He looked at me and asked, “Free?” I nodded. Then he opened a plastic bag and gently took out a small gold box wrapped with a shimmering red ribbon. The package was beautiful.

I helped him look through boxes provided by post office until we found perfect size. As he carefully placed ribboned box inside, he asked to borrow my pen. I wasn’t trying to snoop, but I saw him carefully write name of a woman with an address in New York City.

This was clearly a gift for his Valentine.

Valentines Day is time when feelings of affection and intimacy are high. But for you, has Valentines Day ever become a time to apologize for neglect? Has it ever been a time to make up for lost opportunities of closeness with one you love?

Couples in long-term relationships have a habit of taking each other for granted which makes Valentines Day a good time to refocus on importance of each other.

I frequently have seminar participants tell me they are so busy just getting tactical items done for work, that their personal relationships are way down on list.

I look participants in eye say, ‘If you think your boss will be there for you when you are 85, stand up.’ The room fills with laughter as point is made. People start reassessing their priorities and start putting relationships in their proper place.

The principle Brandau teaches is that jobs provide a measure of self-esteem and money to buy necessities along with niceties of life, but sharing those with someone you love is what makes work worthwhile.

If you are caught in work rat race and have a hard time finding time for your lover, try these tips:

I often thought it was generation gap or perhaps evolutionary cycle or simply a sign of end times. But, whatever it is, one thing is certain: that music has changed immensely in 20th century.

For brevity, my focus shall be on sixties and seventies, when nations seemed to have come alive with lyrics and rhythm of time and nineties, when they seem to have lost that rhythm change that drove sixties.

While music has grown in other times, sixties saw an explosion in industry. It did not only grow in size, but also in quality. Performers elevated art to a new high, using their talents to address needs and concerns of society.

In Africa, artists turned out hit after hit. This was especially true in central and western Africa. The folkloric songs of fifties were replaced by more vibrant, more up beat rhythm of sixties. In Zaire, Franco in his hit song "Trezempoli," which translates "very impolite," criticized those who smoke in offices where they do not like smoke. Also in Zaire, Tabuley in his song "Sara" talked about problem of divorce. In his philosophy divorce is unthinkable. Nigeria’s, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, in his massive hit "Zombie", done in Nigeria's unofficial lingua franca, Broken English, berates military government of then General Olusegun Obasanjo for its lack of vision and soldiers for their blind obedience. "Zombie no go think unless you tell am to think…" he lamented.

In Caribbean, Ska was polished and elevated to richer, more balanced Rocksteady, with a lot of infusion of African drum, and finally to internationally acclaimed Reggae beat. Joe Higgs, Desmond Decker, and Bob Marley were some of early apostles. In his hit song "War," Bob Marley reechoed a speech made by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia at United Nations in 1960's. "Until philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior, is finally and permanently, discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war." Also from Caribbean, Jimmy Cliff, in his classic “Vietnam” lent a credible voice to opposition against America’s carnage in that country. "Yesterday I got a letter from my friend, fighting in Vietnam… Tell all my friends that I will be coming home soon, my time will be up sometime in June. But Mrs. Brown your son is dead.” Yet, in another hit he lamented widening divide between rich and poor. “It’s a pain to see we are in a sad situation, suffering in land. The rich is getting richer and poor…”