I brought us home a big bunch of beautiful off-red tulips tonight. I really admire more creative responses to the ancient Valentinus challenge, but one story totally intimidates me. John Waters has lately been talking about his own special valentine tradition: "I used to always send boys a little chicken heart . . . that I'd get at the butcher. I thought that was a nice way of telling them that I had a crush . . . ."

I wasn't surprised that I couldn't find a pretty picture of a chicken heart, so I went for this dramatic abstraction I found on an Amsterdam medical site where the image is described without any elaboration as an "embryonal stage of a chicken heart".

[image from academisch medisch centrum]