Happy Halloween!

Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.

~ Walter De La Mare from "The Empty House" ~




Image courtesy The Graphics Fairy

Poetry Friday

...I love to work in form. I think the challenges of form elicit extraordinary responses. You don't know what's going to come.

~ Maxine Kumin ~

Vampires Out, Angels In

I'm tired of the idea that the devil is the interesting one. That's not true. The devil is boring and he's lost. And I want to be on the side of the angels this time.

~ Anne Rice ~


Image courtesy chicks57

We're Still Waiting...

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right--not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world.

~ John F. Kennedy ~

Bugs!

An open mind, like an open window, should be screened to keep the bugs out.

~ Virginia Hutchinson ~




Photo by flypig

The Important Thing Is to Try

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

~ Amelia Earhart ~






Photo by Kevin

Sunday's Kat Kwote

If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

~ Alfred North Whitehead ~

Autumn Luster

Photo by la prosperite
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Poetry Friday

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

~ Sigmund Freud ~

Let the Sun Shine!

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow them.

~ Louisa May Alcott ~

Artistry

The fact is that it takes more than ingredients and technique to cook a good meal. A good cook puts something of himself into the preparation--he cooks with enjoyment, anticipation, spontaneity, and he is willing to experiment.

~ Pearl Bailey ~

Today is National Day on Writing

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

~ Anais Nin ~

One Smart Guy

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

~ Leonardo da Vinci ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Little robin redbreast sat upon a tree,
Up went pussy cat and down went he.

~ Traditional Nursery Rhyme ~








Photo by Sangudo

Shut Up and Start Singing!

Photo by iirraa

Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

~ Jimi Hendrix ~

Poetry Friday

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

~ Mary Oliver from "Evidence" ~

A Ghostly Idea

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

~ Charles Dickens ~

The Cure for the Blues

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~


Photo by Shadowfoot

No Dogma, Please

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.

~ Bertrand Russell ~

Columbus Day

Thursday, 11 October. Steered west-southwest; and encountered a heavier sea than they had met with before in the whole voyage. Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel. The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board. The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries. These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful. Sailed this day till sunset, twenty-seven leagues.

~ Christopher Columbus ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.

~ Pam Brown ~

Talk

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

~ Salvatore Quasimodo ~





Photo by Lamerie

Fate Is a Rat?

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

~ Elizabeth Bowen ~



Photo by Infrogmation

She Needs A Sense of Humor to Deal with a Man

You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man's rib; she was really made from his funny bone.

~ James M. Barrie ~

Web 2.0

Image courtesy bensheldon
What the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves.

~ Andrew Keen ~

Imagination

The Possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Photo by karenwithak

Note: this is the Macpherson clan motto, meaning something like, "beware the cat's claws."

And the Writer Has No Control Over It

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

~ Angela Carter ~

Poetry Friday

Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.

~ William Carlos Williams ~

Chickens, Again!

Photo by Brent and MariLynn
He who spends a night with a chicken will cackle in the morning.

~ Tunisian proverb ~

This is Banned Books Week!

The library is perceived as a safe place, but it is not a safe place in terms of ideas. It's a marketplace of ideas.

~ Barbara Berg ~

Photo by bibliona

Go and Dare

Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

~ Johann von Goethe ~

Yes, We Do

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.

~ John Muir ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Oh and you give it all you got.
Fat bottomed girls you make the rockin world go round.

~ Brian May (Queen) ~

Autumn is Here!

Photo by wimbledonian

I saw old autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.

~ Thomas Hood ~

Poetry Friday

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature’s essence.

~ William Ernest Henley ~

Stress

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

~ William James ~

Spend It Wisely

Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.

~ Michael Ende ~

What Are Cursing Chickens Like?

Curses are like chickens; they come home to roost.

~ Greek proverb ~

Trust Yourself

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him.

~ Albert Einstein ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Photo by dulcie
Do not let the cat watch over the bacon.
~ Iranian proverb ~

Dream On!

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

~ Woodrow Wilson ~

Poetry Friday

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

~ Thomas Macaulay ~

That's Why You Get One on Your Ankle!

Well, if you're tattooed on your face or your arms...where people can see it...most employers probably would not hire you.

~ Laura Bush ~


Photo by cwalker71

Don't Underestimate Passion

I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.

~ Albert Einstein ~




Einstein finger puppet available here.

Be Open

Photo by alicepopkorn
Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

~ Gautama Siddharta ~

Novels

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

~ Honore de Balzac ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

If you want to live long, be healthy and fat, drink like a dog and eat like a cat.

~ German proverb ~

On This Rainy Saturday

The world goes up and the world goes down, the sunshine follows the rain; and yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown can never come over again.

~ Charles Kingsley ~

Poetry Friday

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm.

~ Ted Kooser ~

Restoration

We are looking for a homecoming, a peace that is within ourselves and our surroundings. There's a hunger for the solace of restoration, return, and mending.

~ Howard Mansfield ~

You Go, Girl!

When you find a burden in belief or apparel,
cast it off.

~ Amelia Jenks Bloomer ~

He's Tough!

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

~ Jean Cocteau ~

Happy Labor Day!

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking another.

~ Anatole France ~






Cooking on the grill is one kind of labor that is okay! The photo was taken at a 1940 Labor Day barbecue. --KK

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Photo by pigdump

A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution.

~ Hazel Nicholson ~

Fifty Years Later It's Still the Same!

...many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness except as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resort to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower ~

Poetry Friday

Instead of building a fence of formality around poetry, I want to emphasize its accessibility, the sound, rhythm, humor, the inherent simplicity. Poetry can be as natural and effective a form of self-expression as singing or shouting.

~ Karla Kuskin ~