Poetry Friday

My "must-have" was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me. The children of old New England were always surrounded, it is true, with stubborn matter of fact,-—the hand to hand struggle for existence. But that was no hindrance. Poetry must have prose to root itself in; the homelier its earth-spot, the lovelier, by contrast, its heaven-breathing flowers.

~ Lucy Larcom ~

Grover's Taxi

"I want to go to the library."

~ Mr. Johnson, a.k.a. Fat Blue, voice by Jerry Nelson ~

Give Up Smoking?

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

~ Mark Twain ~





Drawing by Everett Shinn courtesy Library of Congress.

Doodle!

Even if you can't draw, do a little doodle or rip an illustration from a magazine--these visuals will help bring your idea to life.

~ John Emmerling ~

Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Room Deodorizer?

Onions and bacon cooking up just makes your kitchen smell so good. In fact, one day I'm going to come up with a room deodorizer that smells like bacon and onions. It's a fabulous smell.

~ Paula Deen ~

Photo by jypsygen.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I want to be a lion. Everybody wants to pass as cats.

~ Counting Crows "Mr. Jones" ~

Here Lies...

Every generation rewrites the book’s epitaph; all that changes is the whodunit.

~ Leah Price ~





Photo by Cat Sidh.

Poetry Friday

The grass resolves to grow again,
receiving the rain to that end,
but my disordered soul thirsts
after something it cannot name.

~ Jane Kenyon from "August Rain, After Haying" ~

Photo by MarkyBon.

Define "Cute"

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.

~ Abbie Hoffman ~

Beware Those With Weak Heads!

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

~ Jane Austen ~

The Case for Knowledge

When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living--to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically--they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship.

~ Paul K. Chappell ~

Art

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

~ Edgar Degas ~







Degas' "Dans un Café" courtesy Musée d'Orsay.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

And Perdita makes me smile every day. She runs to greet me when I come home, and she flops at my feet in the morning to be petted. She loves boxes and balled-up pages of the Nation. She is afraid of vacuum cleaners and tornado sirens. She lies on her back in squares of sunshine with her paws in the air and looks perfectly ridiculous and content.

~ Michael Robbins ~

Take What You Need

~ Unknown artist, photo by Jana Kobold,
posted on StreetArt in Germany, 8/11/12 ~

Poetry Friday

All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse.

~ John Drinkwater ~

Not Just a Boxer!

It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.

~ Mike Tyson ~





Photo by octal.

Summer's Winding Down

'Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.

~ Thomas More ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

An Important Distinction

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~

If You Create, You Are a God!

I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.

~ Rita Dove ~


Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

                               a spitting image
                               of her mother...
                               kitten

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~


Photo by indy catholic.

Bring On the Merry!

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

~ J. R. R. Tolkien ~

Illustration by Randolph Caldecott.

Poetry Friday

Poem, do not raise your voice.
Be a whisper that says "There!"

~ Wendell Berry ~





Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

NH's Own--Franklin Pierce

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.

~ Franklin Pierce ~






Currier & Ives lithograph courtesy Library of Congress.

Better Yet, Stop and Eat!

If you ever have to support a flagging conversation, introduce the topic of eating.

~ Leigh Hunt ~

Utopia

Human beings will be happier--not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~

Perhaps It's Lost in Cyberspace?

Uncle Martin: Tim, did you see this article? Your government is about to spend two billion dollars on a space program that can't possibly work.

Tim: Uncle Martin, here I've got my friendly bank statement. Right here. And over here I've got my enemy checkbook. And between the two, a penny is lost. And the bank wants me to find it! Yes, Abe Lincoln, lost in a miasma of mathematics and figures. And you speak to me about two billion dollars? Please Uncle Martin, can we keep it quiet?

Uncle Martin: [Going back to newspaper] Hmp.

~ From My Favorite Martian ~ ~





My Favorite Martian photo courtesy tv.com.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

In 1963 the French government had numerous cats undergoing intensive training for possible space flight, with fairly arduous tasks involving a compression chamber and a centrifuge. But they don't seem to have suffered too much; ten of the would-be astronauts were 'decommissioned' for eating too much!

~ Patrick Roberts at Purr-n-Fur ~

Honesty In Politics

Is there a limit to how dishonest you can be, in politics? Or is this what is now known as running the nation like a business, where little irritations like honesty or legitimacy can go straight to hell, if there's profit in sending them there?

~ Hunter for the Daily Kos ~

Poetry Friday

Concrete poetry

Verse that emphasizes nonlinguistic elements in its meaning, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic.

~ from Poetry Foundation's "Glossary Terms" ~

Time

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

Photo by Injas World.

Cake for All!

All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.

~ George Harrison ~

Tim Green aka atoach.

So True...

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Photo of Hemingway taken in 1904, courtesy JFK Presidential Library and Museum.

A Shame She Had to Miss the 2012 Issues

I do a lot of running and hiking, and I also collect stamps--space stamps and Olympics stamps.

~ Sally Ride ~



See other Olympics postage stamps at Philatelynews.com. --KK

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty,
The cat ran up the plum tree,
Give her a plum, and down she’ll come,
Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty.

~ Mother Goose ~

Probably True...

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

~ Jerry Seinfeld ~

Poetry Friday

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

I Love This Quote!

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

~ Fred Rogers ~

Mysteries

It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.

~ Charles de Lint ~

R.I.P. Else Holmelund Minarik

~ Else Holmelund Minarik from Little Bear ~

In Art

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.

~ Paul Klee ~

"Tropical Blossom" (1920) courtesy Zentrum Paul Klee.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

"Don't worry about me. I will die soon enough and go to be with your father and with your poor brothers."

"You're not dying," Pasquale said.

"I am dead already inside," she said. "You should push me out into the sea and drown me like that old sick cat of yours."

Pasquale straightened. "You said my cat ran away. While I was at university."

She shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. "It is a saying."

"No. It's not a saying. There is no saying such as that. Did you and Papa drown my cat while I was in Florence?"

"I'm sick, Pasqo! Why do you torment me?"

~ Jess Walter from Beautiful Ruins: A Novel ~

Guess What's Winning In 2012

We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth in the hands of a comparative few, but we cannot have both.

~ Louis Brandeis ~

Photo by AMagill.

Poetry Friday

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.

~ Muriel Rukeyser ~

Feeling Expanded

The awareness that what we are feeling is not necessarily what another is feeling, coupled with our drive to create social bonds with others, gave rise to language and art, to poetry, drawing, dance, sculpture...and music.

~ Daniel J. Levitin ~

Music Should Reflect the Soul

What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

~ Mickey Hart ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Are You An Internet Addict?

The brains of Internet addicts, it turns out, look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts.

~ Tony Dokoupil ~

Photo by Pierre-Olivier.

Amelia Earhart

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

~ Amelia Earhart ~





Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

THE CAT IN THE WOOD

The cat in the wood cried farewell cried farewell
Farther and farther away and the leaves
Covered her over with sound of the leaves
And sound of the wood O my love O my love
Farther and farther away and the sound
Of leaves overhead when I call to you
Leaves on the ground.

~ Archibald MacLeish ~

Photo by heathergm.

Even More Important in 2012

People who wish to govern themselves must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.

~ James Madison ~

Photo by Carol M. Highsmith courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

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

~ Charles Simic ~

Illustration by R. Caldecott from The Babes in the Wood.

Cinderella's Opposite

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~







Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

How We Live

And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.

~ Leo Tolstoy ~

Photo courtesy prokudin-gorsky.org.

Where Does the Other 90% Go?

People don't live nowadays: they get about ten percent out of life.

~ Isadora Duncan ~







Photo by Arnold Genthe courtesy Library of Congress.

The Hobbit (Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

~ J. R. R. Tolkien from The Hobbit ~

Photo by Heather F.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Stately, kindly, lordly friend,
        Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read.

~ Algernon Charles Swinburne
from "To a Cat" ~

Long Live Cooks!

~ From The Suffrage Cook Book ~

Note: click on the image for a larger view.

Poetry Friday

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

~ W. S. Merwin ~

So true! --KK

Photo by Djenan.

Not Any More!

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.

~ Edward P. Morgan ~

Happy Independence Day!

It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever.

~ Daniel Webster ~



Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Who Knew?

Natasha is a Balkan spy.

~ June Foray ~

Support Your Local Public Library!

Just imagine, every single citizen, everybody of every age in this country can get essentially a free education by going to the public library.

~ David McCullough ~

Photo by Carol M. Highsmith courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Having gone into the inn they all three sat down to table, but none of them had any appetite.

The Cat, who was suffering from indigestion and feeling seriously indisposed, could only eat thirty-five fish with tomato sauce and four portions of tripe with Parmesan cheese; and because she thought the tripe was not seasoned enough, she asked three times for the butter and grated cheese!

~ Carlos Collodi from Pinocchio ~