Finding Victory Square 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 behaviour. 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.’

Take a seat for: Pondering Flanders at the Cenotaph – Postcard#43 (.mp3, 16:14, 19MB)

Featuring:

• 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
• Ani DiFranco “Amazing Grace” (trad.) – from Dilante on Righteous Babe Records
• Bagpipes and drummers recorded by Dave in Vancouver, BC 2007 at Saint Patrick’s Day Parade

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