As Valentine’s Day approaches, some look at it as an emotional
minefield to be navigated with care. One of my friends just broke
up with her boyfriend, and another faces a day of loneliness after
being recently widowed. I decided to find out what tips I could get
for this Valentine’s weekend by taking an informal poll around
Gilroy. I asked the question:
”
How are you celebrating Valentine’s Day?
”
As Valentine’s Day approaches, some look at it as an emotional minefield to be navigated with care. One of my friends just broke up with her boyfriend, and another faces a day of loneliness after being recently widowed. I decided to find out what tips I could get for this Valentine’s weekend by taking an informal poll around Gilroy. I asked the question: “How are you celebrating Valentine’s Day?”
“In my classroom, the kids make cards for their parents,” Antonio del Buono Elementary School kindergarten teacher Janet Londgren said. “They will bring Valentines on Friday and pass them out. We made ‘mailboxes’ to receive our cards and letters. Since some students don’t celebrate any holidays, we keep it very low key.”
Some folks are not so low key about it. The senior citizens at Live Oak Adult Day Services on Sixth Street celebrated Valentine’s Day by dancing up a storm.
“The Swing Band is here right now ’til 12:30,” director Cheryl Huguenor said Wednesday morning. “We’re having a ball.”
“I’ll be spending Valentine’s in the restaurant inside of the Toll House Hotel in Los Gatos,” said Andoni Bundros, a talented Gilroy composer and master of the ivories. “It’s called Three Degrees, and I’ve been hired to play piano from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday night. I’ll be playing jazz standards and some of my original material.”
“I’m going to buy ‘Go Red for Women’ candles for the women in my life,” mechanical engineer Josh Aronsen said. “They smell like apples. The Yankee Candle Company donates the proceeds to benefit the American Heart Association. My mother died from heart disease.”
The Go Red for Women movement seeks to educate the public about how women can take action to prevent heart disease – the number one killer of women and men.
“I plan to go to the shooting range at Markley’s in Watsonville,” Doris Tran said, a manicurist in Gilroy. “I just got dumped by my boyfriend after six years, so I’m having an anti-Valentine’s Day celebration. I plan to put up pictures of Cupid and take my best shot!”
Some are showing their love for our community this week. Connie Rogers, president of the Gilroy Historical Society, said that Mimi’s Restaurant made this past Tuesday a Valentine to the Society by donating 15 percent all day for those patrons who told them they were dining on behalf of the Society. Local restaurants who donate a portion of their profits to nonprofits usually only earmark it from one mealtime, but Mimi’s was willing to donate all day.
The only way the Gilroy Museum could stay open this past year was thanks to the concentrated volunteer effort of the many people who came together through a shared love of local history. Volunteers like Janice Krahenbuhl, Arline Silva, Claudia Salewske, and Bill Faus have been willing to give up their free time in order to keep the museum going after major budget cuts.
“Things are going very well at the museum,” Rogers said. “Though it always takes a lot more communication and coordination with volunteers. We are preparing to make a report on our first year to the Art and Culture Commission in March and then to the City Council after that. Volunteer work is a labor of love.”
In Gilroy, there are all kinds of love.
“I’m walking Joey, my man of the hour,” Alene Creager laughed when I asked what she’d be doing for Valentine’s Day.
Joey is her black border collie mix whom she adopted a few months ago. Rescued by the San Martin Animal Shelter after being abandoned, he is a loving companion who is bursting with energy. She walks Creager about three miles each day.
Love of the outdoors will also bring people together this weekend for a 1.1-mile hike to a waterfall led by Santa Clara County Parks docent Ken Halsey.
“It’s called a ‘Family, Friends, and Sweethearts Hike’ to what people say is the Niagara Falls of the South Bay,” motorcycle mechanic Mike Johnson described. “I plan to do that at Uvas Park on Saturday. It’s going to be beautiful, man. Hiking is how I met my last girlfriend.”
There are all kinds of ways to show our love this Valentine’s Day weekend, so whether you’re heading for the shooting range, enjoying a candlelit dinner, or volunteering to help others, may your Valentine’s Day be spent doing something you love.
