A Belated Valentine's Day Message

I wish you all a belated Happy Valentine's Day! I hope that your February 14th was as full of love and as sweet as ours was. We had flowers, music, a special dinner, chocolates, and spent an enjoyable evening here, at home, in our wee canyon cottage.

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The photo above is of my 40-year-old solid brass peace sign. I posted an almost identical photo last year on Valentine's Day. I used these two symbols together because the heart and the peace sign are natural allies. This peace sign and I have been working for years to end America's culture of war. My peace necklace has always inspired me and I have been able to keep on keeping on because my heart is in what I do. Yep, I got "heart".

Its like the song says, "You gotta have heart!" America lost "heart" a long time ago. A century of ever rising militarism and seven years of Bush extremism plus an unnecessary war have drained the economy. Americans have been left without jobs, homes, medical care, and many of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Yesterday there was another mass shooting. Shootings at schools, shootings at colleges, shootings in homes, shootings in malls - shootings have become common, weekly events. Think of the ever spreading epidemic of mass shootings in America as symptomatic of a society addicted to violence and war. A nation that has "heart" does not seek solutions that depend solely on guns and bombs.

A nation that has "heart" does not neglect its elderly, its mentally ill, its homeless, its hungry, its children, or its wounded soldiers. Nor does it betray its working citizens by outsourcing their jobs overseas. A nation that has "heart" does not waste the money provided by taxing its citizens to support endless wars that destroy other nations. A nation that has heart, like a family that has heart, like a person who has heart, takes care of people and extends a weaponless hand to its neighbors. A nation that has "heart" engenders mutual trust and friendship with other nations.

"You gotta have heart". Tune out the heartless drummers pounding their drums of war and listen instead to the rhythm of life that beats within your heart. Yep, "You gotta have heart...All you really need is heart!"

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Years ago when I met my husband he asked me to sing harmony with him. Later on that evening, I found myself on the stage at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas, CA singing harmony on "Dark as a Dungeon". We were married soon after.

One of my favorite albums of all time is Spirit, the 1968 debut album by Spirit. It is timeless and a joy every time I listen to it (I have it on CD now). Anybody else out there into Spirit?


Several days before Valentine's Day, I was looking up Spirit for my daughter when I stumbled across a website page with their available albums. That's where I found the perfect album for a Valentine's gift for my ukulele playing, guitar playing, singing spouse. So I clicked on the pictured "Spirit Live at The La Paloma" and ordered it from CD Baby. If we had known that Spirit was playing a gig at the La Paloma back in 1993 we would have been there!


Anyway, it was kind of a past revisited full circle connection kind of a gift - he liked it! And I love the garden gnome couple on the bench and the garden gnome giving a heart to his love that he got for me. We will find special places for them in our yard and garden.

We have quite a few garden gnomes - they have "heart".
...................Kitchen Window Woman................................