News You Can Bruise for 2003 November 9 (entry 1)

(4) Sun Nov 09 2003 18:33 This Is Like The Wigs, Right?: Question Time is on C-SPAN right now, and all the MPs are wearing red-and-green shapes stuck to their lapels. I've never seen them before. What is their purpose?

Update: Now I feel like a jerk. I apologize for the boorish joke, albeit a joke about my own boorishness.

Comments:

Posted by Frances Whitney at Mon Nov 10 2003 00:00

It's poppies-- for Veterans' Day. They used to do that here in the USA too when I was a little girl. The disabled veterans would make them out of crepe paper and people would buy them for a donation and wear them in remembrance. "In Flander's field the poppies grow..." and all that.

Posted by Rachel at Mon Nov 10 2003 00:23

Yes, you have (seen them before). Don't you remember where you were last November? Because I do...

Posted by Paul Wright at Mon Nov 10 2003 03:33

There's a whole site-ful of poppies at http://www.poppy.org.uk/

Many people I encountered yesterday were wearing one.

Posted by Alyson at Wed Nov 12 2003 15:40

My mother-in-law sent us poppies to wear the first few Remembrance Day's of my marriage. In Canada, people stand outside of grocery stores and malls to sell pin-on-poppy flowers on behalf of different non-profit causes. It is a nice tradition, I think.