Poetry Friday

My "must-have" was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me. The children of old New England were always surrounded, it is true, with stubborn matter of fact,-—the hand to hand struggle for existence. But that was no hindrance. Poetry must have prose to root itself in; the homelier its earth-spot, the lovelier, by contrast, its heaven-breathing flowers.

~ Lucy Larcom ~

Grover's Taxi

"I want to go to the library."

~ Mr. Johnson, a.k.a. Fat Blue, voice by Jerry Nelson ~

Give Up Smoking?

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

~ Mark Twain ~





Drawing by Everett Shinn courtesy Library of Congress.

Doodle!

Even if you can't draw, do a little doodle or rip an illustration from a magazine--these visuals will help bring your idea to life.

~ John Emmerling ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Room Deodorizer?

Onions and bacon cooking up just makes your kitchen smell so good. In fact, one day I'm going to come up with a room deodorizer that smells like bacon and onions. It's a fabulous smell.

~ Paula Deen ~

Photo by jypsygen.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I want to be a lion. Everybody wants to pass as cats.

~ Counting Crows "Mr. Jones" ~

Here Lies...

Every generation rewrites the book’s epitaph; all that changes is the whodunit.

~ Leah Price ~





Photo by Cat Sidh.

Poetry Friday

The grass resolves to grow again,
receiving the rain to that end,
but my disordered soul thirsts
after something it cannot name.

~ Jane Kenyon from "August Rain, After Haying" ~

Photo by MarkyBon.

Define "Cute"

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.

~ Abbie Hoffman ~

Beware Those With Weak Heads!

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

~ Jane Austen ~

The Case for Knowledge

When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living--to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically--they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship.

~ Paul K. Chappell ~

Art

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

~ Edgar Degas ~







Degas' "Dans un Café" courtesy Musée d'Orsay.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

And Perdita makes me smile every day. She runs to greet me when I come home, and she flops at my feet in the morning to be petted. She loves boxes and balled-up pages of the Nation. She is afraid of vacuum cleaners and tornado sirens. She lies on her back in squares of sunshine with her paws in the air and looks perfectly ridiculous and content.

~ Michael Robbins ~

Take What You Need

~ Unknown artist, photo by Jana Kobold,
posted on StreetArt in Germany, 8/11/12 ~

Poetry Friday

All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse.

~ John Drinkwater ~

Not Just a Boxer!

It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.

~ Mike Tyson ~





Photo by octal.

Summer's Winding Down

'Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.

~ Thomas More ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

An Important Distinction

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~

If You Create, You Are a God!

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

~ Rita Dove ~


Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

                               a spitting image
                               of her mother...
                               kitten

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~


Photo by indy catholic.

Bring On the Merry!

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

Illustration by Randolph Caldecott.

Poetry Friday

Poem, do not raise your voice.
Be a whisper that says "There!"

~ Wendell Berry ~





Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

NH's Own--Franklin Pierce

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.

~ Franklin Pierce ~






Currier & Ives lithograph courtesy Library of Congress.

Better Yet, Stop and Eat!

If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.

~ Leigh Hunt ~

Utopia

Human beings will be happier--not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~

Perhaps It's Lost in Cyberspace?

Uncle Martin: Tim, did you see this article? Your government is about to spend two billion dollars on a space program that can't possibly work.

Tim: Uncle Martin, here I've got my friendly bank statement. Right here. And over here I've got my enemy checkbook. And between the two, a penny is lost. And the bank wants me to find it! Yes, Abe Lincoln, lost in a miasma of mathematics and figures. And you speak to me about two billion dollars? Please Uncle Martin, can we keep it quiet?

Uncle Martin: [Going back to newspaper] Hmp.

~ From My Favorite Martian ~ ~





My Favorite Martian photo courtesy tv.com.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

In 1963 the French government had numerous cats undergoing intensive training for possible space flight, with fairly arduous tasks involving a compression chamber and a centrifuge. But they don't seem to have suffered too much; ten of the would-be astronauts were 'decommissioned' for eating too much!

~ Patrick Roberts at Purr-n-Fur ~

Honesty In Politics

Is there a limit to how dishonest you can be, in politics? Or is this what is now known as running the nation like a business, where little irritations like honesty or legitimacy can go straight to hell, if there's profit in sending them there?

~ Hunter for the Daily Kos ~

Poetry Friday

Concrete poetry

Verse that emphasizes nonlinguistic elements in its meaning, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic.

~ from Poetry Foundation's "Glossary Terms" ~

Time

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

Photo by Injas World.

Cake for All!

All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.

~ George Harrison ~

Tim Green aka atoach.