For seven years now, we've entreated you to send us your valentines—bloody, funny and otherwise. And every year we're amazed at what can be expressed by doilies, cardboard and what we hope is fake blood. Can't say Alibi readers are lacking in creativity.

It’s Sunday, the opening of Albuquerque Now: Winter, and the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History is alive. A tiny girl in black-and-white stripes reaches for John G. Garrett’s “Now Net,” a suspended Technicolor waterfall of aluminum wire, plastic cable and recycled picnic ware, among other found elements. Her mother, in turn, reaches for her, saying, “No, love. Touch with your eyes.” A dapper young man exclaims to his girlfriend, “Can you [adverb beginning with ‘f’] believe that all of these artists are from Albuquerque!” And an older woman, relying on her cane for support, sweetly greets her friend with, “We so need art to get us through these times.”

If you’ve been to a bookstore in the past four years, you’re at least glancingly familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. The story of the then thirtysomething author’s disastrous divorce and search for fulfillment was a breakaway bestseller, garnering the praise of none other than Oprah. It is now being made into a movie starring Julia Roberts, realizing what is, arguably, the apex of American pop-cultural achievement.