KEY WEST LOU / VALENTINE’S DAY BORN IN DEBAUCHERY

Valentine’s Day is 8 days away.

Over the years, I have written several times of the Day. The reason being the event is of such importance to many. I am sharing one of my earlier articles today as a prelude to another which I will write and publish in a few days. The for real and honest truth of the source of today’s Valentine’s Day. Not the one I share today and have in several other articles over the years. Not the one that everyone believes.

First the one that everyone believes. Reflected in a blog I published on February 14, 2019 titled: Valentine’s Day…..Debauchery And Two Saints.

Today, one of love. Romance in the air. You feel it everywhere.

Not always the case, however. Valentine’s Day at its beginnings was one of debauchery. Down and dirty. Pain and sex.

The time well before the birth of Christ.

Known as the Feast of Lupercalia. Roman in origin. Some consider it to have been religious in nature. Its activities considered a purification of women.

An annual event. Held from 2/13 to 2/15 each year.

Men and women engaging physically. The women considerably younger than the men.

It began with the men bare assed. They sacrificed goats and dogs. Then removed the hides from the dead animals.

The ladies came into play at this point. Bare assed also. The men beating the women with the hides of the goats and dogs. Men and women alike drunk at this point.

The purpose of the beatings with the skins was to make the young women fertile. So it was thought.

Following the beatings, the names of the women were thrown in a jar. The men picked. Coupled with the woman whose name had been selected from the jar. Coupled for the rest of the feast. Longer if the match worked out.

Years later came the time of Caesar. Year wise around 40 B.C. The feast had become more sensitive. A time of genuine love and concern. The goats and dogs still killed. The women beaten with the hides, though not severely.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar begins during a Lupercalia.

Caesar’s wife Calpurnia had not been able to conceive. Marc Anthony is instructed by Caesar to strike his wife Calpurnia, in the hope she would be able to conceive.

Some three hundred years later in the third century A.D., 2 religious men named Valentine lived. One in Rome. The other somewhere in Italy.

Claudius emperor at the time. He had both men executed on February 14, though in different years. The two Valentines eventually were canonized. Two St. Valentines. It is their day of death that we celebrate today as Valentine’s Day.

Both Valentines were beheaded. Their lives and deaths had nothing to do with love. The surprise. A story I shall write about in the next few days.

Mother Nature is in a constant state of rebellion in recent years. The most recent yesterday’s earthquake in South Turkey and Syria. A big one. A 7.8 on the Richter scale. More than 1,000 killed, 1,700 buildings collapsed. Its effects felt hundreds of miles from the quake’s epicenter. As far away as Lebanon, Israel and Egypt.

I have experienced several earthquakes in my lifetime. The worst at the beginning of my first trip to Greece some 12 or 13 years ago.

I was spending the first few days with Anna in Novara in northern Italy. I was writing my blog when the earthquake hit. Never felt anything so severe before. There were 2 or 3 earthquakes over a period of several hours, with after shocks almost as strong.

I was in a building 1,500 years old. How it survived, I do not know. Many buildings around collapsed into heaps of stone.

A major earthquake is no fun. As Anna ran around the apartment screaming like a maniac, I sat there thinking I was going to die.

Another Supreme Court shortcoming has been discovered.

Justices each have two computer operations. Two emails, in effect. One for personal matters. The other a secure transmitter for sensitive data regarding cases.

Turns out some of the Justices have pushed back on using the secure email providers. New technology. They have been reluctant to learn. A source of case materials being leaked.

Bess Levin wrote an interesting article about Trump in the 2/3 edition of Vanity Fair: Donald Trump Says He Knows How To “Immediately” End The War In Ukraine But Must Keep It To Himself.

Her article is based on a Trump interview thursday night on the Right Side Broadcasting Network. Trump said, peace “can be negotiated within 24 hours” by saying “things” that “will guarantee that this war will end immediately.”

What an ass! If he was being truthful, which is always questionable when he speaks, he should reveal his “secret” in the interests  of stopping the war and saving lives. Trump’s duty is immediate to speak under the circumstances.

The Keys are composed of hundreds of islands. Many have names. The source of the names are interesting in certain instances. Like that of Looe Key.

Looe Key is at mile marker 27 going north on U.S. 1. Pass through it on the way to Big Pine.

Looe Key’s naming goes back to 1744. The HMS Looe struck and got stuck on the Florida Reef that now bears its name. The ship’s commander Captain Utting saw there was no way to save the Looe. He ordered it set afire and blown up. The crew was safely carried to Jamaica in a Spanish sloop.

That’s it for now.

Enjoy your day!

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