Columns
Tick Tock
It is 3:00 am and the moonlit prairie outside the cabin window supplies the quiet solitude that is required for my contemplation. Most of my thoughts that become writings occur when my daytime procrastination eases into compelling concerns about the past or the future. Most of the past is a jumble of warm memories punctuated by occasional regrets; wasn’t that pleasant intertwined with why did I say or do that and why can’t I re-live the good and re-do the painful? And most of my forecast of the future is paved with unrealistic hopes and dread I will repeat missteps in spite of learned lessons I should be able to apply to similar new experiences. My circadian rhythm probably developed much as my correct recollections of my past are intertwined with those my memory provides to enhance the good and assuage the regrets. I suppose, Gentle Reader, you also are in a similar constant struggle with what you have lived and what you hope or fear may follow. With me, what I am aware of when awake and alert versus what occasionally forces its way into my psyche I ascribe to sleep habits developed by the yin and yang of my life and those who have affected it, either directly or through culture. My family has provided the greatest influence upon my memories and the manner in which I dread or hope about the future.
My father was the 20th of 21 children. He was born in Indian Territory in 1905 in what became the state of Oklahoma in 1907. Some of his earliest memories were formed when he was 9 years old and he had to quit school because his father, a Baptist minister, was killed in a church camp meeting accident. My mother’s earliest memory was riding from her birthplace in Kansas to her new home in Oklahoma in a covered wagon; she was 3. Her father moved the family because he found a job in a cement making plant. The dust from that plant contributed to his death from lung cancer. My father and mother met because my father had moved from his home to work in the same plant. Dad died from lung cancer also. Both Grandfather and Dad were strong supporters of unions.
My first job was at age 10 in Mrs. Juby’s restaurant. My brother Philip, age 11, and I worked in the kitchen washing pots and pans and peeling potatoes. When I refused to include the rotten parts in with the rest of the mashed potatoes, Mrs. Juby complained to my parents who had Phil and me change to mowing lawns at $5.00 per.
In our home my sister and my two brothers and I did our school work on a shared card table in the living room. To get the use of the table I had to do my studies late at night. I expect this was the true beginning of when my mind required late night solitude to function. My memories of my home life are all good. If I minded sharing our one card table and our one bathtub, I do not have any complaints now and do not recall my parents or siblings complaining either. Actually, we all seem to have enjoyed our shared lives quite a lot. I often wish I could revisit those good times.
When I got married and we had a son I think back to living in a 10-foot by 48-foot house trailer on the Indiana University college campus with its one Formica table my wife and I shared as a desk. My fondest memories are marveling at our son’s young body growing so fast and later trying to comprehend how that child I so much enjoyed having under our care somehow became an Airborne Army Ranger who saw combat in two wars while we spent every day fearing a knock on the door from two uniformed messengers; fortunately, they never came and he did return. Now his son is an Army Airborne Ranger and we still worry.
Well, Gentle Reader, it is now 5:30 am and maybe I can put down my pen and give you and myself some relief. All-in-all it has been and still is gratifying to engage my nocturnal musings as I work around my diurnal obligations. I hope your memories are full and good and your regrets “too few to mention”. So, for now, I will enjoy my first cup of coffee and build a fire in the fireplace as Peg busies around in the burgeoning sunrise. We spend a great deal of our lives together, but find she prefers to do her work when I am unengaged and vice versa except for those best of times when our biorhythms are attuned, about four hours each of night and day.
So, for now, I wish you a conjoined “good night and good day”.
Legends
What turns a passing incident into a legend? Fear is often involved or at least, apprehension. Hatred perhaps or maybe just sublimated envy. Villains and heroes, sinners and saints, hangers-on and barely aware casual observers may be recognized or may be unnoticed. Accurate observations may be misidentified while surmise and self-fulfilling yearnings might be confused by societies distracted by the sturm und drang of living. What we can be assured is that an occasional legend is required if we are going to sublimate our daily ennui and manage to muddle through.
Great legends of history often arise on a “just-in-time, just-in-place” happenstance. Often, they appear as individuals but, more often, individuals are named while the legends involve groups. Military exploits such as Achilles and the Greeks at Troy, or Eisenhower and the Allies at D-Day are examples. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King led, but many others also sacrificed. It is impossible to honor or even acknowledge the millions who contributed to the legends, so we usually coalesce upon one or a very few to crown with being the legend. There is nothing we can do about this human approach; we are human.
Another area we choose in which to anoint representative heroes is athletics. The legends are often only cogs in the great Circle of Life that helps the hero showcase his or her talents but who would not advance without many spokes supporting them. Fortunately, often our legends recognize and acknowledge these facts and often say so as they share the credit.
So, as we glorify Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza and all the rest of the 2025-2026 Indiana Hoosier football team who are the College Football National Champions, as well we should, we should follow their lead and thank the many before them and along with them who helped them inspire us. Here’s to ball-boys, water-girls and the generous boosters among countless others such as IU’s administration.
One of the best attributes of current glory is, if our contemporary heroes have character, and these do, they acknowledge the foundation upon which they stand and often refer to our heroes of IU’s illustrious more than 200-year history. When the media dwells upon past losses we should remind the world of past glories. Indiana University was founded in 1820, not 2024.
When I would walk across the Indiana campus from the Law School to the Gables Restaurant, I often thought of that other law student, Hoagy Carmichael, who had been in there dreaming of “Stardust” when he probably was supposed to be trying to fathom the intricacies of Marbury v. Madison (1803). But what always drew my attention was the gigantic mural above the Gables lunch counter that portrayed our undefeated football team of 1945; war veterans who had helped save the world while enhancing IU’s proud history.
And another good aspect of our 2025-26 Rose Bowl Champions is their exploits recall those of our 1967-68 Rose Bowl team. It has been particularly gratifying to see Coach Lee Corso on TV giving credit to our 1979 Holiday Bowl victors. Neither Curt Cignetti nor countless others failed to honor our university’s long and proud history of culture and accomplishments. IU’s record of football losses is a mite in the pantheon of our proud traditions. Our 2025-26 team is our most recent reminder, we are not losers, we are Hoosiers!
The current chapter of the IU legend may be a new beginning or but a moment. Regardless, it is sure fun now and that is due to the efforts of a whole lot of other dreamers who are, after all these years, as amazed and gratified as Peg and I and the rest of the long cream and crimson line of co-commiserators and winners are.
Coach Cignetti, The Philosopher King
Curt Cignetti was hired to be Indiana University’s football coach beginning with the 2024 college football season. In 2022 IU’s record was four wins and eight losses. For 2023 it was three wins and nine losses. In 2024 IU lost two games, one in the College Football Playoffs, and won eleven. IU just won the College Football National Championship for 2025-26 by being the only undefeated college team and posting sixteen wins and zero losses. IU started 2025 as history’s losingest college football program based on over 700 losses. A couple of basic questions are: How did IU go from the whale dung of college football to Marathon type victors (490 BC) and who wrought this miracle?
Those are important issues to ponder. However, America is currently dealing with other much more important matters than sports. Perhaps we can learn something as a country by examining how Indiana University went in two years from football fodder to pundits accusing my alma mater of cheating to win games. That has been the ultimate unintended compliment from the envious. We are now so good we must have called upon the gods or stolen signs or somehow bought a championship with NIL money. Surely no mere educational ivory tower could turn southern Indiana limestone into football lemonade in only two years.
Dunn Meadow and the Little Jordan River must have been co-opted by trolls or John Mellencamp and Mark Cuban. Only magic and money could explain the college that lost its first game in 1887, then followed it with over 700 losses, to winning the National Championship on January 19, 2026. But, what if instead of just assuming this Hoosier triumph is but a logical lacuna, we try to learn something from IU and its miraculous turnaround that can be applied to help America out of its miasma.
Is it possible that Curt Cignetti and his staff are the Philosopher Kings of football whose methods should be applied to our democracy? As Plato recommended in his Republic, instead of us choosing our leaders on the basis of popularity created by promising to give stuff away or to conquer other countries because we want their stuff, maybe we should elect our leaders based on their character, ability and hard work as proven by their past performance. Maybe we need portals which incorruptible leaders could pass through to be rewarded for their proven public-spirited expertise; Name, Image and Likeness indeed, but most importantly, proven character!
Instead of our political leaders being voted into office based on the drivel of cackling TV panelists who hate or love whomever they are promoting or opposing, what if we citizens evaluate our future leaders as Coach Curt Cignetti and his staff did for our Indiana University football champions? Quality of past performance, not feckless promises of future nirvanas are the lodestone we voters can learn to follow based on the example of these 2026 Hoosiers. Too often five-star potential from our politicians metamorphosizes into a sense of entitlement without the sweat required for production. Maybe what America needs from its leaders is evidence of proven positive results based on performance. What if we stop mouthing MAGA and adopt for our motto: “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers!”?
On Facebook follow us at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”
Hallowed Halls of Laurel
HALLOWED HALLS OF LAUREL
It is kinda’ like how I felt when the sister and two brothers I grew up with became a college professor, a world-class musician and a leading legal scholar. Where did that come from? Gentle Reader, you probably have had the same puzzlement about the neighbor kid you played house or marbles with who is recognized later in life by others as brilliant. You most likely ask yourself, “Who snatched their body away and replaced them with this heroic icon?”
This Gavel Gamut could not be written until after Indiana University’s football team won the CFP semi-final game against Oregon on 09 January 2026; IU did! So, now the ultimate issue to be decided is, will IU beat Miami for the National Championship on Monday, January 19, 2026? In spite of the “rat poison curse”, I say they can and will have done so before you read this column. Miami is extremely well coached and talented, but IU is even better. Discipline and turnovers will decide the outcome. I submit no college football team is better disciplined nor as adept at causing and capitalizing upon their opponent’s mistakes as IU. Yeah, I cannot believe I am writing that either!
Now back to the theme of this column; where the devil did this come from to a program that was the first in college football history to lose over 700 games? What ironic quirk of athletic history brought the college I first saw lose in 1963 to, hopefully, the National Championship a lifetime later? I still remember countless games we lost in the fourth quarter, even in the last seconds of the fourth quarter, or because of some idiosyncratic football faux pas? Where is that team of hard striving ultimate losers who kept falling just short of glory only to be patted on the helmets as if they were incapable of being even average, much less victorious?
Fall 2024 to January 2026 seems as dreamlike as my surprising siblings or friends who found marvelous success and brought me joy in the process. So, has IU won the National Championship? I do not yet know. But I already know my Alma Mater is no longer the doormat of college football history. While I expect IU to beat Miami, I know they have already covered those hallowed southern Indiana limestone walls with laurel amidst all that ivy!
On Facebook follow us at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”
Want to see those southern Indiana limestone buildings! Click on this link for more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCK0DpkswvY
Therapy
America needs therapy; about 350 million counselors seems about right. Where to find them and how to compensate them are the seminal issues. As therapists always approach client treatment with the same, lone question, “How do you feel about that?”, the answers to America’s dilemmas and to each of our personal problems must lie within. We need only to bring forth for analysis the quandaries we are facing, then have other individuals or groups help us solve things for ourselves.
For example, a Catholic penitent might say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”; he or she divulges the sin, then does whatever penance, say ten Hail Mary’s, the priest decides will expiate those transgressions. Or we pay $500 per hour to psychiatrists who might treat us by asking, “How do you feel about that?”. An example of a United States problem in need of therapy might be invading Greenland or Venezuela. Perhaps we could allow our Congressional therapists to have us explain to ourselves why America deserves and must have Greenland or Venezuela or even Iran or whatever country it will take to “Make America, or us as individuals, Great Again”.
This approach to therapy for people or for countries has been used for thousands of years. The Greeks in Persia, the Romans in Palestine, the Zionists in Palestine, the United States in Iraq, etc., etc., etc. If armed conflict offends your sensibilities, one could simply join a group that can ask that age old question, “How do you feel about that?” and let each American respond with the knowledge our group will help us work out how we truly feel. The answers are always within, it is just bringing them out that is difficult.
A literary example of successful group therapy was Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast in the Paris of the 1920’s. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and James Joyce to name just some of the group would meet at Silvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in the Montparnasse neighborhood on the left bank of the Seine River and interchange what would become some of the best writing and therapy of any generation, especially the Lost Generation of post-World War I.
Hemingway’s experience came to mind when my long-time friend, fellow jurist and fellow writer sent me a Christmas present of his therapy group’s book, Holiday Tales from the San Juans. It is a compilation of his writing group that meets each Thursday morning, if so inclined, at the Ruby M. Sisson Memorial Library in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. This Ruby’s Writer’s Guild consists of Judge Albert Northrop, my friend, and some of his friends in Pagosa Springs. Anyone who wishes can offer a written item such as a poem or a personal story for the rest of the Guild to ponder and pontificate upon. This is the epitome of the therapy America needs. Put the innermost thoughts out first then listen to well informed and well-intentioned responses.
An example for America might be, “Should we adhere to our Constitution or ape the behavior of despots such as Putin, Netanyahu or Hitler?” As for this one American, admittedly in need of therapy myself, I suggest a country of Ruby’s Writer’s Guilds generously sharing their thoughts would be more likely to make America America again than heedless hegemony.
Highly Resolved
Abraham Lincoln published one of our nation’s solemn resolutions in his address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. The over three thousand dead Union soldiers were the particular men Lincoln referenced that day. However, since President Lincoln’s main focus of the Civil War was to hold our country together, most likely he had in mind all the dead and wounded on both sides when he said:
“…[W[e here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain…”
That resolution was not made for a New Year, but it was a noble hope for our country’s future. From 1863 until 1914 this goal was fractured by almost continuous death and destruction, such as the Indian removals, the Spanish American War and then “The War to End all wars”, World War I. After that final war, America fought WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, The Iraq War and so many conflicts most Americans cannot recount whom we have fought and are still fighting nor why. We are currently aiding and abetting and directly involved in Palestine and Ukraine along with Venezuela and bellicose behavior bordering on armed conflicts with so many countries and groups even the cable news cannot keep up with them.
President Lincoln’s resolution for our country has gone the way my 2025 New Year’s Resolutions have. I dug through my devout promises to myself last year and find I do not need to address any new 2026 resolutions as, just like our government, the resolutions from 1863 until January 2026 will suffice.
Therefore, I resolve to give up on exercising more, saving more, losing more weight, being nicer, helping out around JPeg Osage Ranch more and restraining my penchant to gossip about politics. After all, not one of my 2025 ideas that I have offered to our leaders has even been acknowledged, much less implemented.
I, therefore, resolve my 2025 resolutions shall “perish from the earth” should anyone be interested.
