VD
Why are you being hustled by street vendors to buy sad and drooping former roses, vegetative matter that missed the cut for bouquets, or were too late to the hospital?
Blame Esther A. Howland (1828 – 1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her guilt is writ large by the Greeting Card Association’s Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary. She imported the concept to the US from Britain to bolster her father’s stationery store in 1847.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the stationers had infiltrated school boards and imposed the now mandatory exchange in the classroom to push the low end product of Asian children and prisoners.
Seeing the success of the card merchants, the confectioners jumped on board to fill the lull between Christmas and Easter with the benefit that the bulk of purchases would be made by desperate men with less sense of taste than a golden retriever. If the box was red, heart-shaped, and said chocolate, a man would buy it.
There were at least three Saint Valentines and all were martyrs, as they should have been for the trouble they’ve caused. None are the reason for the “holiday”, only the excuse. They lived at a time when life and men were short and brutal, so the romantic aura of the holiday is pure piffle. At least one was reportedly part of a draft dodging scheme during the Roman Empire, marrying people so that men with “other priorities” could avoid being deployed to foreign wars, bachelors being preferred for catapult fodder.
It is to be hoped that the individual who first wrote: “Roses are red, violets are blue” was eaten by rabid wolverines, or had hemorrhoids.
8 comments
The St. Valentines who were martyred… was one of them the legendary pilot of a Fokker triplane who saved his squadron at the cost of his own life? Someone was talking recently about a real martyr Fokker…
Stella will receive a Dove bar, three really silly cards, and two books on bookbinding, one of the many crafts she indulges in for pleasure. She picked them out herself on a book run months ago, saying, “Oh, give them to me on Valentine’s Day; I’ll have forgotten about them by then.” I’m pretty sure she has. She’s a hard-headed practical woman with just enough of a romantic streak that I don’t dare forget the holiday.
Oh, and most important of all… we’ll share a lunch buffet at an Indian restaurant. “Kissing don’t last; cookery do,” or however the George Meredith quote goes.
Do the math: the gestation period of a cat is 2 months; half the cats in my house were born on tax day.
No VD fans here, unless you think twice as much litter box cleaning is romantic.
When I first saw the title, I thought you were doing a blog on *the other* VD. (Which I’m sure was intentional!) LOL Ahem.
Mind you… the two VD’s probably have much in common on this day! I’m sure some of those people indulging in a little ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ today will eventually discover upon a visit to their doctor some time later that the other VD. 😉
I’m such a romantic. LMAO
Hmmm… You need a whistling smiley. 😉
a whistling smiley! cool.
draft-dodging schemes i can support. from here on out i will start bestowing anti-war flowers on feb 14.
hipparchia´s last blog post..for andante
Whistler and his Smiley?
Steve Bates´s last blog post..Saturday Signs
You just did that because I refused to react to that terrible pun.
🙂
I did that because I like that tune. When I was in high school, I knew David Colvig, who played flute in the Houston Symphony; he also doubled on piccolo, and joked that he was also the symphony’s barker… no, not to gather them an audience in case they ever played at a carnival, but to sound the dog-barks every time they played Whistler and his Dog. Between the dog-barks and the piccolo solo in the Stars and Stripes Forever, he was a well-known fellow, and seemed to enjoy his job a lot. I did a web search a while back; it looks as if Colvig died at the ripe old age of 86… but I could not tell which year it happened.
Nice cover story, Steve.
I hope you had a pleasant VD.