• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

James M. Redwine

  • Books
  • Columns
  • 1878 Lynchings/Pogrom
  • Events
  • About

JPeg Osage Ranch

♪ All The Grass Is Green ♪

May 13, 2022 by Jim Leave a Comment

Photo by Peg Redwine

I like brown grass. It matches the unfallen brown leaves I don’t have to rake and the brown stagnant water in the pond that hides my fish from the ravenous blue heron. Also, brown grass does not engender chiggers. Ah, chiggers, Mother Nature’s reminder that we humans are, in fact, at the top of the insect world’s food pyramid. Here’s how the internet waxes eloquent about chiggers:

“They bite their human host (who invited them?) and by embedding their mouthparts into the skin

cause intense irritation with intense itching.” Ugh!

The omniscient internet says chiggers prosper in grasslands, like the Osage County, Oklahoma prairie, and are most numerous in early summer when grass is heaviest; you know, like now! I have been doing my own field work on chiggers since the mowing season has returned. I can attest that for once the internet is correct; chiggers proliferate in tall green grasses.

My ankles still display chigger bites from those halcyon childhood summer days when I would gayly traipse through the green prairie grasses in short pants and bare feet while the chiggers were rejoicing at the opportunity to embed their heads permanently into my skin and scar me physically and mentally for eternity. Surely someone should have kept me out of tall green grass for the first ten years of my life and surely I should not be communicating with chiggers now as beautiful dry brown grass turns into tall green chigger heaven.

Unfortunately, I cannot convince Peg our yard looks just fine with waving green stems interspersed with golden dandelions. She insists that I do battle with the vegetation that is being protected by battalions of chiggers as ferocious as Ukrainian freedom fighters. I don’t get it. Peg plants countless flowers and even decorative grasses while she insists I attack our yard with a smoking, noisy grass decapitating Kubota dragon. No wonder the chiggers launch counter attacks. I say let bygones be bygones. I’ll forgive those childhood chiggers if today’s marauders will leave me alone. But how can they if Peg demands I destroy their homes?

I say the blames for my chigger discomfort falls squarely upon Peg’s pathological need to impress the neighbors. Neighbors? We live in the country! Our cabin is a quarter of a mile from the main county road. Nobody ever sees our yard unless you count FedEx and UPS drivers who deliver Peg’s ever regenerating plants for her to plant and the chiggers to nest in. If I did not mow the yard all summer no one would see or care; well, except Peg of course.

But the real problem is not Peg. The real problem is the United States government that can send out trillions of borrowed dollars to encourage people not to work and trillions of borrowed dollars to help Ukrainians blow up Russian tanks, planes and ships but cannot spend a Depression Era dime to eliminate chiggers. It is time we returned to those thrilling days of yesteryear when instead of spreading armaments we spread insect killer, not DDT, of course.

Let’s hear it for dead chiggers and live, itch-free people. That’s a better campaign slogan than “Ban the U.S. Supreme Court” or “Raise a statue to Sammy Alito.” Well, excuse me a moment. I’ve got to go get Peg to type up this column for the paper and I can see out the window she is gleefully planting even more insect habitat.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Females/Pick on Peg, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Oklahoma, Osage County, Personal Fun Tagged With: blue heron, brown grass, brown leaves, brown stagnant water, chiggers, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Osage County prairie, Peg, plants, Samuel Alito, U.S. Supreme Court, Ukrainian Freedom Fighters

Happy Birthday, Peg!

April 8, 2022 by Jim Leave a Comment

Happy Birthday, Peg! Photo by Jim Redwine

We are almost one full month into spring, the season of renewal for some wives and ennui for their husbands. There is something about damp earth that calls out to such wives as Peg much as the Sirens called out to the crew of Ulysses. Though it would not be politically correct, the Devil is pushing me to try to lash Peg to the steering wheel of her Mini Cooper so she cannot frequent every garden center within twenty-five miles of our cabin.

Peg must have beaucoup amounts of potting soil, countless plants and varieties of seeds, containers of metal, clay and plastic and every conceivable fertilizer and pesticide that is touted by Peg’s countless Facebook friends as the newest miracle agents to produce award winning vegetables and flowers. Of course, beds must be prepared and organized by color, variety, time of planting and varmint prevention. Do you need to ask, Gentle Reader, whom Peg has in mind for these tasks?

I am not a Nancy Reagan type of astrology buff but I do wonder if Peg’s birthday that falls during the first half of April may have influenced her pathological need to commune with the earth. I offer the following horoscope (taken from the internet) as evidence to support my position: under the sign of Aries the first half of April, “Is an amazing time to chase your most precious goals.” I should also include the astrological caution that April will be, “a month of ups and downs”; that will certainly be true for me as I follow Peg’s orders.

I am aware that one must not fall into the Cassandra dilemma of ignoring the claimed wisdom of the stars. You may recall that Cassandra had been both blessed and cursed by the gods. She had the gift of prophecy but no one would believe her so disaster still occurred, including the fall of Troy in Homer’s The Illiad. Therefore, I will keep in mind the prediction in Peg’s horoscope that April will be a great time for her to reach her spring goals of recreating the Gardens of Babylon on the rocky, arid soil of JPeg Osage Ranch. However, I see nothing in any bird entrails or other devices of divination that calls for me to be involved.

The problem is, just as Cassandra, I may be correct but Peg refuses to recognize it. Her position is that my lot is cast as her garden Sherpa and I had better get off the couch. The only saving grace that I see is that both football and basketball seasons are over, the World Series is months from now and the Cardinals probably won’t be involved anyway. And, by the time you read this article, the 2022 Masters Golf Tournament will be history. Perhaps the better part of valor is for me to just accept my fate and conceal my amusement when the deer eat the tops off of everything Peg has planted but the marigolds.

Happy Birthday, Peg!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Baseball, Events, Females/Pick on Peg, Football, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Spring Tagged With: April, Aries, astrology, Cassandra, Facebook friends, fall of Troy, fertilizer, Gentle Reader, Happy Birthday, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, JPeg Osage Ranch, Nancy Reagan, Peg, pesticide, plants, pots, potting soil, seeds, Sherpa, Sirens, Spring, The Illiad, Ulysses

A Cuppa For Peace

March 11, 2022 by Jim Leave a Comment

Post Card from Moscow Coffee Bean. Photo by Peg Redwine

Starbucks Coffee Company has suspended operations in all 130 of its Russia based coffee shops as a protest to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first shop opened in September 2007 in Moscow. Peg and I were in Moscow in 2003. We are Americans. We drink coffee. We were in anguished caffeine withdrawal almost the whole week we were in Russia. I applaud Starbuck’s gesture but worry about those people who are forced back to the pre-2007 coffee-less culture in Russia. Of course, the blame lies with Putin but the headaches are visited on the Russian proletariat as war is visited by Putin on the Ukrainians.

In 2003 Peg and I, after long and frenzied searching, located one coffee shop, The Coffee Bean, in Moscow. As this was our first trip to Russia we had been unaware of Russian culture which at that time considered one cup of instant coffee in tepid water good enough for such foreigners as we. The cold turkey shock treatment made us acutely aware of a society where vodka and cognac were more available at breakfast than coffee.

I do not expect Putin to come to his senses on his own so his war on Ukraine will most likely play out as such debacles always have. There is the initial shock and awe, then the search for weapons of mass destruction, the trading of lies and misinformation, then death, injury and misery followed by years of confusion and remaking of history by the survivors.

I do wonder what Putin’s thought process was that led him into this tar pit. He keeps making public statements and allegations about NATO and Ukraine’s belligerence. His statements and actions appear to arise from paranoia, what most of the world sees as an unreasonable fear that Ukraine and the other pre-1991 Soviet Union countries along Russia’s western border will be used as bases for the United States and our allies to attack Russia.

Putin may have reasoned that as Ukraine was steadily building up its ties to democracies such as America, if he did not strike now, he would have no viable defense to a stronger Ukraine that might become a member of NATO later. Such an analysis seems ludicrous to us but it is not our thought process that is in question. If Putin believes it, even if it is false, then his actions may make sense to him.

He also may have been misled by the relative ease with which Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In today’s attack his objective may have mainly been to take over that part of Ukraine, such as Odessa, that borders the Black Sea. But then he made a common tyrant’s mistake. He got too greedy and decided to grab what was left of the remainder of Ukraine beyond Crimea.

By this time, Gentle Reader, if you are still with me, you are asking, “What does any of this have to do with coffee?” Okay, as Fareed Zakaria might say, “Here’s my take”. I hope the Russian people will have become so hooked on coffee after 2007 that this forced Starbuck’s withdrawal will cause them to see Putin for the despot he is. Then perhaps the aroused common citizens will rise up and replace the warmongering Putin and his incompetent military leaders. If the Russians feel anything similar to the way Peg and I did in 2003, revolution is not so farfetched.

JPeg Osage Ranch Coffee Bar. Photo by Peg Redwine

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Foreign Intervention, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Military, Russia, Ukraine, War, World Events Tagged With: Black Sea, caffeine withdrawal, coffee, Crimea, Fareed Zakaria, Gentle Reader, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Moscow, NATO, Odessa, paranoia, Putin, Revolution, Russia, Starbucks, The Coffee Bean, Ukraine

Crackers of Gold

March 4, 2022 by Jim Leave a Comment

Golden Crackers!
Picture by Peg Redwine

Over the years I have managed to enter the market on the backend of several financial bonanzas. I passed on pet rocks in 1975 and have regretted it for fifty years. But I think I am in on the ground floor of the next gold rush, saltine crackers! Those of you who read this column for advice on how to retire early may wish to listen up. That group does not include Peg, who as many spouses, does not recognize my genius when it arises.

I happened to notice about a couple of months ago that America had a dearth of saltine crackers. Saltines are important to me, and maybe you too. My fallback diet is crunchy peanut butter on crackers. It is quick, easy, tasty and there is no clean up required. Unfortunately, for the last couple of months I have encountered empty shelves at Dollar General and even Walmart when I searched for saltines. And even though I have researched the topic vigilantly, via Google, I cannot find a rational answer to my plea, “Where are the crackers?”

So, when I found a box at Hometown Foods, see the photo for proof, I grabbed it. I felt like I had discovered that first nugget of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. My excitement was dampened by Peg’s response to my plan to try to corner the market, at least within twenty miles of our cabin, on saltines. When I called our son, Jim, who is our financial advisor, he once again sided with Peg. I explained to him I wanted to convert my IRA to cash and buy all the saltines I could find. He mumbled something about a guardianship and hung up.

As you know, Gentle Reader, no prophet is known in his own country, but I can clearly see our barn filled with boxes of saltines, if I can find them, that will jump in value each day, especially with that maniac Putin destroying our stock market as he tries to destroy Ukraine. Now is the time to reach for that brass ring I have just missed out on so many times before.

So, darn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. And if you wish to invest with me in my plan to corner the market on saltine crackers, you better hurry because I can feel the rest of America about to jump on the roller coaster. Please do not mention any of this to Jim or Peg.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, Females/Pick on Peg, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Personal Fun Tagged With: America, cash, crunchy peanut butter, Dollar General, Gentle Reader, Gold Rush, Google, Hometown Foods, IRA, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Saltine crackers, stock market, Sutter's Mill, Walmart

Bowled Over

December 29, 2021 by Jim Leave a Comment

Photo by Peg Redwine

Much as the Summer Solstice ushers in the ennui of torturously less daylight each day, as each of the forty-four college football bowl games is completed the dark pall of life without football forces us to put down our beer, get off the couch and go back to work. I accept that COVID is a significant issue but so is mental health. And one of America’s best palliatives for depression in the gray days of winter is watching other people risk their well-being on the football field.

The first college football game was played on November 06, 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton in New Jersey; one hundred people attended the game that Rutgers won 06-04. The first college bowl game was the Tournament of Roses’ East-West game (The Rose Bowl) played on January 01, 1902 between the University of Michigan Wolverines and the Stanford University Cardinal; there were eight thousand-five hundred spectators. Michigan won 49-0 and Stanford quit with eight minutes left to play. That first bowl game was initiated to increase interest in Pasadena, California as a tourist destination and to market the surrounding area and its products. All bowl games since that first one have had similar goals. The outcome of the games is not of paramount concern to most.

The attendance at such highly hyped events as the Tailgreeter Cure Bowl between Coastal Carolina University and Northern Illinois University on December 17, 2021 is indicative of the lack of fanaticism at most bowl games; 9,784, about the same number of fans who showed up for that first Rose Bowl. The bodies in the stadiums at bowl games are not the targets, eyeballs on TV advertising and promotion of each venue are.

As for the schools and players involved, they may have analogous goals. The colleges want to showcase their products and make some money and some players have hopes of enhancing their football futures either as players, coaches or announcers. In other words, the first bowl game was for exhibition purposes and, except for the payout by major sponsors to each school, that is still the overriding rational.

With that in mind I have a few suggestions on how we can incorporate the goals of all involved, or watching, with the ever-expanding number of college bowl games. As I mentioned earlier, we already have 44 bowls. It would require an addition of only 8 more to be able to have one bowl game every week of the year. Surely such eager potential sponsors as Bitcoin or China would pony-up for a chance to showcase their greatness. Maybe a bidding war could be encouraged between Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban or Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Israel and Iran could promise to dismantle their nuclear ambitions and sell their peaceful intentions via commercials. Surely Facebook and TikToc would want to play.

One might wonder how one extra, exhibition-type game could be woven into a school’s regular football schedule. From the quality of play of most bowl games and with countless players opting to sit out, it is apparent that just showing up for one more Saturday should not be a problem. When my friends and I played Friday night football it was not unusual for some of us to show up the following Saturday morning for an impromptu, unorganized sandlot game just because. A lot of bowl games have a similar feel.

This system would expand college football perpetually and solve the ego problem for such “sponsors” as Jimmy Kimmel who endowed the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. America could probably easily come up with underwriters such as Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Heck, I humbly suggest the Jim Redwine Armadillo Bowl might draw a nod or two and Peg and I will kick in fifty bucks apiece if that would suffice. We could host it in a pasture at JPeg Osage Ranch if the resident varmints do not too strongly object and if fans do not mind sitting on the ground. TV rights could be negotiated.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: America, COVID-19, Events, Football, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Middle East, Oklahoma, Osage County, Personal Fun Tagged With: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bitcoin, China, college football bowl games, COVID, depression, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Facebook, gray days of winter, Iran, Israel, James M. Redwine, Jeff Bezos, Jim Redwine, Jim Redwine Armadillo Bowl, Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl, JPeg Osage Ranch, Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg, mental health, Rutgers vs Princeton, Summer Solstice, Tailgreeter Cure Bowl, The Rose Bowl, TikTok, Tournament of Roses

Cabin Fever

December 22, 2021 by Jim 1 Comment

 

It is official. Peg and I have the fever. No, not that new-fangled COVID fever, but the original fever spoken of in Genesis, Cabin Fever. Why God could not leave well enough alone I do not know. After six days of hard work, He sat back, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Genesis, Chapter 1, verse 31). I guess “very good” was not good enough because after one day of rest God noticed, … “[T]here was no man to till the ground” (Genesis, Chapter 2, verse 5). For all those Biblical scholars, such as my sister, who posit God is actually female, this is strong support for their position. A perfect world could be made more perfect if there were a man to do work around the Garden of Eden.

Of course, Adam could not just lounge around grazing on all but one of Eden’s delights and enjoying eternal life, God had to give him Eve so there would be someone to point out this perfect world needed countless repairs and maintenance, sort of like our little log cabin on the prairie. The week before Christmas brought COVID’s resulting Cabin Fever boiling to the surface at JPeg Osage Ranch.

I do not know how the perfect home Peg fell in love with three years ago magically transformed into a property that constantly requires immediate repair. All I know for sure is I am much more adept at leisure than labor and Peg sees it as her wifely duty to save me from that condition. After all, it was Eve’s sin that brought man’s punishment of work into our lives.

Starting with COVID’s first reported cases in December 2019, Peg and I have gradually adapted from a life of travel, interaction with friends and family, concerts, movies, ball games and dining out to a world with only one other person in it. We have each developed coping skills to handle what may be a life sentence of one-couple isolation. I have reasonably and considerately allowed Peg her own space to do as she pleases such as laundry, housework, juggling family finances via the internet and gardening; there’s that Eve legacy again. Peg on the other hand seems to have a visceral reaction to my approach which is to memorize cable news reports and change sweatsuits occasionally. Hey, I do not concern myself with her choices.

Two years of Cabin Fever finally erupted into full-blown crisis this past weekend when Peg noticed a tiny water leak in the bathroom. It would not have rotted through the floor for quite some time and that is what I politely told her. Well, her reaction was not fit for a column in a family newspaper. She demanded I turn off the fascinating program I was watching on archeological discoveries in the Bermuda Triangle and loudly said, “Do Something!”. Something turned into one full day of me attempting to understand the mysteries of plumbing then another two days of going without the use of the bathroom and waiting for a plumber who told us, “It’s hopeless after your input, now everything will have to be replaced. That will be $100 for analysis of the problem, $200 for parts and $300 for labor. Of course, that’s just an estimate; it will be more if you insist on helping.” When the plumber left, I calmly pointed out to Peg that for the price of a few wet rags we could have saved all the bother for some time. Again, her response was not printable.

So here we are in our own little Garden of Eden waiting for someone to cure COVID and perhaps return us to the halcyon days of yore. One positive thing is, since Peg is not talking to me, I can finish the entertaining program I’m now watching on the mating dances of fruit flies without interruption and without Peg’s demand that something must be fixed, “Right Now!”.

By the way, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that you and yours have a COVID-free New Year. As for Peg and me, I can only wish for at least an occasional maintenance-free week or two during the long dark period between the Super Bowl and the start of the 2022 football season.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Christmas, COVID-19, Events, Females/Pick on Peg, Gavel Gamut, JPeg Osage Ranch, Males, New Year's, Personal Fun Tagged With: 2022 football season, Adam, bathroom leak, Bermuda Triangle, cabin fever, Christmas, coping skills, COVID, Do Something, Eve, fever, Garden of Eden, Genesis, God, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, JPeg Osage Ranch, labor, leisure, maintenance free, Merry Christmas, New Year, one-couple isolation

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to Next Page »

© 2022 James M. Redwine

 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.