Quote of the Day (Robert Louis Stevenson, With a Thought for Valentine’s Day)

“How the world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden; and ‘hope, which comes to all,’ outwears the accidents of life.”— Scottish man of letters Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879)

Quote of the Day (Alexis Wilkinson, on How to Tell an Alien About Valentine’s Day)

“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!

Photo of the Day: X Marks Spot for Times Square

In recent years, Father Duffy Square in Times Square has become the setting for a number of art installations. The current installation, put on display on February 1, takes its cue from the major event in mid-month: Valentine’s Day. 

The 11th annual Times Square Valentine heart design competition was won by X, an 18-foot-tall aluminum chapel. The “heart” in this design was created by overlaying two slabs of offset aluminum, each with a hole cut in the middle. The “X” also functions as a nod to Times Square’s longtime status as crossroads of the world.

This design, created by the architectural firm Reddymade, will be on display in Times Square throughout February.