This week's Saturday Synopsis features my Remembrance Day posts from 2020, 2021 and 2022, to complement yesterday's post for 2023.

"Love in a Cup" [by the group Outside I'm A Giant] is both lyrically and musically soothing. The song is an open invitation to a friend to stop by the singer's home, not just for coffee ("It's brewing for you") but for support ("if you're still hurtin' | Call out to me"). The singer promises to pour out "Love in a cup" and commits to offering an open door ("If you're stuck in a rut | You'll always find | A place at my table").

Like [Winnie the] Pooh, I love a little something sweet, even better when I get to share it with someone. I love having friends and family about. I enjoy a day—much like today—when I can be outside with birds singing. I'm less like Christopher Robin, but am trying to become more like him. Doing nothing has always scared me; I like to be doing something. But when I look at what Christopher Robin means by nothing—"just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering"—I think that I could aspire to doing that kind of nothing.

The overriding thought that came to mind is how lucky I am to have the strength to do what I'm doing and the time to do it. I know that if I were working at my job—rather than simply working at life—I would have neither the strength nor the time for anything but work. And I would not be focused on the present. I would be thinking about the future and all the things I needed to get done, personally and through my team, in the days and weeks ahead. Or I would be focused on the past, remembering all the things left undone because there weren't enough hours in the day to accomplish everything.

Look at your business meetings. For any that are back-to-back, reduce the time allocated by 10-15 minutes. "Make it a practice to schedule shorter meetings with white space between—you need time to digest and assimilate before absorbing more information."

Originally posted to England, [John] McCrae would later be deployed with his unit to Ypres Salient in Belgium. On May 2, 1915, he wrote to his mother: "Heavy gunfire again this morning. Lieutenant H. was killed at the guns. I said the Committal Service over him as well as I could from memory. A soldier’s death!" Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was a close friend of McCrae's. Early the following morning, McCrae found himself sitting near his field dressing station. He could see scarlet poppies between the white crosses in a nearby cemetery, and he could hear larks singing between the sounds of gunfire. It was in this setting that McCrae wrote "In Flanders Fields."

Take notes from all important conversations, erring on the side of taking more notes than fewer. Note to whom you spoke, their contact information, when you chatted, what you discussed and what you both agreed to do next. Keep your notes in one place. Review your notes to ensure that you've followed up on action items.

[Seth] Godin writes: "No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down." Godin maintains that we get better at talking because we do it every day.... "Writer's block isn't hard to cure," Godin argues. The answer is to write every day, even if the writing is poor because, in time, you'll get better.

"I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged, damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room."

~ May Sarton

Your job as a manager is to make every employee you supervise better than they were before you managed them. Granted, you're not trying to make D students A students. But you are trying to make D students C students, C students B students, B students A students, and A students A+ students. It's all about incremental improvement and realistic expectations—moving employees up the competence continuum.

1921 was the first year that the remembrance poppy was worn in Canada, serving as a symbol to honour veterans who had lost their lives in the First World War. Inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields," Anna Guérin of France conceived the idea for the commemorative poppy to support veterans and others following the war. As recounted in this video by the Royal Canadian Legion, 100 years later, the poppy endures in Canada as an emblem of the sacrifice of Canadian veterans from all arms of the military and all missions.

Dr. Jennifer Turner, who facilitated the panel of [ovarian cancer] survivors, had many insightful comments to offer. She remarked that she hates cancer, as it brings a lot of losses and fears. But she does see the opportunity to use cancer as a catalyst for growth, and stated that she doesn't know anyone who had cancer who wasn't changed by it. For her own part, before getting cancer, she worked too much and said yes to too many things. After cancer, she figured out what she wanted to say yes to and what she wanted to say no to.

I didn't dwell on the possibility of recurrence, but it was there. So I did what I always do when an unsettling thought about an issue over which I have little or no control enters my mind: I take out my little mental broom and sweep the thoughts away. But as I thought more about that idea—"an issue over which I have little or no control"—I wondered whether that was entirely true. While some things related to cancer are beyond my control, others are very much within my power to influence. And I'm doing a lot to stack the deck in my favour.

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

~ Niels Bohr

For this year's Remembrance Day, I feature the story of Charles "Checker" Marvin Tomkins, a Métis Cree speaker who served in the Second World War. Tomkins was a Cree code talker who was part of a military intelligence unit made up of Indigenous service people.... "Stationed in England in 1940, he was tasked with 'encrypting' messages into Cree. These would then be sent elsewhere in the field, where another Cree code talker would translate the information back into English. Tomkins and his fellow Indigenous encryption officers played an integral role in transmitting intelligence and protecting the troops."