Live long and ... stay happy

Regional Note: Friends and lovers, you have two chances this week to make things happen in your lives. Live long and ... stay happy. (Editor 02/12/23)

The antithesis of Valentine's Day, with a quasi-connection to Mississippi State University, will be "celebrated" this week. Singles Awareness Day is an unofficial holiday for single people recognizing the love between friends, family and self.

Some folks celebrate it out of spite for Valentine's Day. No one is sure when it actually started. 

Its acronym spells SAD. A group of dating experts wanted it to sound more positive and created National Singles Day. 

It's a reminder that you don't need to be in a relationship to celebrate life. 

Single Awareness Day was born out of social Isolation. In 2001, a high school student named Dustin Barns decided to form a group, that instead of wallowing in the sorrows of singlehood, to celebrate it. 

Dustin took his high school tradition to Mississippi State University where it was well received. It is believed that Dustin met his soulmate at an MSU-student led Single Awareness Day party. He later married her. 

Barnes grew up in the towns of Chalybeate and Kossuth, in north Mississippi, writing poetry and dreaming of becoming a journalist, according to his mother, who was quoted in his obituary in May 2022. He was a reporter at the Clarion-Ledger in 2009 and later worked as a digital strategist at The Tennessean in Nashville. 

Americans celebrate love and friendship on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14). Its origins are also murky. Ancient Rome (not the one in Georgia) celebrated Lupercalia, a spring festival, on Feb. 15. Like many pagan-like holidays, a Christian gloss was added to the fete and moved to the 14th - the saint day associated with several early Christian martyrs named Valentine.