Mind Visualization

This article is in honor of Poppy Day that is observed on November 11th in the U.S. but is referred to as Veteran’s Day. In other parts of the world the day is referred to as Poppy Day, Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Anzac Day, etc. and is observed sometime in the beginning of November, not necessarily on November 11th, but the premise of the day is similar.

This is the day that people across the world acknowledge those that sacrificed their personal safety to defend their rights to peace.

It is commonly a day that is marked with celebration and lots of flowers. It seems that the most significant of flowers for this time is the red poppy that is said to have bloomed in Flanders in the battlefields of WW1. It was further popularized by John McCrae’s poem In Flander’s Field.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the Dead. Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw,
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders fields. 

Though the color of the red poppy’s is sometimes correlated with the bloodshed in the battlefield, there are those who believe that there is a medical correlation between the poppy and the poem. During that time, opium, a derivative of the poppy, was used as a pain killer.

If you can imagine the carnage and pain that was felt for those participants of battle, it is not hard to assume that a lot of drugs, opiates were used to kill the pain; or more likely, to allow a way for those dying, to have a peaceful death. Thus, the significance of the poppy in the poem may not only be in the color but also of a medical significance for the poppy.

The Poppy Seed Bagel Myth

I was invited to sit in on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Air Traffic Control Training Academy’s orientation class. Many things were discussed including that there would be random drug testing that Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) would have to submit to throughout their service as an ATC.

Interestingly, they warned the students to avoid eating poppy seed bagels with (if I can recall correctly), a cup of coffee and orange juice for the likelihood that you would test positive for drugs.

Although the FAA does not just stop at one stage of drug screening, it was strongly recommended that they avoided not passing the first stage as much as possible.

Just recently, on the television show Myth Busters, it was proven that just a handful of poppy seeds (you didn’t even need the orange juice and coffee) could show up as false positive in drug test results.

Mind Visualization is not for or against the use of drugs but, off the record, I think it is rather a sad state of affairs that you can conceivably lose your job over a poppy seed bagel and not even experience any of the hallucinations from the drug that you are testing positive for! What’s up with that?!

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