James M. Redwine

Rodney King

News On Our Doorsteps

by Leave a Comment

According to our new Bible, the Internet, local, independent newspapers are rapidly going the way the American bison did in the 19th century. I researched these facts via the Internet. The last time I entered a public library was about the time Ted Turner unleashed CNN in 1980. However, the last time I received a non-amalgamated view of the news was only today when my October 01 and October 08, 2025 editions of The Posey County News arrived in my post office box.

Some cynics might opine that my view of our fine local newspaper is colored by the fact this column appears every week. Maybe so, but I submit my long-time personal friends, Editors and Owners Connie Redman Pearce and Dave Pearce, are upholding one of America’s essential building blocks of our republic.

At a time when Rodney King’s 1992 plea of, “Can’t we all just get along?”, is belied by the facts of societal anger and hate-speech, America needs its local newspapers to help bind us together in spite of strongly held opposing views. Talking heads on television or Facebook might as well be artificially unintelligently generated. We do not know nor can we evaluate their information. But in local newspapers writers are both known and accountable. We can weigh the pros and cons.

I have been writing the “Gavel Gamut” column since 1990. Over 1,000 of my columns have appeared in Dave and Connie’s paper and not once have they censored, or approved of, one word. I write what I think and it appears for the reader’s analysis, acceptance, rejection or lack of interest.

On the Opinion Page, Dave and Connie explicitly state the content of the columns and cartoons are solely those of the contributors. When I saw the cartoon by Joe Heller in the October 08 edition about “local news” and “community spirit” and the October 01 cartoon by Andy Singer about America’s shameful abetting of the Zionist genocide against Palestinians, I knew the tradition of Benjamin Franklin and Will Rogers was still vibrant.

Thank you, Connie and Dave, for helping to preserve one of our essential liberties!

From Olduvai To Everywhere

by Leave a Comment

The Olduvai Gorge in Africa is accepted by many as the original birthplace of all human ancestors. The gorge is found on the Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania. Archaeologists and paleontologists have spent many years researching our greater family tree since Dr. Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary, found the fossils the Leakeys opined were evidence of our oldest known ancestor.

Competing evidence for human origins was discovered in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia on the continent of Africa by Donald Johanson, Yves Coppens and Maurice Taieb who named the humanoid bones they found “Lucy” and dated her at about three million years old. Regardless of what evidence one follows, virtually every recognized authority on human history agrees every person who has ever lived can be traced back to this area of Africa. For us to return to our roots we would have to visit our grandmother Lucy or perhaps some other related fossil nearby. I will not attempt to determine how many “greats” that is.

I do know if Lucy was anything like my mother was she probably wondered why it took a couple of million years or so before any of her fourteen billion descendants paid her any attention; why can’t those kids, grandkids, etc., ever write home?

Anyway, I got to thinking about Lucy when the media began to report on President Trump’s tweets about The Squad: Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (Democrat, Massachusetts) born in Cincinnati, Ohio of African American heritage; Ilhan Omar (Democrat, Minnesota) born in Somali, Africa; Rashida Tlaib (Democrat, Michigan) born in Detroit, Michigan of Palestinian lineage; and, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat, New York) born in the Borough of Queens in New York City and of Puerto Rican parents.

President Trump tweeted out on July 14, 2019 that each Congresswoman should go back to their country of origin … “[A]nd help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”

In an interview with CNN’s Kyung Lah on July 18, 2019 Kamala Harris (Senator from California) born in Oakland, California who is an announced candidate for President of the United States in 2020 and who has African American ancestors said of President Trump, “He needs to go back where he came from. And leave that office.” Donald Trump was born in the Borough of Queens, New York City, New York and is of German and Scottish heritage. Although I do understand how people from one of New York City’s five boroughs may consider someone born in one of the other boroughs to be foreign born or someone from California may consider a native New Yorker an alien and vice versa and that those folks in New York and California may see the rest of America as one giant undeveloped wilderness. Regardless, here we all are. Maybe a little wisdom from Rodney King, that eloquent and forgiving victim of mob and police violence, may be in order. As Mr. King asked in 1991, “Can’t we all just get along?”