Columns
Thanks, Robert
Last week my friend and fellow member of the Fourth Estate, Robert Smith, published a commentary on the appropriateness of mixing religion and government; it isn’t.
In adopting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the 1776ers relied on the wisdom gained from thousands of years of bad experiences of religion being misused by those in power. It is no accident that Freedom of and from Religion and Freedom of Expression and the Press are joined:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I realize those few of you who read this column already are aware of this bedrock of our democracy. Robert understands that also. He concluded his commentary with this thought:
“It just surprises me that something as basic as creating respectfully neutral spaces in public around intensely personal matters even needs to be explained.”
Of course, Robert has a right to be surprised that in America that was born by the midwifery of Freedom from Governmental interference with Freedom of Choice, anyone who is public-spirited enough to accept the responsibility of serving in any governmental function would violate his or her sacred oath by interjecting their personal religion into public, governmental matters. Most American adults have been weaned on years of formal and incidental realization that the surest way to harm Religious Liberty is by governmental force of any particular Faith.
So, because just as Robert, I am amazed and concerned such issues still require mention in a newspaper, I will just say, Thank you, Robert!
The Game
Those of you who have read my historical novel, Echoes of Our Ancestors: The Secret Game, know of the actual 1924 football game that was played in Osage County, Oklahoma between the Native American school boys from Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence, Kansas and professional players from Kansas City. What was planned to be an exhibition game to encourage wealthy Osage and Quapaw Indians to contribute money for a new stadium at Haskell, became a gambling extravaganza where more than 200,000 dollars changed hands and thousands more were contributed for the stadium. The game was the brainchild of head Haskell football coach, Frank McDonald, whose exhibition spun out of his control when gamblers and grifters got involved.
Peg and I wrote and published Echoes in 2014 based on the memories of our Osage friends, Judy Taylor, her daughter Barbara nee Taylor Pease, and one faded newspaper article. However, I recently was with professional writer and photographer, Ryan RedCorn of Osage County, who happened to know a great deal about The Game and recommended a book by Coach Mc Donald about one of the all-time greatest Haskell football players, John (Big Skee) Levi, who starred in the Secret Game. Peg managed to find and order a rare copy of Coach McDonald’s book; it is interesting and well worth the $90 it cost. McDonald’s book explains why this 1924 game had to be played in secret and kept secret:
“This game played in the Osage Hills has to be one of the best kept secrets of all time. Not only would anyone who participated be declared professional but it most probably would have ruined the future(s) of Coach(es) Frank McDonald, Dick Hanley and assistant coaches. While the team was suiting up for the game I (Coach McDonald) was explaining to Fred Lookout (Principal Chief of the Osages) and his committee the serious aspects of what might happen to the Haskell Indians. They immediately lined up some scouts to police the crowd and report anyone who was taking notes. They found one newspaper reporter but the committee conferred with him and assured me he had been handled ‘Osage Style’. If anyone had showed up with a Brownie camera they might have been scalped.
The next morning when we changed trains at Ottawa (Kansas) to come on to Lawrence (Kansas) we had a station platform meeting with the team. We really painted a bleak picture of what might happen if the word got out. There would be firings of the coaches and expulsion of the players-and the worst-No Stadium.
Several years later in an appearance before the Rotary Club at Lawrence I revealed the secret of the ‘Game in the Osage Hills’.”
John Levi of Haskell by
Frank W. McDonald, pg. 48
Also, in McDonald’s book on pages 42-43 he referred to a September 20, 1970 article that appeared in the Star Magazine:
“FOOTBALL WITH A HASKELL WAR WHOOP
It was a real game of cowboys and Indians with thousands of dollars riding on the outcome.
The game was football and it is probably no exaggeration to say that $200,000 changed hands between oil rich Indians betting on the game. That was almost 46 years ago, and the lasting result can be seen today in the Haskell stadium at Lawrence, Kansas.
In upholding Indian pride that day, the Haskell team earned the hard cash gratitude of wealthy Osage and Quapaw tribesmen.
The 1924 football season had just ended. The Cowboys were the old professional football team. The Indians were from the Haskell Indian Institute. In theory it was a game between Fairfax, Oklahoma and Hominy, Oklahoma. The Cowboys were masquerading as Fairfax and the Haskell team was substituted en masse for the Hominy Giants.
Colleges all across the land had learned that crowds of people would happily pay to attend football games and the initial stadium building craze was on. Frank W. McDonald of Lawrence was in charge of raising funds for the Haskell stadium which was the third largest in the state when it was dedicated in October 1926.
It is now presumably safe, McDonald said recently, to acknowledge how one single football game, the secret, illegal, wildly improbable contest played in the late fall of 1924 in the rolling Osage hills west of Bartlesville, (Oklahoma) built the Haskell stadium.
No program listed the players and no newspaper chronicled the game, and it’s a good thing, in competing against professionals in an unsanctioned game, Haskell and its players were risking their eligibility. But the good-will Haskell engendered that day with the recently oil- and mineral-rich Osage and Quapaw Indians of Northeast Oklahoma unquestionably built the stadium.”
Gentle Reader, the purposes of this column are to reprise The Game and recommend both McDonald’s book and Echoes and also ask if anyone has any further information about The Game or maybe even has a surviving relative who could pinpoint where, “(I)n the rolling Osage hills west of Bartlesville”, the game was played. If so, please let me hear from you and Thank You!
Contact Info: P.O. Box 119, Barnsdall, OK 74002, jmredwine@aol.com or 918-287-8009
For more Gavel Gamut articles go to www.jamesmredwine.com
McDonald’s book is available online. Echoes of Our Ancestors: The Secret Game is also available from the internet, in Oklahoma at The Woolaroc Gift Shop, The Osage County Historical Society Museum, and Peg’s booth at The Great Exchange Flea Market in Pawhuska; in Indiana at Caper’s Emporium in New Harmony.
Alexei Navalny
Forty-seven-year-old lawyer and politician Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison February 16, 2024. He was serving a nineteen-year sentence for opposing and exposing the corrupt government of Vladimir Putin. Navalny had survived an August, 2020 poisoning through treatment at a hospital in Berlin, Germany. He voluntarily returned to Russia in January, 2021 where he was arrested and imprisoned. He is survived by his widow Yulia neé Abrosimova Navalnaya who has staunchly supported Alexei’s courageous public struggle for justice. Yulia vows to continue their Quixotic crusade. Why continue and what has Navalny’s life mattered are pervading questions?
Navalny was born in Russia June 04, 1976. His family has roots in Ukraine and Navalny spoke Russian, Ukrainian and English. Navalny’s daughter became a student at Stanford University in 2019 and Navalny was on a fellowship to Yale University in 2010. Most likely Navalny’s ties to Ukraine and America factored into the Russian government’s constant campaign to denigrate, marginalize and punish his populist words and actions opposing Russia’s autocratic rule including its invasion of Ukraine.
Navalny had to know his return to Russia would lead to his imprisonment and probably death. He surely also knew his valiant struggle was a mere beau geste that was akin to flinging flowers at the crush of Russian tanks. And he could have had a comfortable and financially rewarding life with his wife and two children in several western countries. So, once again, why?
In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote that was the inspiration for Dale Wasserman’s musical The Man of La Mancha, the feckless hero is fantasizing while in prison waiting to face the Spanish Inquisition. Navalny was not a foolish romantic in a frozen Russian gulag awaiting Putin’s tender mercies. Navalny undoubtedly realized his inevitable fate if he persevered in his one-man quest for justice. He also surely knew his and his family’s sacrifices would do little to change the course of history.
So we who watched his holy crusade from a safe distance are left to puzzle out, Why? What, if anything, did it all mean? What do the sacrifices of anyone who casts themselves against the barricades of injustice in a seemingly impossible dream mean?
The music and lyrics of Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion ask and answer this ageless mystery of why some people give everything for an ideal:
“This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For that Heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star”
To soldier on when the battle looks unwinnable is what makes people and life worthwhile. As Robert Frost might say, it is the struggle, not the outcome, that matters. Alexei Navalny faced the unbeatable foe of Putin’s Russia with full knowledge his efforts’ likely result would not be immediate change. What makes him heroic is his fortitude to strive anyway. And, if enough people are inspired by his quest, perhaps it will not have been in vain.
Not So Fast Chiefs
On Monday morning, February 19, 2024 as Kansas City Chiefs football coach Andy Reid was savoring his team’s Super Bowl victory along with his third breakfast pastry, team Executive Officer Clark Hunt hurried into Reid’s office and presented him with a legal notice from one Trump-appointed Federal District Judge in San Francisco, the sole Republican in California. Coach Reid read the following Petition as his blood pressure soared:
“All persons affiliated in any way with the National Football League team the Kansas City Chiefs are ordered to immediately Cease and Desist claiming victory in Super Bowl LVIII pending a Score Recalculation Petition filed by the San Francisco 49ers in this Court by its CEO Jed York.
The Petition alleges there was and is an on-going conspiracy involving certain persons connected with members of the Chiefs organization, the game officials and the replay technicians, to make it falsely appear that an extra point try by 49er kicker Jake Moody was blocked by Leo Chenal of the Chiefs. This AI-created illusion resulted in the 49ers’ regulation time score being a 3-point lead instead of 4. The one-point differential allowed the Chiefs to tie the game with a field goal and send it to overtime where the Chiefs prevailed with a touchdown.
The cabal’s illusion was created with Russia’s new space satellite that was ostensibly launched to monitor American satellites. However, thanks to U.S. Congressman Mike Turner who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, it was publicly disclosed that Russia had conspired with megastar Taylor Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to steal the Super Bowl for the Chiefs so that Swift could use the largest TV audience since the moon landing to endorse Joe Biden for President.
This conspiracy was exposed by Presidential Candidate Donald Trump who had received a telephone call from Tucker Carlson after he met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin the week before the Super Bowl and was told by Putin of the plan. Trump had attempted to warn the world of the nefarious plot, but as he had cried wolf about the stolen election of 2020 so often his statements were discounted by every media outlet except FOX News.
Regardless, to ensure the Constitutional right of every American to worship freely at the shrine of NFL football, until Congress can fully investigate the possibility of a clear and present danger to America, this Court orders the Chiefs, what the heck, I’ll just make my Order apply to everyone everywhere, to Cease and Desist from claiming the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII. Any violation of this Order may incur the wrath of this Court and a finding of Contempt.
Surely, Elon Musk and his Artificial Intelligence compatriots can have an answer to this vital issue before the next Super Bowl. In the meantime, this Court will closely monitor this case until after November, 2024.”
Femme Fatales
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!
Equal Protection
CNN reports that Americans’ confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court:
“[I]s at its lowest ebb in terms of public opinion in the history of Gallop polling.”
CNN attributes much of this lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Court to the overruling of Roe vs. Wade in 2022. Then, even three members of the Court publicly dissented and accused the six-member majority of playing politics. Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor dissented in Dobbs v. Jackson that overruled Roe and stated:
“Today, the proclivities of individuals rule. The Court departs from its obligation to faithfully and impartially apply the law.”
The essence of the dissenters’ warning was that the majority was denying options to America’s female population in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A similar issue is the gravamen of the current issue before the Supreme Court in the matter of whether the 14th Amendment can be used to deny Donald Trump the right to run for president. Or, as is more important, whether the federal or each state’s government can deny American citizens the right to choose whether to vote for him.
People on both sides of Trump’s possible candidacy raise the alarm that our democracy is in peril if Trump is or is not allowed to run. Many who lost confidence in the Court over the denial of a “Woman’s right to choose” are sounding the siren against Trump’s choice to run. And many who celebrated the loss of Roe’s protections of a woman’s options in maternity matters, are up-in-arms at the prospect of denying Trump the right to run.
What Americans are saying by their low opinions of the Supreme Court validates both sides’ fears that our democracy may be teetering. For the essence of democracy is freedom of choice. When the U.S. Supreme Court addresses the matter of Colorado’s position that its voters cannot be trusted to make their own choices, we will all be watching. Perhaps we will find that regardless of how the Court decides Trump’s fate, the canary in the coal mine of democracy will be at risk. Because we all believe that everyone should have the freedom to choose what we do. And our government’s duty, especially the Supreme Court’s, is to guarantee no one has the power to deny others their right to make a different choice. Nowhere is that bedrock of our democracy more crucial than in free and open elections.