Happy Halloween!

Witch and ghost make merry on this last of dear October’s days.

~ Anonymous ~
Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Language

Language was important, sexy, fun, alive, extremely personal, it was like food, you wouldn't just pop anything into your mouth, why would you let anything pop out that hadn't been considered and prepared for someone to enjoy?

~ Jeanne Darst from Fiction Ruined My Family ~

Hurricanes

One thing that does seem clear is that warmer oceans (a la global warming) mean more evaporation, and that likely leads to storms with more and more dangerous rainfall of the kind we saw with Hurricane Irene last year. In addition, a paper published just last month, used records of storm surges going back to 1923 as a measure of hurricane activity. A strong correlation between warm years and strong hurricanes was seen. Thus if you warm the planet, you can expect more dangerous storms.

~ Adam Frank ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Myself and Pangur, cat and sage
Go each about our business;
I harass my beloved page,
He his mouse.

~ Eavan Boland, "From the Irish of Pangur Ban" ~

Welcome, Julian!

Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

~ Louisa May Alcott ~

Poetry Friday

I sometimes like to tinker with poems that have failed, ones that I have sent aside. Even years afterward, I will revisit them if there is something about them that I cannot give up on.

~ John Barton ~

Interesting Thought

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

~ Anita Brookner ~

It Didn't Stop Her From Becoming a Writer

I dropped chemistry. I practically blew up the lab in college.

~ Patricia Cornwell ~

Old New Hampshire

Old New Hampshire, Old New Hampshire
Old New Hampshire Grand and Great
We will sing of Old New Hampshire,
Of the dear old Granite State.

~ Refrain from NH Offical State Song, "Old New Hampshire" ~

Postcard courtesy Boston Public Library.

To Be a Writer You Have to Read!

I started to read books when I was a child. This triggered my strong interest in literature after reading more and more books. I felt I had many words to express, I thought the strongest and most unconstrained way was through literature, so I started to write. Of course, I also had a desire to prove myself, and a wish to change my destiny.

~ Mo Yan ~
Photo © J. Kolfhaus, courtesy NobelPrize.org.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A Thousand years or so before Christ the Egyptians associated the cat with music, utilizing the graceful head and figure of the beloved animal in the decoration of the sistra.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~

This Makes a Lot of Sense

The nation exists to make lives better for all its people--making sure that corporations treat their workers as assets to be developed rather than as costs to be cut. Companies have been slow to create jobs not because of insufficient profits but because of inadequate customers. The vast American middle class are the real job creators, but they don’t have enough money in their pockets because too many companies have broken the basic bargain linking wages to productivity.

~ Robert Reich ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

~ Lucille Clifton ~


Photo © Dorothy Alexander.

And It Keeps You Warm, Too!

We hold the values of freedom and human rights very high and I think that those are all a part of a very strong quilt that binds us together.

~ Robert Menendez ~


Photo by circulating.

This Is Applicable to So Much!

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Work Out!

There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym--it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

~ Danica McKellar ~

The Good Stuff

I'm not after fame and success and fortune and power. It's mostly that I want to have a good job and have good friends; that's the good stuff in life.

~ Drew Barrymore ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats can be cruel and stingy and aloof (although most cats are far less aloof than has generally been supposed). And all of them are half insane.

~ Michael Robbins ~
Photo by jennratonmort.

Defining the Terms

A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted--in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest--at the command--of his head.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Poetry Friday

The secret of all art, also of poetry, is, thus, distance. Thanks to distance the past preserved in our memory is purified and embellished.

~ Czeslaw Milosz ~

Me, Too!

The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.

~ Jacob August Riis ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

A Great Matter

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling.

~ Leo Tolstoy ~





"Portrait of a Young Married Couple" by Jacob Jordaens courtesy Museum of Fine Arts.

An Old Fashioned Birthday Wish

Card courtesy New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Click on the image for a larger view.

Columbus Day

Tomorrow morning before we depart, I intend to land and see what can be found in the neighborhood.

~ Christopher Columbus ~
Map courtesy New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

...it is much easier to train a cat to perform tasks that have some ancestral meaning for their niche in the environment than those which are abstract or meaningless from their point of view. Cats, in other words, are much smarter than they let on.

~ Stephen Budiansky ~


Photo by carolyn.will.

Common Sense and Courage

Most of man's problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.

~ Frances Perkins ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

~ William Faulkner ~

Play

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

~ Plato ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

True Love

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld ~

What An Achievement!

The fastest time to enter a zipped suitcase is 5.43 seconds achieved by Leslie Tipton (USA) on 14 September 2009 in New York, USA on the LIVE! with Regis & Kelly show.

~ Courtesy Socialphy ~

A Most Extreme Form of Censorship

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

~ Ray Bradbury ~


Photo by Samuel M. Livingston.