by Peter Molenaar
Hopefully, a good many visited “Dances with Wolves” as seen again on public television. Certainly, it stands as one of the most beautiful and edifying of films”¦
“Your life is like a pebble dropped into a sea creating ripples endlessly”¦you do not know the end of a thought, action or word.”””attributed to White Eagle.
In the aftermath of Tucson, there occurred a simultaneous prayer. I too bowed my head. We sought to limit the swelling of Congresswoman Giffords”' brain.
My ancestors were agricultural pioneers in Kandiyohi County to the west. They arrived two decades after the Dakota War of 1862 to settle the left-over spots. Like good Dutch people, they drained the land.
Note:Â In 1930, Machine Gun Kelly”'s gang came through Kandiyohi and robbed the bank in Willmar!
So consequently, at nine years of age, Father was compelled by Grandma to commit to memory a poem from a publication of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). I present it here, untitled:
Have you heard of the beautiful city
mentioned in the legends old?
Everlasting light shines or”' it
wondrous tales of it are told.
We are builders of that city,
all our joys and all our groans
help to rear its shining ramparts,
all our lives are building stones.
But a few brief years we labor,
soon our earthly days are or”',
other workers take our places
and our place knows us no more.
But the work that we have builded,
oft”' with bleeding hands and tears
and in error and in anguish
shall not perish with the years””
it will last and shine transfigured
in the final reign of right.
It will merge into the splendors
of the City of The Light.
So finally, would the worshippers of Mamon who intend to “retake” “their” country (twitter: “wink, wink”) kindly listen, please. We will absorb your boots and gun butts and bullets, because in the end, those you purport to command are human. You cannot win.
