James M. Redwine

Oklahoma State University

Respite and Nepenthe

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Edgar Allan Poe in The Raven holds out little hope for relief from the memories of the lost Lenore. Poe seeks respite in the mythical ancient Greek beverage, nepenthe, that causes forgetfulness. In those Dog Days of summer where August made the fires of hell sound inviting, respite and nepenthe finally arrived in September on the wings of the forward pass. Gentle Reader, allow me to quote my favorite author on our salvation from the hades of 100℉ temperatures:

“The crisp autumn air. The dry brown grass. Sweaty pads and the exhilaration of combat without weapons.
The kind of battle where one can experience the thrill of having been shot at and missed without even being shot at.
Football! Ersatz war. Clashes of pride, power and cunning.”

Echoes of our Ancestors: The Secret Game, p. vii
By James M. Redwine

Football has returned and the grass is going dormant. The experts may assert there is no connection but I say the frequency of mowing is inverted to my several favorite teams’ re-emergence in game day uniforms. Somehow the same weather that keeps me from doing outside chores does not hinder me from sitting in the heat for four hours watching boys and men shoving an inflated pig bladder covered with cowhide back and forth.

Perhaps it is because I no longer have to endure the two-a-day early morning and evening practices nor the inane exhortations of coaches who themselves also no longer must do so, but watching others play football sure beats working in the heat. In fact, Peg and I have already been jiggling our schedules so we can follow the Hoosiers, the Cowboys and the Sooners on Saturday. Our new season hopes are high but any disappointments can be assuaged with guacamole, chips and cold beer. Besides, even though we may have the occasional opportunity to attend a game in person, normally we will be sitting on the couch in 72-degree air conditioning while others entertain us with their sweat and blood and give us an excuse to leave the lawnmowers put away. I would not want you to think Peg and I have not had to make our own hard choices during the football season. For example, we had to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning to watch the 2023 Super Bowl when we were in the country of Georgia; it was tough.

Anyway, thank you to all those who have sacrificed their August sweating and preparing and now their autumn struggling for our relief. We truly appreciate it and will frequently raise a parting glass in your honor.

Photo by Peg Redwine

Other Countries Heard From

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Photo by Peg Redwine

President Kennedy gave his inaugural address January 20, 1961 when I was a senior in high school. He was concerned about the Soviet Union’s 1957 Sputnik achievement and challenged American youth to respond. That September I entered Oklahoma State University and boldly majored in physics. By June 1962 I had learned how to smoke but not learned anything that would raise concerns in Russia. I changed my major to English and then in June 1963 decided to “ask what I could do for my country” without the headaches of college level studies. I became a 1960’s Okie and headed for California. On the way I took my first foray out of the United States to Nogales, Mexico.

My friend and fellow OSU dropout, Ed Kelso, and I drove his 1954 Mercury down to the Mexican border and were waved through without so much as a question, much less a visa. We stopped at the first bar we came to and ran into my old high school classmate Jim Reed and a few other guys from Pawhuska, Oklahoma who were there on a similar journey of cultural discovery. What I noted from my brief sojourn was my high school Spanish was sufficient as long as we had U.S. Dollars. I also received my first faint awareness of how lucky I was to have been born north of the border.

Another foreign country experience was when as a member of the National Judicial College faculty I was sent for two weeks (December 1999-January 2000) to Ukraine to teach Ukrainian judges. I liked the Ukrainian people but found their lives to be quite difficult. The judges told me they frequently did not receive their small monthly salaries and the Ukrainian government often failed to provide them and their families with promised individual family housing. Also, police corruption was in full view on the streets of Kiev and workers who were supposed to help repair such public assets as the fountain in “Freedom Square” did about as much work as I did at Oklahoma State. As the old Soviet saying went, “The government pretended to pay them and they pretended to work.” I left Ukraine with a greater appreciation of what our Founders sacrificed for us.

Then in 2003 the National Judicial College sent me to Russia for a week to teach Russian judges about jury trials. The old Soviet Union abolished jury trials after the 1917 Revolution and Russia was just reinstituting them into their legal system. Peg was able to be with me on that trip and we, once again, found the Russian judges to be friendly and gracious but the Russian culture caused us great chagrin. A good cup of coffee was truly a foreign concept, but the consumption of alcohol was quite prevalent. The idea of innocent unless proven guilty was belied by the defendants being housed in metal and plastic cages in the courtroom. And when a defendant on trial for murder was marched into the courtroom by four AK47 carrying uniformed guards right in front of the jury, my American sense of justice was assaulted. It was good to get back to my Indiana courtroom with its guarantees of equal justice. Russia was interesting, but the United States was good to come home to.

Most recently (June 2022-February 2023) Peg and I completed a six-month judicial teaching mission sponsored by the American Bar Association, the East-West Management Institute and the United States Agency for International Development. I was sent to the country of Georgia that until 1991 had been part of the old Soviet Union. My duties were to make friends, observe, work with and give suggestions to Georgian judges based upon my more than forty years of experience as an American judge.

We had a wonderful experience with the Georgian judges and our newly-made Georgian friends. They could not have treated us any better. Everyone we met was positive about our involvement and open to suggestions. We would gladly return to Georgia whenever invited. Of course, we did note substantial differences between the Georgian culture and America’s. Georgia is bordered on the north by Russia and on the south by Turkey. Twenty percent of Georgia is militarily occupied by Russia; that is a constant worry for the Georgian people. Peg and I thought how different our lives in America are. Our northern border is Canada which we visited in 2018 and is about as good a neighbor as any country could have. And our southern border is Mexico that appears to want to join us.

What this 2023 Fourth of July birthday party has helped us to reflect upon is, no matter how much CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and many in government service complain about America and malign it, many of the alternatives are pretty scary. After seeing how some of the rest of the world has to live, I find the ’ole USA absolutely marvelous. America has faults and foibles, but as Francis Scott Key wrote, it is really wonderful, “That our flag is still there.”

Photo by Peg Redwine

Las Vegas In The Osage

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Wade Tower at the Constantine Theatre, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Picture by Peg Redwine

 

Alright, I finally give it up; my 1950’s Saturday morning black and white Cowboy and Indian movies at the Kihekah Theater in Pawhuska, Oklahoma are truly gone. They have been blown away like a prairie tornado by the big band sounds of Wade Tower and his marvelous musicians. Ah well, since Pawhuska is the capital of the Osage Indian Nation, we were always ambivalent as to which side to root for anyway.

On Saturday, June 03, 2023 from three to five in the afternoon Wade and his players with the multiple octaves and complicated rhythms transformed my old Kihekah Theater to the renovated Constantine Theatre and transported the audience across the plains to a séance with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. It was exciting and refreshing to experience music that did not repeat ad nauseum a single beat and three banging chords. Although Wade did manage to pay homage to his Oklahoma roots with a little George Strait. He also got the audience singing along and gyrating to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, although I suspect alcohol may have been sitting in as a contributor from the appreciative audience. Wade and his Blues Brothers-dressed band members filled the ornate and historic Constantine with the kind of music and talent the old venue has not seen since my brother, C.E. Redwine, reprised his Oklahoma State University Blue Note Band there in 1994 when the newly renovated Constantine was re-dedicated. In fact, Floyd Haynes, who is Wade’s bandleader, reminded me of C.E.’s Paul Desmond quality saxophone playing.

Wade Tower and his band. Picture by Peg Redwine

Each of Wade’s ensemble was terrific. Wade’s vocals were powerful, sensitive and truly enjoyable. Sean Johnson on the tenor sax, Zac Lee sliding the trombone, Ryan Sharp on the trumpet, Chase Gulliver on drums, Vince Norman, keyboard, Rod Clark, bass and the justly featured Jerry Connel on lead guitar were solo quality artists. It was so exhilarating to feel each solid note and each changing key and modified rhythm. I like country music, but there are reasons there are seven notes with wonderfully complex sharps and flats as possibilities and multiple key signatures along with intricate tempos. Thank you Wade and your band for knowing and applying the full range of them. And further kudos go to the light and sound technicians who did a terrific job helping to bring Vegas to Pawhuska.

Also, thank you to the Board of the Constantine Theatre for your foresight and good taste in contracting with Wade Tower to perform every Saturday at 3:00 p.m. up to December 2023. Peg and I are eagerly looking forward to enjoying Las Vegas in the Osage again.

Peg Redwine, Wade Tower & Jim Redwine at the Constantine Theatre, Pawhuska, Oklahoma

The Good, The Bad, The Average

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Is it an end or a beginning? A New Year of hope or a past year of regret? A harbinger of exciting new adventures or a specter of hovering doom? I guess one way of discerning whether we are going to gaily anticipate, as the tune says, “Oh, the good times are coming,” or gloomily dwell on, “I took the blows and did it my way,”  is to make an accounting of 2022. After all, if past is prologue, perhaps we can peer into the future by studying the past. But, as the sorceress Cassandra who was blessed by the gods with the gift of prophecy but also cursed because no one would believe her forecasts of coming disasters, we might see the freight train coming but ignore it anyway. Nuclear war anyone? Ah, well, let’s count some blessings and justify some bad choices from 2022.

I would say my number one blessing during 2022 is that I am not related to Harry and Meghan. When one has family like that, other bad relationships fade into royal oblivion. It’s not that my family is perfect; my older brother and my three older sisters still assume I cannot tie my shoes without their help. But let’s move on.

Photo by Diane Selch

The 2022 college football season was pretty much a bust. The Indiana University Hoosiers, of course, never disappoint because we never expect anything. However, the Oklahoma Sooners had better be rebuilding or else the whole apparatus is falling apart. And the Oklahoma State Cowboys looked more average than average can bear. Come on, Pokes, do something! Peg, not I, cares about the Purdue Boilermakers who got clobbered in their mediocre bowl game. As an IU alum I didn’t mind, but Peg’s two brothers are Purdue grads so she was upset. If 2023 is a rebuilding year, I just hope the crumbling Roman Coliseum is not the model our teams are emulating.

Speaking of disasters and rebuilding, we had two, that’s right two, water leaks in our cabin at JPeg Osage Ranch in 2022. One came from a clamp that slipped off of a water heater hose and the most recent, December 23, 2022 (Merry Christmas), was caused by a connection to the ice maker on the refrigerator. Did you, Gentle Reader, ever worry about your refrigerator attacking your home? Me neither. I’ve worked construction and made countless home repairs to everything from fountains to garden hoses and never once had to deal with a refrigerator water leak. Happy 2022 all’ya’all.

Now did anything good occur in 2022? You bet. Peg successfully rehabilitated after her hip replacement surgeries and I managed to learn about three chords on the guitar, although Peg will not countenance me trying to sing along as I strum. She claims my key changes are bad. What’s a key?

Well, I have revisited about all the chagrin I can stand and the 2022 bright spots are fading fast, so on to 2023. My predictions are mainly connected to Peg’s and my work in the Republic of Georgia that sits right on the Black Sea directly across from Ukraine and has Russia on it’s northern border. What could go wrong?

Putin, the Grinch who is trying to steal Ukraine and who already occupies 20% of Georgia, looms large in my reading of bird entrails. The only bright spot I see is our son Jim’s observations about Russian military equipment he fought against in the Iraq War, the Gulf War and briefly in Afghanistan. Jim says it was junk then and it’s junk now. Of course, even nuclear junk might ruin our whole day in 2023.

But I boldly foresee a world where Putin comes to his senses and Zelensky re-thinks his thirst for revenge. Both leaders will most likely end up accepting less than half a loaf of what they want. At least that’s my hopeful, if naive, bet.

Regardless, “When the dealing’s done and there’s time enough for counting” in 2023, I predict “Sunshine and lollipops”. Why not dwell on the positive? After all, Harry and Meghan will surely shut up sometime. But, until then as both King Lear and King Charles found out, “More sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a thankless child,” especially ones who are mistreated by allowing them to live in palaces and spend their time with sycophants such as Oprah.

Distancing

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President Lincoln reportedly used to occasionally sit on the back steps of the White House and talk to old friends who might just drop by. President Truman used to play poker at his Key West, Florida White House with ordinary folks. President Jackson invited the hoi polloi to his inauguration and they came and trashed the White House. There was a time America’s leaders thought of Americans as equals, or at least not as persona non grata. Now there are fences and armed guards at the White House and the only time a president makes personal contact with Americans is to have a photo op. Democracy is now pretty much non-democratic.

Our politicians often ascribe the responsibility for this metamorphosis to need for security, that is, fear of contact with us. I suggest it has more to do with their desire to just pick up their tax payor funded paychecks while being left alone. Kind of like getting COVID-19 checks not to work. Anyway, my experience in working for the public has been that it has not been a concern for my security or anyone else’s that has brought about such distance between public servants and the public. But it comes more from a realization that there simply is very little difference between those who control the government and those who are controlled by it, and the controllers are afraid that will be found out. At least that is true with the judicial branch and the legal system. I invite you, Gentle Reader, to return with me to at least one incident from those “thrilling days of yesteryear” to help me illustrate my concerns about the loss of direct connection to our office holders.

When the State of Indiana used justices of the peace to process most minor legal matters such as driving offenses and small civil claims, the “courts” were often held in the homes or store fronts owned by the justices. One would appear before some non-formally trained person who would dispense justice in a relaxed atmosphere and at little cost. Then we “improved” the system by requiring legally educated and licensed judges and publicly financed court facilities. Everything became more complex, costlier and more distant.

In Posey County, Indiana the County Court that replaced the Justice of the Peace system in 1975 was jammed into a portion of the 1927 Memorial Coliseum Building. The original coliseum was built as a community center. It had a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a stage for shows and a pool table. The new County Court, including the judge’s chamber, took up three small rooms next to where the pool table was. And another feature was the closet in the approximately 20-foot by 30-foot courtroom where the Daughters of the American Revolution ladies kept their regalia to be used in their meetings that also were held in the courtroom.

When I was the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Posey County, 1976-1978, I tried six-person jury trials in that courtroom. As we had no separate jury room we would try a case then leave the jury in the courtroom alone to deliberate on their verdict. Everyone in the courtroom could reach out and almost touch everyone else. Of course, there was little pretense of confidentiality. I know it sounds bizarre but it worked okay and no one, including the judge and the attorneys, could arrogate themselves into special status. Please let me tell you about one of my favorite cases from that halcyon time.

I was a little younger then and one of the cases I prosecuted involved a misdemeanor charge against a Billy ______ who was about my age. Billy represented himself in the jury trial. After Billy and I traded accusations and insults during final arguments the judge gave the case to the jury then ordered the courtroom cleared except for the jury. Billy and I stepped out to the adjoining room where both a soft-drink machine and the pool table were located.

As we attempted to ignore one another, Billy turned to me and said, “Hey, Jim, do you play pool?” As I grew up in Pawhuska, Oklahoma at a time when the only thing other than the ball field was the pool hall, of course I played pool.

“Yeah, Billy, I play pool and I can beat you at that too. By the way, I thought you did okay in court, but be prepared for the gavel to fall.” I was much more sure of myself then.

“Jim, do you want to put anything on the pool game?”

“No, Billy, that would be illegal; go ahead and break.” I did not mention that a portion of my tuition at Oklahoma State University came from non-legal lucre.

Well, we played as the jury was busy deciding they didn’t care if I thought Billy was a menace to society; they sided with Billy. Since that trial Billy and I have had several contacts of the legal variety and you may note Billy is still playing pool but now my pool table is in my barn.

In my opinion, America could use a reprise of some of that by-gone legal system where the people who are processed and those who do the processing are not separated by layers of convolution. As Eva Peron might say, ♫ I’ll keep my promise, don’t keep your distance.” ♫

Baseball vs. Football

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“If a woman’s just a woman but a good cigar’s a smoke” (Rudyard Kipling), football’s just a game but baseball’s who we are. Or, as my friend and favorite song writer, Randy Pease, sang about baseball (and life), “Maybe I should quit but that’s a hard thing to admit, God, I love this game.” Randy honed his musical skills when he took a break from his studies at Oklahoma State University where I also found pursuits other than the prescribed curricula. Another Cowboy that Randy occasionally played guitars and sang with in Stillwater, Oklahoma was a songwriter named Garth Brooks who also loved baseball. I wonder if he ever made the big leagues? For as Garth, Randy and the rest of us frustrated would-be major leaguers eventually accept and as the protagonist in Randy’s song knows, “our playing days are numbered and our fastball’s lost some speed” but we aren’t quite ready to “hang up the cleats and mitt.” On the other hand most of us, not Tom Brady of course, have no angst about leaving the sweaty football pads hanging in the dank locker room while we are still a ways from our porch swings.

Baseball is not just America’s Past Time it is America. It is a grimy catcher’s mask and miraculous or stumbling catches in left-center field. It is come from behind in the bottom of the ninth and lessons learned from games that should have been won. It is sweat and spit and grief and grit and all that makes us glad to endure heat and aches. Boys and girls and men and women of all ages can and do play baseball and softball; not so much football once high school fades.

Baseball affords fathers and mothers a parent’s greatest satisfaction, being asked by their adult children for advice. No kid over fourteen seeks football insights from their folks but even aging children who may question a parent’s sanity on matters of politics, music or religion still occasionally rely on mom and dad on how to hit a softball or play old folk’s league shortstop. As a parent slowly rocks and questions decisions she or he once made, when their grown offspring return to ask the best way to use a pinch hitter the cobwebs seem less opaque. On the other hand, no post-teenager cares what a parent thinks about a statue-of-liberty or a flea-flicker trick football play.

So, we can continue to pretend we understand football’s pass defense coverage two and can continue to yearn for our adult children to ask us to explain it and other football errata or we can thank baseball for keeping us in the real game. But I’ll let Randy finish the column because he is a fine writer of both prose and song lyrics:

“Although the song is on the surface about baseball, it’s really about life and how we should love our lives even when it beats the crap out of us nearly every day. In baseball, even the best hitters get on base only three times out of ten. Such is life. It’s full of disappointments and heartbreaks. But there’s always that hope the next at bat you’ll knock the ball out of the park. And baseball is a sign of spring – new grass, new life, renewal, redemption. It represents the hope that comes with a new season. And it poses a tough question: Can I still play or is it time to hang up the cleats and mitt?”

 

Lyrics to “I Love This Game”

♫ My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League.

I’m thirty-four years old.  My playing days are numbered.

I can’t control my curveball, and my fastball’s lost some speed.

 

I’ve been knockin’ ‘round the minors since I got out of high school,

signed my first pro contract on my seventeenth birthday.

From Burlington to Birmingham to Charlotte I have traveled,

But the White Sox never called, and I stalled in Triple-A.

 

Chorus

I love this game.  I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game.

 

I won fourteen games one year, led the league in shutouts.

Several of the pro scouts told me I was on my way.

But I hurt my arm in Lynchburg.  Doc said it was a pinched nerve.

And I swear that ever since, sir, it’s never been the same.

 

Chorus

 

I love this game, I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game

 

Coda

Maybe I should quit.  Hang up the cleats and mitt.

God I love this game.

 

My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League. ♫

 

© I Love This Game

Randy Pease Decaf Music 1998 (BMI)

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