Poetry Friday

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Yoga

Yoga is almost like music in a way; there's no end to it.

~ Sting ~

Chart courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Joy of Dancing

Part of the joy of dancing is conversation. Trouble is, some men can't talk and dance at the same time.

~ Ginger Rogers ~

And it's the rare one who can sing and dance and do both well. --KK

It's As Good a Reason As Any

God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.

~ Isak Dinesen ~

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ From Punky Dunk and the Gold Fish by Anonymous ~

Technology

Technology is a set of habits, and they can be good or bad for you.

~ Lauren Cerand ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~

The Only Real Reason to Write!

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

~ Jack Kerouac ~



Photo by wallyg.

Absolutely!

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

~ Joseph Addison ~

Libraries

There are an estimated 122,101 libraries of all kinds in the United States today.

~ American Library Association Library Fact Sheet 1 ~

*Magic*

After being in Harry Potter, I believe a bit more in magic than I did before.

~ Rupert Grint ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Then Tabitha Twitchit came down the garden and found her kittens on the wall with no clothes on.

~ Beatrix Potter from The Tale of Tom Kitten ~

A Simple Truth

Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

~ Satchel Paige ~

Photo by zinetv.

Poetry Friday

Efficient use of language is one of the major hallmarks of poetry. For the poet, this means avoiding clumsy or pointless repetition by saying things forcefully and right the first time. It means avoiding abstractions and generalizations in favor of presenting the scene which generated the abstraction. It means that each gesture has its point and no moment of the poem is wasted.

~ Ed Ochester ~

A Friend

A friend--one soul, two bodies.

~ Chinese proverb ~

Land of Dreams

In almost all of our family trees we have someone who was brave enough--sometimes crazy enough--to leave his or her home country to come to this land of dreams.

~ Lisa See ~

Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Ouch!

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

No!

Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?

~ Jack Kroll ~





Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Rain

The rain is raining everywhere,
          Kittens to shelter fly—-
But Human Folk wear overshoes,
          To keep their hind paws dry.

Oliver Herford from The Kitten's Garden of Verses

As the 2012 Election Season Begins...

the bees got their
governmental system settled
millions of years ago
but the human race is still
groping

~ Don Marquis from archy and mehitabel ~

Poetry Friday

I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.

~ Marilyn Hacker ~

Risk

It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

~ John Paul Jones ~

Happy Trails to You!

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

~ Edward Abbey ~

Reading

Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.

~ Charles Scribner, Jr. ~



Photo by Overduebook.

Independence Day

Have a safe and happy 4th!
Image courtesy riptheskull.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the big cat sleeps
in the same seat...
with the doll

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~

Photo by .. marta ..

Vision

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

~ Mark Twain ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

~ Thomas Gray ~

How Sad Is This?

Every time a child says, "I don’t believe in fairies," there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

~ J.M. Barrie from Peter Pan ~

An Admirable Hobby

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.

~ Tom T. Hall ~

Photo by Kevin H.

Fishing

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

R.I.P. Peter Falk

Usually, I get hired because I'm tall.

~ Peter Falk ~



Sketch by Peter Falk courtesy PeterFalk.com.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

If there were to be a universal sound depicting peace, I would surely vote for the purr.

~ Barbara L. Diamond ~

Photo by spear of the nation

The Power of Imagination

...you will find with the proper use of "imagination" almost all the problems in one's life and possibly the world would vanish as if they were illusions.

~ Sidney Madwed ~

Poetry Friday

That's how poetry has always been for me. It's been a way of sustaining my questions about life and mortality and all those things that we don't like to talk about, but they're always there, you know, knocking on the window.

~ Charles Wright ~

Write Your Own Ending

Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

~ Kermit the Frog from "The Rainbow Connection Finale" ~

Stories

The richest most meaningful stories are found in small places: made, carried, crafted, told, and retold by apparently unimportant people.

~ Louise Brown ~

Music Is a Gift

A singer starts by having his instrument as a gift from God...When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy.

~ Marian Anderson ~

Photo by Carl Van Vechten courtesy Library of Congress.

The Big (Hearted) Man

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

~ Clarence Clemons ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"

~ Samuel Butler ~






Photo by PDXdj.

Summer's Here

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

~ Thomas Carlyle ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.

~ William Blake ~

A "W"

I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger the capital "W."

~ Maud Hart Lovelace ~

Let It Shine!

But what I hope for from a book--either one that I write or one that I read--is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

~ Anne Tyler ~

"Pernicious" Is a Little Strong

Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.

~ Andre Gide ~

Photo by Michael McDonough.

Teamwork

I'm not under too much of an illusion of how smart or un-smart I am, because filmmaking ultimately is about teamwork.

~ Guy Ritchie ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Long hair, soft as satin,
    A musical purr,
'Gainst the window she'd flatten
    Her delicate fur

~ Frederick Locker-Lampson from "Loulou and Her Cat" ~

Photo by sean94110.

Extremes

Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

~ W. H. Auden ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

History is Not a Political Issue

The Archivist of the United States essentially works for the American people across partisan lines and not, regardless of which Administration nominates the person, for a particular President or political party.

~ Allen Weinstein ~

Photo courtesy National Archives.

Comics

I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.

~ Michael Chabon ~

Weddings

Christmas carols always brought tears to my eyes. I also cry at weddings. I should have cried at a couple of my own.

~ Ethel Merman ~

Does anyone remember Ethel Merman? --KK

And We're Happy He Did It!

It's a precious thing to be communicating to children, helping them discover the gift of language and thought. I'm happy to be doing it.

~ Richard Scarry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats eat catnip excitedly,
Get drunk and jump around

~ Howard Moss from "Catnip and Dogwood" ~

Smudge in a drunken stupor on a catnip mat.

'Tis the Season

In the span of my own lifetime I observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living.
~ Luther Burbank ~

Poetry Friday

If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly
I could see to write you a letter.

~ Amy Lowell "A Lover" ~



Note: this is the complete poem--only two lines!

Photo by art farmer.

Much Better!

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

~ Wendell Berry ~
Photo by adwriter.

Really?

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.

~ Stephen King ~

A Great Book

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit.

~ Robertson Davies ~





Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Which Will Never Happen, People!

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Pussycat Sits on a Chair

Pussycat sits on a chair
Implacably with acid stare.

Those who early loved in vain
Use the cat to try again,

And test their bruised omnipotence
Against the cat's austere defense.

~ Edward Newman Horn ~

Photo by jabberwik.