Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a pleasant break in the long dark winter of the Midwest. He Who Must Be Obeyed gave this child bride a bottle of Chanel No 5 on our first married Valentine's Day. It was so unexpected, so expensive, so thoughtful; a gift remembered forever, if over 52 married years is forever.

Today we celebrate with lemon meringue pie which we will take across the street to share with our elderly neighbors, shut in with our -20 below wind chill of earlier this morning. We picked it up at Village Inn on our way home from my appointment with my neurosurgeon. (If I am careful, I can start using the treadmill.)

This morning's happy discovery is that of a young man in Astoria, Oregon, who is creating a web site for those of us interested in learning the Finnish language. The article is in the Daily Astorian. "The site contains a catalogue of more than 4,000 words divided into dozens of categories such as family, food and arts and literature. It also includes grammar help, quizzes and an "inflection engine" giving a word's proper conjugation."

I learned that Tolkien used Finnish as a model for the elfin language in "Lord of the Rings." The language is that beautiful and that mysterious. I am ready to try to learn it and I thank Khan Gorlewski for providing this huge help. A click on his 'Articles' takes you to some very interesting methods of memorization. Retrieval is the key, and it needs to be practiced.