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AROUND THE BLUHMIN’ TOWN Always be bold when expressing love

BY JUDY BLUHM Peoria Times Columnist

How was your Valentine’s Day? Hope you had time to buy (or receive) flowers (red, of course), a box of chocolates and a wonderful bottle of champagne. We celebrate the “most romantic day of the year” that actually started in the fifth century as a pagan holiday.

The “day of love” had its beginnings in Rome, when mid-February marked the annual Lupercalia festival, an ode to the god of fertility. It was one huge celebration. Evidently, those Romans knew how to party, because it became the season to fall in love and marry. Then Claudius II became emperor and the party stopped. He had the notion that marriage only distracted and weakened men (sadly, my husband agrees) and so to assure quality soldiers, he banned marriage. A bishop named Valentine stood up for love and met couples in secret places and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. When the evil Claudius learned of this, he labeled Valentine a “friend of lovers” and had him arrested. Unless Valentine agreed to worship the Roman gods and stop marrying young couples, he would be executed. Valentine was a man of faith and conviction, therefore he refused to stop and was jailed.

A miracle happened while Valentine was in jail awaiting his fate. He fell in love with his jailer’s daughter, Asterius. Just before Valentine was executed, he wrote a heartfelt letter to Asterius and signed it, “Be mine, your Valentine.” Legend has it that he wrote love letters in his own blood and wore a red scarf to his execution.

At a garage sale I spotted a beautiful square piece of lace that was lying on a table. I picked it up and an elderly lady came and gently took it out of my hands. “This is mine,” she said sweetly. Then she scolded her daughter for putting it up for sale. The lady told me that her husband wrapped their wedding bouquet in this little piece of lace when they got married. “I still remember that moment,” she sighed. Love lives in those tender gestures.

Valentine’s Day is about undying love. It’s not the candy but the sweetness of romance that it celebrates. It is

SEE LOVE PAGE 11

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Anchovies on pizza? Only in weird Arizona

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist

Having made it this far in life without landing on death row, I feel confident a lethal injection won’t be my fate. With that said, I have my last meal all picked out: a large pepperoni pizza from any restaurant not named Domino’s or Papa John’s.

What I’m saying is, I am a certified pizza lover, a man who can hardly go a week without a slice or three. While I did not partake on Feb. 9 to mark National Pizza Day, I certainly planned to on Super Bowl Sunday, the busiest day of the year for pizza shops, ahead of New Year’s Eve and Halloween.

Unless, of course, I am served an abomination like pizza topped with anchovies. Which, according to the food blog “How to Cook Recipes” is the most popular pizza topping in Arizona, at least according to rankings by Google search throughout 2021.

Yep, anchovies. Ahead of pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage and pineapple in the state’s top five.

People, must everything in this state be weird all the time? I’ve lived here 25 years and I love the place. But every time I speak to someone from out of state, it’s always, “What’s wrong with Arizona? Did the desert heat fry your brains?”

I’m sure you get it, too. “Joe Arpaio this, fraudulent election audit that. What’s up with you guys and _______.” Insert Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger in Barack Obama’s face or Arizona leading America in COVID-19 infection rates.

I would suggest there’s something in the water here, but given the drought, we barely have any water left.

Now we’ve desecrated pizza. Though, to be fair, anchovies were also the most searched-for pizza topping in New Mexico as well. Just what we’ve always dreamed of: being associated with the home of Roswell in a national list.

Slice, the country’s leading app for independent pizzerias, put together their own study of the most popular pizza styles in the nation. Arizona apparently prefers Sicilian pizza, which I can get behind. As for popular toppings, Slice broke it down nationally: Pepperoni (of course) ranked first, appearing on 37% of pizzas. The rest of the Top 10 in order: mushrooms, extra cheese, sausage, onions, bacon, black olives, green peppers, Italian sausage and meatballs.

Anchovies didn’t even get a participation ribbon. In an effort to disprove this half-assed accusation — and potentially win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism — I spent a solid two hours Googling pizza topping rankings in various fashions. A rival ranking list, assembled by the health and wellness experts at YorkTest, arrived at a different answer, again using Google searches. Drum roll, please.

They say Arizona’s favorite pizza topping is … pesto. Which is only marginally better than anchovies. And again, it’s weird. Though arguably not as weird as putting fruit on pizza, you pineapple people.

Pizza was not meant to be topped by fish or things that grow on trees or fungus or anything that’s green, if you really want to get down to it.

As a pizza purist, I just crave your standard cheese pie topped with something sold in the meat aisle. I’m not even a huge fan of the froufrou fancy pizza sold at places like Pizzeria Bianco or Pomo, though I’ll dabble in a pinch. Please just give me a few slices from Nello’s or Spinato’s, NYPD Piz-

SEE PIZZA PAGE 10

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Fed program would foster drug abuse, addiction

BY J.D. HAYWORTH Peoria Times Columnist

One century, one decade and one year separate us from the birth of Ronald Reagan. With each passing day, especially in these troubling times, we are reminded of Reagan’s basic goodness and yes, greatness.

Derided by the Manhattan elites and the Georgetown Cocktail Set as a “simpleton,” Reagan’s genius was his ability to simplify the seemingly complex.

“If you want less of something, tax it,” Reagan said, succinctly explaining the rationale for tax cuts. History recalls that the reduction of tax rates led to the expansion of economic opportunity during the Reagan era.

But our 40th president also understood the absurdity of the big-talking, big-spending, big-government left. “If you want more of something, subsidize it,” Reagan warned.

Sure enough, Joe Biden is buying bigger and bigger problems for our nation and our future.

Among the outrageous examples of “your tax dollars at work” comes this gem: the funding of the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts.

Courtesy of Senate Democrats and Vice President Harris, who cast the deciding vote, the American Rescue Plan features a “harm reduction” grant program.

Of course, it comes with a cheap price — at least by Washington standards: “Only” $30 million. As it stands now, that dough will be divvied up into $400 thousand chunks and sent to local governments as well as selected “nonprofit organizations.”

The goal? To make drug use safer for addicts.

How will that be accomplished? In part, through the purchase of “smoking kits and supplies” for addicts. The all-knowing, all-caring, sensitive bureaucratic souls at the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee this beneficence.

An HHS official confirmed this “forward-thinking action” to the “Washington Free Beacon,” explaining that the smoking kits will include those precious, specially made pipes for users to smoke crystal meth, crack cocaine or “any illicit substance.”

But faced with a strong and immediate backlash from media reports concerning the inclusion of crack pipes, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra issued an “11th hour revision.”

A press release stated that “no federal funding will be used … to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”

So the “safe smoking kits” remain… addicts will just have to furnish their own crack pipes. Got it!

And… with a bureaucratic bow to the American Rescue Plan, Ol’ Joe and his gang didn’t limit the giveaway by grants to just smoking kits. Other items to be distributed included fentanyl strips, syringes and condoms!

Also detailed among the items for which your tax dollars can be spent are “disease screenings” and vaccinations. Remember, this was enacted during the COVID-centric days of “crisis,” and as we’ve collectively learned, the left never lets a “crisis go to waste.”

Undergirding this entire exercise is a wrongheaded idea that government should shoulder the responsibility

SEE PROGRAM PAGE 12

PIZZA FROM PAGE 9 za or Lou Malnati’s.

Frankly, I’ve always subscribed to the idea that there’s really no such thing as bad pizza — until I contemplated my fellow Arizonans all fighting for the last slice of something topped with anchovies.

They say “pizza is life.” You serve me a slice with anchovies and death row may not be entirely out of the question. PT

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com.

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PETERS’ OPINION — King Features

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The Peoria Times welcomes letters that express readers’ opinion on current topics. Letters must include the writer’s full name, address (including city) and telephone number. The Peoria Times will print the writer’s name and city of residence only. Letters without the requisite identifying information will not be published. Letters are published in the order received, and they are subject to editing. The Peoria Times will not publish consumer complaints, form letters, clippings from other publications or poetry. Letters’ authors, not the Times, are responsible for the “facts” presented in letters. the joy of the children in classrooms, who make special cards and red construction paper hearts to take home to their parents. And why not be bold and wear red — that brazen flash of color that “shouts” out that our love will not be secret, quiet or go unnoticed. And let’s not overlook the power of a small, lovingly placed piece of lace.

To celebrate “love” properly, this week, call an old friend. Hug your children. Hold hands. Be bold, like the color red, in your expression of love. Treasure and rejoice in a little paper heart made for you by a child. Savor a cherished memory, like a piece of lace. Dear readers, be courageous and write someone a love note and sign it with the most famous and romantic phrases of all time, “Be mine, your valentine.” PT

Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a story or a comment? Email Judy at judy@ judybluhm.com.

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PROGRAM FROM PAGE 10 of making drug use more secure and “healthier.”

To the extent government is involved, its resources should be focused on the prevention of drug abuse.

It’s bad enough that the Biden Bunch disregards this simple concept, but compounding the error is the curious moral and political “accounting” that accompanies it. By abandoning “equality” in favor of “equity,” the left confers special status on an underclass and a commitment to expanding that underclass.

Here’s the perverse rationale at work: These grants are prioritized for “underserved communities.”

While the late actor and comedian Robin Williams joked that “cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much money,” can anyone seriously believe that expanding access to drugs and drug paraphernalia in “underserved communities” does anything but increase the number of drug abusers in those communities?

Compassionate? No, it’s “confused compassion” at best — and more likely, counterfeit.

Subsidizing drug abuse and all that comes with it — violent crime, homelessness and death — is no way to serve “underserved communities.” PT

J.D. Hayworth worked as a sportscaster at Channel 10, Phoenix, from 1987 until 1994 and represented Arizona in Congress from 1995-2007.

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