I remember taking valentine cards every year to all my grammar school classmates. And every year now I give a lovely card to my wife asking her to be my valentine, often accompanied by a gift of some sort. But this year I’m working on a radical idea. What if, instead of asking someone or ones to be my valentine, I concentrated on being a valentine for another person? And, rather than my wife or my adult children, what if I tried to be an anonymous valentine for an unknown neighbor who really needs a valentine to help them in a really difficult circumstance?

It started with a bold vision. In 2004, Karen Kleinkopf, a mom and first-grade teacher, became motivated to create a change in the community. She saw a need for children in our schools to start eating more nutritionally dense foods and stop eating the foods that were making the community and the world obese. With help from Amy Winston, the Lincoln County Economic Development Office director, they worked together to create a nonprofit organization that would reach as many members of the community as possible and educate them about healthy eating. FARMS was born.

Growing up in Whitefield, I was incredibly lucky to experience a school environment that, even as children, we knew was special. Our little elementary school was the envy of nearby towns, and I am eternally grateful to all the good people involved, who gave me and so many others this exceptional experience.

To accompany our many snow flurries this year, Alna has also seen a flurry of recent controversy over K-8 school choice. In my view, much of it has been fueled by incomplete information. Alna’s student numbers have certainly risen in recent years, but this rise has been driven almost entirely by a natural phenomenon: our town’s birth rate. Restricting K-8 school choice will have little impact on our education costs. Restricting our residents from having babies? Now there’s an idea that could make a difference!