- In Flanders fields the poppies blow
- Between the crosses row on row,
- That mark our place; and in the sky
- The larks, still bravely singing, fly
- Scarce heard amid the guns below.
- We are the dead. Short days ago
- We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
- Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
- In Flanders fields.
- Take up our quarrel with the foe:
- To you from failing hands, we throw
- The torch; be yours to hold it high.
- If ye break faith with us who die
- We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
- In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields was written by a Canadian battle surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, M.D., during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. It was one of the most terrible, bloody, senseless battles in a terrible, bloody, senseless war, as poison gas drifted across the trench lines and tens of thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded during days of fighting. The poem McCrae wrote captures the physical and emotional exhaustion he felt — yet still McCrae wanted others to fight to ensure that the dead did not die in vain. McCrae ultimately died, of pneumonia, during the early days of 1918 as World War I dragged on with no apparent end in sight.
McCrae’s poem, and its duality, is worth remembering on this Memorial Day. We cannot drop the torch, but we need to make sure that the torch is carried forward into battle only when our national security truly requires it. We cannot afford to senselessly bury young men and women beneath Flanders Fields.
Guam’s snake infestation is giving Hawaii the heebie-jeebies. If a pregnant brown snake, or a mating pair of snakes, hitched a ride on a boat and landed in the snakeless Hawaiian Islands, Hawaii’s beautiful bird population — which has no fear of snakes — could be decimated.
The U.S. government has come up with a drastic solution to Guam’s brown snake problem. It will drop dead mice laced with painkillers over the island’s jungles. The theory is that the brown snakes will eat the mice and die by the score. Presumably, the government has some reason to believe that other mice-eating creatures won’t gobble down the tainted mice.
This week comes but once a year
Nooooooo! It’s bad enough that thousands of workers will lose their jobs, but can it really be that the Twinkie will go the way of the Dodo? How can a cruel world deprive youngsters of the finger-licking pleasures of cream-filled, yellow sponge-caked goodness, dipped in milk?
Paul always seemed like somebody’s batty uncle. Now that he’s called a kind of end to his campaign, he can go back to the House of Representatives, where he has served for years and accomplished virtually nothing. (Of course, the people who support Paul probably think that is a good thing. When you take a libertarian approach to the issues, you don’t want the federal government doing much of anything.) Still, Paul was entertaining, and 
Let’s raise a glass to our friend Newt
Last night I watched Illinois play Michigan State. It promised to be a tough game between two teams fighting for the Big Ten lead — but it became 
I’m sure the Twinkie will survive a bankruptcy. As we all know, Twinkies will last forever and are the foodstuff most likely to survive a nuclear holocaust. Still, it is disturbing that the company that makes one of the most classic American foods ever — a true staple of the school day sack lunch, and even mentioned in Ghostbusters — is being squeezed by sugar, flour, and labor costs.
O! Curs’d dog, covered in corn
