Come on Sunday without Fail

Since on this ever happy day, all nature's full of love and play,
yet harmless still if my design, 'tis but to be your Valentine.

— World's Oldest Printed Valentine Card

While there's a Valentine's letter from 1477, the world's oldest Valentine card dates from 1790, a time when literate lovers of every social class secretly exchanged soupy notes.

The card features the word Love and a hand-drawn dove and hearts on the front, and inside a handwritten poem that begins, "Life they say is but a span, let's be happy while we can." 

The sender probably cribbed the poem, as in the 18th century you could buy books full of suggested verses for lovers.

The world's oldest printed Valentine's card, dating from 1797, features hand-tinted cupids on the outside, surrounded by the verse quoted above.

The card was sent by a certain Miss Mossday to Mr. Brown of Dover Place, Kent Road, London. 

Inside she wrote, "As I have repeatedly requested you to come, I think you must have some reason for not complying with my request. But as I have something particular to say to you, I could wish you make it all agreeable to come on Sunday without fail."

Clearly, she didn't copy that from a book.

Two centuries later, we still send our squeezes cards on Valentine's Day. 

Most of us rely on Hallmark to express our feelings.

But if you're feeling lovey-dovey this Valentine's Day, you might consider buying a blank card and using Poem Generator to pen a love poem.

I tried it, and here are the results:

For My Lovely Rose

A Love Poem by Bob

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Ladies are lovely,
And so are you.

Orchids are white,
Ghost ones are rare,
My speech is free,
And so is your hair.

Magnolia grows,
With buds like eggs,
Hands are shapely,
And so are your legs.

Sunflowers reach,
Up to the skies,
Your grin is foxy,
And so are your eyes.

Foxgloves in hedges,
Surround the farms,
My air is warm,
And so are your arms.

Daisies are pretty,
Daffies have style,
A baby is cute,
And so is your smile.

Torpedoed

Sometimes a little subterfuge is in order.

— Justina Ireland

I despise subterfuge. Despise it.

And I despise the developers who so often use it.

Developers in Alexandria, Virginia, are about to torpedo a favorite old haunt of mine, the Torpedo Factory, evicting the artists who've occupied it for 40 years.

In their relentless pursuit of profits, the developers will replace the artists' studios with Burger Kings, Cinnabons, and Gap Stores—even though these sorts of dumps are already within five minutes' walking distance.

Reading the naïfs on the city council, the developers used the cause of the month, diversity, as a ruse. 

The Torpedo Factory, they claim, isn't diverse: the artists are all White.

They've hung a big banner on the grounds demanding "A Torpedo Factory for All" and have promised to engineer diversity into their newly commercialized Torpedo Factory.

Their chicanery sickens me. And their hypocrisy.  

The developers are all White, as well. Lilly White.

The City of Alexandria, which owns the building, wants to earn a profit from it, too—even if that means evicting the artists.

The developer's promise of future profits for the city is yet another subterfuge.

A local waterfront preservationist told ALXnow, "Looking at the Torpedo Factory as a negotiable source of revenue that we would farm out to some developer who would make the future profits is a grave mistake."

The art community isn't happy with the plan, either.

"We’re being asked to step aside and sacrifice our livelihood and this institution in the name of development," one artist told The Washington Post.

NOTE: For accuracy's sake, I'll acknowledge there's in fact one Black on the developer's 48-person senior staff. Odd, for a firm using diversity in its self-promotion.

Toiletgate

Our Commode in Chief may no longer be on the seat of power, but he occupies the headlines daily.

Axios reported this week that Donald Trump routinely flushed White House documents down the toilet, in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires their preservation.

Aides regularly found the papers clogging his personal toilet.

Trump, of course, pronounced the story "fake."

But I think the story holds water. Far too many White House aides saw this Super Bowl to doubt it.

If Trump were half as smart as Richard Nixon was, he'd have called the White House Plumbers to fix things.

The Washington Post called called Trump’s action a "wrenching testimony to his penchant for wanton destruction.”

I agree wholeheartedly with The Post, as I agree with Harvard historian Heather Cox Richardson's assessment of Trumps' document dump.

"The idea that he was flushing so many documents that he periodically clogged the toilet seems a commentary on his regard for the American people."

Trump promised a "Great America;" but he dealt us a royal flush.

Now can we please flush Donald down history's drain?

Heroes

A Hero of Liberty is a person who either promoted freedom, faith, or family values.

— Heroes of Liberty website

A new publisher of kids' books hopes to combat wokeism in grade schools with a series of books that glorify so-called "Heroes of Liberty," including John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Fox News has called the series, written for second grade readers, "phenomenal," failing to recognize that it's above the reading-skills of 99% of Fox News' viewers.

As right-wing Supermoms move to ban classics like Maus, Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 from curriculums and school libraries nationwide, the Delaware-based publisher has released its first title in the series, John Wayne: Manhood and Honor.

House editor Bethany Mandel, formerly a staff writer at the Heritage Foundation, thinks John Wayne: Manhood and Honor can rescue kids from the wrongs of feminism.

She told Axios the book "counters the narrative that 'masculinity is toxic.'

"Boys are conditioned to behave like women," Mande said. "We wanted to give boy readers a glimpse of a positive male role model who doesn't apologize for being manly and masculine."

While she wants the "Heroes of Liberty" series placed in school libraries, Mandel also wants "inappropriate" books removed.

You can guess what those books might be.

For my part, the only heroes I want to celebrate are the sandwiches that go by that name.

I want to see them removed from federal watchlists and made a standard menu item in every school cafeteria. And I want to see September 14 made a national holiday.

Which is why I recommend Delawarean Vince Watchorn's A Meal in One: Wilmington and the Submarine Sandwich.

A Meal in One tells the story of how the foot-long gut-bomb first came about—and why. It's an enthralling book about poor immigrant laborers and the small-time entrepreneurs who kept them fed.

You want to talk about "family values?"

There are more family values packed between two halves of an Italian roll than than in all the bombast ever spewed by Wayne, Reagan, Thatcher, or Barrett.

None other than President Biden wrote, in the foreword to A Meal in One, "I frequently stop in one of Delaware’s established sub shops to pick up lunch, dinner or a late-night snack without thinking twice about the role the sub played in putting Delaware on the culinary map.

"I must give credit to the Italian-Americans who settled in Delaware’s Little Italy and developed and popularized the culinary creation Wilmingtonians simply and affectionately call the 'sub.'

"I give further credit to Vince Watchorn for publicizing this relatively little-known fact about our proud city to everyone who loves good food."

John Wayne may know a thing or two about manliness, but I prefer my heroes to come with capicola, sweet peppers, and an extra dab of mayo.

Con

Con: a ruse used to gain another's confidence.

— Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary

Texas is suing a Christian "influencer" for falsely claiming she could cure eating disorders, Insider reports.

The state accuses Brittany Dawn of misleading customers about her expertise and of falsely promising custom nutrition plans she never delivered.

A self-proclaimed "Jesus seeker" with a half million Instagram followers, Dawn also promised customers regular phone check-ins that never occurred and charged them "shipping fees" for emails.

Allegations against Dawn first surfaced in 2019, when followers began to call her a "scammer" on her Facebook page. Their complaints led to an investigatory report on ABC's Good Morning America.

When the heat grew too much to bear, Dawn shuttered her nutrition business and turned to monetizing Jesus, producing hotel shows for vendors of Christian tchotchkes.

    Jesus clears the "den of thieves"

Brittany Dawn is only one of thousands of scammers we innocents encounter on line every day.

They've made the web a den of thieves.

But who was America's first big scammer?

The credit goes to William Thompson, known to history as the original "confidence man."

Operating in New York City in the 1840s, Thompson would dress up as a gentleman, walk up to a wealthy mark on the street, and begin a conversation, as if an old acquaintance. After a minute, Thompson would borrow the mark's watch, then disappear from his life forever.

Thompson's haul each time was considerable. A gentleman's watch in the 1840s cost $4,200 in today's money.

Thompson capitalized on the instinct of the genteel to avoid a faux pas at any cost; in this case, the cost of a fancy watch. His consummate skill at appearing trustworthy earned Thompson the newspaper nickname "Confidence Man," a moniker that quickly became synonymous for scammer; and, in its shortened form con, synonymous for scam.

Herman Melville immortalized William Thompson's nickname in 1857, by using it for the title of a novel. 

The Confidence Man features a cast of characters who are card sharps, stock swindlers and snake-oil salesmen, cheats who Melville thought symbolized all that was wrong with America.

NOTE: The word scam, by the way, entered American usage in the 1960s. Meaning a "trick," scam is a carnival barker's term derived from the 18th-century British word for a "highway robber," scamp.

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 10. 2022: Axios today announced that Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, the "book Trump fears most," will be published in October.