How Do You Value Something That...

...is possibly tainted by a very human flaw?

Since yesterday, when I posted the poem Hello David written by "Dusty," I heard a strident voice from one of my followers on Facebook cried foul:
...she was never a nurse
...she was never in uniform
...she was never in Vietnam during the war
...she had been outed as a fraud

So I checked out the claim and, it appears he was right, and, ultimately it makes no difference to me from a creative, passionate, resonant perspective.

I have to wonder why it was important to her to be deceptive in a way that was completely unnecessary...that was easy to fact check.

But while I can't abide the fraud, I can still feel the truth and power of the words.

Should we condemn Tennyson because he wrote about the battle of Balaclava without being there? (The Charge of the Light Brigade). Or a hundred other examples I could come up with if I had the time, and felt like it?

Reading those words, it is easy to assume it happened, probably countless times in theater, and it is very likely she heard about it from someone who was likely there, who didn't have the words to express herself, or who couldn't reduce them to paper. Whatever the source, the only way I have of judging the piece is how it made me feel, how it made my mind reel, and the thoughts it brought up, and how i am a better person for having discovered them.

And, so, it is.

See this entry on our new website: http://vietnamveteransmemorialtour.org/how-do-you-value-something-that/