Poppies on Vetern's Day

olcoon

Well-known member
Just a gee whiz item for Vetern's Day

Poppies have been associated with Veterans Day since its first observance, as Armistice Day, in 1919. While often seen in the U.S. around Veterans Day, red poppies have become a prominent part of what’s become known as Remembrance Day in Canada, England and many of the Commonwealth nations around the world.

The poppy’s significance to today’s observance is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red color an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare. An American YMCA Overseas War Secretaries employee, Moina Michael, was inspired to make 25 silk poppies based on McCrae’s poem, which she distributed to attendees of the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries’ Conference. She then made an effort to have the poppy adopted as a national symbol of remembrance, and succeeded in having the National American Legion Conference adopt it two years later.

A small number of people choose to wear white poppies to indicate a preference to look forward to peace rather than backward at the sacrifice. Those who wear the white poppy have, since their introduction in the nineteen twenties, expressed their desire for peaceful alternatives to military action, which may be due to a variety of reasons from the religious, the humanitarian, legal or economic.

So wear a poppy— real or artificial in red, white or whatever color you choose— today as part of your observance of Veterans Day. You’ll be honoring a long tradition observed throughout the world.

It shouldn’t be too hard to find a flower. The California Poppy is our most common native poppy in the U.S. and has been spread by humans far outside its natural range of the western states.

To all of you fellow Vetern's out there...THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE TO THIS GREAT NATION OF OURS! All gave some, and some gave all.


"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in
the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
George Orwell
 
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