{"id":405,"date":"2005-01-16T07:27:07","date_gmt":"2005-01-16T13:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/?p=405"},"modified":"2005-01-16T07:27:36","modified_gmt":"2005-01-16T13:27:36","slug":"happy-birthday-robert-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/2005\/01\/16\/happy-birthday-robert-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Robert Service."},"content":{"rendered":"

I know, you’re thinking, who?
\nWell, Robert W. Service<\/a> is the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. Still in the dark? That’s okay. I don’t think that Mr. Service is too well known anymore. I know him because of my father. Apparently, when my father was growing up one of the things that kids in school did was memorize and recite poetry. It was a competition along the lines of a spelling bee, from what he described. In any case, the poem that he memorized was, of course, “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. It’s a gruesome little tale about a man keeping his promise to a dying friend. A promise to cremate his remains in the frozen Yukon, in Winter, during the Gold Rush. Here’s a sample:<\/p>\n

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
\n By the men who moil for gold;
\nThe Arctic trails have their secret tales
\n That would make your blood run cold;
\nThe Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
\n But the queerest they ever did see
\nWas that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
\n I cremated Sam McGee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can see how that might grab a young man’s attention, eh? Especially, when his father introduces him to it. Well, if you click on the link,<\/a> you can read the rest for yourself. I think it’s worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, you’re thinking, who? Well, Robert W. Service is the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. Still in the dark? That’s okay. I don’t think that Mr. Service is too well known anymore. I know him because of my father. Apparently, when my father was growing up one of the things that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,27,13,25,24],"tags":[553,554,555],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantastic-and-surreal","category-fun","category-horror","category-poetry-and-such","category-things-to-read","tag-robert-service","tag-robert-w-service","tag-sam-mcgee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}