A Sign of the Times

The ones who have nothing have the enormous power of nothing to lose and everything to gain.

~ Sign at L.A. Occupy Wall Street ~

Poetry Friday

I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

~ Carl Sandburg from "Theme in Yellow" ~






Photo by wwarby.

Media Pervasiveness

...our nation's children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development.

From Common Sense Media's mission statement.

Photo by Maufdi.

There Are Some Who Would Disagree...

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

~ David Ogilvy ~

Monsters

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

~ Andre Gide ~

Photo by AlexiUeltzen.

Who Knew?

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

~ W. H. Auden ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

And why do we go on caring, sometimes at great expense or with heartburn involved, for creatures who are sometimes superaffectionate, but at times seem only to want us for our ability to dispense treats, and who would rather claw us than purr while we hold them?

~ Stephen Burt ~

Photo by rwhgould.

We're Right Back to Where We Started...

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

Poetry Friday

I've always believed that poetry is the grace of little things. That the right details make a poem.

~ Paul B. Janeczko ~

This is taken from the new poetry ebook for teens titled p*tag edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, click here to order a copy.

An Eloquent Bad Man

If my lips teach the public that men are made mad by bad treatment, and if the police are taught that they may exasperate to madness men they persecute and ill treat, my life will not be entirely thrown away.

~ Ned Kelly ~

Image courtesy State Library of Victoria.

Peanuts

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

~ Orson Welles ~

Photo by EuroMagic

A Big Difference

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

~ Vladimir Nabokov ~





Photo courtesy Ygrek.

My Kind of Guy

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

~ Mark Twain ~




Photo by litlnemo.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the stray cat
makes Buddha's lap
her pillow

~ Kobayashi Issa, translated by David Lanoue ~

Photo by sadaton.

Well, Duh...

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself.

~ New York Times editorial ~

Poetry Friday

There simply isn't one right way to write a poem. Doesn't exist....Ultimately, you write your own poetry. Your poem is your idea in your voice.

~ Sara Holbrook ~

Reading

The end of reading is not more books but more life.

~ Holbrook Jackson ~

Dancing

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

~ Moliere ~

National Coming Out Day!

Coming out to gays is a way of affirming sanity and self-worth.

~ George Weinberg ~



Photo by Urban Sea Star.

Something To Think About Today

The Columbian Exchange has shaped everything about the modern world. It brought us the plants we tend in our gardens and the pests that eat them. And as it accelerates in the 21st century, it may take both away again.

~ Ian Morris ~



Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

When everyone else is just ready to go out,
The cat is just ready to come in.
He's not where he's been.

~ Rosalie Moore from "Catalog" ~






Photo by stagewhisper.

A Sign of the Times

Occupy Wall Street photo by waywuwei.

Poetry Friday

I think an aptitude for physics and astronomy is probably a plus for a poet. As is an aptitude for anything that involves the real, physical world--stars in the sky, insects on the ground, how bridges and buildings stay up. Without curiosity and passion about physical things, poetry is dead as a doornail.

~ Julie Larios ~

Open Those Pearly Gates...

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

~ Steve Jobs ~

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers.

~ William Petty ~

Photo by David Shankbone taken at Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

Image courtesy Library of Congress.

War

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

~ Robert E. Lee ~



Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

~ Rebecca West ~

Photo by BlancheK.

Let's Get to Work!

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.

~ Calvin Coolidge ~

Poetry Friday

Real poetry can use any material. The important thing is that it be judiciously, infallibly, inevitably selected and arranged so that the perfect form is found, and so that the poet express the truth as it is.

~ Joan Giroux from The Haiku Form ~

And a Teacher Is a Sculptor

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

~ Joseph Addison ~

Road Maps

We're all pilgrims on the same journey--but some pilgrims have better road maps.

~ Nelson DeMille ~

I Do!

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

~ Emily Dickinson ~







Print courtesy Library of Congress.

Intellectual Freedom

Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate, and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of work, and the viewpoints of both the author and the receiver of information.

~ American Library Association from the Intellectual Freedom Manual ~

Natural Resource

Intelligence is the only unlimited natural resource.

~ Robert Theobald ~

Poetry Friday

The Sixth Night: Waking

That first green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the Tree,
God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

Photo by Muffet.

The Fluffernutter

This trusty sandwich is almost more dessert than meal, which is why kids like it, and it is so simple to slap together, it hardly requires directions...

~ Michael McLaughlin ~

What's Up, Chuck?

Photo courtesy ChuckJones.com.

Ambition

I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

~ Donald Hall from "Poetry and Ambition" ~

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all.

~ Johnny Depp ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Politeness pleases even a cat.

~ Czech proverb ~

Drawing by Alice Barber Stephens courtesy Library of Congress.

Art

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Mural photo by Carol M. Highsmith courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

~ Pablo Picasso ~





This is especially true of poetry, don't you think? --KK

Image courtesy the State Hermitage Museum

Standing in Libraries!

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested...

~ Louis Nizer ~

Photo by Ellen Forsyth.

A Sad Commentary...

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

~ William Wiley ~

Photo by Russell Lee courtesy Library of Congress.

Happy Birthday, Roald Dahl!

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.

~ Roald Dahl ~

Breast Cancer

12.2 percent of women born in the United States today will develop breast cancer at some time in their lives. This estimate is based on breast cancer statistics for the years 2005 through 2007.

~ National Cancer Institute ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the cat waits
hour upon hour
...September 11

~ Diane Mayr ~

Photo by bonnyweb.

Embrace It

In a post-9/11 world, diversity has become even more important.

~ Jane Harman ~

Photo courtesy Oregon DOT.

Poetry Friday

The mythic nature of this attack, this disaster--echoing everything from the tower of Babel to the fall of Icarus--is undeniable, and the acts of heroism and the brute loss of so many makes it difficult to find adequate words, even for our most accomplished poets.

~ Philip Metres from "Beyond Grief and Grievance" ~

Film

A film is--or should be--more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings.

~ Stanley Kubrick ~





Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Advice

We hate those who will not take our advice, and despise them who do.

~ David Sarnoff ~

Improvement

Improvement begins with I.

~ Arnold H. Glasow ~

Happy Labor Day!

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

~ Booker T. Washington ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The real measure of a day's heat is the length of a sleeping cat.

~ Charles J. Brady ~

Photo by Stephen and Claire Farnsworth.

Singing Words!

I'm not against e-books in principle – I'm tempted by the Kindle – but the more they become interactive and linked, the more they multitask and offer a hundred different functions, the less they will be able to preserve the aspects of the book that we actually need. An e-book reader that does a lot will not, in the end, be a book. The object needs to remain dull so the words – offering you the most electric sensation of all: insight into another person's internal life – can sing.

~ Johann Hari ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry--
but what is poetry anyway?
More than one rickety answer
has tumbled since that question first was raised.
But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that
like a redemptive handrail.

~ Wislawa Szymborska from "Some People Like Poetry" translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh ~

You Go, Melvil!

The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant.

~ Melvil Dewey ~

Image courtesy Instant Attitudes.

Or Take the Bus

I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.

~ Yogi Berra ~

Home

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

~ Robert Frost ~

Photo courtesy Robert Frost Farm.

Yup, They Do!

You know, the Beatles seem to find a new audience each time another generation comes along.

~ George Martin ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

For by stroaking of him I have found out electricity.

~ Christopher Smart from Jubilate Agno ~

Photo by Hybernaut.

Believe It!

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world.

~ Jack Layton ~

Poetry Friday

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

~ Jean Cocteau ~


Photo courtesy David Reverchon.