Someone's Having a Birthday Today!

Trivia

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.

~ Charles Lindbergh ~
Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, courtesy Library of Congress.

Robots

Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study--you can get a degree in robotics--and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.

~ Daniel H. Wilson ~



Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

She moves in little gusts and breezes
sharp and sudden as a sneeze is.

~ Ian Serraillier from "Miss Tibbles" ~
Photo by ace_alejandra.

Ah, Spring Flowers

Flowers are the expression of the love life of plants.

~ Dain L. Tasker ~

Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Poetry Friday

We read a poem, we listen to a song, and our hearts rise out of our eyes as tears.

That is poetry.

~ Paul L. Thomas ~

Image courtesy openclipart.

Favorite Book

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

~ Beverly Cleary ~
Photo by Caleb Roenigk.

The Importance of Not Knowing

A writer is someone who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do...The not-knowing is crucial to art, it is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

~ Donald Barthelme ~




Image courtesy openclipart.

Happy Earth Day!

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Stress

Stress is our twenty-first century tobacco. As we understand more about stress biology and the impact it has on our lives, we are going to have to wage a campaign to reduce the amount of stress in our lives.

~ Stephen Bezruchka ~
Image courtesy openclipart.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Happy Easter!

Yup!

Writing is thinking on paper.

~ William Zinsser ~

Poetry Friday

Spider

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 ~

Separating Eggs

This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn't say how far to separate them.

~ Gracie Allen ~
Image courtesy openclipart.

Wildlife

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

~ Gerald Durrell ~
[Note: waaaaaay back when I was in high school, my favorite books were written by Gerald Durrell. Durrell spent his life amongst the wild creatures of the earth, and, some of them just so happened to be members of his family! I highly recommend My Family and Other Animals or any of his other books that you can find.]

Photo by Byron Patchett.

A.K.A. "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is"

The people that are fans of animation are really the people that are keeping the art form of animation alive. If you like cartoons, support the cartoons.

~ Kari Wahlgren ~



Photo courtesy KariWahlgren.net.

Surviving

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

~ Robertson Davies ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It is a great many years since she died; but I can see her before me to-day as plainly as if it were only yesterday that I had really seen her alive.

~ Helen Hunt Jackson from Letters from a Cat ~

All the Writers are Nodding "Yes"

Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print.

~ Thomas Moore ~

Poetry Friday

If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive.

~ Richard Eberhart ~
Photo courtesy Dartmouth.

Music

Music is only love looking for words.

~ Lawrence Durrell ~

Art?

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

~ Winston Churchill ~

Colors

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.

~ Hans Hofmann ~




"Pompeii" © the Estate of Hans Hofmann (1959), courtesy the Tate.

On the Proper Use of the Secret Weapon

Be generous with the duct tape, you know; spare the duct tape, spoil the job.

~ Red Green ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Oh, you poor whisker-wiper, you silly piebald, you starveling mouse-hunter! what has come into your head?

~ from "The Fox and the Cat," in Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories ~
Considering the look on Smudgie's face, I would say murder has come into her head! Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Opening Day!

You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.

~ Joe DiMaggio ~
Yesterday was opening day in Boston. I hope the Red Sox see something wonderful happen this season!

Poetry Friday

Poetry, by its nature, is on a human scale: the medium is one person’s voice. That sense of respect for the individual, built into the nature of the art, has the potential to temper, as well as inspire, leadership.

~ Robert Pinsky ~

Water Before Love

Joshua: Here! Water lily!

Lilia: My name is Lilia.

Joshua: To me you are a lily, and I want water.

Lilia: Joshua. Joshua, I thought you'd never come down.

Joshua: Water before love, my girl.

Lilia: Does it take the whole Nile to quench your thirst?

Joshua: No, just your lips.

~ from Cecile B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) ~

Happy National Poetry Month!

Poetry is a pleasure. It is compact and fast. It can pack emotion into the space of one breath.

~ Robert Pinsky ~
I took this photo from too far away at a performance of "Poemjazz" in Boston, March 2013. Pinsky in in the middle.

Judging a Book

Certainly the truth is laid bare once we start reading (just as the truth about a company's quality is laid bare soon after we hire them), but if anyone doubts how their expectations for a book they're about to read are affected by its presentation, I'd challenge them to examine their initial reaction to a book not with an unattractive cover but with an amateurish one.

~ Alex Lickerman ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.

~ Indian proverb ~
Photo by Ant Smith.

Destiny

Give destiny a destination.

~ Tomi Ungerer ~
Photo © tomiungerer.com.

Poetry Friday

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

~ Edmond de Goncourt ~
This begs to be illustrated with a Marc Chagall painting, doesn't it?

Have an Adventure

Pick up your adventures with Stanley where ours ended. Put him in your wallet.

~ Brian Owens ~

Dogs

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

How Is That Fair?

One of the mistakes I made was thinking chickens and penguins could sing, just like all the other animals in the "Muppets." But it turns out those animals are not allowed to sing words.

~ Bret McKenzie ~
Photo courtesy Spinoff Online.

On a Merry-Go-Round

When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.

~ Neil Diamond ~
Photo by Russell Lee, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat owes man nothing. Some experts estimate that there is one homeless cat managing on its own for every one with a home, which makes a total cat population in the U.S. of more than fifty million. That means the largest nonhuman animal population in the nation, short of rodents, whose number is beyond estimate. Eliminate cats from our ecology and, in a matter of weeks, we would be overrun by rodents.

~ Paul Corey ~
[Note: the cats in the image above are from 1642!}

Stupidity

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

~ Friedrich Schiller ~

Poetry Friday

Since I was a boy I have always longed to hear poems spoken to a harp, as I imagined Homer to have spoken his, for it is not natural to enjoy an art only when one is by oneself. Whenever one finds a fine verse one wants to read it to somebody, and it would be much less trouble and much pleasanter if we could all listen, friend by friend, lover by beloved.

~ W. B. Yeats ~

Color

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

~ Henri Matisse ~
"Dishes and Fruit" (circa 1901), courtesy The Athenaeum.

Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

Doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against the west coast of Africa, as if they had once been joined? This is an idea I'll have to pursue.

~ Alfred Wegener ~

Show Don't Tell

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

~ Kate DiCamillo ~

St. Patrick

There was no formal canonization process in the Church during its first millennium. In the early years of the Church the title Saint was bestowed first upon martyrs, and then upon individuals recognized by tradition as being exceptionally holy during their lifetimes.

Consequently these Irish saints, including St. Patrick, were never actually formally canonized...

~ Ken Concannon ~

What Should I Be?

What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay from "The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge" ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The two grey Kits,
And the grey Kits’ mother,
All went over
The bridge together.
The bridge broke down.
They all fell in,
May the rats go with you,
Says Tom Bolin.

~ from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies [1833] ~

March is Women's History Month

Poetry Friday

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.

I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

~ G. H. Hardy ~
Happy Pi Day!

Tomorrow is Pi Day!

Available for purchase here.

Downton Abbey Subtlety

I don’t dislike him, I just don’t like him. Which is quite different.

~ Dowager Countess Violet a.k.a. Granny ~

Books

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón from The Shadow of the Wind ~

When Have Triangles Made You Smile?

I don't know why my brain has kept all the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song and has deleted everything about triangles.

~ Jeff Foxworthy ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The politest musician that ever was seen
Was Montague Meyerbeer Mendelssohn Green
So extremely polite he would take off his hat
Whenever he happened to meet with a cat.

~ Oliver Herford from "The Music of the Future"~

Beauty

Poetry Friday

In composing poetry you need no teacher.

~ Japanese proverb ~
"Eight great Kyōka poets" woodprint by Gogaku Yajima, courtesy Library of Congress.

Yes, Do!

You're a human being, you live once and life is wonderful, so eat the damn red velvet cupcake.

~ Emma Stone ~
Photo by thehoneybunny.

Two Tools in One

The woodpecker's strong, pointed beak acts as both a chisel and a crowbar to remove bark and find hiding insects.

~ Defenders of Wildlife from "Basic Facts About Woodpeckers" ~
Photo by acodring.

Anne Frank

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

~ Anne Frank ~



Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Bad Genes

Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.

~ Margaret Wertheim ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat is apt to sing upon a major scale:
This concert is for everybody, this
Is wholesale.
For a baton, he wields a tail.

~ Rosalie Moore from "Catalog" ~

American Lunacy

The past two weeks have shown us the lunatic fringe is still out there.

I think we got off that track when we allowed our government to become a secular government, when we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that He wrote the constitution that’s based on biblical principles.

~ Tom DeLay ~
[I looked and looked at the signatories and I didn't see God's name anywhere! --KK]

Should a devout baker be required to create a cake for a homosexual wedding that has a giant phallic symbol on it or should a baker be required to create pastries for a homosexual wedding in the shape of genitallia? Or should a photographer be required to photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior? Would they force a Jewish photographer to work a Klan or Nazi event? How about forcing a Muslim caterer to work a pork barbeque dinner?

~ Judson Phillips ~
[What's this sudden interest in the rights of Jews and Muslims? --KK]

Poetry Friday

...my definition of magic in the human personality, in fiction and in poetry, is the ultimate level of attentiveness.

~ Jim Harrison ~

The Great War

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.

~ Bertrand Russell ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.