The Fomenting Has Begun!

...remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

~ Abigail Adams ~

Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

~ John Ciardi ~




Photo courtesy Harvard Square Library.

Drumming

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

~ Lionel Hampton ~

Not Good...

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development.

~ Nancy Gibbs ~
Image courtesy Cafe Press.

Tell Stories!

Stories unite people, theories divide them.

~ James Billington ~
Illustration courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Angels Come in Many Forms

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers...

~ Bayard Rustin ~
Photo courtesy UIC Digital Collections.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

To the north, on bright days you may be seen
in your chariot drawn by white cats
moving across the fields, across the sky
blue-robed, your hair gold-streaming

~ Frederick Morgan from "Freya" ~

Weddings

All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful.

~ Liz Smith ~
Image courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Poetry Friday

Every poet has to develop a habit of work. You have to create a sense of legitimacy for the job and bring a sense of strenuousness to the enterprise.

~ Kay Ryan ~






Childe Hassam print courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

But Not At the Same Time, Please

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

~ Voltaire ~






Photo courtesy NY Public Library Digital Gallery.

Oops! Missed Yesterday's Post!

It happens.

Here's a longish one that will have to count for two days:

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

Discuss!

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.

~ Anna Quindlen ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

On bare new wood
fourteen tomatoes,
a dozen ears of corn,
six bottles of white wine,
a melon,
a cat,
broccoli,
and the Alligator Bride.

~ Donald Hall from "The Alligator Bride" ~

Photo by qmnonic.

Forget Angels!

Narrative building is the key to success in politics and it has been by far Obama’s biggest deficiency. He has been way too reasonable and given way too much credit where none was due. To put it in terms Lincoln would appreciate, his pursuit of the better angels in others has allowed their lesser angels to get the better of him.

~ Peter Fegan ~
Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

I saved up my allowance and bought the little blue, cloth-covered collected Eliot for two dollars and fifty cents and I was off. I decided that I would be a poet for the rest of my life and started by working at poems for an hour or two every day after school. I never stopped.

~ Donald Hall ~

Nobody Wants Feeble Circuits!

Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, which under normal circumstances will unfold according to a program dictated by our genes, the ability to read must be painstakingly acquired by each individual. The "reading circuits" we construct are recruited from structures in the brain that evolved for other purposes-- and these circuits can be feeble or they can be robust, depending on how often and how vigorously we use them.

~ Annie Murphy Paul ~

It Sure Isn't!

I think that you should definitely listen to what people say, because everyone says it: High school is not the real world.

~ Katy Perry ~

Admirable

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

~ Stewart Udall ~

The World of Make-Believe

As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.

~ Jim Henson ~
Photo by Dawn Endico.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Oh I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good

~ Stevie Smith from "The Galloping Cat" ~

Eadweard Muybridge locomotion study courtesy Library of Congress.

Fear No Books

When you fear the books, you also fear the truth.

~ Kelly Jensen ~

Poetry Friday

How true this is with regard to writing poetry--you have to grab it when it runs by, or it'll be lost to you. --KK

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

What Has She Been Smoking?

When I pass a flowering zucchini plant in a garden, my heart skips a beat.

~ Gwyneth Paltrow ~

Zombies!

My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly. I'm pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.

~ George A. Romero ~

Yup!

I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers ~

Big Business

The "gluten-free" label has become one of the best ways to sell a product. The industry is worth upward of $4 billion, and is expected to exceed $6.6 billion by 2017. Many books, diets and self-proclaimed medical specialists have taken advantage of this new trend. It has become so trendy, in fact, that even gallons of milk, that contain no gluten to begin with, have started to get the "gluten-free" stamp.

~ Maggie Beidelman ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

~ Jeanette Winterson ~
Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Homogenization

I think it’s ironic that in the last 15 or 20 years we’ve had the interest in multiculturalism and diversity, but at the same time we’re going through a real homogenization of our culture, from economics and technology.

~ John McIntyre ~



Photo by kke227.

Poetry Friday

The power of responding to the intuitive and the poetic is greatest in childhood. If we can wake in children a response beyond their immediate need--if we organize to accomplish these things, we shall never, never lose the nightingale.

~ Frances Clarke Sayers ~

Written in 1920 (But It Could Have Been Written Today)

Here in America to-day, we are fighting another War--perhaps an even greater one--a war against selfishness and materialism and intolerance and despair.

~ Frances Noyes ~