Pondering Flanders at the Cenotaph – Postcard#43

Finding Victory Park cenotaph in post-ceremony calm, Dave settles onto a bench for lost sailors with some bagpipers to chat about John Macrae’s Flander’s Field poem and mull the tension between remembering noble effort and embracing jingoistic behavior. This conundrum is evident in snippets of an essay by Stephen Osborne – The Poem and the Poppy – which relates the amazing grace of drinking gin with Gramps who was there – ‘in the void.’

Download Pondering Flanders at the Cenotaph – Postcard#43 (.mp3, 16:14, 19MB)

Props to these peeps:

John McCrae surgeon/poet “In Flander’s Field“
Bonus: Flanders Field (Belgium) museum – Audio book from Librivox – McCrae works at Project Gutenburg

Stephen Osborne “The Poem and the Poppy” in The Tyee.ca
Stephen is also editor-in-chief of Geist magazine

Flanders Fields, First World War (tyee)

Ani DiFranco “Amazing Grace” (trad.) – from Dilante on Righteous Babe Records

Bagpipes and drummers recorded by Dave O in Vancouver, BC 2007 at Saint Patrick’s Day Parade

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