Happy Halloween!

I bought all of these big, cold, slimy, disgusting pumpkins and tried to carve them, and it was gross, so I had to find something else to do with them. Glitter was life-changing.

~ Jen Lancaster ~

Poetry Friday

Cognitive science now suggests that humans are actually hard-wired to respond to the sort of patterned speech that verse represents. Like the songs of birds or dances of bees--but on a higher level of complexity--poetry reflects the unique cognitive capacity of the human mind and body.

~ Dana Gioia ~
Photo source: Dana Gioia Official Site.

Where the Nurture Is Stronger Than the Nature

Rich, smart parents tend to have rich, smart kids--not because it's genetic but because they can create a home environment and sensory stimulation that lower-income kids often don't get.

~ George Kaiser ~

Unusual Efforts Required

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes."

~ Clare Boothe Luce ~
Image courtesy The NY Public Library Digital Collections.

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, "I gotta use that one."

~ Paul Simon ~

Art and Artists

I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life.

~ W. H. Auden ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Halloween is rapidly approaching!

[You'd be hard-pressed to find a worse Halloween rhyme than this one! --KK]

Photo courtesy riptheskull.

Accurately!

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

~ Joseph Pulitzer ~
Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

~ Linda Pastan from "Rereading Frost" ~






[Published in 1916 with a price of $1.25! --KK]

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bats Are Not Cliches!

Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed.

~ Wolcott Gibbs ~

Over the Rainbow

I've always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

~ Judy Garland ~
Original movie poster courtesy Wikipedia.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

~ Bela Lugosi ~





Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Maxfield Parris

There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish--whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one.

~ Maxfield Parrish ~
Painting courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Biting and clawing is a form of "love mauling." The more pain they deal out, the more they are trying to tell you that they love you.

~ The Oatmeal ~

Score One For the Geese

...great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them.

~ Meriwether Lewis ~
Illustration courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

...in poetry our motives are utterly similar to those who made cave paintings or petroglyphs...

~ Jim Harrison ~

It's Good to Have a Choice

I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library. I was around nine years old when I began choosing my own books in earnest.

~ Adriana Trigiani ~

Tightrope

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

~ Edith Wharton ~
Poster courtesy Library of Congress.

One Writer's Beginning

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

~ Joyce Carol Oates ~

Columbus Day

The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

© 2014, Michelle Porucznik.

Be Afraid

If there is one thing that my brother’s collection has taught me, it is that guns outlive their owners. These hundreds of millions of guns will most likely be part of our society for decades, and some even for centuries, regardless of what laws we pass now. That is something of which we should truly be afraid.

~ Charles Blow ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is sort of me looking for myself.

~ Chastity Hale ~

It's Cheese Month!

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

~ James Joyce ~

No One, and Yet Everyone, Has Ownership

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Jumper Cables?

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking.

~ Robert T. Bakker ~

It's World Teacher Day!

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

~ Carl Jung ~
"In Class, Instructions for the Young Children" by Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Veterinarians have long known the benefits of adding a little canned pumpkin to a pet's diet regularly.

~ Carol McConnell ~
"Madame Tarkhoff, Her Daughter, Pumpkin and Two Cats" by Nicholas Tarkhoff, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Just Look

The only business protected from government by our Constitution is the media--their right of free speech based in the First Amendment. Just look how the media are handling this public trust!

~ Ralph Nader ~

Poetry Friday

~ From The Book of Nonsense (1870), written and illustrated by Edward Lear ~

Bullying

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.

~ Octavia E. Butler ~