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Word of the Every So Often

gormandize: (verb) (pronounced: ger-mon-dize) Originally, a gourmand, pretty much, was a glutton. Now it means somebody who takes great pleasure in consuming exceptionally good food. And from that, we get “gormandize,” to eat good food, usually to excess. Generally, being a gourmand or gormandizing is something that the majority of the world doesn’t have to worry about.

The Almost Daily

It's Valentine’s Day! As the legend goes, Valentine was a Roman who was martyred on… yup, you guessed it, February 14, in 269 C.E. The Roman emperor at the time, who was affectionately nicknamed Claudius the Cruel, reportedly banned all marriages in order to get men to join the military, reasoning that if the men weren’t married then they would be more willing to join in with his campaigns. Hmmm… sex or carnage… that’s a tough choice. Valentine, doing his part for the Empire, secretly married couples. And Claudius, doing his part for the Empire, had Valentine dragged out in the streets, beaten to death with clubs, and then beheaded. Luckily, that custom wasn’t widely adopted.

Long before Valentine, though, February 14 had been celebrated in honour of Juno, the Roman goddess of women and marriage, among other things, including fertility. One of the Roman customs on this day, which was then known as the feast of Lupercalia, was for young girls’ names to be drawn from a jar by young boys, and then they would be each other’s sexual partners for the following year. Flowers were optional.

In 469 C.E. Pope Gelasius (remember him?) deified Valentine, making him the patron saint of lovers and finally giving him a first name – Saint. And February 14 was officially set aside in his honour. Pope Gelasius also sought to make St. Valentine’s day a bit less… fun. He tried to change the custom of drawing a lover’s name to that of drawing the name of a saint that you would then try to emulate over the next year. With my luck, I’d get one of the many patron saints of celibacy. Among them are the obvious: St. Mary and her husband St. Joseph. Then there’s St. John, who has been argued to be superior to Peter since he never married. Go figure. As well, there is St. Jerome (the patron saint of librarians), who ardently supported celibacy, and St. Marie Goretti, a fairly recent saint, who chose to die rather than succumb to the advances of a young man, giving a whole new meaning to “ghosting” somebody. Suffice it to say, there’s not a whole lot of saints’ names that you could draw that would be anywhere near as fun as the celebration used to be. Suffice it to say that it was a custom that didn’t garner many followers.

Nowadays, Valentine’s Day is the busiest day of the year for florists, and tons of chocolates are purchased. All in hopes of getting lucky. Well, while you're hoping, keep in mind that it’s also National Impotence Day. Nope. I'm not making that up. So have fun!

Cartoon of the Week

"How long do we have to live here before they stop calling us European Starlings?"

STUFF

Starlings

Wouldn’t it be great

to murmurate?

Hundreds or thousands or even more,

to move together as one?

Some say it’s a way to survive, or

maybe they do it for fun.

Only a few species of birds murmurate.

Grackles and blackbirds and a sandpiper or two.

But it’s the lowly starling –

Sturnus vulgaris –

that does it so well.

To rise

to fall

to be one

to be all

To fall

to rise

to soar

to glide

to become the wind

If I were to come back as a bird,

if that is to be my fate,

then I’d want to be a starling,

so I could murmurate.

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