Bloggable Librarian: Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, Goose!

Something to Look at Other Than a Lover

15TH Century Man Seeking Woman:

Young Duke of Orleans
stuck in dead end career
after battling English dogs
seeks a bright and professionally
bound Lady of noble manners.

Address all drawings/stats to:

Frenchman
Tower of London
London
England
(Strumpets need not apply).

How Lovers Love the World Over on Feburary 14

ASIA

In China, on February 14, officials can confiscate flowers according to BBC reporting. The holiday is popular amongst most of the population. China also celebrates Valentine's Day on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. On this day, lovers go to the Matchmaker Temple to ask for prosperity in love.

In Korea and Japan, girls and women give candies and chocolates to their boyfriends. In Korea and Japan on March 14, "White Day" is celebrated where boys and men give gifts to their girlfriends. The Japanese bake the chocolates at home for their true loves. The store bought chocolates are for co-workers or friends.

SOUTH AFRICA

In South Africa, Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14. In some places, the girls pin the name of the boy they love on their sleeve. These traditions follow the old festival of "Lupercalia," the Roman festival celebrated on February 15.

*Historical Notes: Lupercalia was celebrated by the Romans on February 15. The festival took place on Palatine Hill, in a cave called Lupercal. This is the supposed place where Romulus and Remus (founders of Rome) were nursed by a wolf.

SOUTH AMERICA

In Brazil, Dia dos Namorados, or "Day of the Enamored" is celebrated on June 12. This is the day before Saint Anthony's Day. He was a marriage saint.

In Colombia and Venezuela, the "Love and Friendship Day" is celebrated on the third Friday and Saturday in September.

THE WORLD

These countries celebrate St. Valentine's Day similar to the United States:
Australian Countries
Bangladesh Canadian Countries
European Countries Mexico

Russia
Thailand
Turkey
United Arab Emirates

According to the Greeting Card Association, St. Valentine's Day is the second largest card sending holiday of the year. Christmas, of course, comes in first. Even though celebrations vary in different countries across the globe, love is in the air on St. Valentine's Day. Spend the day celebrating with your loved ones and feel the love!

Alone on Valentine's Day?

Check this out:

http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/valentines-day-history.htm

You will discover some darker moments on this day in history that will make your crappy day seem, as the wise Forest Gump chimes: like a Box of Chocolates.

A poem?

Roses are red
and Violets are blue.
Nobody loves you!

If after all this you crave the affections of another this means you are not a realist but a romantic. This is a psychiatric condition marked by long periods of delusion marked by a strong inability not to coo and awe at even the most pedestrian of things. This may mean long nights alone, and if you are unfortunate enough to gain admitance to the private chambers of that special one, reassuring your intended that they are not too fat and that you think everything they say is interesting.

Romantic love, the nuts and bolts of this holiday, are a tradition going back to the 12Th Century. Trent professor Roy Haden (an authority on the history of romantic love) says:

The troubadours were renowned medieval composers and performers who thrived from 1100 to 1300 AD, first in southern France, then later expanding to neighbouring countries such as Italy and Spain. They wrote more than 2,500 song lyrics in what is called the Old Occitan language. Sifting through a database with thousands of songs written by the troubadours during a 200 year period, Prof. Hagan analyzed every instance they used the word 'amors.'“I found some startling patterns,” he says. “They were treating love as some sort of attacking force. In their songs they were turning love into an entity with power that controlled people's lives. That hadn't been done before.” He says the ancients had a concept of love, but love wasn't about the romantic relationship between men and women, it was about family and friends.

So this whole history of this holiday could only have happened with this shift from more community based social structures to the more intimate and personal form of affection that is recorded in thousands of songs since the 12TH century. It is an entirely different concept of early Greek and Roman concepts of state and family. Before this exsisted the culture of Rome where the family was the social model adopted and supported by the state. Love was an act of loyalty to what seems more like friendship and the honor of a family as Hogan notes:

He also discovered the troubadours use of the word amors, and the development of a new aggressive and all powerful love concept coincided with the Crusades during the middle of the 12th century. “It is perhaps no coincidence that the new 'love God' of the troubadours should be a warrior God, whose central focus was to conquer and control its subjects,” he speculates.

It's no wonder that the common lament of young star crossed lovers is "I'm crazy for you", and that this goes as far as Shakespeare could in Romeo & Juliet.

Hopefully you will not have to suffer as much, nor dramatically as the following scene:

Mercutio: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs, The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, The traces of the smallest spider's web, The collars of the moonshine's watery beams, Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat, Not so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers . And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight, O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, O'fer ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, Then dreams, he of another benefice: Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bodes: This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage This is she--

This is the gentle advise of not only love, but of its dangers. So if today hits you hard at the bank or in the heart consider this:

Its only love.