R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen

Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen): Can you fly this plane, and land it?

Ted Striker (Robert Hays): Surely you can't be serious.

Dr. Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

~ from the film Airplane! ~

Science

Overall, the key criterion of science is that it provide a clear, rational, and succinct account of a pattern in nature.

~ from the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks ~





WPA poster by Shari Weisberg courtesy Library of Congress

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The white saucer like some full moon descends
       At last from the clouds of the table above;
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,
       Transfigured with love.

~ Harold Monro from "Milk for the Cat" ~

Photo by tillwe

Shopping Season

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

~ Richard M. Nixon ~
Photo by jpellgen

Poetry Friday

The pleasure a writer knows is the pleasure all sages enjoy. Out of non-being, being is born; out of silence, the writer produces a song. Laughing winds lift up the metaphor; clouds rise from a forest of writing brushes.

~ Sam Hamill ~

On the Plymouth Rock

Hear me, I beseech you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes.

~ Mark Twain ~

Engraving by Joseph Andrews courtesy Library of Congress

Remember This...

...an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.

~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

Photo by Sharlee H

Simple Math

Nature has given men one tongue and two ears, that we may hear twice as much as we speak.

~ Epictetus ~

I Kid You Not!

Roadkill is an alternative designer toy boutique, creating original toy characters. We make toys with a twist. Toys as dark as the inside of a goth’s wardrobe. And they all have one thing in common. They’ve been run over. We’re calling it Squash-Plush.

~ From the RoadkillToys.com website ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says
that animals have no need of speech and Nature
abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He
converses when he wants with me.

~ Robert Duncan from "A Little Language" ~

Photo by magdelana_b

Imposed Amnesia

Imposed amnesia is the modus operandi of the current moment. Not only is historical memory now sacrificed to the spectacles of consumerism, celebrity culture, hyped-up violence and a market-driven obsession with the self, but the very formative culture that makes compassion, justice and an engaged citizenry foundational to democracy has been erased from the language of mainstream politics and the diverse cultural apparatuses that support it.

~ Henry A. Giroux ~

Poetry Friday

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

~ Jean Cocteau ~

Escape!

Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.

~ Dean Koontz ~

Everything's Comin' Up Roses!

You could probably get us to set fire to our own trousers if there was a good laugh to be had in it somewhere . . . so after all the praise and awards that have been Heaped Upon Us, we decided it was time to add some substance to a phrase we often hear...with the launch of our special edition of Rose fragranced Poo-Pourri™ we can now proudly boast that we are the only company on earth (and possibly in the know-able universe) whose poo literally smells of roses.

~ News release on Sheep Poo Paper™ website ~

Image courtesy Sheep Poo Paper

Never Forget

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.
~ Simon Wiesenthal ~

Photo of Kristallnacht courtesy USHMM

In Other Words--Practice!

You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.

~ John Singer Sargent ~

Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Tee-shirt found here.

What a Sad Metaphor

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

~ Salvador Dalí ~

Poetry Friday

If I should make no poems any more
    There would be rest at least, so let it be;
Time to read books in other tongues and listen
    To the long mellow thunder of the sea.

~ Sara Teasdale from "Leisure" ~

Photo by explorer056

Veterans Day

Being a soldier, fighting for this country, is neither Republican nor Democrat.

~ Max Cleland ~

David Livingstone

Livingstone was equally at home wandering the wilds of Africa and making small talk over tea with the Queen. The public made his books best-sellers, his speeches standing room, his name household. Livingstone was beloved in Britain, and so famous worldwide that one poll showed that only Victoria herself was better known.

~ Martin Dugard from Into Africa ~

Photo courtesy National Trust for Scotland

Ha, Ha, Ha

Whiskey is by far the most popular of all remedies that won't cure a cold.

~ Jerry Vale ~

Photo by OctopusHat

Good Food All Over the World!

Good food is a global thing and I find that there is always something new and amazing to learn--I love it!

~ Jamie Oliver ~

Photo by hradcanska

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.

~ William Butler Yeats from "The Cat and the Moon" ~

Photo courtesy Hidden Side

Dumb Drones

Research conducted by the University of London a few years ago unearthed a concept known as 'infomania', which is when people are addicted to emailing and texting, with the study showing it could lower a person's IQ by twice as much as smoking marijuana. So, basically, smart phones are turning us into dumb drones.

~ James Adonis ~
Image courtesy dmixo6

Poetry Friday

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

~ Don Marquis ~

The Necessity of Space Travel

Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

~ Gene Roddenberry ~

Image Credit: NASA/JSC James Blair

You Want Fried With That?

Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.

~ Robert Redford ~

You Can Make a Difference--Vote!

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

~ James Garfield ~

Alexander Calder

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

~ Alexander Calder ~

Photo by H4NUM4N

Sunday's Kat Kwote

People that are comfortable with themselves I think is very sexy. My cat is really sexy.

~ Gina Gershon ~

A Universal Truth

The older I get the better I used to be!

~ Lee Trevino ~

Poetry Friday

...Most mornings these days
Ralph Edwards comes into the bedroom and says, "Elizabeth,
this is your life. Get up and look for color,
look for color everywhere."

~ Elizabeth Alexander from "Today's News" ~

Halloween and Cats

Every year in America and some European countries, our precious pets are put in danger, especially black cats, due to superstitions and legends that claim that black cats are bad luck. This misinformation stems from the belief that witches could transform themselves into cats to carry out evil deeds incognito during the night.

~ Candace Runaas ~
Image courtesy TIAS.com

Oooooo!

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

~Emily Dickinson ~

Ghost Season!

Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

~ J.M. Barrie ~

It's Here!

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

~ Dave Barry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

You carry your tail as a banner...

~ Amy Lowell from "To Winky" ~

Book As Performance

Each single-author book is immensely particular, a story told as only one storyteller could recount it. Scholarship is a collagist, building the next iteration of what we know book by book. Stories end, and that, I think, is a very good thing. A single authorial voice is a kind of performance, with an audience of one at a time, and no performance should outstay its welcome. Because a book must end, it must have a shape, the arc of thought that demonstrates not only the writer's command of her or his subject but also that writer's respect for the reader. A book is its own set of bookends.

~ William Germano ~

Poetry Friday

...I believe that in the end poems strike something deeper than thought itself.

~ Edward Hirsch from How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry ~

Autumn

Autumn's a grand old drag
            in torched and tumbled chiffon
                        striking her weary pose.

~ Mark Doty from "Couture" ~

If He Could See the Way People Dress Today...

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~

No Wimps Allowed

You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.

~ Les Brown ~

Robots

We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies.

~ Marshall McLuhan ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

~ Anne Tyler ~

Photo by MACSURAK

Good Choice!

I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil, and I reached out for God.

~ Mario Sepulveda, rescued Chilean miner ~

Photo of Mario Sepulveda courtesy El Mercurio, Santiago, Chile

Poetry Friday

I am writing poetry because it seems the way I can say things that have meaning that is almost beyond language. Poetry is a hint, I guess, a whiff, of the depths of the heart.

~ Cynthia Rylant ~

Photo by Bob.Fornal

One of Eliot's Cats

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.

~ T. S. Eliot from "Macavity: The Mystery Cat" ~

Photo by Forty Two

Heaven and Earth In Your Hands!

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night--there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

~ Christopher Morley ~

Release That Prisoner!

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

~ Michelangelo ~

Sad, But Probably True

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.

~ Brian Greene ~



Photo by cokescroaks

Enthusiasm

If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

~ Vince Lombardi ~

Photo by glsims99

Poetry Friday

Never yet has poet sung a perfect song,
But his life was rooted like a tree's, among
Earth's great, feeding forces,--even as crag and mould,
Rhythms that stir the forest by firm fibres hold.

Harmonies ethereal haunt his topmost bough,
Upward from the mortal drawn, he knows not how:
The old, sacred story of celestial birth
Rising from terrestrial; heaven revealed through earth.

~ Lucy Larcom from "The Trees" ~

Note: the illustration is taken from Childhood Songs by Lucy Larcom published in 1874. A digitized copy is available at Google Books.)