Theater: the Original Interactive Media

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

~ Orson Welles ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

"Please--ma'am--the cat has put her kittens--in--your--bonnet!"

Such a breach of discipline had never been known before in our prim household, where there was a place for everything, and everything had a place.

My mother pushed her spectacles on to her forehead, and, looking severely at Ann, said: "Which one, Ann? My summer bonnet, or--my winter bonnet?"

"The one with the fur lining, ma'am."

"And a most comfortable bonnet to live in, I'm sure!" replied my mother sarcastically, as much as to say that she wished all cats had such a choice under the circumstances. "Another cat would have chosen the one with the lace and the violets, out of sheer perverseness. But there--I knew I could depend on a cat which had been trained in my house."

~ Charles Morley from "Peter: A Cat O' One Tail" ~

Photo by CRASH:candy.

Read!

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

~ Margaret Fuller ~


Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

...I was to learn that Mama had an articulate theory about reading poetry aloud to children, a theory not surprising for she was a pianist. It did not matter, she was convinced, if we could not understand all the words. We could enjoy the beautiful sound of them.

~ Helen Ferris ~

Author As Princess

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

~ C. S. Forester ~

(Note: the poor man must have been bruised something awful--he wrote more than 50 books! --KK)

On Being a Princess

Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.

~ Princess Diana ~

This From a Mother of Nine

I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all.

~ Queen Victoria ~

Preservation Week

More than 4.8 Billion Artifacts are held in public trust by more than 30,000 archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, scientific research collections, and archaeological repositories in the United States. 1.3 billion of these items are at risk of being lost.

~ American Library Association Preservation Week Fact Sheet ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I'm surrounded by morons.

~ Henri ~

Nature

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright ~

Carol M. Highsmith photo of Wright's Church of the Holy Cross courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

The important thing about writing is the rewriting. In order to make a poem look unworked, you have to work a lot.

~ Kay Ryan ~

He's Right!

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

~ Richard Avedon ~

An Excellent Track Record!

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

~ Harriet Tubman ~





Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Tofu

Tofu can be used as a high-protein meat substitute, as well as a denture adhesive or tile grout.

~ Dave Barry ~

Photo by jazzijava.

It's What's Inside...

    O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!

~ William Shakespeare from Measure for Measure ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Even Jenny, the ship's cat as part of the crew, had immediately found herself a comfortable corner; she varied her usual Christmas routine on previous ships by presenting Titanic with a litter of kittens in April.

~ Violet C. Jessop ~

True Of So Many Things!

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

~ Edgar Degas ~

"Waiting" courtesy J. Paul Getty Museum.

Poetry Friday

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

~ Robert Frost ~

So Is "Pizza"

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Photo of Moroccan chicken with prunes by Mongiesama.

Pruning--Not Just For Trees

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

~ Henri Matisse ~

So Sad

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

Princely Advice!

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer ~

Photo by -Jeffrey-.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Easter greetings to all cats and their people! --KK

Postcard courtesy riptheskill.

Interesting Advice

Poetry Friday

The basic line in any good verse is cadenced...building it around the natural breath structures of speech.

~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

And Yet the U.S. Refuses to Get Behind It!

Green technologies--going green--is bigger than the Internet. It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

~ John Doerr ~





Photo by Steve Abraham.

Eggsactly!

Q: Why did the chicken lay her egg on a axe?
A: She wanted to hachet.

~ Anonymous ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Great Expectations

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Literature About Chickens?

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

~ E. B. White ~


Photo courtesy Skokie Public Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats

When I grow up, I plan to keep
eleven cats, and let them sleep
on any bedspread that they wish,
and feed them people's tuna fish.

~ Maxine Kumin ~

Photo by Tom Clifton.

Memory

A country without a memory is a country of madmen.

~ George Santayana ~

Graphic courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

I think there’s been a great denial of the kinds of poets and poetries that could speak to a lot more people. Poetry has been kind of hoarded inside the schools, inside the universities. The activity of writing about poems and poetry--the activity of making it available and accessible--became the property of scholars and academics and became dependent on a certain kind of academic training, education, class background.

~ Adrienne Rich ~

If Rick Santorum Has His Way...

Women’s studies and feminism have always been attacked. I think it was in 1970 that I remember seeing an article in Harper’s called "Requiem for the Women’s Movement," when the women’s movement was just beginning to show its face. Its death is being constantly announced. But it’s an unquenchable and unkillable movement that has come and gone or come and submerged throughout the world in many different places in many different times. At this point, I think we live in an era of such global communications that that cannot happen again.

~ Adrienne Rich ~

Bullying

You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.

~ Lady Gaga ~

Good Advice for Writers

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

~ Anita Diamant ~

Say What?

If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.

~ Michael Lewis ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ J. G. Francis from A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals ~

Health Disaster in the Making

We have deferred to food companies the responsibility for ensuring that a good nutritional balance emerges. Voluntary guidelines and piecemeal nutrition initiatives have failed to create a system with the right signals, and the odds remain stacked against the achievement of a healthy, balanced diet.

~ Olivier de Schutter ~

Poetry Friday

It doesn't seem right to weigh poems like cabbage or fish, but that is precisely what the final grueling work of an anthologist becomes. And worse: Each poetrymonger applies his own rate, so the crucial question of "Who matters?" is skewed by fees that range from modest to outrageous and don't necessarily correlate to literary significance and artistic influence.

~ Rita Dove from "Introduction" to The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry ~

Probably the Reason Most Little Girls Want to Take Ballet

I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu.

~ Elle Macpherson ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library

Priceless Gift

Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it.

~ Nikola Tesla ~

A Drawing

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

~ Paul Klee ~

Klee drawing courtesy Museum of Fine Arts.

I Agree Whole-Heartedly

I think that being perceptive and having interests is nothing but an asset.

~ Ashley Judd ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

There is a crock of gold in the tomb of every chieftain, but they are all guarded by cats and fairies.

~ Irish proverb ~

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.

~ Fiona Shaw ~

Poetry Friday

No moment is too brief, no object or happening too insignificant, for a poet to notice it.

~ Charles Sullivan ~

Graphic courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Who Knew?

34.7 million

Number of U.S. residents who claimed Irish ancestry in 2010. This number was more than seven times the population of Ireland itself (4.58 million).

~ U. S. Census Bureau ~

Just Make Sure You Get On the Right Road

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination, but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.

~ Barbara Kingsolver ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

So True!

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

~ Tennessee Williams ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Anatomy (A Two-fer)

Anatomy is destiny.

~ Sigmund Freud ~

So, if anatomy is destiny then testosterone is doom.

~ Al Goldstein ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Fine words don't feed cats.

~ Italian proverb ~

It's Time We Started Linking

I can promise you that women working together--linked, informed and educated--can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.

~ Isabel Allende ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of the written word he has no claim to be considered a poet.

~ Amy Lowell ~

Especially True for Americans

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

~ M. C. Escher ~

Science

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

~ Adam Smith ~






Engraving courtesy Library of Congress.

It All Depends on the View

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.

~ Mao Zedong ~

Maybe Not Blind Faith...

Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.

~ Michelangelo ~


Photo by profzucker.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The pup was let out, and he ran all about
So happy was he to be free.
Then Punky said: "Meow!" the dog said: "Bow-wow!"
And Punky said: "Look out for me!"

~ from Punky Dunk and the Spotted Pup by Anonymous ~

Existence

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.

~ Alice Walker ~

Poetry Friday

You decide, says the poet.
You do some of this work,
but think carefully.

~ Lawrence Raab from "The Questions Poems Ask" ~

Creativity

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

~ James Russell Lowell ~

R.I.P. Jan Berenstain

"...we have each other," said Mama, bringing the cubs close. "That's another blessing."

~ Stan and Jan Berenstain ~

Yes, Pretty!

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir ~

"Pinning the Hat," color lithograph, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Echoes

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

~ Richard Wright ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat seldom interferes with other people's rights. His intelligence keeps him from doing many of the fool things that complicate life.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~






Photo by Carl Van Vechten courtesy Library of Congress.

Stupidity

I learned something from this healthcare debate--stupidity is a pre-existing condition.

~ Bill Maher ~

Poetry Friday

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.

~ Zora Neale Hurston ~

It's All Good!

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

~ John Ruskin ~

Photo published in The Boy With the U.S. Weather Men (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1917).

Is It Art?

And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves "It's pretty, but is it Art?"

~ Rudyard Kipling ~


Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Story of Ona Judge in a Nutshell

She took a passage in a vessel to Portsmouth, N.H. and there married a man by the name of Staines, and had three children, who, with her husband, are all dead. After she was married, and had one child, while her husband was gone to sea, Gen. Washington sent on a man by the name of Bassett [Burwell Bassett, Jr., Washington's nephew], to prevail on her to go back. He saw her, and used all the persuasion he could, but she utterly refused to go with him.

~ Rev. Benjamin Chase. Letter to the editor,
The Liberator, January 1, 1847. ~

Good Advice, George!

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

~ George Washington ~


Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

She shall sit by my side,
And I'll give her some food;
And she'll love me because
I am gentle and good.

Jane Taylor from "I Like Little Pussy"

The American Idea

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

Poetry Friday

In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Flowers

Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.

~ Theodore Roethke ~






Photo © Diane Mayr.