A mystery resolved

[lederhosen]

What makes your mouse pointer move?

http://www.1-click.jp/

Edit: Makes me wonder how many miniaturised Canadians can fit inside a nanotech quarter.

Comments

[sarin-girl.livejournal.com]

hehehehe.. that's awesome :)

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

And it had to be the poppy quarter, too.

Then again, the other symbol I've seen on Canadian quarters--a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness--is solemn, too. And that's a symbol which definitely extends beyond Canadian borders; not sure the poppy means the same thing elsewhere.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

The poppy's pretty widespread - my great-uncle had a part in introducing it here, and I think it's recognised through most of the Commonwealth. Not sure about the USA.

[mdsteele47.livejournal.com]

Sadly, not in the USA. Mostly because we think everything outside our borders is either silly, scary, will kill us, or all of the above.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

That seems a little harsh. As far as I know, the overwhelming majority of Allied troops at Ypres throughout WWI were in fact from the Commonwealth[0], the poem was written by a Canadian, and first published in Punch in England. So it doesn't seem unreasonable for it to be a far more powerful symbol of Commonwealth loss than U.S., and I can in fact see an argument that it would be inappropriate for the U.S. to adopt it, given the context. Especially given that the poem was published in 1915, 2 years before the U.S. declared war on Germany.

On the other hand, of course, Moina Michael, who was instrumental in establishing the poppy as a world-wide symbol, was from the U.S., so it clearly wasn't entirely lost on Americans at the time, however much it may have passed out of popular use there now.

sol.
.
[0] A brief google seems to indicate that the official U.S. cemetery in Flanders contains 368 dead, as opposed to the 11,000 in the British cemetery. Even allowing for those not acknowledged and bodies returned home, it's a pretty large discrepancy. And that doesn't include other Commonwealth countries.

[moxie_man]

(With apologies to mr_figgy and any other Canadians out there...)

We are Canadian Intelligence, eh, stealing your seekrits, eh...

With the amount of Canadian coinage I see pass through Maine, I'm surprised I haven't seen either the Poppy or Breast Cancer quarters yet.

(chuckle) I wonder how long now before Bush bans all foreign currency from entering the USA for fear that it may be spying for its motherland. ;)