The “Happy” Pillow

I sleep with two pillows. One is somewhat firm; the kind you rest your head on as you’re drawn into your dreams. The other is soft and squishy. I call this my “hugging” pillow, and I rather abuse it nightly. I punch and squash it into shape before finally hugging it or sprawling over the top of it.

And then there’s the “happy” pillow. Technically, I share this one with Desiree. It doesn’t serve any practical purpose. I don’t sleep with it. It’s more of a “show” pillow. It just sits there and tells us to be happy. And somehow, looking at it makes me happy.

The Happy Pillow

—Mitchell Hegman

The Good Apprentice

Yesterday, I taught a class filled with a dozen apprentice electricians in their fourth year of training. These are the finest young men and women you can imagine. They proved both intelligent and attentive as we waded through some technical material related to the use of digital multimeters.

I enjoy teaching the willing.

At present, there exists great demand for electricians. And we will need many more as we surge into our electrified future. I found myself particularly impressed when I engaged in side conversations with the students. These are highly motivated people, and all of them revealed how much they enjoy their craft.

It warmed me to hear that. We need these young people on our side. And here we have them.

—Mitchell Hegman

Self-Assessment

Clearly, my thinking is too small to fill even the tiniest crack in the face of a mountain. The slowest-growing pine will reach higher than me. Though both silent and fleeting, the shadow of a passing cloud has a broader impact. But I can out-frenzy the best of them. And if need be, I can raise enough dust to baffle everyone.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Cattle Drive

Montana is known for perpetually supporting a larger population of cattle than people. Though the cow-to-person ratio has narrowed a bit in recent years, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in early 2024 reveal 2.12 million cattle roaming the state alongside 1.14 million people.

As we might say in my hometown of East Helena, Montana, that’s a plethora of cows. Just kidding. We would never say that. First, we call them cattle around these parts. Second, saying “plethora” might earn you a disciplinary punch in the shoulder.

The other afternoon, as Desiree and I were driving home, we fell in behind—of all things—an old-fashioned cattle drive just as we reached the causeway.

Droving cattle from place to place is no small task. Pushing them in the desired direction can be about as effective as shoveling dirt with a pitchfork. In this instance, two sheriff’s officers and about a dozen cowboys and cowgirls—some on horseback, others in trucks or bouncing along on ATVs—strove to move the herd and keep them together at the same time.

The causeway confounded the cattle. They didn’t appreciate crossing that narrow strip of pavement with water jostling on both sides. The drovers frenzied around the knot of restless animals to keep the herd from blowing up or turning back. In the end, the process of urging them on cost us about a half hour, but Desiree and I enjoyed the event all the same.

Vehicles and Cattle on the Causeway and Strung Along Lake Helena Drive

Cattle Milling on an Open Hillside

A Cowgirl Watching Over the Herd

—Mitchell Hegman

An Alchemist’s Dream

In simpler times, alchemists spent endless hours trying to turn base metals into gold. Their attempts failed, of course. But yesterday, Desiree and I drove a country road and discovered a place where autumn had turned the trees into tall stands of fluttering gold.

A Golden Country Lane

Desiree Under a Shroud of Gold

—Mitchell Hegman

Stacking “Junk” Sounds Together

Watch and listen to the video I’ve shared today. After this, you’ll never carelessly cast aside another “junk” sound again.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jQCurDh9yrQ

My Reincarnation

If reincarnation is a thing, I’ve decided how I want to come back. I want to be that one bird in a string of twenty perched on a wire, facing the wrong direction.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Good Fortune of a Gully Washer

A literal “gully washer” rainstorm swept through the ranchlands late this summer. The heavy runoff waters gouged down all the slopes and thrashed through the gully bottoms, removing and dragging off the accumulations of pine needles and pine cones. In some places, the water scrubbed away thin layers of overburden and exposed an underlayment of rocks.

This occurred in some of my prime rock-hunting ground.

Yesterday, I took a hike through some of the rumpled land and bloodhounded down through the deepest gully bottoms, looking for rocks. I quickly filled my pockets with shale, quartz, and specimens of multicolored jasper. But the most interesting and unusual rock is a weathered chip of limestone.

The bottom is gray and smooth as an eggshell. The top is white and looks like a skyrise city in miniature. What makes this more fascinating is the fact that my neighbor, Kevin, collected a smaller piece similar to this many years ago.

Top View

Bottom View

Side View

—Mitchell Hegman

A Good Reason for Eating Live Frogs

The title of this blog is somewhat deceptive. There really is no good reason to eat live frogs. More on that later.

For now, let’s talk about Traditional Chinese Medicine. I’m referring to the fringe stuff, like eating tiger penis and testicles to treat erectile dysfunction or improve sexual performance. Or that thing where you eat flying squirrel feces to stop bleeding.

I’m a firm “no” on both counts. Mind you, I’m all in on great sexual performance, and I’d prefer not to bleed all over, but there must be better solutions.

Still, there are people who subscribe to all manner of offbeat ways to cure the most ordinary ailments. Recently, an 82-year-old woman from Hangzhou, China, found herself in a shiny new Western-style hospital after swallowing eight live frogs in an attempt to relieve her persistent lower back pain from a herniated disk. Following more folklore than science, she had enlisted her family to catch frogs smaller than the palm of her hand.

You know: eating size.

She downed three frogs immediately after their capture and finished the other five the next day. Not long after swallowing the last one, she was rushed to the hospital with abdominal pain, where doctors quickly determined she had a parasitic infection.

She accepted treatment and was discharged after two weeks. No word on the back pain.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Assembly, Part 2

At the end of one day, and at the beginning of another, we completed the assembly of our new TV table. Honestly, everything fell together spectacularly well. Let’s just go ahead and say that Desiree’s thoughtful direction eased us through. And I only broke one of the twisty hardware-holding whatchacallits, which was readily replaced by one from the packet of extra hardware pieces.

In the end, Desiree and I both love the quality and look of the table.

I’m sharing a photograph of the table finally pushed into place. Please note the Cold Smoke beer on top.

Cheers!

The TV Table in Place

—Mitchell Hegman

The Assembly, Part 1

You know you’re in for a furniture-building rodeo when they hang a long flag of plastic tape from the hardware box.

That flag was one of our first finds when we began to unpackage the thirty pieces required for the full assembly of our new TV table. Upon opening the hardware box, we found something approaching two hundred screws and pieces of hardware.

Faced with such an array of untethered parts stacked against us, Desiree and I did something we had to do: we reached for the instructions.

“You read. I work,” I suggested.

Fortunately, Desiree is fluent in four languages: Tagalog, Bisaya, English, and Construction.

Last evening, we set about assembling the new TV table from the heap of parts we’d scattered about our living room. As of this writing, we are still in the building process. Later today, we hope to finish and put the new table in play.

The Hardware Flag

Me With Instructions Amid the Scattered Parts

—Mitchell Hegman 

The Great Computer Crash of 2025

 My laptop computer did something extremely ungood. I had tethered my smartphone to the machine and was transferring a photograph from my phone when all hell broke loose. At once, everything on the screen began jostling back and forth rapidly. The open windows, icons, and folders on my desktop all distorted themselves into a constant blur. The Esc key didn’t work. Ctrl–Alt–Delete failed.

Finally, I resorted to jamming down the power button for several seconds, which forced a hard shutdown and instantly sucked the screen to black. After a mini-debate with myself, I poked the power button again to see if my machine would blossom back to normal operation.

Nope.

After the machine chased its tail for a minute or so, a message on the screen informed me it “couldn’t connect with the network.” I took a second run at rebooting and achieved the same result. Following that, I shut the laptop down for good.

This trouble makes perfect sense when you consider that my factory warranty recently expired. I’m on my own with this one and will be taking my machine to the computer shop today. At present, I’m writing this on my old laptop, which is limping a little and bumping into things as we proceed. But at least I’m not entirely dead in the water. I’m sharing a photograph of the message I got on the screen of my broken laptop.

The Message on My Computer Screen

—Mitchell Hegman

Thoughts and Statements

• If cheese hadn’t already been invented, I would have done it myself.
• I hear voices in running fans.
• I want to invent a comb that combs out stupid thoughts when people use it.
• In the Philippines, walking around with both hands stuffed in your jacket pockets is considered a sign of arrogance. Doing that here, in the midst of a Montana winter, is necessary.
• Often, the most important missions are those we can’t justify financially.
• Within six months, I plan on swimming with whale sharks.
• I’m convinced that working hard always pays off at some point.
• The technology that got me into the fix rarely gets me out of it.
• You may want to look into what Botox is made from before having an injection.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Heavy Metal Tree

Trees are capable of weird things. They’re also capable of thriving in the harshest of conditions. One way or another, they find a way to survive: from low, heat-warping deserts to high, blizzard-wracked peaks.

Here in Montana, trees must endure radical swings in weather. Some thrive in poor soil and dry, windswept environments. It’s not uncommon to see a pine tree growing straight out of a rock face. Ponderosa pines have learned to survive where wildfires regularly sweep through the understory.

And trees will find a way to work around all manner of obstacles.

I have a section of a fir tree in my cabin loft that grew around and nearly encased a long-dead three-inch lodgepole that had been blown over and caught up in nearby trees before reaching the ground. Early this spring, we felled a tree near my cabin with strands of barbed wire embedded deep inside it. Somewhere in the early 1900s, the tree had served as a living fencepost.

Yesterday, while splitting the last round of fir I brought home from the cabin, I came across a piece that refused to split. After several minutes of me “going at it like a one-armed man killing snakes,” as my friend Kenny used to say, I finally broke it apart with a wedge and sledgehammer. Inside, I found a hook of metal nearly a half inch thick, likely part of a giant broken nail.

I’m sharing two photographs of the metal. In the second, I held a Cold Smoke beer beside it for a sense of scale.

Freshly Split Wood with Embedded Metal

Cold Smoke and Metal

—Mitchell Hegman

Conspicuous Beauty

For the past few days, I’ve been breaking up my day by lugging a round or two from the fir tree I chopped up at the cabin out onto the drive and splitting a few pieces of cordwood by hand. This serves the purpose of satisfying my fairly constant need to “be busy” and provides a solid level of exercise.

A victim of pine beetle infestation, the wood clearly displays the gray-blue staining at the butt end of each round. A conspicuous sign of death. Clear evidence of the killing fungus vectored into the tree by beetles not much larger than a grain of rice.

I don’t like to say this, but the staining is beautiful in its own way. Finish wood milled from beetle-kill trees is quite appealing. Over the years, I’ve used blue pine for a variety of finish projects. I first used it over thirty years ago on the walls of a basement in a house in East Helena. The vaulted ceiling in the cabin runs end to end with tongue-and-groove blue pine. The north wall of our living room is finished with lightly whitewashed blue pine.

A Blue Pine Round

Blue Pine Split into Cordwood

Blue Pine Wall in Our Living Room

—Mitchell Hegman

The Little Big Move

About the only thing I didn’t need was the hand truck.

Allow me to explain. Following the successful installation of our new big-screen TV, I needed to move our old TV stand from the living room to what is now my office. We’re talking about something less than thirty feet in distance.

Oddly enough, this turned out to be “the little big move.” The job consumed the better part of a day and required armfuls of both hand and power tools. The difficulty arose from the fact that I had customized (read: made it really big) the old TV stand to accommodate a 48-inch TV several years ago. To make the move, I needed to unscrew and pry apart nailed pieces from a live-edge slab of blue pine I had used to extend the stand to something near six feet in length. I also removed a glass door and some shelves.

Following the disassembly, I used furniture sliders to push and pull the stand down the hall and into my office. I had no more than an inch to spare when rotating the hulking piece out of the hall and into the room. Once I wrestled the stand into the office, I dragged my collection of tools into the space and clambered around it, reassembling everything I’d torn apart.

Required Tools

The Stand in the Hall

Reassembled Stand

—Mitchell Hegman

Back to My Batchelor Days

Desiree and I purchased a 75” big-screen TV. Wall-mounting and commissioning it proved shockingly easy. That said, a weighty problem did surface—we need a low-built table to support all the associated hardware and, of course, the requisite rocks from my collection that deserve a place beneath the screen.

As a temporary solution, we’ve had to resort to the kind of furnishings I used back in my early, frugal bachelor days. You might recall the bookshelves made from concrete blocks and dimension lumber, giant wooden wire spools pressed into service as tables, and posters standing in for art.

For this project, an old cooler and a plastic storage bin are filling in as our temporary television table. I’m rather pleased with the look and feel of it, truth be told.

The Big Screen and Furnishings Below

—Mitchell Hegman

Buddha’s Hand

The Buddha’s hand is—apologies given now—hands down the weirdest citrus fruit on the block. It looks like a lemon trying to become an octopus. Its origins trace back to the lower slopes of the Himalayas and northeastern India. Botanically, it’s a close cousin of the citron, one of the ancestral citrus species from which many of our familiar lemons and limes descend. What makes it truly odd is the way its robust segments set out on their own and stretch apart as it grows, giving rise to the distinct “fingers” that make each fruit look more like a sprawling sculpture.

Unlike lemons or oranges, Buddha’s hand contains no juice—none at all. Inside, it’s mostly pith, thick and pale. But here’s the twist: the pith isn’t bitter. You can use the whole fruit, rind and all.

I find the scent of Buddha’s hand appealing. It’s bright and floral, with an obvious hint of lemon. Many people simply set a Buddha’s hand on a counter or shelf and let its fragrance fill the room. In the kitchen, it makes for a lively natural flavoring: thinly sliced and candied, infused into vodka or syrup, or grated over fish and pastries where a delicate citrus lift is wanted.

Desiree and I picked up a Buddha’s hand on our latest shopping trip. She used it to flavor baked salmon. I like the way it eased through the other flavors without tipping over any carts.

A Buddha’s Hand

A Look Inside

—Mitchell Hegman

Clearing the Way

I had to fix the creek at the cabin.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. The creek is fully functional, and the fish are fine. Rather, at some point during the summer months, a strong wind shoved a dead-standing fir to the ground alongside the creek, blocking the way for anyone (me, specifically) wishing to walk beside it and pitch random sticks, rocks, or pinecones into the water.

Montana being Montana, the weather obliged me yesterday with a cool, snowy day—exactly the kind I enjoy for cutting rounds with my chainsaw. So I lugged my saw down to the creek and powered through a section of the fallen tree. As I cut, the reason for the tree’s death became clear: beetle kill. Each round exposed the gray-blue staining left by the fungus the beetles carry in when they bore for lunch.

It’s the fungus, not the beetles, that chokes the trees to death.

After an hour or so, I had segmented about fifteen feet of the trunk, providing a clear path for walking. I lugged the rounds—the largest measuring sixteen inches across—to my truck and hauled them home for splitting.

The Downed Tree Alongside the Creek

Fungus-Stained Tree Butt

A Collection of Rounds

—Mitchell Hegman

Ponderosa Pine Cones

Let’s talk about pine cones.

For one thing, size doesn’t matter. At present, the tallest trees in existence are coast redwoods, which can attain a height of 350 feet. Yet the redwoods produce cones only about an inch long for the distribution of tiny seeds—about the same size as a tomato seed.

In my section of the woods, ponderosa trees produce the “big-daddy” cones. They’re durable, industrial-sized, and generally as big as a grown man’s fist. The local fir, spruce, and lodgepole pine produce far smaller and considerably more fragile cones.

Many of the ponderosas near my house have produced an abundance of cones this year. I find them beautiful in their symmetry and appreciate them whether hanging in the tree or shed upon the understory.

A ponderosa cone is built to both protect and distribute its seeds—and it does so with prickly authority. The outer scales are thick and armored, each tipped with a sharp, recurved barb—a cat-like claw. These barbs form the tree’s natural defense system, deterring animals from prying open the cone before the seeds fully mature. Handle one long enough, and the claws are bound to snag you.

When mature and dry, the cones open in warm weather, their scales flexing outward to release the winged seeds—each capable of spiraling away on a puff of wind. In cooler, damper conditions, the cones close again, guarding whatever remains inside. This simple, temperature-driven mechanism helps the tree time its seed release for the best chance of success.

I’m sharing a photograph featuring a Cold Smoke beer (as a size reference), a ponderosa pine cone (the larger one), and the much smaller cone from a spruce tree.

Pine Cones in the Tree

Pine Cone Comparison

—Mitchell Hegman

Fine Sand

As I’ve mentioned many times before, my house sits on a literal pile of rocks. I don’t have such a thing as native topsoil in my yard. My property lines are flung across what is essentially a heap of cobbles and boulders plowed into this section of our broad valley by ancient waters.

But an interesting twist flavors the rocky makeup of the ground at the front of my house. I discovered this many years ago when I planted a Russian olive and again when digging a hole for the linden tree outside the bay window. In both instances, while digging a hole in which I could plant the tree, I dug down into a layer of pure sand—almost as fine as flour. The layer of sand lies a bit over a foot below the surface and is at least a foot thick. The linden tree has thrived, I believe, by splaying its roots within this layer.

A few days ago, I started digging a hole for a tree (species to be determined) that we’ll plant some twenty or so feet southwest of the linden early next spring. Happily, after barring and shoveling my way down through the hard-packed rocks, I once again encountered the super-soft layer of sand.

Strange good stuff, this. I’m not sure what unusual dynamics account for layering the sand between shelves of stone, but I appreciate the effort.

I’ve posted photographs of my digging project. This includes a photograph of the sand alongside a Cold Smoke beer. The beer is not a reference for size in this instance—rather, it’s there because I earned a sip.

The Beginning of the Hole

A Sample of Cobbles

A Sample of the Fine Sand  

—Mitchell Hegman

Tolerating Silence

I can tolerate silence. I don’t seek it. I don’t particularly like it. But I can tolerate it.

This has not always been so.

For most of my life, I found silence insufferable. As a boy, I could not precisely define why I disliked—or at least mistrusted—quiet spaces. I quickly discovered a solution to the bothersome silence: making my own noise.

Making a bunch of noise all the time proved somewhat impractical, but I did my best. I chattered away. I tapped on tables, bowls, and plates. I made car and truck noises. Thankfully, my mother enjoyed listening to the radio and often did so throughout the day. I soon developed a deep love for music.

As I got a little older, I realized the issue with silence was not the silence outside me. The problem developed within. Lacking input from the world, my brain began fiddling with knobs and dials better left untouched. My thoughts jumped off cliffs and sometimes left the hose running.

To this day, I turn on either the television or stereo within five minutes of waking. I need the sound. But as I’ve advanced in age, I’ve learned to tolerate a small diet of silence. I suppose I’ve, in a sense, exhausted my brain by now. It’s fine with just lying there for a few minutes.

—Mitchell Hegman

Closing Out

A strong blast of wind clawed away the last leaf from the buckeye tree and sent it scratching along our front drive. The last of our bluebirds gathered by twos and threes before stitching off and dissolving against the nomadic clouds.

Though the Mayday and linden remain clutching their leaves jealously, this marks the end of our far-north growing season.

We’re closing out.

At the flower beds, we’ve shaken free and gathered seeds from both the annuals and perennials—some of those as small and shiny as new minnows. We’ve cleaved the dry stalks of the dead things at the base.

In our modest vegetable garden, we’ve unbraided the tomatoes from the supporting wire cages and uprooted the plants entirely. Both the green and blushing fruits have been appropriately gathered. We’ve harvested the last three kohlrabi.

Come now the raw wind driving frost into the earth itself. Bring us the sweeps of snow. We’ll piece together jigsaw puzzles indoors for the months of long darkness. And next year, when the days are long again, we’ll begin anew with seeds sown in fistfuls of soft soil, with lush green starts basking in the ever-warm light of our sunroom.

—Mitchell Hegman

First-Best, Second-Best

Forgiving yourself is the second-best thing.

The first-best thing is recognizing you were an ass to begin with.

—Mitchell Hegman

Eating a Sponge

Welp, I’ve dodged a bullet. I’m not going to be forced to eat a sponge. Turns out the loofah plants Desiree planted in our garden can’t tolerate even a touch of below-freezing weather. This, despite our efforts to tent the plants in plastic and pitch a blanket overtop the evening before temperatures crashed into the twenties. By the next frosty morning, the plants had deflated and begun to dry out.

Mature loofah gourds are not exactly the stuff dreams are made of, but they do produce a decent exfoliating sponge. Before reaching that stage, though, young loofah gourds are edible. They’re sometimes called vegetable sponges or Chinese okra. When cooked, they apparently have a mild, slightly sweet flavor—something close to cucumber.

Our plants were just beginning to extend miniature gourds from a few desiccated flowers when the cold struck. No eating sponges this year.

Loofah Sponge

Young Loofah Gourd

Desiree’s Cold-Damaged Loofahs

—Mitchell Hegman

Portraits of Glacier National Park

Desiree and I had planned to cross Going-to-the-Sun Road on our way home from Kalispell. Instead, Montana’s ever-restless weather swept in with a brawling snowstorm at elevation, steering us away from the high country and along the park’s southern edge on Highway 2. The mountain peaks loomed above us—wind-bitten and dusted with new snow. Still, we found our way to the shores of Lake McDonald, where waves shuffled against smoothed stones, and later wandered partway into Two Medicine on a day mostly claimed by the weather.

I’m sharing three photographs from our drive.

Lake McDonald

Desiree at Scared Dancing Cascade Falls

Two Medicine

—Mitchell Hegman

My Half-Fortune Cookie

While in Kalispell, Desiree and I ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant. After finishing our meal, we were given the requisite fortune cookies.

My fortune was not good.

When I snapped my cookie in two and fished out the flag of paper inside, I discovered that half of my fortune had been torn away at some point before reaching me. The half I received read as follows:

“ease from your cares, have a good”

That’s it.

A cryptic, incomplete fortune awaits me.

Life can be so weird sometimes.

My Fortune

—Mitchell Hegman

Along the Blackfoot

One of the best things about living in Montana is that to get from, say, Point “A” to Point “B,” you must drive through Montana. Yesterday, Desiree and I drove from our house near Helena (Point A) to Kalispell (Point B) by way of the Seeley-Swan Valley. The first leg pulled us close to the Blackfoot River and twisted us alongside it. The second funneled us between the toothy, eager Mission Mountains and the chevron peaks of the Swan Range. Tall tamaracks marched beside us for miles, while lakes flashed into view when allowed.

The leafy trees and bushes are just now flushing color through their skirts, and the tamaracks are only beginning their fall wear. Desiree is especially enamored with autumn colors, which don’t exist in her faraway tropical home.

The cottonwoods along the Blackfoot glowed half-neon yellow in the new light of our early-morning drive. I stopped at a turnout atop a prow of earth and stone so Desiree and I could pile out and bracket a few photographs.

Fall Colors Along the Blackfoot River

—Mitchell Hegman

A Single Feather

I’m incapable of passing up a feather. If I chance upon a feather lying on the ground, I feel compelled to sweep it up and examine the colors and patterns, and then drag it like a soft file against my wrist. Feathers are invariably pretty. The standards iridescent. The structures impeccable, sometimes otherworldly.

Interestingly, a feather grows the opposite manner to a tree. A tree grows new at the top, while a feather grows new at the bottom. Trees add height and reach through their tips, where buds at the ends of branches and the crown extend upward into the light. Feathers, by contrast, push out from follicles in the skin, with fresh cells forming at the base and older material carried upward until the feather unfurls to full length. One reaches higher by stretching at its topmost points, the other by building steadily from its root.

Yesterday, I found a feather near my back door—a northern flicker feather, by my best estimation. That’s a woodpecker, for those of you from my lovely smelterite-filled neighborhood in East Helena, Montana.

Northern flickers are strikingly attired and sure to catch your eye. They also overwinter in our rumpled swath of Montana. For that, I give them due credit. At the same time, they can prove a pest. They are not opposed to pecking away at the exterior of a house if they appreciate the sound it makes or suspect dinner is someplace inside. A few years ago, one of our local flickers took to hanging out with a rowdy band of magpies that regularly descended upon my yard.

Interesting stuff, that. And the feather I picked up is interesting enough that I placed it on a shelf in my den.

The Feather

Northern Flicker (Photo: Audubon)

—Mitchell Hegman

Something Sitting Bull Said

Sitting Bull (c. 1831–1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux leader, warrior, and spiritual figure best known for uniting the Plains tribes against U.S. government policies that threatened their land and way of life. Revered for his wisdom and courage, he played a central role in the resistance leading to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, where Lakota and Cheyenne forces defeated General George Custer’s troops. Though later forced to surrender, Sitting Bull remained a symbol of Native American resilience and dignity, even touring briefly with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. He was killed in 1890 during an attempted arrest at Standing Rock Reservation, but his legacy endures as a powerful voice of defiance and cultural pride.

Following are three quotes from Sitting Bull:

— "It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.”

—"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.”

—"Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

—Mitchell Hegman

Another Observation

In my limited experience, mean people make decent electricians, but they don’t make for good cashiers at the local grocery.

—Mitchell Hegman