Clear the Clutter!

When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and "good, orderly direction" to enter.

~ Julia Cameron ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I'm running out of kat kwotes, but I'll never run out of cat videos!

Reality

Those who willingly reject reality should never have the chance to shape it.

~ Chad R. MacDonald ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

~ Charles Simic ~






Photo from NH Poetry Festival schedule.

Ha, Ha!

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

~ Doug Larson ~






Photo courtesy Internet Archive.

And, No Fear of Flying!

Visit a National Park Today!

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

~ Aldo Leopold ~
Photo Rocky Mountain National Park courtesy Library of Congress.

Music!

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.


~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The poem, "Cat!" by Eleanor Farjeon, can be found here.

Tell Your Story!

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

~ Anne Lamott ~







"At the Writing Desk" by Frederick Childe Hassam, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Poetry Friday

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.

~ Samuel Beckett ~
"Creation of the World" by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Advice For Writers

Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

~ William Faulkner ~
Photo by Dr. John B. Padgett.

There's Always More

You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.

~ Lauren Oliver ~

Keep Your Eyes Open!

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Between

Graphic courtesy Good Book Scents.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

poking her nose
into thorny wild roses...
kitten
~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~

Photo by Ms. Barrows.

People Are Unique

Because people are unique and books are complex. No rating system is going to convey everything in a book. To do that you need to read the book and decide for yourself.

~ Kristin Pekoll ~







Photo courtesy Upper Arlington Archives.

Poetry Friday

The art of flying is the art of writing.

~ Juan Felipe Herrera ~

Happy Birthday, Mr. Hitchcock!

The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.

~ Alfred Hitchcock ~

Remembrance

Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.

~ Patti Smith ~

No One Said Life Was Fair

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

~ Johnny Carson ~
Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

In the Smithsonian

I've got a portrait in the Smithsonian. Who ever thought that would happen?

~ Tommy Lasorda ~




Portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler, courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Narrow your eyelids to entreat the beast;
Make soft your glances; never show surprise
Discovering the lion in his eyes--

~ Elinor Wylie from "The Persian Kitten" ~

Illustration by John Tenniel.

Common Sense

Living in a pluralistic society that also grants freedom and civil rights protection to those with whom one disagrees is not the same as religious persecution. And crying persecution every time one doesn’t get one’s way is an insult to the very real religious persecution happening in the world today.

~ Rachel Held Evans ~

Poetry Friday

The book is part of the poem. Because you have little trees in the paper that are holding the poem up, and little rivers going through the paper, encouraging the poem to flow.

~ Juan Felipe Herrera ~





Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

And Yet, We Still Stockpile Them

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

~ J. Robert Oppenheimer ~

Happy Underwear Day!

From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.

~ Bertolt Brecht ~

Young People--Wake Up!

What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.

~ Bill Gates ~

Please Don't Fail

Generosity has built America. When we fail to invest in children, we have to pay the cost.

~ Bob Keeshan ~


Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Her joy is like an instinct, joy
Of kitten, bird, or summer fly;

~ Dorothy Wordsworth from "The Mother's Return" ~

Illustration from An Alphabet of Animals, courtesy Internet Archive.

Ignorance Is Curable!

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

~ Albert Camus ~