This Podcast is intended as Entertainment for Grownups and to spread awareness of 826 LA, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for children ages 6 to 18.

For a full schedule of 826 LA's events and programs, including the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, visit 826.org.

And now here is the host of the Dead Authors Podcast, Mr. H.G. Wells. G. Welles.

G. Welles here, G. Wells here, bringing you another exciting chapter of the dead authors

podcast.

Permit me also to bring you the warmest of regards in this the coldest of months.

For if March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,

surely February goes out like a lion and comes in like a bad-tempered lion with a bad back who has

to shovel a walkway to the Serengeti.

But February isn't just the coldest month, it's also the shortest, which is why it's so often referred to as

the Dudley moor of the calendar but despite its diminutive day count February

still manages to find time for Candlestmas Day, American Network Television's all-important

sweeps period, and Valentine's Day.

Dear listener, I make no claim to the mantle of Casanova, but I have had my share of involvement with the fairer sex, and usually with my wife's permission.

So don't bother concocting one of those ham-handed blackmail schemes that are the blight of today's literary crowd.

Am I right George R.R. Martin, you prodigious old Tomcat?

Back to me.

Of all my paramours, there hasn't been a one that didn't go completely to mush over this manufactured excuse for gift giving.

I mean honestly, cards, flowers, one of Mr Whitman's gaudy samplers, purchased at the absolute last moment from a 24-hour

right aid, and don't get me started on Vermont Teddy Bears. Stuff and nonsense all of it.

Well this year, I decided to get there. Stuff and nonsense all of it.

Well, this year, I decided to get to the bottom of this alleged holiday, and so set the time machines dials for the year 496 AD, the first recorded feast of St. Valentine.

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