You're a with-it kind of person. I know this because you're reading my blog, and by "with-it" I mean "reader-of-my-blog." Admittedly, this stretches the the ordinary definition of the word.

Anyway, you, dear reader, my with-it kind of person, should know that there is a new High Hat, a valentine to you, with the theme of First Loves. And Love is the key. I cannot read it without getting all soft-focus vaseline-eyed. It's just that wonderful and romantic.

There's too much goodness to recommend any particular article over another, but I will single out two. First, Phil Nugent's remembrance of New Orleans and his friend Helen Hill, who was murdered there last month, is a breathtaking essay of such scope that the editors took the unprecendented move of presenting it outside of any of our little departments. Second, and I mention this not because it is a high quality essay, but because this is my blog which I write, necessitating a bit of occasional egotism to stay in the spirit of things, my first love article is on an embarrassing youthful indiscretion with the band Styx. Read it at your own peril. Or don't and still think well of me (presuming that, in fact, some of you think well of me in the first place).

Go and be loved.