“Humans pair up periodically, originally for
procreation and now mostly for sport. This is the day to get your chosen person
a piece of thick, folded paper, some food, or a very old rock. A
mutant flying baby also shoots people, but just metaphorically.” —Alexis
Wilkinson, on Valentine’s Day, in “Shouts
and Murmurs: Explaining U.S. Holidays to Extraterrestrials,” The New Yorker, Nov. 26, 2018
The image accompanying this post is the
painting Cupid in a Landscape (1510), by the Italian painter Il Sodoma--who, as fate would have it, died on Valentine's Day in 1549!
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