Human Flower Project

Secular Customs

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Mannerly Robot

Photo: Associated Press

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark accepted flowers from Asimo, the mechnical diplomat of Honda. Refreshingly, Asimo’s idea of protocol also included “standing on one leg and kicking a ball….”

If the bouquet is a symbol of esteem, if the robot Asimo is a symbol of Japan’s technological prowess, what does Queen Margrethe II symbolize?

The Danish queen is spending five days in Japan.

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Poppy Cocks

Keep your eyes on the lapels

At a Nov. 12 joint press conference in D.C., Blair and Bush took questions about the Middle East. I couldn’t help but notice the contrast in accessories. Bush wore the little metallic U.S. flag pin that’s now de riguer for any politician who doesn’t want to be branded a “global-test taker”  or worse, and Blair wore a soft red poppy, carrying remembrance of the nation’s (world’s?) war dead on past the anniversary of World War I’s armistice.

Hey, we give you vets November 11th. Now you want to stretch it out for a whole “Remembrance Week”?

Hurrrah for the Prime Minister. And check out this good piece from the Independent asking all sorts of Brits, “Will You Be Wearing a Poppy?”

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Vets’ Poppy Custom Seems to be Wilting

It’s Armistice Day, that marked the end of “The War to End All Wars” November 11, 1918. Schools are out, new wars are raging and the V.F.W.‘s “Buddy Poppy” has all but vanished.

V.F.W. Auxiliary Takes Donations, Austin, Tx., 2002

Wildflowers have a strange affinity for battlefields. All that shelling, scuffling and blood are, it seems, just what sets wildflower seed off to a vigorous start.
The most famous example grew out of the Belgian front in World War I, where the battlelines sprouted with brilliant papaver rhooeas: corn poppies.
In his memoir Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves described the scene outside Cambrin, near the French/Belgian border.
“I looked at the German trenches through a periscope—a distant streak of sandbags. Some of these were made of coloured cloth, whether for camouflage or from a shortage of plain sacking, I do not know. The enemy gave no sign except for a wisp or two of wood-smoke where they, too, were boiling up a hot drink. Between us and them lay a flat meadow with cornflowers, marguerites and poppies growing in the long grass, a few shell-holes, the bushes I had seen the night before, the wreck of an airplane, our barbed wire and theirs….”

But it was a Canadian medic, John McCrae, who turned the poppy into the veterans’ emblem, with his poem:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row….

After the poem was published in Punch magazine, Moina Michael, an American woman, popularized the custom of wearing a red poppy in remembrance of the war dead. And in in 1921 the Veterans of Foreign Wars began selling cloth poppies to raise money.

Corn poppies, Cap de Creus
Photo: EcoCam.com

Today’s Register-Pajaronian (Watsonville, CA) features a story about Buddy Poppy sales. V.F.W. Post Commander J.D. Head, who fought in World War II, took donations for poppies that vets had made; proceeds pay for “everything from reduced cost medications and subsidized membership fees to purchasing wheelchairs or new scooters” for vets.

“The war does some strange things to you,” Head said. “Thousands of them died in one day (in World War II). That lives in your mind forever.”

The post commander said 10,000 U.S. veterans die every day.

“When I’m gone,” Head said, “the boys serving now in Iraq will be sitting here.” Selling poppies, if they’re lucky.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Locoseed in Canada

Angel’s Trumpet nearly plays “Taps” for Ontario teenager.

The sad shadow of fall has dropped on Canada, and many a young man’s mind turns to, well, getting high.

As the St. Thomas (Ontario) Journal reports, one fellow nearly died trying. A 15-year-old boy stumbled into police after eating datura seeds, and was rushed to the local hospital.

Datura, also known as Angel’s Trumpet, has been tried by backyard dopers for many years, with unfortunate effects. The stuff can kill you. “The active chemicals in the plant’s seeds, atropine and scopolamine, target the body’s central nervous system,” causing rapid increase in heart rate and blood pressure, as well as “confusion, blurred vision, loss of muscle control and aggressive behaviour.” When did teenage boys need a drug to achieve those effects anyway?
Where I grew up, in Louisville, KY, we had a shrubby row of white datura growing along the back of the garage. The flowers were elegant white horns that shone at dusk, and the seed pods looked like spiny ping-pong balls. Tempting, but “My mama done tole me….” this plant was poisonous. We didn’t call it “Angel’s Trumpet” but something much less ethereal: “Jimson weed.”

More to the point, this beautiful flower belongs to the “Deadly Nightshade” family. Y’all run along and get a Dr. Pepper.