nuh uh

No snark or anti-commercialism rantings here, just a dose of simple sweetness. We asked readers to share their most memorable Valentine’s Day cards; here are a few of our favorites, edited for length and clarity. And we asked NPR illustrator Chelsea Beck to re-create two valentines that live on only in their recipients’ memories.

Renae Quinn, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

My favorite valentine ever was from my late husband on the Valentine’s Day before we married. He gave me a box and lined up in the box were a drawing of an eye, a paper heart on a spring that popped up when I opened the box, a pink foam letter U, a chocolate-covered strawberry, and a baggie full of dirt from the garden in front of our apartment.

I was mystified. I mean I got the “I love you so very” part clearly enough, but the dirt? I said, “You love me so very dirty?” I didn’t care for that! He kept saying, “No, think about it.”

But all I could come up with was, “I love you so very dirt.”

He finally told me, “MULCH! It’s mulch!”

So it said, “I love you so very much.” Duh.

It’s still my favorite ever.

Christine Hull, Springvale, Maine

Three years ago, when my son was 7, he made a collection of small valentines that he distributed throughout our house. Each valentine was unique, and each involved a heart shape.

One was a simple red heart taped to the inside of a spoon. I found it while I was making my morning coffee and, of course, it brightened my day. Another was a pink bunny, who was especially cute because he was lopsided. Yet another was a series of yellow hearts arranged like petals of a sunflower. It was carefully taped to appear as if it were growing out from under my desk.

I was impressed by his creativity, but more so by the fact that he woke up early to hide each valentine for my husband and me to discover as we went through our day. He didn’t simply give us one valentine, he gave us a day full of discovering valentines.

Francha Menhard, Tel Aviv, Israel

I was teaching second-graders how to speak English. I was teaching them similes to describe things. “You are as quiet as a mouse,” “You are tall as the ceiling,” etc.

When Valentine’s Day came, wild and crazy J.R. gave me a heart cut out of plain white paper. On the heart, he wrote: “You are as beautiful as Wonder Woman. You are as fun as clowns. You are as smart as God. Love JR.”

I kept that valentine on my fridge until the sun bleached it out completely, some 14 years later. Thereafter, my sweet husband would remind me at bedtime that I was as beautiful as Wonder Woman. As fun as clowns. As smart as God. Just in case I forgot.

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On Holocaust Remembrance Day, this twitter account is posting the names and photos (when available) of refugees turned away from America who became victims of Naziism. #NoBanNoWall #RefugeesWelcome 

jerrynicarao: Fuck the Founding Fathers. This was already the land of the free

since when did the ‘nation’ start publishing good shit

The transcendental experience of watching Roger Federer play tennis, David Foster Wallace wrote, was one of “kinetic beauty.” Federer’s balletic precision and mastering of time, on the very edge of what seems possible for a body to achieve, was a form of bodily genius. What Foster Wallace saw in a Federer Moment, I see in a video of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face.

It was a bizarre Hollywood kerfuffle.

Over the weekend, the publicist for actress Tilda Swinton released an email exchange between Swinton and comedian Margaret Cho about race and casting in Hollywood. Swinton was one of the stars of Dr. Strange and played a character, The Ancient One, who had always been Asian in the comic books on which the movie was based. Swinton had reached out to Cho, an outspoken critic of “whitewashing” in the film industry.

After the email exchange, Cho went on a podcast and characterized the brief conversation as a “fight” in which she said Swinton essentially asked her to make the criticism go away.