Unbelievable

There are surveys that say people will vote for almost anyone over an atheist. There is a 30 or 40 percent part of the population that will not vote for someone who doesn’t believe in God, so there’s definitely a religious test for the highest office.

~ Michael I. Meyerson ~

Poetry Friday

Everyone knows what 911 means. Everyone should know what 811 means--that’s the poetry section of the library. Visit as often as you can.

~ J. Patrick Lewis ~

R.I.P. Nora Ephron

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

~ Nora Ephron ~

I Never Associated Dickens With Butterflies!

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Ansel Adams

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

~ Ansel Adams ~

Ansel Adams photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Only If You Live Alone, Bill

I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted--stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container.

~ Bill Bryson ~



Photo by TomD.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

C was Papa's gray Cat,
  Who caught a squeaky Mouse;
She pulled him by his twirly tail
  All about the house.

~ Edward Lear ~

Title IX Signed into Law 40 Years Ago Today

While the impact of this amendment would be far-reaching, it is not a panacea. It is, however, an important first step in the effort to provide for the women of America something that is rightfully theirs—an equal chance to attend the schools of their choice, to develop the skills they want, and to apply those skills with the knowledge that they will have a fair chance to secure the jobs of their choice with equal pay for equal work.

~ Birch Bayh ~

Poetry Friday

Isn’t that the beauty of writing? Everyone else but us knows what we mean.

~ Pamela Ross ~

Title IX

When it comes down to it, the majority of the characteristics I like about myself--my competitive spirit, perseverance, decision-making and communication skills, ability to handle pressure, to solve problems, to overcome adversity and to work with others--were developed through a lifetime of athletic competition. I am who I am because Title IX gave me the opportunity to play.

~ Beverly Oden ~

Summer--It Does Exist!

People take pictures of the Summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to prove that it really existed.

~ Ray Davies ~




Photo by Diane Mayr.

Music

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

~ Paul Simon ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Instant Vacation

Laughter is an instant vacation.

~ Milton Berle ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I never thought I should come to like cats. But I have. Perhaps it is because, as my Aunt Amanda used to say, we change every seven years, sort of start over again, as it were; and find we have new thoughts, different ideas, unexpected tastes, strange attractions, and shifting doubts.

~ Ida R. Fargo from "Somebody's Cat" in American Cookery, November 1921 ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Pray Justice Is the Winner

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

~ John Stuart Mill ~

Poetry Friday

How can a word taste, smell, feel? It just can. It just does. At least for me. And that’s where it all begins: in that sensory place where pleasure meets up with the desire to make something out of nothing: to make love.

~ Peter Markus ~

Flag Day!

Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.

~ Daniel Webster ~

Photo by bbaltimore.

Don't Forget a Cat...

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero ~







Photo courtesy State Library of Victoria Collections.

The Head in the Sand Response

There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.

~ Bill McKibben from The End of Nature ~

Wild Expressions!

Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, or I shall burst.

~ George Farquhar ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

June is designated as National Adopt a Shelter Cat month. June is the height of "kitten season" and animal shelters everywhere are receiving litters of abandoned kittens; single sick or injured kittens as well as adult cats.

Those adult cats arrive very pregnant or with their litter of kittens. They arrive by the thousands.

For those folks living in the country, you already know this and you know how hard it is to manage so many stray cats and their offspring.

Spaying and neutering your cat is one of the most important things a pet owner can do.

~ Tami Crawford ~

Photo by TNT Photo.

The Difference Is Huge

No, Mitt, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they love, they cry, they dance, they live and they die. Learn the difference.

~ Elizabeth Warren ~

Poetry Friday

I'm terrified of switching the computer on because there are so many poems.

~ Roger McGough ~

Photo by Chris Boland.

Reading

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

The Dangers of Being an Orchestra Leader

"Pinocchio, come up here to me," cried Harlequin, "and throw yourself into the arms of your wooden brothers!"

At this affectionate invitation Pinocchio made a leap from the end of the pit into the reserved seats; another leap landed him on the head of the leader of the orchestra, and he then sprang upon the stage.

The embraces, the friendly pinches, and the demonstrations of warm brotherly affection that Pinocchio received from the excited crowd of actors and actresses of the puppet dramatic company are beyond description.

~ C. Collodi ~

Child Labor

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

~ Grace Abbott ~

Photo taken in Manchester, NH, 1909, by Lewis Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

Venus

Venus favors the bold.

~ Ovid ~

Photo by Carol M. Highsmith courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

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

[Note: click on the illustration to make it easier to read.]

Don't Even Think It!

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower ~


Photo from National Archive courtesy U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Poetry Friday

There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.

~ Helen Dunmore ~

KK note: as readers, too!

Berry

Berry comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to shine," perhaps for the bright colors of many small fruits.

~ Harold McGee from On Food and Cooking:
The Science and Lore of the Kitchen ~

Image by robynejay.

R.I.P. Leo Dillon

When we first met, we thought that there would be vast differences between us since we were different races and from different cultures. It wasn’t long before we began to understand that there really is no difference between people. There might be ideas that you’ve grown up with and believe are true. But you realize early on that those are really surface things; that underneath it all, we’re the same.

~ Leo Dillon ~

It's the Smart Thing To Do!

It is no disgrace to move out of the way of the elephant.


~ Vietnamese proverb ~



Photo by easegill.

Memorial Day

summer grasses
all that remains
     of soldiers' dreams

~ Basho ~

Photo courtesy the U.S. Army.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

from his hole
the snake pokes his head...
the cat slaps it


~ Issa translated by David G. Lanoue ~

Fiction

It think maybe that's why people write fiction, and why people read it, is because you don't know who you are unless you can imagine being otherwise.

~ Marilynne Robinson ~

Poetry Friday

Haiku shows us what we knew all the time, but didn't know that we knew.

~ R.H. Blyth ~










Image courtesy Library of Congress.

People ≠ Gods

I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

~ Imogen Cunningham ~





Photo © Imogen Cunningham Trust, courtesy National Galleries of Scotland.

The Internet

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

~ Andrew Brown ~

Photo by Steve Rhode.

Dreamy Shoes

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.

~ Ryunosuke Satoro ~

Photo courtesy the Virtual Shoe Museum.

Number 3 Was Unexpected!

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts--the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

~ John Ruskin ~





Mary Cassatt, "The Boating Party," courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

She rubs my chin
and purrs away,
as if I am
a game to play!

~ Aileen Fisher from "My Cat and I" ~


Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Feminist Makeover

Feminism represents all women, young and old, pretty and plain, boisterous and shy, married and single, straight and gay. That's the whole point. Instead of lumping all of us in with some generalized definition of womanhood, feminism seeks to allow each individual the freedom to define herself.

~ Digby ~

Poetry Friday

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.

~ May Sarton ~

Win-Win

People worldwide are rediscovering the benefits of buying local food. It is fresher than anything in the supermarket and that means it is tastier and more nutritious. It is also good for your local economy--buying directly from family farmers helps them stay in business.

~ LocalHarvest.org website ~




Image courtesy NH Dept. of Agriculture.

So Sad

I'm in awe of people out there who deal with Alzheimer's, because they have to deal with death 10 times over, year after year.

~ Marcia Wallace ~

Something We Never Seem to Understand

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

~ François Fénelon ~

The Purpose of Junk Mail

Cartoon courtesy Dilbert.com.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

1. Find sunbeam.
2. Lie down.
3. Sunbeam moves just as you fall asleep.
4. Wake up cold.
5. Repeat until you are a nihilist.

~ Henri, le Chat Noir ~





Courtesy Henri, le Chat Noir

Good Job!

Once you start to see praise for what it is--and what it does--these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), "Good praising!"

~ Alfie Kohn ~

Poetry Friday

Spider, you and I are kin;
Our deepest selves we both disburse.
Your entrails into silk you spin,
      And I mine into verse.

~ Paul Scott Mowrer ~

Photo by cybershotking.

Science or Politics or Both?

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

~ Albert Einstein ~

The Original Wild Thing

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat. That's true, too.

~ Maurice Sendak ~

Children's Book Week

A great nation is a reading nation.

~ Frederic Melcher ~






Poster courtesy Children's Book Week.

Strawberry Bank

"Oh, Mother, see what we have found! The bank was covered with berries, even after we had picked all these!"

"Why, boys, it is just like the home-land! Surely Captain John Smith had described this Place well for Prince Charles to name it New England. Already I feel better, for this land is not so strange since home things grow here."

The boys found that even the sassafras could not have given her more pleasure. They went to bed that night before dark, contented with their search and anxious to return to the strawberry field.

For twenty years the land about the Great House was called Strawberry Bank. Though that was almost three hundred years ago and the name was afterward changed to Portsmouth, there are now many people in New England, and some outside, who know just what spot is meant when they hear of Strawberry Bank.


~ Edith Gilman Brewster from Some Three Hundred Years Ago, The W. B. Ranney Company, Printers, Concord, New Hampshire, © 1922 ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point--and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

~ Edgar Allan Poe from "The Black Cat" ~

Photo by spacecookypk.

Free the People!

We'll free the people with music.

~ Bob Marley ~

Poetry Friday

They are milestones to see where you are now, to perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive.

~ Richard Eberhart ~





Photo by sleepymyf.

Pretty Creepy If You Take It Literally...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

~ Gilbert Highet ~

Good Advice!

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.

~ Muriel Spark ~

Monuments

Monuments and archaeological pieces serve as testimonies of man's greatness and establish a dialogue between civilizations showing the extent to which human beings are linked.

~ Vincente Fox ~

Photo by Darkest Before Dawn.

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 ~