{"id":9220,"date":"2012-05-28T23:45:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T23:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=9220"},"modified":"2012-05-29T01:21:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T01:21:26","slug":"in-memoriam-a-tipi-and-a-garden-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=9220","title":{"rendered":"In memoriam: a tipi and a garden, I"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — Memorial Day, USA ]
\n.<\/p>\n

1. The tipi:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n.<\/p>\n

Inside the night, Afghanistan; in Arghandab, Afghanistan, a small American army base; inside the base beside the chapel a tipi; within the tipi photos of the fallen, cigarettes, an open bible, strong bonds, strong memories.<\/p>\n

.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n.<\/p>\n

If you look closely, you will see cigarettes offered in front of the photos of the 21 members of 1-17th Infantry Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division who had died here at the time Michael Yon<\/strong>, himself a former Green Beret turned warzone photojournalist, took the series of photos from which these two are taken \u2013 and which I urge you to visit<\/a> this Memorial Day:<\/p>\n

Soldiers put cigarettes in front of each photo, though they say that many of the fallen did not smoke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kanani Fong<\/strong>, friend of this blog, quotes a Blackfoot warrior’s poem in her comment on Michael Yon’s post:<\/p>\n

What is life?
\nIt is the flash of a firefly in the night.
\nIt is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
\nIt is the little shadow which runs across
\nthe grass and loses itself in the sunset.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think a church bureaucracy has the insight yet, in these non-smoker times, to call a cigarette a sacrament \u2013 yet there’s something sacramental about the friendship that comes with the giving of a cigarette to a fellow soldier, wounded and dying. And to my Lakota friends tobacco is a sacrament: a tobacco offering, ground pushing upward into sky, a prayer. <\/p>\n

The buffalo too are sacred to the Lakota: it was White Buffalo Calf Woman<\/strong> who brought them the sacred Pipe.<\/p>\n

I ask that you visit Michael Yon’s site<\/a>, and make a small donation to help him keep up the work he’s doing. Just this month he was in Burma.<\/p>\n

The bible is open to Psalm 31, verse 5:<\/p>\n

Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — Memorial Day, USA ] . 1. The tipi: . Inside the night, Afghanistan; in Arghandab, Afghanistan, a small American army base; inside the base beside the chapel a tipi; within the tipi photos of the fallen, cigarettes, an open bible, strong bonds, strong memories. . . If you look closely, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[527,361,526,359,616,1,18,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-america","category-charles-cameron","category-memorial-day","category-memoriam","category-uncategorized","category-war","category-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9220"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9282,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9220\/revisions\/9282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}