Bringing the Poppy Back to Wall Street
By: Jason Trennert of Strategas Reseach has a wonderful idea: bring the poppy back to Wall Street.
He writes:
To make a long story short, I travel around quite a bit and on my travels to the U.K. and Canada I would occasionally see men and women wearing red crepe-paper poppies. Either through complete cluelessness or stupidity, I had never learned or had forgotten that these were worn on Memorial Day as a remembrance of those who have died in our nation’s service. We have been told that the practice was yet another casualty of the Vietnam War in the US. The practice takes its origin from the poem In Flanders Fields, written in 1915 by John McCrae, a Canadian:
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.
Given the fact that its origins rest here in the lower 48, there is a certain irony in the fact that the practice appears to be more widely observed abroad than here at home. Perhaps it’s because we have the day off, but it seems a pity. Last year, I resolved myself to bring the poppy back to my little corner of the world. We’re buying 1,000 to give friends and clients and colleagues. Please let us know if you’d like us to send you one. They’re only 16 cents a-piece so it’s well within SEC limits on gifts. I’m going to encourage all of my colleagues here at Strategas to wear them on the Friday before and the Tuesday after Memorial Day.
I'm going to ask my friends here at CNBC to wear poppies on Tuesday.
