England finale: Poppies

[neadods]

After the Holmes exhibit, we split up. L stayed with her friends, and The Other M, while M and C and I left with Jean and Fake Keith of Staggering Stories to meet up with Keith, AsdaMan, and El Presidente of Staggering Stories. (Only Jean is a London native, so the Staggering Storytellers were taking the opportunity to do a little in-country tourism.)

I had no idea until I got there the impact and the sheer size of the installation, which is flooding all around the Tower, lapping and pouring and advancing in waves.

I also had no idea, until we turned the corner and saw the line of volunteers (200 per shift) that the poppies were being assembled, not just being taken out of a box and stuck in the ground. Someone -- usually in military uniform, the Tower is, after all, still a military base(ish) and a historical site -- hammered in a stalk. Then a volunteer in red would gently place the petals on the stem and screw them down with the center of the flower.

The last third of my photo album is a wash of red. It's really impossible to show the impact, much less the size of it, in 600 x 600 pixels. Here in America, we keep seeing the same two photos: poppies waterfalling from the "Weeping Window" and heading to the Thames, and the Queen and Duke wandering among them. Like St. Mary's, I kept trying to get the right "emotion" shot.


Photos in America only show the right side of this.


Trying to get the scale of it. My mind refuses to grasp that every flower is a life; there are too many.


The line of volunteers


Jean had a professional camera and isolated this volunteer. Scott put video of the poppy assembly on my Facebook.


This is my best shot, I think. It was the end of shift and one of the volunteers stopped to... get a photo? Pray? Couldn't tell from the distance.


From the sublime to the ridiculous. Staggering Stories and Friends at the Tower.

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

Excellent pix-- it sounds like you had a great time, as well! :)

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

I've just read a book about Britain in 1936. The scale of the poppy flood makes visible why so many people did not want war again, despite Germany's rearming and belligerence, and Italy's atrocities in Abyssinia. (Still doesn't excuse the Brits who sucked up to Hitler, though.)

Glad you had a good time!

[nonelvis]

The poppies were truly stunning, and I'm so glad I got to see them in person in August. I completely agree that it's just about impossible to wrap your head around the fact that each one of them represents someone who died in the war; there are just so many of them.

These two photos of mine show what the moat looked like in mid-August: left half & right half. You can see how much space they filled in only two months. It's amazing.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

Useless (?) information department: "Around 17 million soldiers and civilians were killed during WW1. Although more Britons died in WW1 than any other conflict, the bloodiest war in our history relative to population size is the Civil War, which raged in the mid-17th Century. A far higher proportion of the population of the British Isles were killed than the less than 2% who died in WW1. By contrast, around 4% of the population of England and Wales, and considerably more than that in Scotland and Ireland, are thought to have been killed in the Civil War."

[raqs.livejournal.com]

Oh, these are gorgeous.

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

Every year at our county fair, the veterans of foreign wars have a tent where they accept donations and hand out poppies. As a spinning demo, I walk by them with arms overfilled as I head to and from my space for the demo. My wheel is adorned with a few of their poppies.

When I return with family for a fun day of play, every time I walk by the tent I donate, and thank them for their service.

The fair was in September. My purse still proudly shows this year's poppy.

All that said, the installation at the Tower is astounding. Thank you for sharing.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's odd. Keith asked me if poppies were an American thing and I said "no" because I haven't heard of them being sold here - and then I get back and everyone's telling me about buying poppies!

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

I used to see more poppies sold...but not as much, now. And it's always the veterans of foreign wars. At least, it is near me.

Here's the story: http://www.vfw.org/BuddyPoppy/

Unrelated

[glamazonwarrior.livejournal.com]

Happy belated birthday!