Monday, August 31, 2015

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, August 30, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote

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


Saturday, August 29, 2015

Reality

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

~ Chad R. MacDonald ~

Friday, August 28, 2015

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.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

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.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

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.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Music!




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


~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote



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

Saturday, August 22, 2015

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.

Friday, August 21, 2015

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.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

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.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

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 ~

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Keep Your Eyes Open!






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

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote

poking her nose
into thorny wild roses...
kitten

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~
Photo by Ms. Barrows.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

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.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Happy Birthday, Mr. Hitchcock!





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

~ Alfred Hitchcock ~

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

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 ~

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

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.

Monday, August 10, 2015

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, August 9, 2015

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.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

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 ~

Friday, August 7, 2015

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.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

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 ~

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Happy Underwear Day!


From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.

~ Bertolt Brecht ~



Tuesday, August 4, 2015

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 ~

Monday, August 3, 2015

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, August 2, 2015

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.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

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 ~