Attention (Bargain) Shoppers!

During the last few weeks, the media have been bombarding us with the phenomenon of 'Black Friday.'
On that day of the year, according to the merchandizing trade, retail companies have paid their bills, and can now start making a profit.

In doing so, they seem to celebrate BIG, by offering (sometimes unbelievable) bargains, with price cuts of 50% even 65%!
(Sometimes, not so big. But that is another story.)
Of course, bargains are not a new thing.
My wife once work at the Sears department store in Halifax, as one of the pioneers of mail-order by computers.
Generation alert: computers during that era spanned the size of large rooms, but had much less power than the iPhone in my hand.

'In Flanders Fields' -- A Century Later

Since the years of World War I, the poppy has remained a symbol of Remembrance Day.
Most of us in Canada wear it proudly on our lapels each year, and it is also worn in the U.K. and, to a lesser extent, in the U.S.A.
But we Canadians have our own symbol of war, peace and remembrance: the poem, 'In Flanders Fields.'
This year we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the poem by Lt.-Col John McRae, a field surgeon from Guelph, Ontario.
The poem still resonates and continues to inspire, a century after its publication.
According to a story posted on CBC News on November 11, 'it was hardly the only poem penned out of the emotion of the First World War. But its vivid imagery and the haunting evocation of men whose lives were lost have given it a lasting place in the collective Canadian imagination.'
In short, it 'gets to your soul.'
At that same CBC News story, you can listen to 'In Flanders Fields', read by Michael Enright.
Here is the poem, written by McCrae, soon after the death of a friend during the second battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915:

'We shall remember them.'