It's November 11 and I don't have a more comprehensive post but it's Remembrance Day here in Canada. Poppy day.
Many people have stories about the adventure of getting your poppy and losing your poppy and getting another poppy and losing that one and eventually resorting to putting a Canadian flag pin in in the middle just to keep the thing on.
I have a story of when I had lost about 3 poppies in the same year and encountered a veteran giving them out in a metro station. I decided to ask him what he does to keep the poppy on because losing them was driving me insane. He told me that he'd pin one on my jacket and that I'd never lose it again. So he did and I didn't. I was so impressed and stupid because it didn't occur to me to check what he did until much later. He basically just bent the end of the pin so it wouldn't come off easily. Smart. I've been doing it since.
How many Lauras does it take to pin on a poppy pin? haha. no?
Another Remembrance day memory I have is of an assignment in eighth grade. We had to memorize and recite "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae. I don't know if it was the act of memorizing and reciting it in an animated manner over and over or listening to it being recited in an animated manner over and over but I still remember it by heart, word for word. And many of my blog followers (hi guys!) were in that class and still remember it too.
Anyway it's a beautiful poem :
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
- John McCrae
really good information for me to learn
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