a small portion of Little Bighorn National Historic Battlefield
Over the last two days we have had virtually no internet and no cell phone at the ranch at which we were staying. For cell phone, you had to walk out down to the end of the road; for internet, you had to plug in directly to the modem, which my computer cannot do. Therefore, I had to write my post, put it and the photos on a flash drive, plug that into my daughter’s larger computer and have her plug in with the ethernet line to the modem. Downloading or opening any page was so slow, you could go away and cook dinner while a page loaded, and even then it was all hit or miss. Frustration was great and the wine flowed, but so did the thoughts in my poor brain. How the hell did I get to this point where I go berserk when I have no cell and no internet? I was born LONG before the computer took over our lives; I shouldn’t need it! Cristal, born in the ‘80s on the cusp of the computer revolution, pointed out that kids today can’t imagine life without computers because they’ve always had them. Well, I’m that kid…and tonight I’m happy to have internet once again in a cabin in Medora, ND.
On the way here, we stopped at the Little Bighorn National Historic Site, driving the five miles around the signs and back, posted explanations of what took place, along with a cell phone commentary. The battlefield sits in the middle of the Crow Agency reservation, with small stone markers showing where the dead lay, white stones for the cavalry and red for the native Americans. While I was totally immersed in seeing the battlefield, I realized suddenly that I had very mixed feelings about its existence as a national landmark. Libby Custer tried for years to perpetuate the ‘myth’ of her husband’s heroism. History has revealed, I daresay, the jackass Custer actually was, as well as the unspeakable injustices of what we have done to native Americans. 
I imagine that, in some ways, making the site a National Cemetery for the warrior dead up through the Vietnam War has given the site some ulterior purpose.
The world does turn.
Andrea Downing 