really gave both Adam and Eve and that meddling serpent what for. Gentle Reader, I do not recommend kidney stone attacks for Monday morning pastime activity. OUCH!

Fortunately, my best friend from my old Air Force and Indiana University days had just sent me a great book of medical information for my birthday. Dr. Walter Jordan, O.D., has been my free medical advisor as well as an excellent source of information about all things IU since we first met in 1963. He has also long provided me with excellent reading material each year on my birthday. This year, by coincidence, he sent me Dr. Tony Robbins’ new book, Life Force, ISBN 978-1-9821-2170-9. Walt did not get the book to me in time to study up on the pain and misery of kidney stones. Nor did Dr. J have the opportunity to fulfill our long-ago made honor pact to use a 38-caliber solution to save me from a fate worse than watching IU lose the Big Ten Championship to Purdue. However, it is a wonderful source of information and I plan to recommend it to the office that attacked my lower quadrant.

Things have finally reached what we in the legal biz describe as a permanent and quiescent state and it appears I will survive although my friend Dr. Walt has been of more medical value to me than those “providers” who get paid for it. Anyway, as those who live in a “house” with kidney stones should not throw them I will forever hold my peace.

I do look forward to those days when we will, perhaps, all benefit from Dr. Robbins’ insights on how we might stop or even reverse the aging process. Of course, Walt and I have been around for so long Robbins’ book may not add much to our lifespan. But, Gentle Reader, I strongly suggest a trip to a book store or a library to read all of Robbins’ Chapter 4: pp. 96-120, “Turning Back Time: Will Aging Soon Be Curable?”

The Briar Patch

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Joel Chandler Harris, AKA Joe Harris (1848-1908), was born in the state of Georgia before the Civil War and worked on a slave-holding plantation as a teenager. After the war he became an associate editor at The Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Harris had lived and worked around the evils of slavery and he had absorbed the folk wisdom of slaves who were prohibited by law from formal education. Harris created his fictional writings using Uncle Remus as a wise and shrewd observer of human nature hidden within animal behavior.

Harris intended his writings as compliments to the ability of Uncle Remus to explain human foibles by giving animals human failings such as arrogance. In the story of Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox contained in Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, the meanness of the Fox is used by the Rabbit to escape by getting the Fox to “punish” the Rabbit by throwing him into a briar patch. Of course, that is exactly what the Rabbit really wanted.

Unfortunately, due to our current misguided wokeness in many areas, the slave dialect used by Harris now interferes with the appreciation of the literature of The Song of the South and a great number of those pro-African American folk tales are no longer read. However, for those of us whose time of birth helped us escape the ravages of the current misguided ignorance in the area of children’s literature, Uncle Remus is still imparting wisdom, such as enjoying a proverbial briar patch. Or in my case, Peg’s banishment of me to the solitude of our bunkhouse when I got COVID and Peg did not.

At first, I was offended when Peg handed me my toothbrush and a set of clean underwear and locked our cabin door behind me after she forcefully shut it. It was not that I wanted Peg to share in my experience of a sore throat, lethargy and endless amounts of crud being expelled from my body. It was more the feeling that a one-person leper colony was a rather lonely possibility, plus I really missed my favorite recliner and ready access to the refrigerator. Oh, and Peg too, of course.

Be that as it may, Peg sentenced me to two weeks of quarantine with the same lack of ceremony she would have exhibited if a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman had appeared with a sample case. You remember encyclopedias don’t you, Gentle Reader? You know, those things with pages, tables of contents and indexes that went the way of the dodo bird after Google came along. Well, that may call for a different column.

Anyway, here I am alone with the piles of books I never read, the piano I used to play and old photographs of friends and relatives I barely recognize. I have been rummaging through boxes and drawers filled with the most interesting stuff not seen by me since high school. What a strange looking dude I was with dark colored hair and a discernible jaw line. Who was that and who are those undecipherable young people around him wearing weird clothes?

Say, Peg, what is this thing that says Maytag on it? Is this where my clean clothes came from? It must be a miracle machine. How does it operate? By the way, there is no stove out here and after several days of eating the leftovers you sent with me, I am ready for some real food.

By the way, I have done my Paxlovid and am pretty sure I am not Typhoid Mary anymore. On the other hand, the bunkhouse refrigerator is stocked with leftover beer from our Fourth of July Family Reunion and the TV is constantly tuned to Gunsmoke reruns. The bunkhouse is the answer to every boy’s escape from his mother and every husband’s escape from constant inspection by his wife.

Clothes are in a pile where I take them off. The bed never has to be made to drill sergeant standards and every door knob and chair back is a hanger. But the most serendipitous of all? Peg is afraid to step foot in my little slice of heaven. I may claim to be eternally toxic. Bring on that Briar Patch!

D-Day

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“Throughout the 200-year history of the United States the American nation has been at war.” That was how author William Koenig led into his 1980 book, Americans at War. Although ostensibly a study of American warfare from about 1775 at Lexington and Concord to 1975, the end of the Viet Nam War, Koenig actually starts with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and Native Americans meeting the ship. Had he waited until today to publish he could have included another fifty years of Americans at war, right up to Ukraine.

In general, we Americans view our involvement in foreign wars, that is, non-Native American warfare, as justified by the belligerence of others who have forced us reluctantly into “making the world safe for democracy.” The beginning of our provision of armaments, intelligence and training to Ukraine dates back to soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “breakup” of the Soviet Union. The current U.S. commitment of over 50 billion dollars is only a fraction of our huge military and economic support for Ukraine over many years. Russia has often taken note.

George Soros, the Hungarian born American billionaire, stated on May 24, 2022 that the Russia-Ukraine war may be the start of World War III and result in the end of human civilization. Such doomsday statements are not a new phenomenon. Ever since the days of The Flood people have warned that human behavior, usually by someone other than the Jeremiad of the moment, was going to lead to the end of the world. They mean the end of homo sapiens’ short 200,000-year reign on our 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Earth will survive, but without us.

I have no estimate how many predictions of mankind’s demise have been made from the time of our common really great-grandmother, Lucy, in Africa until 1945. Until America came up with and used the atom bomb, the philosophers who had previously cried wolf were doing just that. However, now with numerous countries possessing nuclear weapons and itching to use them, we may have finally made honest men out of Noah and all the other survivalists. I am not going to address climate change and pollution as doomsday machines as I only have about three pages of print available. I will stick with nuclear war in this column.

With nuclear powers, such as Russia, North Korea, China, America and Israel all claiming they fear for their survival, I am reminded of my onetime acquaintance who told me in 1973 that if Egypt were about to destroy Israel that Israel would be justified in destroying the whole world to avenge itself. Fortunately, he was not an Israeli and Egypt stood down. I do wonder if Putin might feel so threatened he would believe Russia would be justified in starting the nuclear daisy chain.

These thoughts of World War III came scrambling into my brain when I thought about June 06, 1944 and D-Day. Americans and many others thought the World War of 1914-1918 with its inane carnage, over no one knew what, was going to end world-wide war. Then the courage and sacrifice of 150,000 American soldiers on D-Day was touted as the beginning of the end of totalitarian regimes. Later we thought we had learned something from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, George Soros, hardly a war monger, fears we may be at the beginning of WWIII raging in Ukraine.

As for me, I will place my confidence in that part of human nature that has pulled us back from self-immolation many times. History leads me to have faith we will not self-fulfill such a dire prophecy. Of course, if I am right everyone will be around to say so, and if I am wrong, what difference will it make?

Lemonade

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Liberals are upset that the leak from the U.S. Supreme Court may signal that the case of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), may be overturned or, as is more likely, modified. Conservatives are upset there was a leak from the Supreme Court that may allow public pressure from Liberals to influence the Court to not modify Roe’s holdings.

Neither Roe v. Wade nor the case that followed it, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), is before the Supreme Court for decision. They could be referred to and overturned or reaffirmed by the Court within its decision of the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson, No. 19-1392 that will be decided in 2022. As there has not yet been an official decision in Dobbs, it does not have an official public citation.

Liberals celebrate the leak and abhor the substance of the draft opinion authored by conservative justice Samuel Alito. Conservatives celebrate the preliminary opinion and abhor the leak. Both Liberals and Conservatives find reasons to attack the institution of the Third Branch of our democracy as they clamor for it to be fundamentally changed. Liberals want to “pack” the Court so as to dilute its current conservative majority. Conservatives want a vigorous investigation into the leak with the hope the public will be outraged if some left-leaning leaker is identified as the culprit.

I agree with Shakespeare’s character, Mercutio, in Act III, scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet when his imminent death results due to an irrational feud between the families of the lovers:

“A plague on both your houses!”

However, if we are to be constantly accosted by railings of both Liberals and Conservatives about the need for modifications in the United States Supreme Court, let us consider making some constructive changes. After all, no rational American wants to do away with the Court. We all know one of the main reasons our country has outlived every other constitutional democracy on earth is our equally competing three branches of government. We must support the maintenance of all three, including the Judicial Branch.

When it comes to the Judicial Branch, political commentators often assert it is non-political and must remain so. They are correct if they mean the actual decisions of the Court. No judge should allow political influence to affect his or her decision. But when it comes to maintaining the public’s confidence in the non-political basis of a judge’s decision, it is the processes of judicial selection and retention that are most important.

One reason the public believes the members of the Supreme Court are politically motivated is because the public has no influence on how the justices get their life-time jobs nor any realistic way to remove them. Presidents are elected every four years with the possibility of only one more four-year term. Representatives are elected every two years and Senators are elected every six years. The public has a right to remove them. Supreme Court justices are nominated by one person, the President, as the President sees fit. The public’s influence is greatly attenuated, in fact, virtually non-existent.

At a minimum, the public should have the assurance that many of the most vital issues of their lives will not be at the mercy of the same five-member majority of the Supreme Court for an unknown period. Perhaps our current national furor could be a catalyst to, at least, set term limits for the Supreme Court justices. A ten-year term is what I suggest but the public, through its federal Legislature, should decide such issues. It is fair and in our own best interest in getting well-qualified justices who are willing to serve, to grant the retired justices generous life-time pensions once their term is up. But in return, the retired justices would agree to neither seek nor accept another judicial position ever again.

The possibility of term limits for the Supreme Court might help assuage the current calls by Liberals and Conservatives to radically control what must remain one of our three independent branches of government. Term limits is a better solution than a continuing loss of public confidence in and, perhaps, a loss of independence for, our Supreme Court. In other words, we do not want to make the same types of mistakes as did Romeo and Juliet in their final Act. We do not need to continue on our road toward possible suicide for our democracy.

p.s. Gentle Reader, Peg and I have two upcoming book signings for our new historical novel, Unanimous for Murder, that is a sequel to JUDGE LYNCH!. The first is May 17, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Osage County Historical Society Museum at 700 Lynn Avenue in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The second is May 20, 2022 at Capers Emporium, 602 Main Street, New Harmony, Indiana from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Please drop by and say hello!

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