Facebook checks your pants

     "Language is power,” the feminist British writer Angela Carter wrote, and it’s true. Words represent concepts that can shake our world. 

     This week a new word certainly shook mine. I was noodling around Facebook, encountered a term I wasn’t familiar with, found the definition, then hurried downstairs, where my wife was in the kitchen baking banana chocolate chip muffins.

     “I have an announcement!” I said, with well-practiced grandiosity. “One that I think will explain a lot that has gone on in our relationship over the years. I am coming out of the closet. I am . . . cisgendered. I am a proud cisgendered male.”

     She paused, mixing bowl in the crook of her arm, wooden spoon in hand, looked at me, her face placid. Then returned to mixing. She was not taking the bait. OK, OK, I told her, Facebook now gives its billion members not just the choice of familiar “male” and “female” genders to identify themselves as, but 50, count ’em, 50 alternatives, many I had never heard of — “agender” and “pangender” and “non-binary” — but could at least roughly figure out.

     Then there was “cisgender,” which made no sense at all, as it turned out. I checked the dictionary. Nothing. Then Wikipedia, which defines it as “where an individual’s experience of their own gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.” In other words, someone who is born a boy, in possession of a penis and then cleaves to the realm of traditional maleness, such as it is.

     “My God,” I thought, “that’s . . . that’s me.”
     And let me tell you, it feels so good to get that out, to reveal my true self. Finally, a burden has been lifted. . . .
     Sorry. I can’t even have momentary fun aping the victim envy that ignorant people indulge in. Can’t wink at the theater of coming out without recognizing the widespread human tragedy that makes it necessary. That is: It’s easy to be the norm. With our frisson over gay marriage, with religious conservatives hot to portray our country as some sinkhole of anything-goes depravity, the fact is, most people who stray off the narrow path of the ordinary — blue trucks for boys, pink ribbons for girls — step off a cliff into a realm of woe. The usual stuff that we straights expect — say, go to school without torture — is up in the air.
     Homosexual men and lesbians have, after long struggle, finally established themselves being bona fide members of the human race, nearly, whose participation in regular human activities, such as getting married and raising families, should no longer be thwarted by the anxious sex-averse puritanical wasp’s nest that we call our society. Not everyone has gotten the message, however. Some still sit in the stands chanting for a fifth quarter, though the game is over and the rest of us are heading for the exits.
     Now the question is whether the transgender world, those who identify themselves along a spectrum of mind-twisting complexity as reflected in Facebook’s 50 terms, will be able to piggyback on the success of gays and slip through the door into acceptability that gays have jammed their foot in.
     The answer, at least based on Facebook’s action, seems to be a tentative yes. “Cisgender,” as far as I can tell, is a half-clever term cooked up so the opposite of “transgender” isn’t “normal.” And why not? The trans world is a far smaller sliver than the gay/lesbian world, and will no doubt feel the wrath of frustrated religious types looking for a group upon which to shower disapproval. We’ve already seen anti-bullying measures opposed on the insane grounds that kids being bullied are often transgender kids.
     As with many subcultures, the trans world places much emphasis on fine distinctions. So I phoned the contact listed by GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, for “Transgender Media Inquiries” to make sure I’m not calling hellfire upon myself through some faux pas (noticing that they seem to violate their own guideline, “Transgender should be used as an adjective, not as a noun.” In that case, wouldn’t “Transgender Media Inquiries” describe inquiries from the transgender media? Which I assume doesn’t need GLAAD to help navigate this ever-shifting labyrinth).
    Back on Facebook, I tried to plug “Married” into gender — not technically a sex, true, but the term speaks to my condition. No go. Just as well. The idea that Facebook, a medium for showing off your dinner, your Caribbean rental and your kids, should suddenly grab at our collective crotch and demand we pick what team we’re batting for from a huge laundry list of proclivities — that seems a bridge too far. I struck the category from my page.

Technology wins

     Technology wins. You can complain about it. You can be unhappy about it, point with open-mouthed protest at whatever pleasant social dynamic seems to be melting away in the gentle glow of electronics. But it still wins. Nobody crosses the country in an ox cart anymore, which in one sense is a shame, because doing so was probably three to six of the most deeply-felt months a person could experience, between the deserts and the Comanche and the pitiless elements. Nothing bound people together like sharing an ox cart. Now we fly across the country in what, six hours? Not much time to get to know each other.
    Still, it's an improvement. A big improvement. We have lots of those, really. From remote door locks on your cars to security cameras. People cling to some vestigial fear about cameras, but where's the harm? They don't lie. They're always on. They catch crooks. We worry they're the overture in some Orwellian control state, but where's the evidence of that? Maybe it's coming, true, but if you look at the past, and the present, we don't need cameras to have a police state.
     Cell phones are an improvement. That sounds obvious, but I know a lot of people of my generation —the tail end of the Baby Boom — are not comfortable with the phones, or at least with the idea of them. We got 'em, in droves, but they worry us. We worry that we're always being distracted, that because of the phones, people are never really where they are, never notice who's around them, but are always off in some electronic world, playing Angry Birds or checking their stocks or tweeting their 32 followers.
     We're still getting used to them. Radio was cutting edge technology, too, once upon a time, and people fretted what it would do to society.
     You don't have to carry a phone. But most people do. That's their choice, right? I'm of the generation—the last generation, probably—who remembers when none of us had little pocket phone/computers. You know what? It wasn't an era of deep Bryonic feeling, high adventure and lives richly lived. You got lost more. You missed appointments. You looked out the window blankly, drew tic-tac-toe boards in the condensation on the glass.  People twiddled their thumbs. They read newspapers more. That was a good thing, in my view.  
     Technology wins because we adapt to it. We become different people than our great-grandparents were, with different attention spans, different expectations. Thirty years ago people using cell phones were jerks. Rich jerks. The phones were new and expensive, so the public consensus was anyone using one was a show-off, to be making a phone call in public like that.  Who does he think he is?  Now we pull them out almost as a reflex, the way a 4-year-old on his first day of nursery school will clutch a tattered strip of beloved blue blankie. They're safety. The communicative aspect is almost secondary. It isn't like we're waiting for the Madrid office to sign off on the big deal. It's a tic. The phone is something to do with your hands, a time-filling fumble. Like a cigarette only it doesn't give you cancer.
      That's good, right? Another improvement. If you were to explain it that way -- go back in time, tap one of the 48 percent of Americans who were smoking in 1965 and say, "In 50 years, half of all you smokers, instead of reaching for a cancer stick, will reach for the entire world of knowledge and communication at their fingertips in a device of startling complexity and power," most anyone would take that deal, would probably sign off on that, accept that development as an advancement, view the prospect with a pang of envy that they wouldn't be around to see it. 
     We are around to see it, and perhaps it's human nature to be underwhelmed by whatever actually happens. I'm glad I wasn't like that, glad that getting my first iPod make me proud to be a human being, to belong to the same race who created that device. And I still am, still delight that I can phone people from the train, listen to Mozart as I clomp around the city. And even given the tradeoffs—people whistle less, but then, they'll have all recorded music at their disposal any time of the day or night—it's a pretty good deal. That goes against the common wisdom, I know. We're supposed to be concerned about all this stuff, what it's doing to us, the idea that we might change, as if we were perfect to begin with and should have stopped developing at some point centuries ago. Stop the presses: we weren't perfect.. 
    Worrying about technology is an empty question., as you can see if you turn around and apply it to any technological development in the past. Was the telephone a good thing? It ended the practice of paying social visits. Were antibiotics a good thing? They ended the special world of sanitariums. You can debate any development—the bicycle, the automobile, television. They're all part of a process. Autos had bad effects, sure, but they also had good effects and, ultimately, they were what happened. Technology is a process, unfolding. There's no going back for a redo. We should give ourselves more credit. It isn't so much that technology wins, as we win, embracing the change that we want, that improves our lives, in the main. Technology wins because we make it win, even though we immediately doubt and second guess and worry about what we've just done. We ought to trust our own judgment a little more.

Young man with a suitcase

     A combination of things drew my attention to the young man hurrying past me one morning recently. That gray fedora, of course, not unknown but certainly not common, particularly in February. A sports jacket instead of a winter coat, despite the deep cold, the jacket being of what looked like velvet, of a rich blue, almost purple. The black gloves. And that large, old-fashioned suitcase with brass clasps. It seemed like it had something special in it: a ventriloquist's dummy, maybe. A magic act. A bear costume. 
     He was headed up Franklin Street. I followed.
     Years of reporting have dulled the sense of reserve found in most people. I'm trained to blunder up to strangers in the street and quiz them about their lives. They usually take it pretty well. I picked up speed and measured my approach. "You seem like an interesting person," was the first thing I thought to say, but that seemed, I don't know, too much like a pick-up line. No point in frightening people. "What's in the suitcase, bud?" Too intrusive. 
    Pondering this, I increased the pace. He was losing me.
    Probably some banal explanation. A Columbia College student, dragging his laundry home to mom.  An apprentice necktie salesman hauling his sample case back to the Merchandise Mart having failed to interest the buyer at Macy's. That last one would be a good story. Actually, they both might. Everyone has a good story, they just usually don't know it. You have to tease it out of them.
     Maybe he was an artist—he looked the type. Maybe his rolled canvases, his small ceramics, his careful etchings, his intricate jewelry, were in the suitcase, and he was lost in thought, wondering, "How can I get get the attention of the media?" Just slow down, pal.
     Alas, he was too fast for me. I snapped off a photo, for documentary purposes, as he was picking up speed, and hurried ahead. But by the time I got to Lake Street, he had crossed and the light had changed. I could bolt after him, but bolting seemed to defeat the purpose. This was something that had to be done casually or not at all. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was not to be, and just as well. The trouble with instinctively finding out stuff is that doing so wipes away what can be an appealing mystery. Sometimes it's better not to know.  

Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery

   

     Ting-a-ling.
     "Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery. May I help you?"
     "Yeah...I'll have ... let's see ... six schneeballs ... three of the cream horns....a half dozen ruggelah..."
     "Cinnamon, chocolate or raspberry?"
      "Two of each."
      "Excellent. What else?"
      "Lets' see ... a stollen..."
      "I'm sorry, we're out of stollen."
      "No stollen? Okay, how about a pound of the assorted butter cookies..."
      "Any in particular?"
      "No, just give me ... well, okay how about one of those, and one of these, that one and this one and two of leaf-shaped ones. A few with the candied cherries, and the almond crescents..."
      "Here, with the powdered sugar?"
      "No, behind it, there."
      "Got it. Having a party?"
      "No just a few people over for coffee after church ... and a couple of the poppyseed cookies."
       "After church!?"
       "...and a lemon square...what? Oh yes, church. That lemon square there...."
       "Christian church?"
       "Yes, that's right. The one in the front looks nice."
       "You want to serve my baked goods after your church?"
       "The lemon .... Yeah, you got a problem with that?"
       "Frankly yes. Well at least now I do. I mean, if state legislators in Kansas can try to pass laws allowing bakeries there not to make wedding cakes for gay Kansans, just because they've decided doing so violates some ad hoc notion of religious belief, then why should I be any different? Why should I insist upon my beliefs any less than they do theirs? Why should Steinberg Bakery provide my delectable Special Pecan Raisin Bread Pudding so you and your goyish pals can stuff yourselves silly and talk about Jesus?"
      "Hey..." 
      "Maybe we should all just unleash our deepest prejudices and let them roam free, under the guise of extending our peripheral religious beliefs to our business transactions. I mean, it's one thing if we were all in the same country, right? You know, Americans. Fellow American citizens who respect each other and try to get along with each other despite our differences, within the parameters of our idiosyncratic, often conflicting, almost random biases and belief systems."
      "Maybe I'll come back later..."
      "But if we throw that out, if one group feels entitled, feels empowered, feels free to proudly and consciously step back from the basic capitalist system, and wants to claim that it is a violation of their ineffable pact with the Lord God Almighty to rent their Grange Hall to a couple of ladies who want to have a commitment ceremony, so much that they want to even consider passing laws to codify their right to turn away anybody whose existence they disapprove, then why should I be so loosey-goosey about my own sincere religious beliefs that I'm going to supply the mandel bread for your Sunday-after-church-lord-ourselves-over-our-neighbors session?"
       "I think I'll just head over to Deerfield Bakery..."
       "Sure, sure, St. Bartholomew, shop around, find some cookie cleric who shares your hierotopic outlook, some muffin mullah whose worldview perfectly meshes with your own, cause soon that's the only kind of person you'll be able to buy macaroons from, buster, when our heretofore cherished, fought for and protected democracy crumbles into the same anxious wasp's nest of warring tribes that wrecks half the world. Because we wouldn't want you suffering in your imagined fiery pit of hell along with my children for all eternity because you helped a gay couple pick out green tulle rental napkins for their wedding, would we? Because it's all about you, cupcake, isn't it? You you you and your precious theology, well, do you ever think about anyone else, huh? How they might feel seeing you run to legislature to protect yourself and your Bible buddies from the sin of selling a couple of queers some flower arrangements for their moment of happiness? I'll tell you this, Mark the Apostle: you're not the only religion around anymore. You never were, but the boot has slipped off the neck of we untermenschen, and your not wanting to provide your lousy limo service for Adam and Steve today means that Hajji the taxi cab driver won't take you to communion tomorrow! Or the Steinberg Bakery gets to tell you to hustle your mayonnaise-larded Christophany right out the door and bring your business somewhere else. Ever think of that? Huh? Ever imagine that other people might harbor toward you a fraction of the disdain you glibly heap on others? No? 'Course not. Sorry to be the one to bleepin' tell you, mon-seen-your. Sorry to be the bearer of the bad news. Go! Go, you cross-caressing Vanilla Wafer! I wouldn't sell my profoundly puffy and ethereal jelly-filled sufganiyot to you if you were the last cash-paying customer on God's green acre! Get the Keebler elves to cater your Sunday tent revival soiree, you English muffin munching moron! Out! OUT!"
      "Well I.... I... Fine! I'm out of here!"
      Ting-a-ling.

     Ting-a-ling.
     "Welcome to the Steinberg Bakery. May I help you?
     "Umm yeah. Do you have honey cake?"
     "Sure, fresh out of the oven."
     "Okay, I'll take two."
     "Two of the honey cake? Of course. Having a party, are you...?"



                                                          ###

Paddling the divine canoe

   

      An ellipsis, as you no doubt are aware, is the little train of three (or four) periods signaling there's more, either words that are missing, or yet to come. Or just a pregnant pause. 
     And yet...
      My wife has a rare ability to actually pronounce ellipses.
     "I liked your column today..." she'll say, in such a way that I hear those three dots and think, Oh boy...
      "...but?" I'll add, encouraging her to get on with it. Just pull the Band-Aid.
      "...but I think you misunderstood what Sister Rosemary meant," she said Friday morning, regarding my column on Sister Rosemary Connelly of Misericordia, telling an audience, "Who's God but us?" My wife explained that Sister Rosemary didn't mean, as I archly suggested, that we are supposed to step in when God lets important matters drop. But rather that we are the agency God uses to perform His good works. 
    To illustrate this, she referred to one of my favorite jokes, the canoe joke. More about that in a moment. 

Chapel in the Sky in the Chicago Temple

     I said something like "Yeah yeah." I was feeling good about the column and didn't want to entertain its deficiencies, didn't want to take what she said to heart. As people in marketing know, sometimes a message has to be delivered a few times before it is actually received. It wasn't until later Friday morning, when I got the following from reader Scott Whited, that I began to give the question serious thought. He wrote:  

     My wife and I met each other while working at Misericordia, and we were blessed to be a small part of the magnificent organization that Sr. Rosemary built and continues to build. Without assuming to know exactly what is in her mind, I think you misinterpreted the meaning behind her comment, "Who's God but us?"  Rather than rebuking God for failing to help those in need, she recognizes, embraces and acts upon the concept that God uses people to do His work.  It's like the joke about the man surrounded by flood waters who turns away people in boats and helicopters while proclaiming that God will save him, only to drown and find out that it was God who tried to save him by sending those people.  God isn't dropping balls, He's calling all of us to be His hands and feet in this world.  Sr. Rosemary hears that call and, unlike most of us, responds to it and great things happen.  Thanks for using your forum to highlight Sr. Rosemary and Misericordia.  It's an amazing place and Sr. Rosemary is a very special woman.

     Not only the same point my wife was trying to make, but using the same joke to deliver it. One thing I've learned is that when two very different people, from very different realms, say exactly the same thing about a piece of writing, well, you should pay attention, because they're probably correct.

     Of course this is all interpretation. I don't think there is an overarching intelligence that is either neglecting our fates or expecting us to step in and do nice stuff. If there is a yawning need in this world, from a practical point of view, it hardly matters if the need is due to cosmic indifference, or divine non-existence, or because an antic Heavenly Father is testing us to see if we'll jump through these hoops and do good. That's a theological matter. But what I took to heart, and what was important, to me, was that I was layering my own viewpoint upon Sister Rosemary, who no doubt by "Who's God but us?" meant that we are the agency of God, not that we are here to cover up His omissions which, being God, are fairly scarce. It seemed something worth noting.

""Who's God but us?"

Sister Rosemary Connelly and Terry Morrissey, the self-proclaimed
"Mayor of Misericordia."

Fate keeps delivering me into the hands of Sister Rosemary Connelly. I was trying to track down Mary Dempsey, the former Chicago Public Library commissioner, who happened to be volunteering that afternoon at Misericordia. So I phoned there, trying to find her, ended up on the line with Sister Rosemary and accepting her invitation to lunch. That's set off a chain of circumstance—almost against my will— that placed her and Misericordia atop the Esquire profile I wrote about Rahm Emanuel that will be out in a few days. In this case, I went to a Misericordia luncheon Tuesday, again, not because of Sister Rosemary, but to hear Amy Rule, the mayor's wife, speak, under the naive notion she might actually say something. She didn't. But Sister Rosemary sure did. 

     People love Sister Rosemary Connelly for a variety of reasons. For founding Misericordia, the city’s pre-eminent home for those with Down syndrome and other cognitive disabilities. For being its fierce advocate, fundraiser, cheerleader. For the act of singular bravery that helped create the whole thing 45 years ago.

     Her original mission was to care for disabled foundlings who were dumped by their distraught mothers on the doorsteps of Catholic churches. Then, when they turned 6, she was to hand them over to state care.

     When Sister Rosemary saw the kind of state-run hellholes she was expected to deliver her charges into, she refused. She disobeyed. She demanded the archdiocese do something, and it shrugged and gave her the newly shuttered Angel Guardian Orphanage, which became the 31-acre Misericordia home. After nearly 40 years of her stewardship, the place has the feel of a high-end golf resort without golf, or a Wisconsin resort hotel. Imagine The American Club in Kohler if every guest had a disability.

     But that isn’t why I like her.

    I like her because she isn’t afraid to talk. Sister Rosemary will tell you what’s on her mind.

     And no, not the phrase she repeats with such delight, quoting our mayor,"Sister, you scare me ..." then a word with more sting spelled in a newspaper than spelled aloud, so let's just say it's eight letters long, begins, "S-H-I" and ends "L-E-S-S."
     Not that line. But other things she says. If the state isn't paying its bill on time, as it often doesn't, she tells you. If one-size-fits-all activists clamor against Misericordia because it doesn't mesh with their fantasy that every disabled person would be happier living alone in an apartment, she says so.
     She said something Tuesday before 400 people at a fundraising lunch that I've never heard spoken before, never mind by a nun.
     And no, it wasn't individuals have "not just a right to life, but to a life worth living," a tossed-off line of hers with enough power to make the whole Right to Life movement a lot more palatable to a lot more people, though of course that would shift their focus from shaming women to helping children, and they don't seem eager to consider it.
     It wasn't that.
     Sister Rosemary was telling a story about a mother who called her in despair. "She was crying," Connelly recalled. "She said, 'I'm a single mother. I have a 15-year-old boy who can do nothing for himself, and he's too heavy for me to lift. The only place I'll ever bring him to is Misericordia.' And I said, 'I'm so, so sorry, we haven't any room.' "
     Misericordia has a 600-person waiting list. The mother said, "Please, just see him."
     "And I said, 'Oh, I don't want to see him,' " Connelly said. "He becomes real then. It becomes dangerous." A tough cookie, she is, when need be. But of course she saw him.
     "It was heartbreaking," she told the crowd. "She could no longer lift him. She was worrying about his future. She didn't know what she was going to do. And I very piously told her that he was God's child, even before hers, and she had to trust."
      The standard, sorry-not-my-table shrug so many give to those in need. But it didn't sit well with Connelly, even as she said it. "And I saw her wheel this boy down the hall, going back to a very depressing situation, and I said to myself: 'Who's God but us? If we don't do it, it's not going to happen.' "
     "Who's God but us?" Who's God but us! Pardon me, sister, but daaaamn! Do you know how many people invoke God to justify their indifference? Their harshness? Their evil acts? Their dismissal of the very people they should most open their hearts to? And here's Sister Rosemary, trying out the platitudes, finding them hollow and basically looking up at God, giving him the stink-eye and saying, "OK then, Mr. Lord of the Universe, if you're going to fail this boy, I guess we'll have to do your job for you."
     Not that she just waved the boy to the front of the line. That wouldn't be fair either.
     "It took two years to raise the money and build the house," she said, "but that boy has been here 15 years now."
     Who's God but us?! That's edgy stuff, Sister, practically sacrilege. And a recipe for making faith more palatable to those who wonder what it's all for. For inspiring you to do what you should do anyway. Less worshipping the ineffable and more trying to pick up a few of the balls that Mr. Big keeps dropping. It isn't just a Catholic obligation. The Jews have a term for it: tikkun olam. Repair the world. It just helps to have someone like Sister Rosemary remind you.
     Footnote: After Sister Rosemary finished, Amy Rule, the mayor's wife, also spoke, her first public utterance as Chicago's first lady.

Valentine's Day sneaks into town

Couple at the Renaissance Faire in Bristol, Wisconsin

     Tomorrow is Valentine's Day —I hope I'm not the one to tell you. Or maybe it doesn't matter. There seems to be a pronounced lack of commercial Valentine's Day hoopla this year. I was walking across the Loop Wednesday, hoping to take a static and enigmatic photo of some stark red heart-shaped commercial come-on to post here, and found basically nothing. No Valentine's Day specials. No chocolate promotions. Nothing red in the windows of Walgreen's. Nothing from the Potbelly. No "Happy Straight Person's Valentine's Day" in the window of the Chick-fil-A. No red sprinkled heart-shaped donuts at Dunkin's.
    Weird. I'm at a loss to explain it, but can toss out a few theories: A) the economy is still sagging, promotions cost money, the wad was shot at Christmas, so businesses decided it was best to limp on until spring; B) the Winter Olympics sucked all the hoopla out of the room; C) Gay marriage, having ruined the institution of wedlock, is now corrupting romance itself; D) it's Obama's fault. 
      I certainly didn't write anything for the newspaper about Valentine's Day this year. Been there, done that. At this stage of the game, Edie and I don't want to ignore the holiday—that would be sad—but don't beat ourselves up commissioning jewelry and engraving love sonnets on grains of rice either. We know. This is where tradition comes in so handy. Tradition takes the place of surprise—you're doing something, but nothing that's going to roil the placid waters of matrimonial harmony, or break the bank. So we will be lunching, quietly, at Prairie Grass in Northbrook, where we always go, where I hope they will have Door County Sour Cherry Pie, as they have on Valentine's Days past. 
    For those who want a little additional perspective on the heart-shaped holiday, a piece of Valentine's Day candy from The Vault.  Five years ago, I waved the flag in surrender:

     Sure, Valentine's Day is commercial, but then so is getting married. You obtain a license, as if you were opening a bar. Objects of value are exchanged. Oaths are taken. You may even sign a contract. Mine was in Aramaic.

     Those guys who airily announce they won't let themselves be bullied by the Hallmark Corp. into putting on a display of affection on command doth protest too much, methinks.   The implication is that they'll do something special later, on their own terms; the reality is, they never do. I can see them sprawled on the couch all day Sunday, watching basketball, while their honeys glare at them, disappointed.

     Even birds know that love demands you fluff your feathers and show off. At least occasionally. Otherwise, love becomes little more than a shared routine, a practical domestic joining of forces. True, love can't be on display, can't be splendid, all the time. The truth is, love changes year by year, day by day, sometimes second by second. Love is multifaceted, extraordinary, strange and wonderful, fleeting and forever. It stops you in your tracks and makes you run up the stairs. It is the boy tugging on the girl's pigtails and the aged widow who lives for years with the mummified corpse of her husband.

     The mystery of those mummified mate stories falls away when you place them into the continuum of marriage -- enough decades go by, and you don't harp on your partner's peculiarities.

     If you're lucky enough to have a partner. There's a whole lot of lonely in the world. Before decomposition sets in, if you love them, show them. If not on Valentine's Day, when?