MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS KILLED in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His name was Blue Eagle and he died protecting his land and his wife and his daughter from forces that he did not understand and against which he could not hope to prevail. Every year his widow visited his grave. When she got too old his daughter went and she took my grandfather with her. He's the one that fished me out of the mill pond and taught me woodcraft, and how to shoot. He's the one that got blown to bits in the trenches of the Great War. A smart doctor decided to put him back together again. Out of 262 men in the First Infantry only two came back. The other 260 sleep in France. All those young men who never became old men. My ancestors who took a bullet, they took it for me. They looked into the dark and hidden future and they stood up and they took it and said: It is a good thing to die for love.
June 25, 1994
For KDPGC
"In general, men will die for love, out of anger, out of fear for authority, for righteousness, and for profit." - The Methods of the Ssu-ma, Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.
"Medicine," among North American Indians was something believed to control natural or supernatural powers, and to serve as a preventive or remedy.
3/17/99
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