James M. Redwine

Indiana

A True Depression

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If a recession is when your neighbors lose their jobs but it is a depression when you lose yours, what is the analogy for our society’s losses due to ’Ole 19? Let me suggest that for Peg it was when she finally submitted herself to asking me to cut her hair. Yep, it’s complete capitulation; 19 can claim total victory. I should be able to show you photographic proof but it turns out that a wife’s hirsute humiliation is in the same category of bad husbanding as failing to separate the whites and colors for the laundry. No pictures of my artistry were allowed. In fact, Peg has found a new use for the flowered bandana she uses as a face mask; it now covers the top of her head too. And my attempts to assure her that within a few months her hair will grow back just seem to exacerbate the situation. Please allow me to digress.

Gentle Reader, you may have noticed it is hot in July and August near the latitude along the Mason-Dixon Line. Well Peg, who was born in upstate New York, had not quite acclimated to the previous weeks of 100-degree temperatures. Her Joan of Arc length hair tended to stick to her forehead and the back of her neck whenever she lugged water to her flowers and her vegetable garden. The martyr-type comparison will make sense by the time you finish the column. I was understanding and sympathetic, but my advice that Mother Nature would eventually provide rain was not received gladly. She stubbornly persisted and even suggested I could get involved if the TV re-runs of old golf matches didn’t interfere. Surely, we need not revisit that painful discussion.

The real problem is not me but ’Ole 19. Peg used to go to the beauty shop to get her hair cut. Or, when we still lived in Indiana, our daughter, Heather, who is a beautician would take care of it. However, now, as we do not wish to contribute to 19’s macabre statistics, we have socially isolated since our last foray out to eat which was March the 5th. We wear masks, we wash our hands, we ignore our friends and family, we shop online, we eat lots of tuna. But we both knew the Corona Virus had achieved complete domination when Peg said last week, “Jim, I just can’t stand this heat and having my hair string down my face and neck. Nobody but you is ever going to see me again anyway (I thought that a little overly dramatic) so you are going to have to cut it. Come watch these YouTube videos and try to pay attention.”

Well, it didn’t look that hard to me. I remember when I got my hair cut in Pawhuska, Oklahoma by Clyde Ensley or Bob Butts or in Mt. Vernon, Indiana by Steve Burris. Heck, it appeared about like cleaning a squirrel or a chicken. Just slice here, snip there, shear off the sides. No problem. After watching for ten minutes or so I was pretty sure I could give Vidal Sassoon a run. “Peg, get a towel and I’ll grab a pair of scissors and the electric clippers you used to use on our dearly departed dog and meet you on the front porch.”

It probably would have turned out better if Peg had not sat as if she were an unfortunate customer of an electric chair and if she hadn’t jumped and squirmed each time the clippers whirred and the scissors snipped. Regardless, in my unbiased opinion I did a fine job. If the bowl I used had fit better it would have helped. I can only guess at Peg’s opinion as she hardly has spoken to me for three days and when she does it is difficult to make out what she is saying amid the shrieks, sobs and expletives as she tries to pull her hair back to its former length.

Hair on the porch floor

The Right To Matter

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From www.270towin.com

It was not the British Parliament’s tax on tea that caused the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773; it was the denial of the Colonists’ right to be represented in Parliament.

It is not the sexual part of unwanted sex that matters to the Me Too Movement, we Homo sapiens have spent the last 200 to 300 thousand years engaging in sex; it is the “unwanted” factor that is objectionable.

And when our Founders were barely able to cobble together our Republic it was not the fact that some of the Thirteen Colonies had much greater populations than others or much greater wealth than others that almost caused the United States to be simply thirteen entirely separate entities; it was the fear by both the more populous and less populous colonies that their voices would not sufficiently matter.

There were many reasons why and how our constitutional democracy survived colliding circumstances, desires and egos but two of the most significant compromises were the Proportional Representative construct and the Electoral College.

Large states accepted the compromise that in the Senate each state would have two and only two Senators because their proportional influence was recognized by having the number of Congressional Representatives determined by population. Smaller states accepted this arrangement in like manner because they would have an equal voice in at least one of the two Congressional bodies, the Senate, even though they would have fewer Congresspersons than larger states.

Then there is the imaginative system of the Electoral College. The Electoral College determines who will be the Executive Branch leaders, the President and Vice President, via a method similar to the proportional representative system. And because the President has the authority to nominate all federal judges, whoever has influence over the election of the President has an indirect voice in the makeup of the third branch of our federal government, the Judicial Branch. Therefore, the Electoral College, whose only job is to meet every four years and vote for the Chief Executive and the Vice President, has some influence over two of the three Branches of our government. Of course, the Executive Branch contains the armed forces, the F.B.I., the D.E.A., etc., etc., etc. And these countless agencies assert immense power over all of us. We certainly want our opinions to matter when it comes to all those aspects of our government.

The number of Electors of the Electoral College is determined by totaling the number of Congressional Representatives each state has and each state’s two senators. The number of Congressional Representatives is derived from each state’s population. So, very similar to the general system of representative/proportional government, where all states have two and only two senators but have differing numbers of Congresspersons based on population, the Electoral College is based on every state having some Electors but more populous states having more Electors than less populous states.

Currently there are 538 members of the Electoral College based on 100 Senators and 438 Congressional Representatives. For example, Indiana has 2 Senators and 9 Congresspersons for a total of 11 Electors and Oklahoma has 2 Senators and 5 Congresspersons for a total of 7 Electors. On the other hand, California has 2 Senators and 53 Congresspersons for a total of 55 Electors. Indiana’s sister state of Illinois has 20 Electors, almost twice as many as Indiana, and Oklahoma’s sister state of Texas has 38, over five times as many as Oklahoma. The District of Columbia has no Senators but does have 3 Electors based on the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. Three is the least number of Electors of any state. The U.S. Territories do not receive any Electors.

Whichever candidate receives 270 Electoral votes, the current majority of Electors, is elected President. Sometimes the candidate who receives the most popular votes does not receive a majority of the Electoral votes. This always reignites a debate to eliminate the Electoral College and go to a pure one person/one vote system. Such was the case in 2016 when the Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton received 3,000,000 more popular votes than the Republican nominee Donald Trump, but Trump received 304 Electoral votes, which was 77 more than Clinton received. Had this outcome been inverted I suggest the pro/anti-Electoral College debate would have also been inverted.

There certainly are legitimate arguments for modifying or even eliminating the Electoral College system even though the College has helped to assuage the constant yin and yang of large states versus small ones. As for me, having spent most of my life, so far, in either Oklahoma or Indiana, I do not wish to rely upon the tender mercies of the few lumbering giant states with huge populations of voters that might deign to turn a deaf ear to my concerns and those of the other residents of the numerous less populous states.

Pugh Or Phew?

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JPeg Osage Ranch

Peg and I recently moved from Posey County in southwestern Indiana to Osage County in northeastern Oklahoma. The acculturalization for me was fairly seamless as I was born in Pawhuska, which is the county seat of The Osage. As for Peg, she was born in Schenectady, New York and has lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River her whole life. She is what we of the Oklahoma persuasion would generally classify as a “Yankee”. For Peg, the move from the land of corn, soybeans and concrete has been, well, let’s just say more interesting. And our log cabin out on the prairie thirty miles from the nearest Walmart occasionally poses new challenges for her. Oh, we do have a Dollar General about five miles away, but there’s one of those everywhere so that does not assuage Peg’s concerns.

As Peg becomes accustomed to being called “Ma’am” and getting to frequently use her high beam headlights on the uncrowded highways she is often confronted with the ambiance of a life lived among creatures she used to assume lived in zoos or within the confines of the Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve or the 3,700 acres of the marvelous Woolaroc Museum with bison and other animals only 7 miles from our cabin. Imagine her reactions when she began to encounter hawks, eagles, deer, wild turkeys, cattle, armadillos, scorpions, coyotes, opossums and raccoons right outside our door. Actually she has habituated quite well to most of Mother Nature’s creatures even when they pushed their way into our personal space. Unfortunately, our most recent visitors have been a family of skunks. That’s right. What the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) classified as Mephitidae, which means stink.

When Pepé Le Pew was cavorting on the cartoon movie screen in search of love while spouting off in a French accent, the skunk came across as cute and lovable. However, when our own skunk family took up residence under our cabin and spent their nights defending their territory by spraying copious volumes of malodorous ink at the opossums challenging for the same space, Peg called for Terminix. The nearest office was in Tulsa fifty miles away.

Now we have live traps baited with some kind of cat food and cement poured into every cranny around the base of our cabin. Each night the skunks find a new way to burrow, chew or claw their way back under our home.  Gentle Reader, please imagine city girl Peg’s reaction to the wafting of odiferous waves of stench up through the floor and into her rugs and clothing. That’s right. It ain’t pleasant.

On the positive side we probably do not need to worry about any visitors wanting to stay even the traditional 3-day limit. As for Peg, she now understands why I bought a shotgun when we decided to move west.

The Legacy

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The Crew: John, Jason, Mark & Jim

Erma Bombeck says the grass is always greener but usually only over the septic tank. For all other locations what’s beyond the next hill is pretty much the same. But we humans do not let reality interfere with our favorite myths so we keep seeking Eldorado even when we may be happy where we are. And in America the gold ring is often searched for “out west”. That has been true from Plymouth Rock in 1620 until California four hundred years later. We just feel like our lives will be better if we head west.

The Gold Rush of 1849 is the eponym for this belief that paradise awaits us across the Mississippi River. Horace Greeley exhorted America’s youth to fulfill our Manifest Destiny although Greeley decided to remain comfortable in the east editing the New York Tribune. If one drives from say Indiana to Oklahoma she or he will find themselves immersed in a maelstrom of humanity trudging along Interstate 44 in their gasoline powered covered wagons. Instead of a family lumbering along behind a team of oxen with a water bucket clanging against the side and kids peeking out from under the canvas, the parents will be sipping coffee from a thermos and the kids will never see anything but the screens of their cell phones.

Should you, Gentle Reader, have been reading this column recently you may recall Peg and I have decided to join much of the rest of America and move west. Our most recent effort in this regard involved a 26 foot U-Haul truck. It had both heat and air conditioning and covered the countryside at 70 miles per hour; oxen would have had trouble trying to keep up with our fellow travelers who let us know the speed limit is only a suggestion. When we got hungry we stopped at a restaurant. Wild game did not have to be shot. When we got sleepy we stopped at a motel. Blankets on the ground were not our lot. When we got thirsty we grabbed a Coke. Searching for an oasis we did not. Our only hardship was the U-Haul did not have Sirius Radio. Since we took two vehicles we chatted along casually when we wanted to talk to each other by our cell phones while peering out the tinted windows of the U-Haul and car.

What we did fairly quickly realize was what a debt we owe to those who blazed the trail west before us. Those old western movies depicting families suffering dust, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and medical emergencies while fording streams and crossing mountains took on a personal feel. It feels good and gives one confidence to know we come from such stock. And it certainly puts our trivial complaints in perspective.

A Tale of Two Counties

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Posey County, Indiana
Osage County, Oklahoma

 

 

America is a wonderful country from the amazing amalgam of cultures in cities such as Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Portland to the majesty of Yellowstone and the Mississippi River. We are truly fortunate to have the privilege to live here. As for Peg and me, we are most familiar with two counties in two states, Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma.

Of course, the basic element of all inhabited areas is the same, the inhabitants, and those inhabitants are more alike than unalike wherever we live. I have found this to be true from Russia and Ukraine to Palestine and Bahrain as I have taught judges from several foreign countries and from every state in America. Of course, I have also physically visited a few places around the world. It has been my great pleasure to discover practically everybody I meet is interesting. I understand why Will Rogers who grew up near Osage County, Oklahoma said he’d never met someone he didn’t like.

But just focusing on Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, the two places Peg and I call home, I find much to admire in both. In Posey County the soil is so rich and the people are so industrious that enough wheat, corn and soybeans are produced to feed much of the world. And Osage County’s Tallgrass Prairie and hardworking cowhands furnish the accompanying beef. One need never go hungry if he or she spends time in either county.

I hope I have made it clear that I truly appreciate the county where I was born and the county where I have earned a living. On the other hand, just as there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, both Posey and Osage Counties fall a little short of perfection due to the foibles of Mother Nature. I suppose life just requires that we occasionally find half a worm in an apple. Let me explain.

Neither Posey nor Osage County has unbearable weather. Each gets a couple of snows each year and each has a hot July and August along with a rainy spring and fall. Both experience tornadoes. For Posey County, Big Creek and the Ohio and Wabash Rivers occasionally flood as does Bird Creek in Osage County along with the Arkansas and Caney Rivers. But all in all the climate for both counties is fairly salubrious. In fact, the weather in both helps make them more interesting and for Indiana it gives citizens something besides basketball to talk about and for Oklahoma it expands the topics beyond football. Both states used to discuss politics but recently most rational people do not broach that topic.

However, it is not the occasional weather phenomenon that keeps paradise just out of reach for both counties. No, it is Mother Nature’s diabolical sense of humor. Let’s take up spring in Posey County first. You may know that Osage County, Oklahoma has thousands of roaming buffalo (bison). Well, just to make sure Hoosiers remember who dictates what happens in heaven, each April, May and June millions of biting/blood sucking buffalo gnats (flies) descend on Posey County much like the Biblical hordes of locusts. And like beachgoers after the movie Jaws it simply is not fun to be outside.

But Osage County has its own flies and to add to Mother Nature’s amusement She has supplied Osage County with several varieties of scorpions. Gentle Reader, should you never have been stung by a scorpion, as I have in Oklahoma, trust me, it is an experience you do not want. Peg, who is a born Yankee who spent her childhood in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and northern Indiana, has now learned to shake out her boots in the morning to be sure some scorpion has not chosen them as a residence. And the ubiquitous sand rock of Osage County appears to be a scorpion’s version of the Garden of Eden where the scorpions play the serpent’s role.

I guess what it comes down to is both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma are wonderful places to live. But don’t forget to channel Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and wear screening over your head and carry a fly swatter in Posey and shake out your boots in The Osage nine months out of the year.

Table Talk

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is generally regarded as a portrayal of the evils of America’s wealth-driven culture. I suggest it really was about Fitzgerald’s tumultuous marriage to his wife Zelda who constantly drove him crazy. When the book’s narrator, Nick Carraway, says about the wealthy Tom and Daisy Buchanan, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me”, I submit Fitzgerald really has Zelda in mind for Daisy. And he is not referencing Daisy’s money but her infuriating ability to easily manipulate Jay Gatsby and, ergo, Zelda’s penchant to drive Fitzgerald over the edge.

It is the institution of marriage, especially Fitzgerald’s complete inability to keep up with Zelda, that was the impetus for one of America’s great novels. Most married couples can relate to such a theme. For example, let’s you and I consider the dynamics between Peg and me as we negotiate our move from Posey County, Indiana to Osage County, Oklahoma. If there is anything more challenging than paddling a canoe for a couple it is moving.

I do want to be fair in relating both Peg’s and my viewpoints on the matter, but let me point out it was not Adam who first suggested taking a bite of that apple; original sin in-deed! Anyway, let’s start at the beginning when Peg first saw our cabin on the prairie.

“Oh, Jim, it is perfect.” That should have been my clue but then I am a man and female-speak will forever remain a foreign language. I did not comprehend that by perfect Peg meant everything from the yard to the interior absolutely required change. Let me suggest the fact that women generally outlive men by several years disproves Dr. Joseph Brady’s Executive Monkey Theory.

You may recall that in 1958 Brady published the results of his psychology experiment in which two monkeys would both be shocked if one of them did not “correctly” press a lever. One monkey had control, the Executive (or wife), and one monkey (or husband) had no control. The non-executive felt no pressure and lived a normal life. But the Executive died young. So, there, Dr. Brady; why do not us non-executive men live longer? But back to our move to the prairie.

Please allow me to cite just one example of a marital disaster in moving. It involves our “new” antique dining table that Peg saw as perfect until we moved it into the cabin. Then she demanded I modify it so there was more leg room. Not being completely obtuse I referred the problem to an expert, our general contractor in charge of implementing all of Peg’s changes to our once perfect property. Gentle Reader, I assume you agree that tables play a huge role in our lives. There is Leonardo da Vinci’s table of the Last Supper. There is Sir Thomas Malory’s Round Table in Le Morte d’Arthur. There were the endless squabbles over the shape of the “peace” talk tables between South and North Korea and South and North Vietnam. And there is Peg’s once perfect antique dining table.

So, I told Mark, our highly skilled contractor, about my problem and he, also of the male persuasion and also not conversant in female-speak, volunteered to help. You know what they say about good deeds. Mark understood the problem to be not that the sides of the table were too low to allow leg room, but that the whole table was too tall. When Peg saw all four legs had been cut off by four inches, well, somethings cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

All’s well that ends well however as Mark was able to apply his magic and restore Peg’s table including ample leg room. Peg, of course, never blamed Mark anyway. I am the one who had to deal with my own Zelda crisis. Well, Gentle Reader, let’s just table that thought!