Happy Valentine’s Day from Knoxville, Tennessee – the city most often ranked by Amazon as “America’s Most Romantic”!
To be clear, Knoxville doesn’t currently hold the top spot. That honor goes to San Antonio, Texas, in the most recent Amazon ranking I can locate.
That was the 2017 listing. Even after scouring Amazon and Google, I can’t find evidence that the online retail giant has yet published such a list either for 2018 or 2019.
But Knoxville remains, to my knowledge, the only city ever to take top honors three times (2012, 2013, 2015), or to be in the top three for five consecutive years.
Amazon bases these rankings on things such as per-capita sales of romance novels, greeting cards, “wellness” products, and albums by the likes of Barry White, Adele, and John Legend.
In 2017 we had fallen to number six. Still pretty darned romantic, and believe me: We’ll be working overtime to reclaim our title. Stay tuned!
As my contribution to that effort, I’ve rearranged the letters in “Gary and Cheri Matthews” to spell “dreamy watching hearts” and “steady reaching warmth”. Here’s a Valentine-themed virtual card illustrating how that works:
This isn’t the first time I’ve published those particular anagrams. I did so here in the form of an anagram video (celebrating our 30th anniversary), with the various letters moving around to rearrange themselves.
But as I’ve noted recently, animated images don’t work in books, or even on all websites or email clients. So I’ve been tinkering with ways to better use static images for anagram illustrations.
But more on those later. For now, it’s time to celebrate life and love. May your dreamy heart feel steady warmth, reaching out today and for all days ahead!
9 responses to “Dreamy Hearts, Steady Warmth”
Oh, how sweet and inventive. I love you both!
We love you too, dear Neranza. In view of your kindness, it should not surprise anyone that the letters in “Neranza Noel Blount” rearrange to spell “noble zeal — ‘n’ a turn-on!”
Happy anniversary my friends ❤️ 😘🤗
Thank you, dear Toby! Much love to you as well.
Enjoyed the article and the beautiful pictures. Happy Anniversary.
Thanks so much, Rosalind. You are most kind!
Gary, I LOVED this. Been wanting to ask if you do palindromes? “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama”
Thanks and thanks again, Thom. Always a joy to hear from you.
Regarding palindromes — no, I don’t “do” them, if by that you mean, do I compose them? But I collect them, and love them dearly.
As you of course know, palindromes are words or sentences spelled the same forward and backward. The “Panama canal” example you cited being a case in point. My own favorite:
“Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw. Sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I — lo! — rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!”
Not sure the name of the genius who came up with that one! I’ve tried to find out by Googling, but the author seems anonymous. Be that as it may, there are even longer palindromes. The longest I’ve seen on the web is 543 words.
And I’ve been planning, given world enough and time, to write about palindromes. Thanks for reminding me; here’s hoping your nudge will speed me along to that goal.
Congratulations to the “ Dreamy watching hearts for so long demonstrating A beautiful marriage. Miss you both Loren