We are…
I remember in the Uk donating, but like many not always taking the poppy.
Perhaps people feel obliged today to sport one, which is rather sad as that is not what it is about. 
It is also a way of showing solidarity… sporting a poppy and/or le bluet (I wear both) - always brings smiles and has folk wanting to chat… 
I have a large poppy, meant for the car-bumper I suppose. Anyway, it is placed alongside the war memorial in our local church for each 11 Novembre… (I did ask permission first, of course… now it is a given.)
That’s fine and a valid reason to wear one.
I am referring to those people that only wear a poppy to fit in and conform without any thought or consideration of it’s true meaning. That is what I find sad…just my opinion. 
Don’t know many people who wear one as a fashion accessory. Most know the significance.
There will always be such folk… life is like that… some folk have to “be seen” to be whatever is flavour of the month.
The rest of us simply do our own thing, regardless…
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Sorry if this is off topic, but why is your name anon? I thought we were all identified by our names in this forum!
Anon won’t be able to reply as they are no longer a member of the forum. When someone is banned, or requests to be removed, their posts remain but their name is changed to Anon followed by a number.
Do those that appear on TV sporting enamel Poppy brooches buy a new one every year or recycle the old one?
(Red is the colour and always will be, though I do display a purple one for animals on my profile picture as well as the red for the dead of all countries)
Unfortunately, I think that the differences discussed above exemplify some sources of the much greater current and historical cultural differences between the UK (or do I mean ‘England’?) and Continental Europe. The poppies are rooted in a specific historical event or phenomenon and its subsequent annual commemoration. I’d argue that at the time the appearance of the poppies was used as a symbol not merely of commemoration of loss, but of Nature’s power of renewal (and presumably healing). By contrast, the widespread Continental adoption of the cornflower is grounded in C19th German Romanticism and a yearning for something that had been lost or was impossibly attainable (perhaps a bit iike Brexiteers’ nostalgia for an idealised, pre-Suez 1950’s?).
All this might seem a rather intellectually opaque post and some might say too gobby or in the wrong place, but if you’ re interested in a fairly straightforward, non-gobby, account of how these cultural values (and differences) are constructed, try reading my essay on Romanticism, cornflowers, memory, loss, Malcolm and Donald Campbell, Bluebird and, most importantly, the colour blue (it’s the second one on this link) at:-
Fascinating, I look forward to reading it! I am in two minds about Ruskin, I love Sesame and Lilies and all sorts of writings of his BUT I can’t ever quite get out of my head the idea that he had a hissy fit with poor Effie and think get a grip.
I think there is a link between the bleuet and the fact that the Poilus originally wore blue, that blue is the colour of the monarch’s guard and subsequently of the Republic’s… that French racing vehicles had to be blue until the end of the 60s and carts were always blue (hence ‘bleu charette’) and that fortunes were made with bleu pastel grown in the SW (so pays de cocagne).
And then Klein, Majorelle etc etc etc
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No we were talking about Churchill who went to Harrow and wasn’t bright enough to get into Eton.
I realise that! 
I was joking by implying confusion that Churchill wasn’t bright enough to get into Eton but my “surprise” that Boris was!
Now I’'m confused as Boris managed to get in 
…a scholarship maybe? 
Seeing this again… and remembering that every flower represents a terrible death… all caused by War…
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Beautiful and breathtaking, especially when realising the enormity and importance of what it represents. 
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Boris Johnson did get a scholarship, he was a very clever little boy indeed. Unfortunately it is possible to be very clever and also ghastly/amoral/bumptious/a sociopath etc
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888246 poppies. I did a bit of work on this installation with my pupils before the holidays.
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Wow ! what amazing pupils( as in 
)you have 
I gave up counting after 487 … started seeing “red”. 
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Fascinating…
Thanks Vero!
Michel Pastoreau, Blue the History of a Colour, is an otherwise superb book, but its final section on the twentieth century is fragmentary and incomplete - surprisingly lacking any explanation for France’s sporting associations with blue’ However, I suspect these arose from the success and subsequent post-War popularity of horizon bleu (the colour that replaced the red pantalons of les poilus and stemmed the slaughter of 1914 that is evidenced on the war memorials of every French village), Back on the thread’s subject!
Re your other thoughts on Klein - Goethe’s subtractive colour theory assigned emotional and metaphysical values to colours, which is why blue is associated with C19th Continental Romanticism - these ideas subsequently influenced the Theosophists and Rudolf Steiner.
I’ve just remembered that Goethe was very dismissive of Newton’s additive colour theory because it appeared to lack any practical applications, whereas his became very popular with early C20th artists German Expresionists, but also Kandinsky and Mondrian. However, today most images that people see (TV, video, computers and phones) are Newtonian (RGB) rather than paint,
I think Goethe’s massive impact on Continental thought is often underestimated or ignored by the English,
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