OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY.

One can't put a value on love. It’s an emotion and feeling that every human being needs desperately. All of us – with the exception of anti-social vampires – seek to find our soul mate. It’s what makes the world go round. Despite Monroe and Jane Russell shaking their ample tushes and singing, “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” they’re not. The loving fellow giving that diamond is.

More songs, poems, plays, movies and books have been written about the quest for love than anything other than the right bait to catch flounder with. We all want to be and feel in love. We all want to be loved by someone else. In my case many someone elses. But whathehey……

The greatest mystery about what it is that causes each of us to fall in love is bewildering and never the same. “Whoever floats your boat?” “Love is in the eye of the beholder.” “Love at first sight.” And, of course, the old standby, “You want how much….?”

My uncle Herbie loved my aunt Ida until the day he died. She looked like something you’d find in a fish tank but it didn’t matter to Herbie or his seeing-eye dog. There have been legendary love affairs throughout history. Romeo & Juliet; Napoleon and Josephine, Ronnie Reagan and Nancy; and Dagwood and Blondie. Seeing two people in love gives me the same warm feeling as a hot foot.

How do you measure love? Is it by buying a huge diamond ring, writing love poems or…offering 40 goats for her hand in marriage. Remember, Chelsea Clinton? Everyone made fun of her looks when Bill Clinton lived in The White House. They were cruel but somewhat accurate. Well, friends, Chelsea has cleaned up real well. She’s now 25-years old and quite a looker. More importantly she has a serious wooer who wants to marry her and is willing to spend a fortune in order to get her to say, “Yes.”

Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor, 36, is a Kenyan city councilman who has fallen in love with Ms. Clinton. He has written to Bill and Hillary asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage. Godwin is very serious about his romantic feelings toward Chelsea. Five years ago, he wrote Bill Clinton and offered 40 goats and 20 cows if Chelsea would only agree to become Mrs. Chepkurgor. He’s still waiting for an answer.

Godwin vowed to remain single until he gets an answer to his proposal. Chepkurgor, a city councilor in Nakuru, told Clinton of plans for a grand wedding presided over by South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tuto. If Tuto is unavailable he’d substitute Stepinfetchit. “Had I succeeded in wooing Chelsea, I would have had a grand wedding,” he told the Standard in an interview published during Clinton’s recent visit to Kenya.

The electrical engineering graduate said he promised to pay 40 goats and 20 cows in dowry for Clinton’s only daughter in accordance with African tradition. Sadly, Godwin’s letter never made it to the office because authorities thought Chepkurgor “just took the joke too far.” What joke? Do the Clinton’s know how much 40 goats and 20 cows are worth? At least as much as Paris Hilton’s engagement ring and Chelsea didn’t have to make a porno flick to get it.

In this cold, sick, impersonal world it’s nice to know that a suitor is still willing to put his fortune where his heart takes him. 40 goats and 20 cows are nothing to be sneezed at, my friend, unless you happened to be allergic to bovines. I just hope Chelsea reconsiders the offer. She and Godwin have much in common. They can sit around the old thatched hut and discuss politics with tom-toms playing softly in the back ground.

Ain’t love grand?