Doctor Valentine

by Pa Rock
Former Teacher

This is Valentine's Day, a holiday, a day for sharing love and messages of love, often in the form of elaborate cards, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, roses-by-the-dozens, fancy dinners in expensive restaurants, and sometimes even memorable events such as marriage proposals or actual weddings.

But the day isn't just all hearts and flowers, it also stirs darker memories like the infamous gangland murder of several rum-running mobsters in a Chicago garage in 1929, an event known in history as the "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre," and the more recent Parkland school shooting in Florida that occurred three years ago today when a former student armed with automatic weaponry entered the main high school building where he killed seventeen students and teachers, and wounded seventeen more.  Parkland was (and is) an affluent and well educated community, and the shooting there stirred a level of student anti-gun activism that was unmatched in previous mass shootings.  Today many of those former high school students are in college and are still active in the national push to enact commonsense gun safety reforms.

All of which makes Valentine's Day a day of love and happy thoughts as well as a time of remembrance and getting to work on things that matter,  Our nation's new First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, a professional educator, saw the holiday as a time to begin addressing the bitter wounds that divide our nation.  Sometime in the wee hours of this past Friday morning, Dr. Biden slipped quietly out of the White House and began putting up large valentines on the yard for her fellow Americans to see and appreciate over the Valentine's Day weekend.  Her large heart-shaped posters contained words and messages of healing, hope, and love.

Teachers decorate for the holidays, that's what they do, it's in their DNA - and Jill Biden is a teacher.  She had something important to say and she presented it in the way she knew best.  It was a message about her love for America and our love for each other, and it is still on display on the White House lawn for the whole world to see and appreciate.  

It's Valentine's Day, and it's definitely a new day in America!