“it is often,” he said, “that the poets speak of war-soaked glory and the sickening scent of blood and metal, that the only stories worth being told are ones of immense courage and the crimson victory of causing the death of another. seldom do you hear magnificent tales of the gardener, hands callused from wielding not a sword but the handle of a shovel, exhausted from the humble act of creating life rather than taking it. and that, i think, is a great shame.”