Columns
Speak Up!
I am pretty sure no one in my high school had ever heard of Viet Nam when our country decided to get involved there. It was interesting how the war of our generation worked its way into our psyches as our government stumbled its way from 600 “advisors” in the 1950’s to 58,000 dead young American soldiers by 1975.
My post-Korean War generation generally started its ignorance of Southeast Asia believing our government’s policies were rooted in American values of support for democracy, humanitarian aid and the principle of “Let’s fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here.” Or, from a geo-political concern, after the Bay of Pig’s debacle, our crushing of Communists in Viet Nam might restore our nation’s unbeatable image.
Most college students, including me, either were unaware or unconcerned about a “Police Action” with little risk. In fact, many college students, including me, were rather excited by the possibility of adventures in a foreign land. What few debates that occurred on college campuses were more about which folk songs to champion. Students, including me, flocked to recruiters’ offices and had few worries about dodging the draft.
But by the time I had received my honorable discharge and returned to campus, young people had experienced an awakening due to such events as the Tet Offensive, B-52 carpet bombing of primitive villages and coffins being returned draped with American flags. As for me, the most significant event was the combat death of my childhood friend, Gary Malone, in 1966.
College campuses had metamorphosized from the indifference of the unaffected to protests against government censorship and misinformation. Such student-led political successes as President Johnson publicly declaring on television, he, “Would not seek and would not accept his party’s nomination to run for another term”, energized young people on campuses throughout America. Students were no longer going to accept the government’s Party Line.
I now see a similar fire smoldering and sometimes blazing among many students who object to their country involving itself in killing innocent civilians and borrowing billions of dollars of future tax revenues. Their grandchildren will not be able to afford infrastructure because our country chooses to give away billions of dollars’ worth of munitions.
Another similarity I remember from the Viet Nam campus environment was the stifling of free expression from students whose political and moral views differed from the government’s and the college administrations. College administrations from Harvard, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Columbia and so many others have allowed contributors to silence pro-peace and pro-Palestinian views or criticism of the Israeli government’s military suppression and oppression in Gaza and the West Bank. Money has trumped the raison d’être for the existence of colleges, the free interchange of ideas.
Under the disingenuous charge of antisemitism, the actions of Israel have become immune from campus debate. However, what is really occurring is the blanket expulsion of free expression in return for contributions and political acceptance. The Viet Nam era is being revisited.
A recent shocking and cowardly action by a university’s administration occurred this week at the University of Southern California. The chosen 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum who is a Muslim, was banned from giving her valedictory because of her pro-Palestinian views. One need not guess what the administration would have done had she supported the military actions of Israel.
There is an encouraging similarity between my generation’s awakening and activism that finally brought an end to our war in Viet Nam and today’s campus climate. It is reminiscent of the 1960’s folk singer Phil Ochs’ song about student free speech:
♫ We’ve even helped to overthrow the leaders of the land.
I wouldn’t go so far to say we’re also learning how,
But when I’ve got something to say, sir,
I’m going to say it now. ♫
If colleges are that afraid of student free expression, we should remember, the first casualty of war is truth.
The Ides of April
Julius Caesar was assassinated by his fellow Romans on March 15, 44 B.C. Brutus and his co-conspirators used numerous stab wounds for the job. Our government is using the unrelenting Chinese torture of taxes: drip, drip, drip until our Body Politic is exsanguinated.
At least Jules did not have to inflict his own wounds. Our governments, federal, state and county, require us to report upon ourselves and furnish our public “servants” with the means of ruining our lives if we do not.
It is not like any of us does not realize we have an obligation to contribute to public services. I like driving on paved roads and drinking clean water. What turns our gratitude for our collective governments’ provision of benefits to resentment is our total loss of control over how our hard-earned income becomes lucre. Then it is wasted and mismanaged or, worst of all, given to people our government favors so they can use it to abuse people we do not know.
If our government would use our tax money on services for us, most of us would accept those decisions as necessary even if we might make different choices as to how our money is spent. Most Americans champion democracy and democracy means we each do not always get our way. We get it.
However, it is concerning that our country’s Gross Domestic Product for 2023 was over 27 trillion dollars; federal tax collections were over 4 trillion dollars; state tax collections were nearly 4 trillion dollars and local tax revenues were almost 2 trillion. Yet our federal yearly budget deficit from 2022 to 2023 ballooned up by $320 billion to $1.7 trillion. And our total national debt is currently $34 trillion. I think Peg and I could probably manage to balance our budget with $27 trillion, or maybe only a mere billion or so.
How can our trillions of dollars of hard work result in even more exorbitant debt? It is like we all, ♪ owe our souls to the Company Store ♪ and our government runs the Store. What happened to our capitalistic system? The governmental workers we have hired at exorbitant rates to manage our money are like socialists on methamphetamine. As Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher said about the soft-hearted and soft-headed British socialists, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”, in this case, OURS!
When our government graciously gives the money we have earned to people less fortunate, most of us clamp our teeth and bear it. However, when our “public servants” squander our resources to enable other countries to kill people with whom we have no quarrel, we take umbrage.
We are a generous nation, but we object to being complicit in destroying innocents, especially children. Also, even if we are better off than some, we have plenty of our own needs that should be addressed. Charity should at least begin at home.
Anyway, Gentle Reader, just as you, these dark thoughts reappear every year at this time. So, I guess the Pollyanna approach is the only rational option when our government has a stranglehold on all our other options. Maybe Peg and I should listen to the guidance set forth in Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 40 and voluntarily send in more money:
“[I]f any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well.”
On the other hand, even the Book of Matthew may be conflicted by our government’s voracious appetite for our tax money, because only two chapters later we are warned:
“Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot
and turn to attack you
….
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
You will know them by their fruits.”
Matthew, Ch.7, vs. 6, 15 and 16.
Of course, our governmental “servants” would not be amused if we sent in a check in the amount we believe they should receive. People such as Henry David Thoreau might be courageous enough to go to jail for his non-tax beliefs, but even Jesus advised:
“Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due,
Revenue to whom revenue is due ….”
Book of Romans, Ch. 13, vs. 7.
My conclusion is that even Jesus saw no hope for relief from paying taxes and our government wasting them. Ok, I give, the check’s in the mail.
Where’s the Wizard?
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz based on the book by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are swept up by a tornado and dropped into the Land of Oz. Dorothy has fantastic adventures and meets fanciful characters such as The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man with no heart, The Scarecrow with no brain, and The Wicked Witch of the West who has bad intentions. Most importantly, she meets The Wizard of Oz who is masquerading as an all-powerful ruler but is exposed to be a graven image. What Dorothy learns from her trials and tribulations in Oz is, “There’s no place like home” and the true Yellow Brick Road is the one that takes you there.
On April Fool’s Day, Peg and I and a lot of other people, just as Dorothy, had the everyday values of home reinforced by an F1 tornado that roared through our usually rather uneventful lives. We had become inured to such unappreciated comforts as roofs and electricity. We expected that nothing unexpected would disturb our reverie.
From childhood one of my greatest pleasures has been watching and feeling a storm lazily working from calm to possible calamity. I know I am joined by many people who enjoy and are excited by slowly tumbling grey clouds in the distance that metamorphize into colliding black clouds that envelope lightning bolts and driving rain. Few things are as rare and pleasurable as the acrid smell of ozone. Perhaps it is the foreboding that storms represent, much like skiing down a mountain or watching your favorite sports team when it is one point behind with a minute to go. Regardless, few things make humans appreciate being human as does a roiling and thundering storm.
When Peg stepped out on our veranda to check on the strange sounds coming at us from the southwest, she quickly turned, ran back in and said, “Jim I hear THE TRAIN!” We huddled momentarily in an interior bathroom, but the siren call of a mighty natural event was too strong. We had to join in the grand dance so we took deep breaths and were mesmerized by prairie grasses waving like laundry flapping on a clothesline; you do remember those, right?
After a night of agitated wonder and worry and hours without power, we ventured out to find a few items from a neighbor’s ranch but no damage to ours except a couple of downed trees and quite a few broken limbs. Of course, Peg has already assigned me to clean-up duty. Once we had used our cellphones to make sure there was no loss of life and only some unfortunate damage to a few residences, we felt much as a speeding motorist who hears a police siren behind them, but relaxes as the officer flies on past in pursuit of a more egregious offender. It is exhilarating to be shot at and missed.
As General Patton said about war, “God, help me I do love it so.” Peg and I, and maybe you too, Gentle Reader, do so love a “good” storm. Of course, sometimes a storm brings loss of lives and property. Then we are forcefully reminded of what we truly have and that there really is, “No Place Like Home.”
Spring Forward
Tuesday, March 19, 2024 was the Vernal Equinox. The sun was directly over the earth’s equator and husbands throughout the world saw their sublime winter days replaced by wives who feel compelled to build nests, or more correctly, to exhort their husbands to help do so. Peg does not care that we live in the country and no one can even see our yard from the nearest road. When spring arrives, my reverie ends. Watching sports on TV fades in the glow of longer days that demand immediate attention to countless tasks that must be attended to, “Right Now!” Never mind that not one of these matters mattered until the ponds stopped freezing over.
The inexhaustible energy of a wife in springtime is exhausting. What is there in the female biology that cannot accept that Mother Nature provides her own rejuvenation of beauty such as dandelions and blooming thistle. Woman-made improvements to nature’s burgeoning bounty of wild growing plants, that Peg calls weeds, must be addressed with rakes, hoes, chemicals and sweat, mine.
It is not that I wish to ignore home maintenance. I agree that grass should be mowed occasionally. However, where is the sin in appreciating what comes from nature? Do we need numerous areas for flowers and vegetables that are readily available from Walmart? Why did we save for retirement if we are not going to retire? And, what about the welfare of all the little critters we are disrupting and worse with god-knows what concoctions that we spray and spread? I ask you, Gentle Reader, well, at least those of you who are husbands, what is wrong with living with nature? Live and let live sounds good to me.
Another thing that comes with spring is the plethora of Nature’s creations that apparently want to live in proximity with us and which Peg cannot abide. About once each day I am startled by, “Jim!” I know from the tone and decibel level that some unlucky snake, mouse, squirrel, scorpion, spider or bird has been doing its spring things too close to ours and my role is to ruin its day. Never mind that all these creatures want is to eat and procreate on their own terms without our interference, they must be dispatched, by me of course.
There is hope for Peg’s yearly compulsion to control the natural world with my labor. Before long the Summer Solstice will arrive and the moist earth and temperate weather will gradually metamorphosize into sunbaked clay and near drought. Then maybe Peg’s condition will cure itself until she hears the siren of autumn’s equinox and the chores of preparing for winter.
Prometheus Revisited
A few days ago I received a telephone call in the early morning from my neighbor who owns the ranch immediately east of our property, “Jim, can we cross your place with some fire-fighting trucks and volunteers? Our controlled burn is not controlled. It may jump over on you.”
“Sure, anything I can help with?” Of course, as a judge neither I nor anyone else ever expects me to do anything except watch and listen, but I thought I should offer.
“Just keep an eye on things; it should be okay if the wind doesn’t pick up or if it changes from westerly to eastward. My cowboys and I will be coming through soon.”
Controlled burning in the early spring and fall when the land is more moist and seeds are not yet being heavily produced has been a proven technique for range management for many years. There is evidence Native Americans used deliberate burning in parts of America many years before Europeans arrived. According to a 2016 article from the National Park Service the tallgrass prairies would quickly succumb to undesirable shrubs and trees, such as red cedars, without periodic burning.
There are some negatives such as possible erosion and excessive smoke from pasture fires, but most experts posit the overall benefits lie with burning. As for Peg and me, our concerns were more with our log cabin and log out-buildings. I stationed myself at the fence line between the neighbor’s ranch and our place and marveled at the hard, dangerous work done by mainly volunteer fire departments from Barnsdall, Hominy and rural fire departments from other areas of Osage County, Oklahoma. I apologize for not thanking each firefighter and company by name, but there were so many volunteers and water trucks and there was so much expert and complex planning going on I do not know whom to thank. Therefore, thanks to all who responded and managed the raging backfires that preserved all of our structures and helped clear out the thatch and undergrowth from a good portion of our trees and pastures.
It was gratifying to experience the thoughtfulness and expertise of the firefighters who were the opposite of the fire company of the town of Dawson’s Landing in Mark Twain’s wonderful book, Pudd’nhead Wilson:
“A village fire company does not get much chance to show off, and so when it does get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village (Dawson’s Landing) as were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against fire, they insured against the fire company.”
It was interesting to see firefighters helping to safeguard our home who understood the elements of fire and wind and how to turn them from a possible dangerous disaster into benefits.
The new growth is already striving to turn the still smoldering old vegetation into wildflowers and new Bluestem grasses. I wondered how the ubiquitous and unfeeling conflagration would impact the deer and other animals that inhabit our fields and make them so much more enjoyable. But just today I observed a coyote gingerly dancing across the ashes as he reoriented himself to his new environment. He looked just as any human might look in the aftermath of some catastrophe, a little confused but hopeful Mother Nature knew what she was doing.
Peg and I will take our guidance from Wily and look upon the huge fire as what Peg might call another one of “Jim’s Adventures”. We are eagerly awaiting the emergence of the Indian Blanket and Indian Paintbrush wildflowers that, thanks to the uninvited wildfire, will soon be gracing our prairie home.
We Weren’t Heavy
My grandfather Redwine was born in 1848 in Walls, Georgia. After the Civil War he traveled to Indian Country, married and had five children. After his first wife died young, he married my grandmother who was a widow with six children. Together they had seven more children, of which my father was next to the youngest. My grandfather was a Baptist minister who may have known the Bible but unfortunately was careless in his choice of pulpits. He was preaching to a camp meeting while standing on a buckboard hitched to a skittish horse that got spooked by grandpa’s vociferous sermon. The horse bolted, grandpa lost his balance, fell off, hit his head and died. He was buried on the spot by grandmother and the congregation. My father was eleven years old and in the third grade when he and his numerous siblings were forced to raise themselves and one another while grandmother held the family together.
My father left school at age eleven and went to work in the high-sulfur unregulated coal mines of what by then was the southeastern corner of the new state of Oklahoma. Breathing in the coal dust led to my father’s massive heart attack at age thirty-three and to his ever-tenuous hold on his health until his death at age fifty-nine. Dad did not have the benefit of instruction from his father, but learned life’s lessons from his older brothers. This circle of concern and love helped make Dad a wonderful and kind father and also caused him to believe it was natural for one’s older brothers to educate them.
With my siblings and myself this meant my older sister, born in 1937, helped Mom with the household while my brother, Philip, born in 1942, and I born, in 1943, were mentored by our older brother, C.E. Redwine, born in 1936. C.E. (Sonny to the family) was our guide and protector. Sonny was the most patient and encouraging teacher and coach. He taught Phil and me to fish, play baseball and appreciate music. Mainly he taught us to be curious, strive to be our best and love every second of life.
Sonny was an inexhaustible deep well of knowledge and had the unselfish gift of generosity to share it. He could play and teach instrumental music and sing, teach and conduct choral ensembles. C.E. led our sister Jane and Phil and me in our church choir. He formed and performed with numerous dance bands. He played his brilliant saxophone all over the world with the United States Army Field Band. And everything he learned and experienced worked to the benefit of Janie, Phil and me as he always found the time and opportunity to share.
Sonny was a master chef and gardener. He knew how to grow food, when to harvest it and how to cook it, especially how to season it. He knew how to butcher every kind of meat and preserve it. My wife, Peg, and I must have gone to Sonny thousands of times for advice on every arcane topic one can imagine. He always knew what and how to do things and, most importantly, generously shared his knowledge without any hint of self-righteousness or impatience.
For all three of us, Janie, Phil and me, Sonny gladly sacrificed his time for our betterment. Our father and mother gave to us fully, but Sonny inspired us every day. I guess now our interests will begin to narrow and our questions will go unanswered.