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POPSBelgian Author's Euthanasia Death: Hugo Claus "I insist on being Belgian . . . I want to be a member of the pariah nationality, the laughing stock of the French and an object of ridicule for the Dutch. It's the ideal situation for a writer." Despite his scathing criticism of Belgium, Claus received warm tributes from both the Flemish and francophone communities following his death. "In his works he gave us a mirror on our lives," said former prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who was a close friend. "Certainly a hard image, often unpitying, which helped us understand who we really were."
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POPSNov 11: History of the Poppy
A writer first made connection between the poppy and battlefield deaths during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, remarking that fields that were barren before battle exploded with the blood-red flowers after the fighting ended. Prior to the First World War few poppies grew in Flanders. During the tremendous bombardments of that war the chalk soils became rich in lime from rubble, allowing ‘popaver rhoeas’ to thrive. When the war ended the lime was quickly adsorbed, and the poppy began to disappear again. Lieut.-Col. John McCrae, the Canadian doctor who wrote the poem “IN FLANDERS FIELD,” made the same connection 100 years later, during the First World War, and the scarlet poppy quickly became the symbol for soldiers who died in battle. Three years later an American, Moina Michael, was working in a New York City YMCA canteen when she started wearing a poppy in memory of the millions who died in the battlefield. During a 1920 visit to the United States a French woman, Madame
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