Fishing

It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

~ Stephen Leacock ~




Illustration courtesy NYPL Digital Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

IV

The cat walks across the board game.
The whims of fate
cast furry shadows.

~ Tabatha Yeatts from "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Emma" ~

Photo by Eleftheria G .

Everyone's Reading!

WPA Art Project poster courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Happy 4th of July!

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

~ Adlai Stevenson ~
"Independence Day" by John Califano (1900), courtesy The Athenaeum.

A Balanced Diet

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

~ Fran Lebowitz ~

What Is It?

It ain't the heat, it's the humility.

~ Yogi Berra ~





Baseball Digest, September 1956 issue cover courtesy Wikipedia.

What To Do This Summer?

Summer is a great time to visit art museums, which offer the refreshing rinse of swimming pools--only instead of cool water, you immerse yourself in art.

~ Jerry Saltz ~
Photo by Robert Banh.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

~ Rupert Brooke ~
Photo by Atomische * Tom Giebel.

Downstream

I feel there is an extraordinary shift of consciousness that effects every aspect of our life when we realize we travel on 'spaceship earth' (sharing one sky, one earth plus the air we breathe and the water we drink). We really have one shared destiny. We all live 'downstream' from each other so how each of us lives effects the whole.

~ Shiva Rea ~

NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data provided courtesy of Chris Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center). Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense.

Poetry Friday

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

~ Robert Frost ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Writing only leads to more writing.

~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette ~




Photo courtesy Peter Lanczak.

You Can't Defy Mother Nature

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.

~ Paul Hawken ~

Sweet Passions

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

~ Vladimir Nabokov ~
Photo by katybird.

Another Variation on "Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover"

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

~ R. Buckminster Fuller ~
Photo by TrombaMarina.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

...it takes an aristocrat with a Persian soul to understand the soul of a cat.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~








Image courtesy Walters Art Museum.

Criticism

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

~ Robert F. Kennedy ~

Poetry Friday

...one tries to convince oneself that the older one gets the less time it takes to say what one has to say. I attribute this canard to the miscalculation of hope over experience, and a certain amount of truth.

~ Charles Wright ~

Not Exactly a Picture Book!

When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

~ Pat Conroy ~

Aren't We All!

I'm not over-weight, I'm under-tall.

~ Garfield (character created by Jim Davis) ~

Good Question!

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?

~ Bertolt Brecht ~
Photo by arbyreed.

Not a Bad Compromise

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?

~ Princess Diana ~
Royal Monogram courtesy Wikipedia.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.

~ Raymond Chandler ~
Photo by swhsu.

So Much Easier

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

~ Frederick Douglass ~



Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

~ Albert Camus ~
Photo by MartusJaav.

True Love

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~

Book Reviews

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1. those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2. those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

The Art of the Ordinary

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

~ Russell Banks ~

It Can't Compete!

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers--and never succeeding.

~ Gian Carlo Menotti ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.

~ Amy Lowell from "The Garden by Moonlight" ~

Photo by ladybugbkt.

Frances Perkins

I wrote the profile of Perkins for Women of the Empire State: 25 New York Women You Should Know, she was one fabulous lady. If only we had followed her advice, we would have had universal healthcare 70 years ago!

Poetry Friday

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

~ Emily Dickinson ~





Photo courtesy Amherst College Archives.

Anxiety

Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

~ Rose Kennedy ~

A ha!

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

~ Edmond de Goncourt ~
Photo by tanakawho.

Still Possible?

Our earth is but a small star in the great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color, or theory. Grant us that courage and foreseeing to begin this task today that our children and our children's children may be proud of the name of man.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Sobering for Sure!

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

~ Alan Shepard ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat goes to a monastery, but she still remains a cat.

~ Congolese proverb ~
Photo by juicyrai.

Soul Food

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.

~ Luther Burbank ~

Poetry Friday

Poetically said of Georgia O'Keeffe:

She looks as if she had ridden the millions of miles of her every known imaginary horizon, and has left all her horses lying dead in their tracks.

~ Marsden Hartley ~

Doors...

The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books--but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy.

~ Caitlin Moran ~

Tornadoes

Tornadoes can also happen at any time of day or night, but most tornadoes occur between 4–9 p.m.

~ NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory ~
Photo courtesy NOAA NSSL.

Don't Forget...

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 by David Stokes.

Memorial Day Thought

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ From the The New National Reading Books. Infant Reader. (1885) ~

The Cult of Money

The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.

~ Pope Francis ~

Poetry Friday

Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

~ Beatrice Schenk de Regniers from "Keep a Poem in Your Pocket" ~







Illustration by Maurice Sendak from The Giant Story by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers.

Comfort

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

~ Malcolm Forbes ~

Yuck!

Poultry is like meat, except when you cook it rare. Then it's like bird-flavored Jello.

~ P. J. O'Rourke ~

Childbirth

Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.

~ Gloria Steinem ~

Goodbye Bernard Waber

Frequent family moves made me the perennial new kid on the block with no prospect of immediate friends, so books became my friends. I borrowed insatiably from various neighborhood branches of the Philadelphia library.

~ Bernard Waber ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Lyle desperately wanted to win Loretta over. He tried flashing his sweetest, most toothsome smile at her to show how really friendly he was. But this only frightened the distrustful animal even more.

~ Bernard Waber from Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile ~
In memory of Bernard Waber who passed away on May 16.

Image courtesy threedonia.com.

Veggie Politics

The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus.

~ Louie Gohmert ~
Click here for video; quote at approximately 3:52.

Poetry Friday

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

~ Mark Strand ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

And Work Together!

We need to harness the potential of our entrepreneurial spirit and our abundant clean energy resources to create a more sustainable future.

~ Michael Bennet ~
Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum!

Floating In His Tin Can

I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.

~ Chris Hadfield ~
Photo courtesy NASA.

Over the Rainbow

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there.

~ Barbara Walters ~
Photo by paparutzi.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their "evil" look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it.

~ Camille Paglia ~
Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Breathing Is Good

What art offers is space--a certain breathing room for the spirit.

~ John Updike ~
Photo by renedrivers.

Poetry Friday

Prose and Poetry

You can be immersed in good prose, like swimming in a lake on a warm summer afternoon.

In poetry
the ice-cold moon
drops down
into the lake,
melts
to surround you,
and then
together
you fly back home
to the sky.

~ Eve Merriam from The Singing Green: New and Selected Poems for All Seacons ~

Photo by chrismek.

Diabesity

One in four kids have either pre-diabetes or diabetes--what I like to call diabesity. How did this happen?

~ Mark Hyman ~
Photo by Greyhawk68.

A Sad Truth

Sometimes it can feel like the whole globe is spinning with irredeemable losses, capricious natural disasters and crimes so outrageously evil they dismantle any attempt to solve or explain them.

~ Karen Russell ~

Standardized Testing

...what started as a well motivated process to improve student learning has become an increasingly irrational high-stakes endeavor. Politicians may show short-term gains, but students, teachers, and the learning process are becoming casualties.

~ Howard Gardner ~

Today, It Appears That Education Is Losing

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

~ H. G. Wells ~



Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It's a splotchy, blotchy
city cat, not pretty cat,
this rough little tough little bag of old bones.

~ Eve Merriam from "The Stray Cat" ~

Photo by vpickering.

Unleash the Artist in You!

Reading is an art form, and every man can be an artist.

~ Edwin Louis Cole ~
"Man Reading in a Park" (1914) by August Macke courtesy The Athenaeum.

Poetry Friday

Poetry should be like fireworks, packed carefully and artfully, ready to explode with unpredictable effects.

~ Lilian Moore ~
Photo by bayasaa.

With an Occasional Peek to See Where You Are Going

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

~ Theodore Roosevelt ~

Lovely!

Blossoms are scattered by the wind and the wind cares nothing, but the blossoms of the heart no wind can touch.

~ Yoshida Kenko ~
Photo ©Diane Mayr.

They're Both Beautiful In Their Own Way

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

~ Edna Ferber ~