Mother
held a poetry reading for my brother, Dan, at her home. There was a small
group of family and friends there to enjoy his reading from his book,
"Blood of our Earth." The children are always included in our family
functions. Since our little daughter was only four years at the time we
felt her presence was just pleasant for us and not really that much she
would understand. She was very quiet and well behaved and we were pleased
about this.
As we drove home she was
sitting in the back seat looking out the window with a far away look. All
at once she said, "I was sitting by the creek with a fishing pole." "It
was a beautiful day and so peaceful." "All at once! rarrraahh!" "A big
alligator tried to get my fishing pole."
We never had to wonder
again if she was actually getting anything out of what was being
presented.
Over the years we have had
many occasions to enjoy brother Dan's films. Probably, the work I have
liked the most is when he brought the book Tibble's wrote about the
Ponca's trek here. The book was preserved there all these years from 1896
in the archives at Washington, D.C. about Chief Standing Bear. Dan's work
at getting the material into a produced documentary and shown on PBS has
given many people a better understanding of this history.
His latest work hopefully
will be aired in April 2003. It is his filming of the Crow Fair in
Montana. I have only seen a four minute segment of that but it was great.
I enjoyed 500 nations narrated by Kevin Costner so much if this is nearly
as good as that, we should be in for a treat. |