March 21st, aside from being the Spring Equinox this year (more later), is also World Poetry Day. The day was established by UNESCO in 1999. The United Nations site explains “Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings. Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures.”

That sounds so serious – and the poetry I’d like to share today is not. It prefaces the book Most Anything You Please by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole which I just picked up from the library yesterday and am itching to start. It’s about three generations of women who run a small grocery and confectionary store in St. John’s Newfoundland.

The words of this poem are taken from Old Brown’s Daughter by G.W. Hunt, an old English music hall song which has become a Newfoundland folk song.

Old Brown sells from off the shelf most anything you please
He’s got jews-harps for the little boys, lollipops and cheese.
His daughter minds the store and it’s a treat to see her serve
I’d like to run away with her but I don’t have the nerve.

Although we’re supposed to be getting a snow/ice pellets/freezing rain storm this evening, this morning is sunny. I think that’s appropriate given, that for the next six months, our daylight hours here in the Northern Hemisphere will be greater than the dark hours. Hurrah!

Happy World Poetry Day! Thank you to Sue at Whispering Gums for the impetus for this post. Her take on the day is much more intelligent and diverse than mine.

Do you have a bit of rhyme you’d like to share?

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, the largest man-made explosion up to the atomic bomb. Two thousand people died, more than six thousand were wounded and blinded (by flying glass), and over 9,000 left homeless. Relief efforts were hampered by a blizzard the day after the disaster.

Compare those figures to the sinking of the Titanic five years earlier: 1,500 people dead, no record of injuries (they would have been few), no one blinded, no one left homeless.

But the luxury ship makes a better movie than the poor and working class homes in Halifax that were destroyed, the dead from the ship included rich people, and they were mainly American and British, while the explosion affected Canadians.

Perhaps that’s why there’s barely anyone alive in the developed world who does not know the story of the Titanic; while few people, even Canadians, remember the tragedy that befell Halifax Nova Scotia on December 6th, 1917.

You can read more details of the explosion at my review of the book Blizzard of Glass.

Ellen at Invest Me in My Motley has written a touching requiem, including links to some extremely moving material. I encourage you to have a look.