James M. Redwine

Walmart

A Goat Roping

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Last Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. Peg and I joined supplicants from numerous Oklahoma communities at the Grant County Health Department in Medford, Oklahoma, population one thousand. Medford is 105 miles from our home in Barnsdall, Oklahoma but there were pilgrims there from even further away. The convocation had the feel of a Hadj with the tiny health department being the Ka’bah and Medford being Mecca. Instead of seeking a later reward we were all beseeching the higher authority, our government, for salvation here and now from COVID-19.

The congregation consisted of a continuous stream of persons all of whom had the same color hair, were of similar size and shape and shuffled along as if in fear of falling. Because Medford’s Health Department is staffed with small-town Oklahomans who were born in the 20th century they were unfailingly friendly and efficient. Peg and I arrived early, of course, as did many others and were welcomed in out of the forty mile per hour cold wind gusts into the 10’ x 20’ reception area. We were there about 45 minutes, most of that time being required to see if either of us had a bad reaction to the shots; we did not. However, since these supplicants were mainly friendly refugees from an Oklahoma of the 1940’s and 50’s, in that time we learned more about them and they about us than any government census worker ever would.

Our experience with the fine folks of Medford, most of whom were unpaid volunteers, was difficult to reconcile with America’s over all response to COVID-19. Whereas our federal government should receive praise for developing vaccines in record time, we have fallen way, way short in delivering the vaccine. Every day the battle we are in with the constantly mutating virus becomes more dangerous and ’Ole 19 has already killed over 450,000 of us.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) has her main character, Milkman, in her novel Song of Soloman thinking, “Perhaps all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?” Morrison clearly understood Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) anguished frustration with the legal system in his novel The Trial. Kafka’s main character, Joseph K, cannot even get the legal system to explain what he is charged with or why. William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) Macbethsums it up: “Life is a tale told by an idiot”. Apparently Morrison, Kafka and Shakespeare were trying to get their governments to provide something as essential as a COVID-19 vaccination or whatever basic public service they needed then.

Whereas most of us are amazed that our government ramped up vaccines in about one year, the euphoria over discovery appears to have interfered with actually inoculating us. It is as if we have been so proud of finding a potential prevention of the plague that we have failed to develop a plan to employ the prevention. At the rate we are inoculating ourselves ’Ole 19 will mutate us out of existence. Supposedly millions of doses of vaccines will soon be shipped to CVS, Walgreens and Walmart. That is great but if our government has to use the existing Internet portal system, the virus will outpace us. We must be able to sign up “at the door” of the pharmacies or have the vaccine delivered and applied at our doors. We have already appropriated trillions of dollars to respond to COVID-19. We have spent enough taxpayer vaccination money to send a trained UPS, FedEx, Amazon worker or National Guard soldier to every one of our 330 million citizens with a needle and a vile of vaccine and the knowledge, training and emergency supplies to check for and respond to any bad reactions. Although in the millions of shots already given there have been virtually no deaths reported. We are allowing an extremely unlikely deadly reaction to the vaccination to interfere with the delivery of the vaccine and the almost guaranteed possibility the virus will continue to kill us in huge numbers if we do not quickly vaccinate a large percentage of our population. Another possibility would be to have the vaccines delivered directly to us and then allow us to contact medical providers of our choice to inject them. After all, millions of us receive billions of doses of medication by mail already.

We inoculated the whole country for polio without so much as a ripple. We all have had shots for smallpox, measles, TB, etc., etc. without this bottleneck. As Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine at George Washington University, said back in January 2021, “The bottleneck is actually the logistics of vaccinating people (not the supply of the vaccine)”. And former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated in The Wall Street Journal, “New variants of the virus that appear more contagious increase the urgency to deploy the vaccine as fast as possible”.

The craziness of signing up on Internet portals, waiting in lines of vehicles or waiting in lines outside in the weather adds another level to Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) Inferno. Americans can order everything from food to computers over the Internet and get them sent overnight right to our doors with simple instructions on how to use them. A packaged, pre-loaded syringe packed in dry ice is not a space shot problem. A looped YouTube video and public TV demonstration would get to 99% of our cell phones and homes for those who wish to DIY.

If our government does not think we, their bosses, are competent to give ourselves or our families shots then why not use each state’s National Guard or our 2 ½ million regular military personnel. When I joined the United States Air Force fifty-eight years ago, they gave us enough inoculations in one day to save the world from all known diseases and some not even thought of. Surely we can adapt from that system.

By the way, in a week or two after we get the promised email notices from the Oklahoma Board of Health, Peg will have to get back on the online portal to schedule appointments for our second shots at a location somewhere around the state. Hopefully it won’t take a month of checking daily/hourly to schedule the second dose as it did with the first. And, of course, we each have to get a separate appointment within the three to four week allotted period before the next dose is due. All this must take place while the virus continues to out fox us.

It’s An Ill Wind …

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Original Artwork Used by Permission of Artist & Attorney Cedric Hustace

COVID-19 has killed about 200,000 Americans since it took our first citizen in early February 2020. It has cost us millions of jobs and thousands of businesses. Before we finally defeat it, and we will, ’Ole 19 will have cost us many trillions of dollars of our personal and public treasure. It is difficult to contemplate there may be anything worthwhile to be gleaned from this world-wide pandemic. However, we humans are a resilient species. We have learned better hygiene from past plagues (Typhoid Mary?), better agriculture from past famines (the Dust Bowl?), and better technology from past wars (too numerous to name). With the corona virus we are rapidly developing better, cheaper and more ecumenical delivery systems of social services, including legal services, in response to social distancing.

As Jeff Bezos rides Amazon into the financial stratosphere we now can get groceries and education without leaving our homes by simply using our thumbs and televisions. While we complain about the pervasiveness of the outside world into our lives we can now consult with our medical providers at lower cost and with greater convenience. We can even have our “day in court” and never go to court. And the courts we no longer have to go to may have changed their attitudes more in this year of 2020 than they changed in the transition from ecclesiastical models to secular ones over the last few hundred years, or, at least, since I began practicing law in 1970 and judging in 1981.

Just as Walmart encouraged southern ladies to eschew high heels when shopping and Rural King and Atwoods relaxed the clothing bar even further for men than their wives thought possible, socially distanced court proceedings have proved that justice need not be pretentious to be administered fairly. A live-streamed video decision that grants a divorce or closes an estate is just as valid and just as readily accepted as a stuffy proceeding presided over by some self-important potentate in the presence of three-piece suits and tasseled loafers.

“Zoom”ed legal proceedings are quickly proving what some in the judiciary have been asserting for years, it is the facts and the law of a case, not the “majesty of the law”, that are the essence of justice. We judges are discovering thanks to COVID-19 what the Wizard of Oz was so rudely apprised: litigants do not need to tug on their forelocks and beseech their “betters” for justice. In an American courtroom even if that courtroom is one’s living room, “Justice is to be administered freely and without purchase, speedily and without delay”.

What we are discovering is that American citizens can save time, money and inconvenience by attending court electronically while sipping coffee and wearing casual clothing and still accept judicial decisions as just. It is the fairness of a judge’s ruling, not the judge’s robe or periwig, that is the woof and weave of our judicial system. If we judges concentrate on the evidence and properly apply the law, we need not waste time and resources enforcing arcane rules designed to stroke our egos. Legal proceedings do need proper structure but two of our most honored judicial precepts should always be followed by judges: (1) De minimis non curat lex (don’t sweat the small stuff), and (2) When the reasons for a rule no longer apply, do not apply the rule. A casual but mutually respectful atmosphere and the ability to ignore behaviors that do not impact a just outcome in court proceedings may be an unanticipated “symptom” of ’Ole 19 and electronic court.

With electronic court the days of waiting for years to get into a court should be over. Every judge, lawyer and litigant has instant access to a court; there is one in his or her hand, home or chamber. And since 95% of all cases are eventually settled without trial why delay justice due to everyone having to use the same brick and mortar building? Socially distanced justice has been forced upon us. Of course we must address the health issues but we need never go back to the Wizard of Oz days. The curtain has been raised and up it should stay.

Pugh Or Phew?

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JPeg Osage Ranch

Peg and I recently moved from Posey County in southwestern Indiana to Osage County in northeastern Oklahoma. The acculturalization for me was fairly seamless as I was born in Pawhuska, which is the county seat of The Osage. As for Peg, she was born in Schenectady, New York and has lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River her whole life. She is what we of the Oklahoma persuasion would generally classify as a “Yankee”. For Peg, the move from the land of corn, soybeans and concrete has been, well, let’s just say more interesting. And our log cabin out on the prairie thirty miles from the nearest Walmart occasionally poses new challenges for her. Oh, we do have a Dollar General about five miles away, but there’s one of those everywhere so that does not assuage Peg’s concerns.

As Peg becomes accustomed to being called “Ma’am” and getting to frequently use her high beam headlights on the uncrowded highways she is often confronted with the ambiance of a life lived among creatures she used to assume lived in zoos or within the confines of the Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve or the 3,700 acres of the marvelous Woolaroc Museum with bison and other animals only 7 miles from our cabin. Imagine her reactions when she began to encounter hawks, eagles, deer, wild turkeys, cattle, armadillos, scorpions, coyotes, opossums and raccoons right outside our door. Actually she has habituated quite well to most of Mother Nature’s creatures even when they pushed their way into our personal space. Unfortunately, our most recent visitors have been a family of skunks. That’s right. What the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) classified as Mephitidae, which means stink.

When Pepé Le Pew was cavorting on the cartoon movie screen in search of love while spouting off in a French accent, the skunk came across as cute and lovable. However, when our own skunk family took up residence under our cabin and spent their nights defending their territory by spraying copious volumes of malodorous ink at the opossums challenging for the same space, Peg called for Terminix. The nearest office was in Tulsa fifty miles away.

Now we have live traps baited with some kind of cat food and cement poured into every cranny around the base of our cabin. Each night the skunks find a new way to burrow, chew or claw their way back under our home.  Gentle Reader, please imagine city girl Peg’s reaction to the wafting of odiferous waves of stench up through the floor and into her rugs and clothing. That’s right. It ain’t pleasant.

On the positive side we probably do not need to worry about any visitors wanting to stay even the traditional 3-day limit. As for Peg, she now understands why I bought a shotgun when we decided to move west.

Putrid Porridge

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As this is a family newspaper I cannot recite the W.C. Fields (1880 – 1946) actual quotation about why he did not drink water. However, after spending two full days removing a winter’s worth of sludge from Peg’s above ground pool I side with W.C. My first clue as to the toxicity of the greenish, quivering mass clinging to the Walmart plastic liner was when my friend Paul Axton, who is a Department of Natural Resources officer, stopped by to retrieve the racoon trap he had loaned me. Paul smelled the acrid fumes rising from the pool and walked over to investigate.

“Jim have you notified the E.P.A. about this concoction? It may require Congressional oversight to remove this junk. If this gets into the wrong hands terrorists may be able to use it for untold mayhem.”

“No, Paul, but Peg has already ordered me to get in that knee deep filth and prepare the pool for swimming. According to Peg, as the man of JPeg Ranch, the gods have ordained it is my duty. Peg has already cleared the disposal with the Health Department and the Department of Defense. Thanks for your concern; would you like to join me?”

“Gee, I would but I told my sister, Judy, I would help her with her racoon problem. But feel free to call me any other time.”

In past years Peg has just bypassed my reluctant involvement in removing the winter’s accumulation of dead organisms, crop dust, and floating debris. However, Peg thoughtlessly fell off the ladder when she started to clean it last week and re-injured the knee she broke skiing 22 years ago. She claims it hurts and Dr. Matthew Lee took her side and ordered her on bed rest for two weeks. To make matters worse, Dr. Lee then sent her to an orthopedic surgeon who agreed.

I gently reminded her she had skied on down a huge mountain in Utah when she broke her leg and maybe she could just ignore the medical profession’s opinion and the pain. I cannot repeat her response due once again to that family newspaper thing.

Anyway, my weekend was filled with two days of shop vacs, mops, Clorox, white vinegar, long handled brooms and water hoses. It was so gay to watch globs of unidentified multi-colored crude having the consistency and smell of the contents of used diapers ooze off the plastic floor through the vacuum, into the bucket then hoisted over the pool wall into the yard. My guess is every varmint within miles will think a grand smorgasbord has been laid out for them. Of course, the grass immediately began to wither and turn yellow.

Well, Gentle Reader, I know Peg’s injury and its unfortunate consequences may concern you, but, do not worry, I’ll be alright.