James M. Redwine

Males

Spring, Humbug

by Leave a Comment

James Taylor wrote Sweet Baby James in 1970:

“There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
Song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me”

If you side with those who dream of a home in the sky, paradise was populated by Adam and Eve. Their Garden of Eden was perfect but that did not stop Eve from trying to improve it. You know, kind of like some wives when spring arrives. Say my wife, Peg, for example. I can imagine the conversation between Adam and Eve.

“Adam, isn’t this idyllic? Everything is just perfect. However, that one tree needs its fruit plucked. Would you mind just keeping an eye on that serpent while you are lounging around doing nothing?”

It is theoretically possible that was the beginning of humanity’s Rite of Spring where husbands are cast out of their dens by their wives who are intoxicated from the sight of emerging buds, the feel of damp earth and the smell of humas. I am reminded of Peg’s need to transform our perfect new home with paint and flower beds. Spring should be re-named the season of restless wives and “Honey, could you?” Where in the Constitution is it provided that it is illegal, or at least, unpolitic, for husbands to prop up their feet while waiting for a fish to make a mistake?

What estrogen fueled behavior is it that prevents wives from allowing winter to gently and slowly thaw its way to autumn and football season? Or as Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady asked, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” My guess is that Dr. Louis Leakey only found Lucy and not her mate in Olduvai Gorge because she had her husband off performing some springtime chore. Nothing has changed in a few hundred thousand years.

Now, it may not be that the female response to spring is responsible for all the world’s troubles, but I think it goes without question that Peg’s incessant activities both in our cabin and our yard interfere with my desire to fish our pond and watch Gunsmoke reruns. I will leave it to you, Gentle Reader, at least those of you of the testosterone persuasion, what else could it be?

Labor Day

by Leave a Comment

My father’s father was killed in an accident when my dad was nine years old. My father had to quit school in his third-grade year to help his mother support the family. He went to work in an independent coal mine running water to the older workers. The mine was unregulated by state or federal law. The shaft was supported with tree limbs for beams and the coal produced was high sulfur. The dust he breathed helped lead to his death from cancer when he was fifty-eight. He left the mine which closed when the shaft collapsed upon some of the miners. Dad was out of the mine on a water run at the time the supporting tree limbs gave way.

It was not just coal dust that contributed to his health problems. When he had to search out another job after the cave-in, he found work in a cement plant where he breathed in cement dust for several years. He lost that job when he had a heart attack at age thirty-three but had no health nor unemployment benefits from the company. He was out of work and bedridden for six months while my mother nursed him back to health. They were without outside income or insurance during that period. That is why my father went into insurance sales. He and my mother were strong supporters of workers’ rights who revered Labor Day just as they did July Fourth. They knew that law was essential to ensure safe working conditions. Such things as child labor laws, restricted work hours and days, health precautions and minimum wage requirements are not socialist ideals but are some of the building blocks of our economy. Labor Day is a celebration of America’s commitment to fairness, equality and good economics in the workplace.

Of course, as Peg points out, for about half of America’s workforce the bulk of their work is in their homes. Peg says it is ironic that we have a national holiday named Labor Day. She asks, “What about some fairness and equality in labor around the home and, what’s more, what about some recognition not just for ‘child labor’ but for the labor of having a child?” I should have seen this discussion coming when I casually mentioned my days of manual labor for hire.

According to Peg, Mother’s Day is a fine recognition of mothers but flowers once a year just doesn’t cut it. “Where’s the beef?” she asks. “Where is the minimum wage for round-the-clock cleaning, cooking, laundry, deliveries, nursing, sewing, yard work, gardening, child care, carpooling, schedule maintenance, bookkeeping, counseling and furnishing a sympathetic sounding board for every hurt feeling? And what about some time off occasionally? How about some time alone with peace and quiet and a cool drink that somebody else brings to me?”

Well, Gentle Reader, you most likely fall on whichever side of this one-way discussion your gender dictates. So, for now, I plan to change the subject and return to a topic I may be able to discuss without interruption, that is, Labor Day. Oh, not the one Peg is on about, but the one declared by President Grover Cleveland in 1894. So here goes.

Peg got agitated as we watched numerous male politicians on television exhort the wonders of the American, mostly male, workers whose harsh working conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries caused the birth of Labor Day. When it came to Peg’s complaints about work in the home, I felt duty bound to point out that husbands were responsible for much of her complained about female labors. After all, someone has to wear the clean clothes, eat the food and watch the kids play soccer and baseball. It is not all beer and TV you know. And if anyone had ever asked men to have the kids, who is to say we might not have considered it.

Further, most men have no problem with wearing the same comfortable t-shirt and Levi’s for a week or so. And on top of that, beer and chips have plenty of nutritional value to sustain men through football season. I told Peg, gently, that she was being disingenuous in her analysis of the significance of Labor Day. Labor Day for male workers was much like the right to vote for women. While women were wearing white, marching and singing songs about freedom, we men were busy gathering at bars talking about seeking fair working conditions. Men gladly organized for shorter work weeks and safer working conditions as women sought not just the right to vote, but also better working conditions and fair and equal treatment everywhere. The two movements fed off the synergy of one another and, together, made life better for both men at work and women at home and work.

Of course, those intertwined crusades for justice made our country better for us all. So, I guess if Peg thinks Labor Day is truly about all labor, I will, in the spirit of home harmony, agree. After all, I’m getting hungry and the game’s about to start on tv and I’m hoping Peg will bring me chips and a beer.

Femme Fatales

by Leave a Comment

Photo by Peg Redwine

William Shakespeare is the English language’s greatest writer, in part, because he was our greatest psychologist. No one understood and used irony as did Shakespeare. Hamlet, with Shakespeare’s tongue firmly planted in his cheek, laments, “Frailty thy name is woman”. Hamlet who is the unquestioned definition of vacillation, “To be or not to be,” is casting shade upon his mother, Gertrude. Gertrude was complicit and conspired in the murder of her husband, Hamlet’s father also named Hamlet, the King of Denmark, so she could marry his younger brother, Claudius. Gertrude also helped Claudius defeat her son’s rightful claim to inherit the crown. Hamlet, Act 1, scene ii.

But the first woman to conspire to lead mankind down the primrose path to destruction was Eve, Genesis, Chapter III, vs 1-24. Thanks to Eve’s perfidy with the serpent, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, women were assigned the pain of childbirth and we all lost eternal life. However, there are many who agree with Mark Twain who wrote in his book Pudd’nhead Wilson:

“Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.”

Then we have nefarious Delilah, Book of Judges, Chapter 16, vs 4-31, who as an agent of the Philistines in Gaza, wheedled out from Samson the secret to his great strength then set him up to be weakened and blinded. In World War I the Germans used Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (Mata Hari) to spy on the Allies. She was executed in 1917. Also, Tokyo Rose (Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino) and Axis Sally (Mildred Sisk) sought to dispirit the Allied soldiers in the Pacific and Europe in World War II.

Perhaps the most famous conspirator against her country was Helen of Troy. According to Homer in the Iliad, Helen betrayed her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, by eloping with Paris, a son of King Priam of Troy. Helen’s misguided loss of control, “Launched a thousand ships” and led to a long war between Greece and Troy.

By now, Gentle Reader, you have noticed a pattern of female conspirators who used their womanly wiles to bring about disasters. What my wife, Peg, and my sister, Jane, who proofed this column pointed out was the author of Gavel Gamut and all those who “documented” the sins of the distaff conspirators were male. My rejoinder to Peg and Janie is, “The facts are the facts and pointing them out does not, in and of itself, show evidence of misogyny”.

Therefore, when that paragon of cable news, Jesse Watters, claims Taylor Swift is in league with the Biden government to affect the 2024 presidential election and that Taylor Swift along with Travis Kelce are conspiring to steal Super Bowl LVIII for the Kansas City Chiefs, I say, “So?”

I know there may be a couple of people who could be influenced by Taylor and Travis but would Shakespeare deign to write a plot as convoluted as the Rolling Stone magazine credits right-winger Rogan O’Handley with:

“Far right influencer Rogan O’Handley went so far as to suggest that if the (Kansas City) Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce would trigger an apocalyptic chain of events that would kill millions. ‘You MUST defeat the Chiefs’, O’Handley wrote in an X post addressed to the San Francisco 49ers. ‘If you don’t, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce) and his girlfriend (Taylor Swift) are going to tour the country as world champions helping elect Joe Biden. WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die. The fate of the free world rests upon your shoulders.’”

Of course, Mr. O’Handley was probably just writing from the perspective of a 49er fanatic in the same ironic/sarcastic vein as most who are having fun with the Taylor and Travis phenomenon. Unfortunately, in today’s America we often do not afford our cultural adversaries a sense of humor. Therefore, some of the cable news pundits see doomsday via public voyeurism of a private relationship. However, Mr. O’Handley and the rest of the 49er faithful, let me remind you that Joe Montana and Jerry Rice will not be in the San Francisco lineup for this Super Bowl, but Patrick Mahomes and Rashee Rice will be. So, good luck to you.

Now, the fate of the free world may hang in the balance if Taylor and Travis are not prevented from their alleged coup. But there are plenty of other threats to our democracy. So, I say to Travis, GO CHIEFS, and to Taylor, YOU GO GIRL!

Photo by Peg Redwine

 

Good Things Come With Time

by Leave a Comment

Photo by Peg Redwine

As did Athena, the goddess of wisdom who sprung full grown from the head of Zeus, occasionally a Mozart-type creative genius is born into the world already with great mental acuity. But most people only develop wisdom over a substantial amount of time. That is why virtually every culture honors its older citizens, not because they have lived a long time but because they may have accumulated knowledge and may possess sound judgment as a result. Of course, good judgment often is earned the hard way, that is, in response to earlier bad decisions. If one survives enough poor choices, better choices and better advice become more likely.

When it comes to good choices, I have been impressed by the simplicity of the dietary decisions of two elderly women. France’s Jeanne Louise Calment lived to be over 122. She quit smoking at age 120 and she claimed her long life was due to her penchant for chocolate and port wine.

Her fellow Frenchwoman, Sister Andre, is now the oldest person on earth at 118 years of age. Sister Andre survived the Spanish Flu in 1918 and recovered from COVID-19 in 2020. The Catholic nun stated that chocolate is her favorite food and she drinks a glass of wine every day. That certainly sounds better to me than kale and exercise. I am changing my approach.

One recent phenomenon of reaching an old age that as a male concerns me is that since the beginning of the 21stcentury of the 24 oldest people on earth only two have been men. Now I do not know the ages of many Biblical women but according to the Old Testament at Genesis 5:27, Methuselah lived to be 969 years old and Genesis at 9:29 tells us Methuselah’s grandson, Noah, lived until he was 950. What happened to men? I say we are now short about 900 years and women are now greatly outliving us. Please do not mistake my intent. It is not that I want women to live shorter lives than men, I just want all of us to, at least, make it to well over 100 or even receive a Biblical allotment of a long tenure.

In that regard, I must replace my granola bars with an assortment of chocolate. As to the wine increment, Peg and I bought a wine cooler at the Pawhuska, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce auction last Saturday and Pawhuska’s Blue Sky Bank, that contributed the cooler, filled it with fun brands of wine, including some from the Prairie Rattler Winery in Shidler, Oklahoma. I feel heathier already. In fact, Peg and I now qualify to be full members of my sister Jane’s so-called women’s book club, Inspiritice, that ostensibly meets to discuss good books, but in reality, just gets together to drink good wine. I think they may all live forever; at least I hope so.

Photo by Peg Redwine
Photo by Jim Redwine

Blame Lucy

by Leave a Comment

Louis and Mary Leakey discovered some early human ancestors in Tanzania, Africa’s Olduvai Gorge in 1959. Donald Johanson discovered who may be our original grandmother in Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley in 1974. He named her Lucy because he was a Beatles fan and listened to the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” right after his discovery. It may be uncharitable to Johanson and paleontology to point out many believe the song was a paean to LSD. On the other hand, those who question Lucy’s bona fides may find solace in this theory.

At the opposite end of those Doubting Thomas’ is the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins from the University of Oxford who pushed human origins back to as much as five million years ago and posited his meme theory. Dawkins suggests that it is our replicating genes that determine who and what we are and why we behave as we do. One of his famous analogies to explain the evolution of human biology and behavior is to suggest we envision a long line of mothers holding hands all the way back to Lucy. And, as for me, my experiences with my mother and my wife, Peg, convince me there is some credence to the science of the Leakeys, Johanson and Dawkins.

Let’s envision Lucy, our grandmother, in her African cave while our mythical grandfather, call him Adam, goes out to hunt a mastodon for dinner. Adam is struggling with how to trick the massive beast to stampede over a cliff, but Lucy is back home planning for Adam’s return. After Lucy rearranges the lodge pole front door for the tenth time, she surveys the cave’s interior. She is dissatisfied with the position of the bearskin rug she had Adam move just yesterday. She makes a mental note to have Adam shake out the bearskin and figure out a way to attach it to the granite wall of the cave.

Next, Lucy inventories the two stone cooking utensils that Adam carved out for her last week and decides she must have another small one for their new baby’s meals. Lucy switches the positions of the two vessels for the third time. They look better to her now. Lucy gives the baby a bath in the stream running in front of their cave and realizes with only a few days of work with his stone hoe Adam could divert water right to their cave. Lucy resolves to mention her idea to Adam over a handful of fermenting blackberries when he returns.

Meanwhile Adam is full of a sense of accomplishment because he has skinned the mastodon and is hauling the hide, one ivory tusk and a huge chunk of meat back for Lucy to admire. Adam assumes his work is done for a week or two because Lucy will need to tan the hide, process the meat and make sewing needles from the tusk as she cooks dinner and nurses the baby.

Gentle Reader, you may wonder, or you may not care, why we are discussing the lives of Lucy, Adam and baby from thousands of years ago. Well, I will tell you. About three years ago Peg and I moved into our cabin on the prairie. By unspoken agreement Peg took over all space but my barn. This worked out fine until over the two years of COVID Peg had time to organize every inch of her Girl Cave, the Bunkhouse, the Cabin and even the neutral territory of our garage. Last week spring truly arrived and Peg turned her gaze on my barn. It has not been pretty.

As long as she did not have to look at my laissez-faire system of “if it ain’t in my way, why worry about it”, well, she didn’t worry herself with it. But once she opened the overhead doors and found the mother lode of “my stuff”, she focused her female/Lucy type DNA upon my space. It reminded me of when my sainted mother would venture into my room on a Saturday morning and turn it upside down. Peg and Mom and Lucy and all wives and mothers in between have spent about two million years of two X chromosomal fixation with organization of sons’ and husbands’ behavior. I guess my three-year barn reprieve is over.

Cabin Fever

by 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.