Happy Halloween!

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Photo by plochingen.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Image courtesy riptheskull.

A Sign of the Times

The ones who have nothing have the enormous power of nothing to lose and everything to gain.

~ Sign at L.A. Occupy Wall Street ~

Poetry Friday

I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

~ Carl Sandburg from "Theme in Yellow" ~






Photo by wwarby.

Media Pervasiveness

...our nation's children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development.

From Common Sense Media's mission statement.

Photo by Maufdi.

There Are Some Who Would Disagree...

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

~ David Ogilvy ~

Monsters

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

~ Andre Gide ~

Photo by AlexiUeltzen.

Who Knew?

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

~ W. H. Auden ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

And why do we go on caring, sometimes at great expense or with heartburn involved, for creatures who are sometimes superaffectionate, but at times seem only to want us for our ability to dispense treats, and who would rather claw us than purr while we hold them?

~ Stephen Burt ~

Photo by rwhgould.

We're Right Back to Where We Started...

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

Poetry Friday

I've always believed that poetry is the grace of little things. That the right details make a poem.

~ Paul B. Janeczko ~

This is taken from the new poetry ebook for teens titled p*tag edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, click here to order a copy.

An Eloquent Bad Man

If my lips teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may exasperate to madness men they persecute and ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.

~ Ned Kelly ~

Image courtesy State Library of Victoria.

Peanuts

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

~ Orson Welles ~

Photo by EuroMagic

A Big Difference

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

~ Vladimir Nabokov ~





Photo courtesy Ygrek.

My Kind of Guy

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

~ Mark Twain ~




Photo by litlnemo.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the stray cat
makes Buddha's lap
her pillow

~ Kobayashi Issa, translated by David Lanoue ~

Photo by sadaton.

Well, Duh...

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself.

~ New York Times editorial ~

Poetry Friday

There simply isn't one right way to write a poem. Doesn't exist....Ultimately, you write your own poetry. Your poem is your idea in your voice.

~ Sara Holbrook ~

Reading

The end of reading is not more books but more life.

~ Holbrook Jackson ~

Dancing

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

~ Moliere ~

National Coming Out Day!

Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth.

~ George Weinberg ~



Photo by Urban Sea Star.

Something To Think About Today

The Columbian Exchange has shaped everything about the modern world. It brought us the plants we tend in our gardens and the pests that eat them. And as it accelerates in the 21st century, it may take both away again.

~ Ian Morris ~



Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

When everyone else is just ready to go out,
The cat is just ready to come in.
He's not where he's been.

~ Rosalie Moore from "Catalog" ~






Photo by stagewhisper.

A Sign of the Times

Occupy Wall Street photo by waywuwei.

Poetry Friday

I think an aptitude for physics and astronomy is probably a plus for a poet. As is an aptitude for anything that involves the real, physical world--stars in the sky, insects on the ground, how bridges and buildings stay up. Without curiosity and passion about physical things, poetry is dead as a doornail.

~ Julie Larios ~

Open Those Pearly Gates...

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

~ Steve Jobs ~

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers.

~ William Petty ~

Photo by David Shankbone taken at Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

Image courtesy Library of Congress.

War

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

~ Robert E. Lee ~



Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

~ Rebecca West ~

Photo by BlancheK.

Let's Get to Work!

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.

~ Calvin Coolidge ~