James M. Redwine

Females/Pick on Peg

Time Is On Our Side

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Over the two or three hundred thousand years we homo sapiens have created and destroyed countless cultures there has been a recurring philosophical debate over whether time is linear or circular. Do things occur once or do events repeat themselves? Is life finite or eternal? Will we find life after life has always been the great mystery. Most people are hesitant to test their hypothesis whichever they believe, hope or dread. Also, most of us who puzzle over the conundrum of time, who are most of us, agree with Viking Cruise Line Chairman Torstein Hagan who says, “Time is the only truly scarce commodity, so spend it wisely”.

Of course, whether we are investing our time or squandering it is about as difficult for us to determine as The College Football Playoff Selection Committee found the choices of which teams should be one of the twelve chosen to vie for the national championship. But one choice was as non-controversial as history made it absolutely phenomenal: THE Indiana University is not only IN, it is at the top of the class!

Photo by Peg Redwine

I attended my first class at IU in the autumn of 1963 when the United States Air Force sent me there for foreign language training. That was my introduction to IU’s reputation as the doormat of college football. By the time I had completed my law degree in Bloomington in 1970 I fully understood. Each year began with hope and ended with despair. We almost always found a new way to snatch defeat from the jaws of a narrow victory. Regardless, Peg and I fell victim to each ray of hope engendered by the rare bright spots such as the 1967-68 Rose Bowl; we lost. She and I were born too late to celebrate the 1945 championship season; well ok, Peg wasn’t even born yet.

As you can tell, Gentle Reader, in the 130 years of IU football the field has remained quite barren. Yet, Peg and I always donned our cream and crimson along with our rose-colored glasses. We just knew if we lived long enough time would reward us. It only took from 1963 to 2024-25. Now, what are we to believe about eternity, if there is such a thing?

At the IU Bookstore. Photo taken by Peg Redwine

 

Sour Grapes

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A plethora of professional football, a cornucopia of college football and, most importantly, the hallowed echoes of high school football. Thanksgiving brings out the America our Founders dreamed of, “A more perfect union”. One where the battles almost never involve fatal blows but where due process on the field requires impartial officials, the Judiciary (?), involved and spirited fans, citizens (?), teams with different positions, players and coaches who are leaders and standard bearers for the hopes of countless constituencies, fans (?).

Peg and I almost surfeited on football last week but our stomachs have about recovered from gastronomical excess and our eyes and seats are ready for more football. Unfortunately, we are already ruing the long, dark journey from February until the fall of 2026. Ah well, we do have a few other things to attend to. And the memories of this season and seasons past will sustain us until then. For example, my favorite Thanksgiving Day football game occurred during my senior year of high school in 1960. I have carefully and constantly rearranged that game, especially the role of my favorite seventeen-year-old player in the outcome.

Photo by Peg Redwine

I was a linebacker who was not particularly gifted in the speed department. All right, I was on defense because my time in the forty was not clocked, but calendared. On the other hand, as I was a catcher on the baseball team, I was fairly adroit at retrieving fumbles; I just did not usually advance them.

Anyway, as I relive that glorious Thursday afternoon in November of 1960, I see myself clutching a blocked punt from our opponent. Only an uncharitable observer would have pointed out that my teammate actually blocked the punt. Regardless, when the football bounced into my arms, I took off like a lightning bolt for the goal line fifty-one yards away, my player number on the team. Mercury could not have caught me.

The next day the newspaper showed why people dislike the media. My heroic touchdown was described thusly, “Jim Redwine, reputedly the slowest player on the team, lugged the ball over the goal line”. That is why my football career ended in high school.

However, Peg and I still plan to cheer on Indiana and Oklahoma University teams as they conquer the playoffs, cheer on Army in the Army Navy game, watch every single college bowl game late into the nights of January then end the season with the Super Bowl in February. Who knows, with coaches making more money than Croesus, maybe some school will hire me to coach linebackers on how not to run.

Photo by Peg Redwine

The Public Forum

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I have subscribed to The Posey County News and its progenitors for about forty years. At the request of the then editor and owner, Jim Kohlmeyer, in 1990 I began writing “Gavel Gamut”. Current editor Dave Pearce continued to publish my column after he and his wife Connie took over the paper. Neither Jim nor Dave nor Connie ever sought to censor any of the more than 1,000 columns I have written.

Gentle Reader, you are undoubtedly aware of how rare it has become for news outlets to provide a true forum for the exchange of differing views. The Posey County News provides such a forum. The Posey County News is a beacon to the First Amendment at a time that such beacons of illumination are under attack from several powerful and diverse sources. Our republic will not survive as the America our Founders envisioned if our citizens cannot freely express conflicting views, especially on deeply felt issues. As newspapers throughout our country continue to be subsumed by major news outlets, we need more than ever the courage of such local papers as The Posey County News.

Our republic’s free flow of ideas has been the major driver of our desire for “a more perfect union”. There was a time only 21-year-old, white, male citizens could vote. Due to the most vigorous of public debates, now 18-year-old citizens can not only be sent to war, they can vote on who sends them. My first vote for president was when I turned 21 even though I had already earned my honorable discharge from the Air Force.

My grandmother could not vote until 1921 after millions of Americans had demonstrated for her right to do so. It took a Civil War to get Blacks citizenship and many Native Americans are still in a struggle for the right to self-determination; but public outcries are forcing progress.

Therefore, when I opened my October 15, 2025 edition of my Posey County News and saw that Reverend Norman Martin had written a respectful and measured disagreement to one of my columns I was elated. There were no aspersions or threats, just calm opposing views. Thank you, Reverend, for reading my column. I am truly grateful you and I both have the right and, thanks to The Posey County News, the ability to publicly state our views without fear or expectation of favor.

We are all aware of our current climate of uncivil behavior among citizens of differing viewpoints. It may just be my age but I believe our culture was at one time able to discuss without cussing and disagree without canceling. Reverend Martin and I may never have the opportunity to have a cup of coffee and vigorously and respectfully exchange views, but thanks to one of America’s bedrock institutions, The Posey County News, if we ever have the chance, I bet we can do so.

Lessons Learned

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Peg and I used to live on 12 acres just outside of New Harmony, Indiana. We enjoyed taking care of it ourselves. We now live just outside Barnsdall, Oklahoma on a small acreage we do enjoy but find its care occasionally more of a challenge. Such was our recent experience. In fact, we almost got nostalgic for town living when we decided to attack the repair of our mower. It all seemed so simple, in theory.

I had just finished mowing the high hill we call “Mogul Margaret’s Mountain” and was going back down the trail along the side of the mountain when the zero-turn mower controls quit controlling. I was headed into a ravine. I pushed the brake and stopped the mower just before taking the plunge. Since I had left my cell phone in the Cabin, I could not call for Peg to jump in the 4-wheel drive dune buggy and bring me a towing chain. So, I walked down the half-mile trail and found Peg working in the vegetable garden. We devised what appeared to us to be an easy solution to a rather mundane maintenance situation. We jumped in the dune buggy after throwing a chain in the bed and headed back up the mountain.

When we got to the disabled mower, I surveyed the damage and drew upon my vast knowledge of mechanics. I related the complexity of our modern mower to the walk-behind push mowers my brother, Phil, and I used to use to mow yards a mere seventy years ago. I remembered how we would sharpen the blades with a file, change the oil in ten minutes and repair the engine with a screw driver. Well, Gentle Reader, due to the great improvements in technology, our zero-turn mower now resembles a simulation of a spaceship. D.I.Y. has been usurped by, “What’s that and where does it go?”

Anyway, my first idea was to get the mower down to the line shed (the barn) so I could stare at it in puzzlement indoors and out of the heat. Here’s what I did. Oh, by the way, Peg has disavowed all responsibility for my approach. First objective, get the mower away from the ravine and the other side of the mountain, which is an even bigger drop-off. I had to ease the dune buggy past the mower so I could get it turned around. This required that Peg, staying far away, edged along the trail so she could guide me. She did and I managed to not slip off the side into oblivion.

Then I attached the chain to the mower and dune buggy. I asked Peg to slowly ease the dune buggy down the trail as I guided the mower with just the brake. Of course, the main problem was the tires could not be turned, so only the brake stood between me and an Olympic ride down the ridge. Fortunately, Peg did not see me, as yet, as dispensable so she skillfully eased me between the ravine and the hillside as I rode the mower like a mechanical bull.

When we got the mower to the line shed, I did rely upon my years of book-learning and referred to the repair manual. What my expert analysis was? I had no idea how to fix the problem, whatever the problem was. However, I did remember an important lesson from my past mistakes and decided to call the service department of the Scag dealer. They will be out tomorrow.

Lessons From Moms

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President Trump announced his main goals during his second inaugural address on January 20, 2025:

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”

President Trump also declared:

“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

President Trump’s stated goals are the bedrock of our fragile democracy. It takes very little to get mired in endless wars, especially when voices calling for peace and reason are silenced. History is littered with great societies who charged headlong into their own destruction for the silliest of causes.

The most famous war of ancient western civilization was the Trojan War between Greece and Troy. It lasted ten years, cost countless lives and treasure and was started over one woman, Helen, whose face, according to the poet Homer, “Launched a 1,000 ships”.

World War I was often called the “war about nothing”, cost the earth millions of human lives, including over 100,000 Americans, and was started over the assassination of the Arch Duke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand.

America’s Viet Nam War spanned over twenty years of conflict, but it was a questionable attack on a United States ship in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 that was used to justify America’s involvement in the “endless war”.

The United States had no quarrel with Iraq but false intelligence alleging Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” got us involved in the costly military slog that has continued since 1990. In this pointless and endless war America has expended and is still expending countless lives and treasure. What President Trump recognized in his inaugural address is that war can be slid into easily but may result in catastrophic consequences and never end.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has frequently compared the fighting between Israel and its neighbors to a school yard dustup between boys. As President Trump has frequently said, America has no reason to be involved. U.S.A. involvement might lead to another world war but it could lead to a permanent Middle East Peace if we put into practice the lessons of history or simply those from our mothers.

When I was in the first grade, for some never fathomed reason, another first grader and I developed a routine of fighting every day after school. As do most schoolboy contests, they amounted to little damage to either of us but did result in the destruction of numerous tee shirts. Well, our mothers banged our heads together and ended our “endless war”. He and I, of course, became good friends and still are today. Neither of us has a clue what we fought about back then.

I respectfully suggest to President Trump that he tell Israel and Iran they should neither one have nuclear or atomic weapons and neither should attack the other or their neighbors. Instead of arming one country to attack the other, America should use its enormous motherly power and wisdom to sit Israel and Iran down with the stern warning that no more tee shirts will be lost by anyone, including us.

Sláinte

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Isle of Skye, Scotland 2017

Not long ago Peg and I visited the Isle of Skye in Scotland. We took a bus ride to the small town of Portree and chuckled when we were let off near an intersection with a sign that said, “Caution, Elderly People Crossing”. The sign had a drawing of a bent at the waist old woman holding onto an even more acutely bent old man leaning on a cane. It looked strangely familiar.

Portree is the capital of the Isle of Skye. It has a little more than 2,000 residents, most of whom pretend to speak English, but who really communicate among themselves in Scottish Gaelic. Alcohol is available as long as you do not order “Scotch”. The Scotch drink is “whiskey”. The locals are reservedly polite but do not hide their bemusement at American tourists, especially if the tourists resemble the Elderly Crossing signs.

Just as many other societies, the Scotch have an arcane yang and yin approach to regulating the use and abuse of alcohol. At our hotel the tiny bar was intimate and comforting. Dark walls and heavy wooden furniture were accented by the lone barkeep who was obviously accustomed to explaining the local customs to hapless American tourists. He was of ruddy, bewhiskered visage and a roguishly engaging attitude. He was reminiscent of the 19th century immigrants who brought their Viking-like culture with them to America. Peg and I were his only customers that bleary afternoon after our bus trip. He put on his best Scottish brogue to disguise the true meaning of his responses to my haltingly timid order for a double shot of Bailey’s as though I were addressing Cerberus guarding the Bar. He scoffed, rolled his eyes and his tongue then condescendingly informed me it was illegal to buy a double for one person. Then, with a twinkle he said, “Now, should you wish to buy a single for your wife and a separate single for yourself, that will work”. So, even though I had already ordered a “Scotch” for myself and received a primer on it being properly called a “whiskey”, I ordered as instructed.

This experience reminded me of my days as an underage American trying to procure 3.2% beer from a drive-through beer joint. It always seemed to me that the only thing the Volstead Act accomplished was to sharpen the imaginations of thirsty Americans and, according to my family’s lore, to keep my Uncle Henry’s moonshine still in business. It looked to me like Scotland had approached alcohol prohibition and regulation in a similar fashion.

Regardless, Peg did get to drown her ennui about “Elderly People”; the two Baileys did the trick. However, we both have remained acutely aware of how our strides might appear; we strive to walk straighter and more briskly, and, of course, without a cane.

Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland 2017