Time to Remember.....Veteran's Day 2015

[Jim Page]

(11-12-2015 12:39 AM)ReignetteC Wrote:  This poem is very popular in Canada where most school children can easily recite it. Not so here in the U.S.

I'm not certain that memorization is assigned to kids in today's classrooms. Growing up in the South in the 1960s, we had to memorize lots of things. I can remember memorizing the Gettysburg Address, Antony's Eulogy, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, a couple of poems from e.e. cummings, Poe's Raven and Annabelle Lee, and my favorite, Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

None of this did me any harm and I think that memorizing helps stretch a person's mind. Later, when in bands, I could memorize song lyrics very easily and I still do that, as much for mental exercise as anything else.

--Jim