James M. Redwine

New Year's

Predictions

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Happy New Year! Photo by Peg Redwine

It is the new year, a time when we humans have often either savored our accomplishments, reflected on our regrets, dreamed of our hopes or dreaded our fears. The new year has long been a time when people of many cultures have analyzed the past and predicted the future. As Yogi Berra might have said, the future is hard to predict. However, that has never stopped us from trying. As for me, I find regretting the past only makes it more regrettable and dreading the unknown future only leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. On the other hand, attempting to predict the as yet uncontrollable events ahead will probably do little harm as the world will ignore us anyway. Ergo, I will boldly, if ignorantly, publish a few of my predictions as my experience has been hardly anyone will pay attention so no harm will result.

First, I will not lose weight nor exercise more unless an increasing frequency of nighttime bathroom trips qualifies. Nor will I read the many potentially life-altering books I have in my library. Second, I will not help Peg more around the house nor spend less money on chips and dip and less time in front of the telly. Third, none of my complaints about any public officials will result in any constructive impacts as, first of all they will not be read and secondly none of the officials will think they need to make any changes.

When it comes to generic suggestions, such as I and many others have been making for many years, our state and federal governments may take umbrage, if they even take notice, but not one of our calls for peace in the Middle East or anywhere else will be heeded. In fact, I predict our national leaders will swallow the false intelligence once again fed to us by Israel, such as “weapons of mass destruction”, and we will support a war against Iran as we enable Israel’s theft and destruction of Palestine and Syria.

I do predict Ukraine’s invasion by Russia will finally reach a stalemate on the terms I predicted just after it began three years ago; and, after we have expended billions of our treasure. Russia will stop in return for a permanent seizure of Crimea that they have occupied since 2014 and the permanent occupation of a substantial portion of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River with Ukraine to maintain its ownership and control over the port of Odessa on the Black Sea. I further predict Russia will not help rebuild Ukraine, but America will to the tune of many more billions of our dollars.

Well, Gentle Reader, I suppose you can tell why I find predictions of the future as unhelpful as Yogi might have. I do have many more fears and hopes relating to our fragile globe’s future, but I find the concentration upon them debilitating. And, as it is the new year, I will just succumb to muddling on through 2025. “Happy” New Year to you all.

They Deserve A Special Place In ….

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Gentle Reader, as we face a New Year my thoughts are ever hopeful we have learned something worthwhile from the years that have gone before us. I realize this has been the dream of most of you too. However, we all know there are those whose thoughts and behaviors never turn towards improvement, but in fact, are often the very things that need to be improved.

The best example I know of placing such cretins where they deserve to be is The Divine Comedy (The Inferno) written by Dante degli Alighieri (1265-1321) in the 14th century. Dante did not just suffer the infuriating faux pas and social sins of people such as Dante’s political enemies in Italy, he created an elaborate hell of deserved punishments and placed them in it. To that I say AMEN! Perhaps, we should at a minimum list and expose some of the boorish behaviors that call for condemnation. You, Gentle Reader, will surely wish to recognize many others that quickly come to mind.

I will lead with those lazy louts who defile our roads, streets and sidewalks with their litter. Is it too burdensome to put one’s trash in a designated receptacle? Oh, and that includes cigar and cigarette butts, you buttheads. I humbly suggest such losers should have to dine off unwashed dinner plates previously used to gather stockyard feces.

Then there are the geniuses who ”child-proof” medicine bottles by making them completely unopenable except by a chainsaw. This genre of misled child saviors should acknowledge that if a medicine bottle that contains medicine for children and the elderly cannot be opened, it does not protect but endangers the intended classes. I think a reasonable punishment for such bottle cappers would be to have to open every can or bottle only with their teeth.

Another group of public minded workers in need of training are traffic officers who, even once a traffic accident scene is secure and any injured are removed, fail to direct vehicles so that people lined up for miles in each direction can continue on. Often officers forget that most of the world’s citizens were not involved in the accident but do have other things to do. A proper sanction might be making such unconcerned public servants always be the last in line for Taylor Swift concert tickets then telling them it is sold out when they finally reach the ticket seller.

And what about those makers of products such as expensive clothes who are so concerned that some miscreant might steal one of the thousands of items on the shelves that they stick or staple or otherwise attach labels to each product that can only be removed by damaging the product? Perhaps a label should be affixed to their forehead with a staple as a reminder not everyone is a thief.

Another place that reciprocal treatment might be called for is drive-through establishments, such as coffee shops, where cups of scalding liquid are filled so full there is no way to handle them without the liquid splashing upon one’s lap? Do the baristas get some satisfaction from seeing us drive away in fits and jerks? Workers at such establishments might be sentenced to a lifetime of sitting in a hot tub of tar heated to a toasty 103° Fahrenheit.

Now, I know we have just skimmed the greasy surface of situations that call for divine, or at least heartfelt, retribution for behaviors we wish we could see change for 2025. On the other hand, Dante knew he could not expiate all of Italy’s 14th century uncalled for behaviors. He just did the worst he could. I call for the same deliverance from the jackanapes who show no concern for the rest of us.

You, Gentle Reader, might desire the same including the extinction of newspaper columnists who campaign for never to be achieved outcomes.

Cabin Fever

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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.

Scat 2020!

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How was that for a New Year’s Eve? On the other hand, just about anybody who chose to could attend a masked ball in 2020-2021 where many of the loud, inebriated strangers eschewed the masks. But one could still engage in or be subjected to rude behavior and wake up at noon thinking “Oh, no!”. ’Ole 19 may have changed our social interactions but human nature does not metamorphosize so quickly; we are still capable of making poor decisions to which we have given hardly a thought. After all, if we have no regrets have we really lived? With memories of such moments in mind, Peg and I spent New Year’s Eve in front of the fireplace, just we two and a bottle of medium-priced red wine. We gratefully rang out 2020 and truly welcomed 2021 as we reprised some of what the Lone Ranger might refer to as “Those thrilling days of yesteryear!”

In December 1999-January 2000 we decided to ring in the new millennium with a ski trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We skied all day on December 31st then partied at a live music gala to usher in 2000. There were no masks and no temperature checks; where did that world go? Regardless, Peg and I replayed that New Year’s Eve from twenty years ago as this past Saturday we sat in large rockers before the fire and compared 2000 to 2020.

Instead of skiing during the day on New Year’s Eve this year we attended a physical therapy session to help us deal with the aches and pains brought on by the broken bones we each incurred on ski trips after 2000. Then, instead of dancing and drinking as in days of old we returned to our cabin and found a skunk in the live trap I had set. The skunk was not in a festive or forgiving mood. No live music was in the offing. Surely Peg and I have not changed that much in a mere twenty years but I confess I felt no call to celebrate Auld Lang Syne after enduring body manipulation and skunk odorification. Things called out to be dealt with.

There was a time I enjoyed hunting then I lost interest in it. Somehow getting up at o’dark thirty and immersing my body in the vicissitudes of weather for the possibility I might shoot some creature that I would then need to eviscerate and skin before cooking lost out to packaged, store-bought meats. Therefore, for several years about the only wild animal I have communed with has been the occasional hapless house mouse. Then Peg and I bought this cabin in the woods. It came fully furnished with an abundance of spiders and scorpions inside and a plethora of raccoons, armadillos, opossums and skunks outside. My hunting years are now being revisited.

In the two years we have lived in our cabin we have seen our yard extensively cultivated by digging animals and fertilized by scads of their scat. And with the skunks there has often been an accompanying aroma. It may say more about my character than it does about our furry frequenters but I keep watching Bill Murray’s slide into groundhog insanity while I cheer for Murray to take the nuclear option in Caddyshack. At least Murray only had to deal with one invasive specie on that golf course. My war with Mother Nature has been fought on several fronts.

The casualty count so far has been 8 raccoons, 10 opossums, 6 armadillos and 9 skunks. The most recent skunk was the one that joined us on New Year’s Eve. I found it in one of my “humane” live traps near the foundation to the cabin. The skunk was at least as upset as I was; he exuded his displeasure in the manner you might expect.

Now I know some people trap such critters, drive out to the countryside and then release them with a self-righteous feeling of humanitarianism. Of course, then the pests become a problem for innocent other residents. I uncharitably expect such misguided miscreants are the same type of people who throw their trash out on the public right-of-ways without a thought of who must endure their boorish behavior and put up with their scat. How about just putting the refuse in a trash bin and not imposing their nuisances on others? The only satisfaction I find as Peg and I pick up the trash along our county road is that most of the trash I see is beer and soft drink cans and empty fried food containers. I content myself with the thought that the slobs who defile our environment may end up with health problems and indigestion. As for their release of varmints instead of properly disposing of them, I can only hope some other thoughtless soul is doing the same thing to them.

In that regard, I suggest two New Year’s Resolutions for general consideration: (1) properly dispose of trash, and (2) do not impose pests on others. And, by the way, Happy New Year! Let’s hear it for the passing of 2020 which was pretty well filled with plenty of scat of its own.