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Sandi Rinaldo
Sandi Rinaldo, CTV News
(now if she does not rate a double take, we’ll accept a triple take)
Tamara Cherry
Tamara Cherry
(happiness is truly a bowl of tamaras)
Christine Brinkley
Christine Brinkley
sharply-focused eyes, high resolution
Sunrise at Flanders Fields
“Twas that time in High School when my English and Composition teacher; she was prim, proper, and had a bearing that commanded your undivided attention; Mrs. Del Rosario (Remedios was mayhaps her first name), strove diligently to burn in the minds of her students the complete stanzas of a lot of poems in the textbook.
She is wont to do this, not because she was the cruelest teacher in town, but because it was the rule of the Education Department during those days to test the mettle of the teachers by imposing rigid testing procedures on their students. One of these exams was to write from memory, and thence paraphrase, certain poems in the textbook. Little did I realize that this method provided more benefits to the students than to the teachers, memory-wise.
After I migrated to Canada, I had a co-employee by the name of Hodson. He said he came from an English town where the famous cookies Of Peak Freans were manufactured. One day I surprised him by quoting from memory this poem:
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.
Mrs. Del Rosario (I’m pretty sure Remedios was her first name) told us that this is a poem from World War I.
I never realized this until Mr. Hodson explained to me what this poem was all about.
Now I remember everything, including that part where the author was a Canadian,
even when the textbook was called “English and American Writers”
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