James M. Redwine

Peg

To Take A Walk

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Photo by Peg Redwine

I have always enjoyed walking alone. In the small town where I grew up one could “slip the surly bonds of …” life’s cares, as John Gillespie Magee, Jr. might have said, within 15 minutes of casual walking. My town was surrounded by countless acres of people-free space populated only by gracefully waving tall grasses and meandering cattle. Occasionally the reverie would be accentuated by a coyote or two or maybe a soaring red-tailed hawk. Later in my life I learned to enjoy – usually – Peg’s accompaniment on my quest for a respite from the world’s intrusion. But those sojourns now are often infested with the clang of, “Jim, can’t you see that fence is sagging and what about the length of the grass? Isn’t it time to mow again?”

Photo by Peg Redwine

As I am marveling in the tall milkweeds that bring the Monarch Butterflies and the blue-flowered thistle, Peg is cataloging items that must be attended to “right now”! I never respond to these intrusions as I never notice them. I am lost in the Indian Blanket and Indian Paint Brush with their brown and gold splendor and the swaying blue stem grass.

“Jim, when are you going to rearrange those sand rocks around the dock by the pond? And, there are weeds poking through every crevice.” My response is to feign attention to “something, anything” but what Peg is consumed with. I just continue drinking the miracle of people-less space and natural wonders that need no mending.

As we near the end of our informal survey of our property, Peg says, “I am going to do some laundry and finish up a project or two in the Girl Cave, what are you doing next.?”

“I am going to take a walk.”

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Armored Adversaries

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It is unlikely that armadillos ascribe to any mystic beliefs, but they definitely bring out the devil in those of us whose yards are decimated by their reptilian claws. Having shot fifteen of the ugly excuses for lawn ornaments, I immediately bonded with Oklahoma State University football coach Eric Morris who endured what he described as armadillos, “…[C]rushing my yard, my flower beds, digging everything up”. His solution was the same one I applied after trying live traps, bait, wolf urine and asking Peg to sit on our veranda with a metal bucket and a large spoon to scare them away. It was sort of like President Trump’s approach to foreign affairs. Cursing, threats and self-destructive actions were all useless. The only answer was extermination. We have paid through our collective noses for Trump’s babbling ineptitude with Iran. Both Coach Morris and I took a more direct approach after the armadillos refused our terms of negotiation.

In my case, I found reason with the armored obstinate menaces was a waste of time. A few well targeted 20-gauge shots did more than all my vociferous complaints ever did. Coach Morris obviously had tried to live and let live until his yard became a war zone of claw marked messes. If Coach Morris’ wife is anything like Peg, Morris probably tired of the constant refrain of, “When are you going to keep those things out of my plants?” It is sort of like Israel demanding that Trump bomb Iran back to the Stone Age for having the temerity to live on Iran’s own land. After all Coach, the armadillos were there before you moved in.

Now, do not get me wrong, I know the pesky armadillos on our property likely came with the end of the last Ice Age. I do not care! Peg wants them gone and, apparently, so did Mrs. Morris. Neither Coach Morris nor I was going to let a little thing like “First in time, first in right” stop us from settling on armadillo habitat.

Regardless, as a former freshman at Oklahoma State University and a current suffering football fan, if eliminating a couple of ground grubbing scavengers causes the Coach to be able to better concentrate on a game plan to beat anybody, I am behind you all the way, Coach. And I will even bring my shotgun to Stillwater if it helps us beat Oregon on September 12!

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Not Just Fleeting Things

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Poster from our wedding

Peg and I have planned a sojourn to the Grand Canyon for our anniversary. Actually, Peg asked me what I wanted to do, then she contacted the Park and got us a room for three days with a dinner reservation for August 25th, our anniversary. Once she had secured both room and board for us, she developed a scenic and meandering route to guide us; she included two motel reservations on the way out. As we may wend our way to Monument Valley and, as yet to be determined adventures on the way home, she will secure those accommodations before we leave the Canyon.

You might ask what I helped do in the preparations. Well, I did not demur to anything Peg proposed. And, I have already procured a bottle of Amarone for our anniversary evening. It makes me proud that I contributed. In fact, Peg’s meticulous matriculation to our anniversary Odyssey caused me to reflect on some of my other ideas that would have been but peccadilloes without Peg’s inspiration. As they are myriad and varied, I will mention just a few.

Volgograd, Russia, December 2003

I went to Volgograd, Russia to teach Russian judges about the American jury system. Volgograd was called Stalingrad during WWII. In a six month’s winter battle one and a half million Russians and six-hundred thousand German soldiers died there. It is recognized as the bloodiest ground battle ever. Also, it is known for the movie made about it, Enemy at the Gates and the Russian sniper, Vasily Zaitsev, who personally killed 225 German soldiers. Of course, it was Peg who made all of our travel arrangements and who prepared the PowerPoint for my week of lectures. It was also Peg with whom all the male Russian judges wanted to dance as she knows how to Rock and Roll and the Russians love American music.

Batumi, Georgia, September 2022

Then we were contracted by the U.S.A.I.D., the American Bar Association, the East-West Management Institute and the National Judicial College, where I have long served on the faculty, to spend six months in the country of Georgia working with Georgian judges. Georgia borders Russia and is directly across the Black Sea from Ukraine. Once again, Peg made all the arrangements and did all the paperwork for my twenty-four presentations. We had to socialize and teach through translators. Peg was able to easily ingratiate both of us into the legal community while giving me the professional credit. And, we were greatly aided in this by our wonderful Georgian friends, Irina and Eka.

Peg reminds me of that nostalgic 1968 song by Tom Jones, My Elusive Dreams. Basically, the lyrics are you followed me in all my dreams and never left me to move on alone. There is so much more that I find myself grateful to Peg for at this anniversary. Suffice it to say, without you all those and many other adventures would not even be memories. And one more extremely important and thoughtful thing Peg has done for me was she figured out how to use her I-Pad to get the 2023 Super Bowl live at 5:00 am Georgian time. We did not miss a moment of the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the Philadelphia Eagles on February 12. While Peg used her native ingenuity to defeat all efforts to have us miss the game, I did my part too; someone had to make the morning coffee.

By the way Peg, as she has done for many years, typed this column, emailed it to the news media, put it on my website and posted it to Facebook too. I think it’s only fair to point out that I did come up with the title and remembered our anniversary. Well, Peg may have gently mentioned it first. Thank you, Peg, and Happy Anniversary!

Our formal wedding picture

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Lessons From Literature

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The Iliad and The Odyssey

Peg and I are going to see the movie The Odyssey tomorrow at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa. My thoughts about The Iliad and The Odyssey started with my memories from my high school English class. My sixteen-year-old life experience did not do Homer’s great classics justice. I enjoyed The Iliad more than The Odyssey, probably because I could more closely identify with the heroics of Achilles than with the convoluted motivations of Odysseus. Achilles was sometimes envious and petulant, but mainly he was an immortal warrior to whom the morality of the Trojan War was but a footnote. Whereas Odysseus (Ulysses in the later Roman telling) was not motivated by the betrayals of the Trojan Paris and the Greek Helen but by personal desires for glory, sex, adventure and revenge. As a 16-year-old I did not grasp Odysseus’ inner demons but related completely to Achilles’ being all in for glory.

As I now ruminate on my devouring of both The Iliad and The Odyssey so many years ago, I appreciate even more Homer’s almost 3,000-year-old brilliance. Homer tried to help us deal with the good and evil of our human nature. That is the mission of all great literature whether Homer or Shakespeare or Mark Twain. The great irony and tragedy of human history is that whether 3,000 years ago or today, we often fail to understand and apply the wisdom of those whose writings lead us toward the harder right choices and away from the easier wrong ones.

What did the citizens of Troy do to the citizens of the Greek Isle of Ithaca? Paris and Helen fell in love but did that call for the fall of Troy? Or as we might ask today, what did Iran’s citizens do to America’s citizens? Fifty-two hostages taken in 1979 and released unharmed in 1981 was a crime from forty-four years ago. It was not an act of war and had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It was in response to the United States repeated interference with the inner workings of Iran’s government.

The lesson America could have learned from a reading of The Iliad or The Odyssey from three millennia ago was that it is both immoral and self-destructive to start a war without just cause. It is reported that Americans are reading religious sayings on public school house walls instead of learning from history. It appears that we, as the ancient Greeks, have much to learn about morality and motivation. Maybe opening some books instead of our cellphones would help.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Sour Grapes

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A plethora of professional football, a cornucopia of college football and, most importantly, the hallowed echoes of high school football. Thanksgiving brings out the America our Founders dreamed of, “A more perfect union”. One where the battles almost never involve fatal blows but where due process on the field requires impartial officials, the Judiciary (?), involved and spirited fans, citizens (?), teams with different positions, players and coaches who are leaders and standard bearers for the hopes of countless constituencies, fans (?).

Peg and I almost surfeited on football last week but our stomachs have about recovered from gastronomical excess and our eyes and seats are ready for more football. Unfortunately, we are already ruing the long, dark journey from February until the fall of 2026. Ah well, we do have a few other things to attend to. And the memories of this season and seasons past will sustain us until then. For example, my favorite Thanksgiving Day football game occurred during my senior year of high school in 1960. I have carefully and constantly rearranged that game, especially the role of my favorite seventeen-year-old player in the outcome.

Photo by Peg Redwine

I was a linebacker who was not particularly gifted in the speed department. All right, I was on defense because my time in the forty was not clocked, but calendared. On the other hand, as I was a catcher on the baseball team, I was fairly adroit at retrieving fumbles; I just did not usually advance them.

Anyway, as I relive that glorious Thursday afternoon in November of 1960, I see myself clutching a blocked punt from our opponent. Only an uncharitable observer would have pointed out that my teammate actually blocked the punt. Regardless, when the football bounced into my arms, I took off like a lightning bolt for the goal line fifty-one yards away, my player number on the team. Mercury could not have caught me.

The next day the newspaper showed why people dislike the media. My heroic touchdown was described thusly, “Jim Redwine, reputedly the slowest player on the team, lugged the ball over the goal line”. That is why my football career ended in high school.

However, Peg and I still plan to cheer on Indiana and Oklahoma University teams as they conquer the playoffs, cheer on Army in the Army Navy game, watch every single college bowl game late into the nights of January then end the season with the Super Bowl in February. Who knows, with coaches making more money than Croesus, maybe some school will hire me to coach linebackers on how not to run.

Photo by Peg Redwine

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.