Review: The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend
The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend by Bob Drury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An interesting history of Red Cloud and a moment where the northern plains Indians briefly stemmed the tide of the U.S. advance across the west. Like so many of these histories, it’s frustratingly thin on material from the Indian perspective, despite the existence of an “autobiography” of Red Cloud that apparently played an important role in the writing of this book.

So I found the book interesting and I learned some valuable things about that history, but in the end really wanted to read Red Cloud’s “autobiography” directly.

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How things change, and how they stay the same

Fishing with Misty & Dad
An old photo (’75-ish?) from a fishing trip (Colorado?) with my sister and Dad

This blast from the past was taken in the mid-70’s and features a much younger (but no less geeky) yours truly, his squirt of a sister, and our dad.

Me

  • Just turned 50
  • Just celebrated 24 wonderful years of marriage to a woman I couldn’t have dreamed of meeting when this was taken
  • Have a 19-year-old son, making him quite a few years older than me in the picture
  • Work in computing (not much of a surprise to someone who knew me then)
  • Teach for a living (probably a lot less obvious when this was taken)
  • Have more than a little gray hair to document the years in between :-)

Misty

  • About to turn 46
  • Turned out to be the actual outdoorsperson in the family (we were a little slow to figure that out – gender stereotypes weigh heavy in the world)
  • After traveling through an undergraduate degree in music history, got a PhD in biology and now teaches animal behavior and conservation at UW Oshkosh
  • Is biking this summer (with her awesome dog in a trailer behind her!) from Ann Arbor, MI, to Ithaca, NY (I consider biking the 15 minutes across the Mississippi into downtown Minneapolis without dying an accomplishment)
  • Also turned out to be a teacher for a living, and an exceptional one at that (I suspect our mother has something to do with that)
  • Got to do field work in cool places like the Galapagos and Turkey (yeah, I have biologist envy)
  • Also has more than a little gray hair to document the years in between :-)

Dad

  • About to turn 83
  • After living for decades in Wichita Falls, TX (where Misty and I essentially spent our whole lives before going away to college), moved to Houston for roughly a decade
  • Then retired to NW Arkansas, where our folks still live an incredibly active life
  • Got really involved in the NW Arkansas jazz scene and knows all the celebs
  • Rediscovered (with Mom) his love for bridge, and they get invited to play with some pretty serious heavy hitters which is super cool
  • Joined with a submariner veterans group in NW Arkansas and has become a lot more connected to his experience on subs during the Korean War
  • Fishes as much as circumstances allow, but physically managing the boat and the truck and the gear, etc., etc., is proving tougher. Luckily he’s got friends that help a lot.
  • Has beaten cancer twice, but it hasn’t been easy and those battles have definitely left their marks

The crazy thing, though, is how much this old picture resonates with now. My sister and I have changed a ton, but my Dad still looks a lot like that. Thomas, Dad, and I went trout fishing on the White River in Arkansas last week, and it was pretty much just like I remember events like this picture. A few weeks before that, he and Misty went fishing in Lake Michigan near Green Bay. While we were in Arkansas, he and I took the recycling to the recycling center. He came with me to the car place while they looked at a rattle. We went to a picnic hosted by his submariners group. We listened to live jazz over a Sunday brunch. A lot of the details have changed, but the broad brushstrokes are still very recognizable; it’s definitely our strange, happy family.

Since she’s not in the picture, I end up pretty much ignoring my wonderful mother in this, which isn’t really cool. She just turned 75 and totally rocks, and is the rock of the family in so, so many ways. I suspect that while we were fishing she was back at the camper, bravely enduring the “great outdoors” when she would have much been somewhere with indoor plumbing :-). Love you Mom!

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