Accurately!

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

~ Joseph Pulitzer ~
Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

~ Linda Pastan from "Rereading Frost" ~






[Published in 1916 with a price of $1.25! --KK]

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bats Are Not Cliches!

Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed.

~ Wolcott Gibbs ~

Over the Rainbow

I've always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

~ Judy Garland ~
Original movie poster courtesy Wikipedia.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

~ Bela Lugosi ~





Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Maxfield Parris

There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish--whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one.

~ Maxfield Parrish ~
Painting courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Biting and clawing is a form of "love mauling." The more pain they deal out, the more they are trying to tell you that they love you.

~ The Oatmeal ~

Score One For the Geese

...great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them.

~ Meriwether Lewis ~
Illustration courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

...in poetry our motives are utterly similar to those who made cave paintings or petroglyphs...

~ Jim Harrison ~

It's Good to Have a Choice

I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library. I was around nine years old when I began choosing my own books in earnest.

~ Adriana Trigiani ~

Tightrope

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

~ Edith Wharton ~
Poster courtesy Library of Congress.

One Writer's Beginning

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

~ Joyce Carol Oates ~

Columbus Day

The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

© 2014, Michelle Porucznik.

Be Afraid

If there is one thing that my brother’s collection has taught me, it is that guns outlive their owners. These hundreds of millions of guns will most likely be part of our society for decades, and some even for centuries, regardless of what laws we pass now. That is something of which we should truly be afraid.

~ Charles Blow ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is sort of me looking for myself.

~ Chastity Hale ~

It's Cheese Month!

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

~ James Joyce ~

No One, and Yet Everyone, Has Ownership

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Jumper Cables?

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking.

~ Robert T. Bakker ~

It's World Teacher Day!

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

~ Carl Jung ~
"In Class, Instructions for the Young Children" by Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Veterinarians have long known the benefits of adding a little canned pumpkin to a pet's diet regularly.

~ Carol McConnell ~
"Madame Tarkhoff, Her Daughter, Pumpkin and Two Cats" by Nicholas Tarkhoff, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Just Look

The only business protected from government by our Constitution is the media--their right of free speech based in the First Amendment. Just look how the media are handling this public trust!

~ Ralph Nader ~

Poetry Friday

~ From The Book of Nonsense (1870), written and illustrated by Edward Lear ~

Bullying

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.

~ Octavia E. Butler ~

Book Burning

Banning Books

Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.

~ James Howe ~

Rise Up!

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

~ Confucius ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Why should pirates be any different from regular cat owners? Cats will walk the plank only if they WANT to.

Bliss by Harry Bliss, © 2015.

Do Right!

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

~ Mark Twain ~
Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Poetry Friday

The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.

~ Wendy Cope ~

I Love This!

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

~ Ella Fitzgerald ~

Books, Books, Books!

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.

~ Arnold Lobel ~

Illustration from St. Nicholas Magazine (1873).

On Your Birthday, Remember This

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

~ Madeleine L'Engle ~

Still True 100 Years Later

No longer ought we to be called upon to be particeps criminis with men to the extent of being compelled to pay taxes which are largely used for the support of the army and navy.

Moreover, a recourse to war as a means of righting wrongs is full of peril to the whole human race. Not only are bodies killed, but the ideals which alone make life worth living are for the time being lost to sight. In place of those finer attributes of our nature--compassion, gentleness, forgiveness—are substituted hatred, revenge and cruelty.

~ Mrs. Henry Willard, President of Women's Peace Conference, 1915 ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ Henri, le Chat Noir ~
Without the benefit of opposable thumbs he manages to post to Facebook a few times each week. Incroyable! --KK

Something to Think About

Massive inequality is incompatible with robust democracy. Today, in the United States, the top 1% is taking home more than 20% of total income and owns at least 38% of total wealth. The richest 400 people in America have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together.

~ Robert Reich ~
Visualize this: the 400 richest people could attend a banquet in the Grand Ballroom at The Plaza in New York City. At banquet capacity, one million people would require 2,000 ballrooms! 150 million people would need 300,000 ballrooms. If the 150m were to enjoy the same amount of elbow room as the richest 400, they would need 375,000 ballrooms. It's a mind-boggling picture! --KK

Poetry Friday

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

~ Robert Frost from "The Oven Bird" ~
Illustration by Louis Agassiz Fuertes from National Geographic Magazine (1917), courtesy Wikimedia.

Science!

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.

~ Sally Ride ~
Photo courtesy NASA.

Memory Soup

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.

~ P. G. Wodehouse ~








Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

The Movie Theater

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

~ Ridley Scott ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Animal Love

Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more.

~ Edwin Way Teale ~
Photo courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

My little mother,
                      little kitten,
be patient, I’m trying, it’s for you
I’m opening this can of worms,
for you I’m opening this can of food.

~ Gail Mazur from "I Wish I Want I Need" ~

Response to the Kentucky Hoopla

Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature--just as it’s irrelevant to the question of whether or not citizens are obligated to follow the law.

~ Lawrence M. Krauss ~

Poetry Friday

What is poetry which does not save nations or people?

~ Czeslaw Milosz ~



Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Color

Color is a power which directly influences the soul.

~ Wassily Kandinsky ~
"Colorful Life" (1907) courtesy The Athenaeum.

Gluttony

My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing--while denying--that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.

~ David Mitchell ~

Fairies

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

~ Richard Dawkins ~





Fairy door courtesy Wildflower Gardens.

Happy Labor Day!

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

~ Theodore Roosevelt ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

Blessed Are...

I'm sorry I don't know the source of this. It was shared on Patricia Polacco's Facebook page, and it had been sent to her by a friend.

Poetry Friday

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

~ Anne Sexton ~

Make Up Your Mind!

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~
Photo courtesy Tennessee State Library and Archives.

All Parts Need to be Feed

Rice feeds the body, books feed the mind, beauty feeds the soul.

~ Imelda Marcos ~
The beautifully designed book above seems to have achieved all three! --KK

Since When Is "Buck" Not a Word?

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 ~

Clear the Clutter!

When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and "good, orderly direction" to enter.

~ Julia Cameron ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I'm running out of kat kwotes, but I'll never run out of cat videos!

Reality

Those who willingly reject reality should never have the chance to shape it.

~ Chad R. MacDonald ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

~ Charles Simic ~






Photo from NH Poetry Festival schedule.

Ha, Ha!

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.

~ Doug Larson ~






Photo courtesy Internet Archive.

And, No Fear of Flying!

Visit a National Park Today!

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

~ Aldo Leopold ~
Photo Rocky Mountain National Park courtesy Library of Congress.

Music!

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.


~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The poem, "Cat!" by Eleanor Farjeon, can be found here.

Tell Your Story!

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

~ Anne Lamott ~







"At the Writing Desk" by Frederick Childe Hassam, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Poetry Friday

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.

~ Samuel Beckett ~
"Creation of the World" by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Advice For Writers

Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

~ William Faulkner ~
Photo by Dr. John B. Padgett.