Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.

~ William Butler Yeats from "The Cat and the Moon" ~

Photo courtesy Hidden Side

Dumb Drones

Research conducted by the University of London a few years ago unearthed a concept known as 'infomania', which is when people are addicted to emailing and texting, with the study showing it could lower a person's IQ by twice as much as smoking marijuana. So, basically, smart phones are turning us into dumb drones.

~ James Adonis ~
Image courtesy dmixo6

Poetry Friday

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

~ Don Marquis ~

The Necessity of Space Travel

Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

~ Gene Roddenberry ~

Image Credit: NASA/JSC James Blair

You Want Fried With That?

Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.

~ Robert Redford ~

You Can Make a Difference--Vote!

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

~ James Garfield ~

Alexander Calder

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

~ Alexander Calder ~

Photo by H4NUM4N

Sunday's Kat Kwote

People that are comfortable with themselves I think is very sexy. My cat is really sexy.

~ Gina Gershon ~

A Universal Truth

The older I get the better I used to be!

~ Lee Trevino ~

Poetry Friday

...Most mornings these days
Ralph Edwards comes into the bedroom and says, "Elizabeth,
this is your life. Get up and look for color,
look for color everywhere."

~ Elizabeth Alexander from "Today's News" ~

Halloween and Cats

Every year in America and some European countries, our precious pets are put in danger, especially black cats, due to superstitions and legends that claim that black cats are bad luck. This misinformation stems from the belief that witches could transform themselves into cats to carry out evil deeds incognito during the night.

~ Candace Runaas ~
Image courtesy TIAS.com

Oooooo!

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

~Emily Dickinson ~

Ghost Season!

Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.

~ J.M. Barrie ~

It's Here!

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

~ Dave Barry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

You carry your tail as a banner...

~ Amy Lowell from "To Winky" ~

Book As Performance

Each single-author book is immensely particular, a story told as only one storyteller could recount it. Scholarship is a collagist, building the next iteration of what we know book by book. Stories end, and that, I think, is a very good thing. A single authorial voice is a kind of performance, with an audience of one at a time, and no performance should outstay its welcome. Because a book must end, it must have a shape, the arc of thought that demonstrates not only the writer's command of her or his subject but also that writer's respect for the reader. A book is its own set of bookends.

~ William Germano ~

Poetry Friday

...I believe that in the end poems strike something deeper than thought itself.

~ Edward Hirsch from How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry ~

Autumn

Autumn's a grand old drag
            in torched and tumbled chiffon
                        striking her weary pose.

~ Mark Doty from "Couture" ~

If He Could See the Way People Dress Today...

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~

No Wimps Allowed

You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.

~ Les Brown ~

Robots

We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies.

~ Marshall McLuhan ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

~ Anne Tyler ~

Photo by MACSURAK

Good Choice!

I think I had extraordinary luck. I was with God and with the devil, and I reached out for God.

~ Mario Sepulveda, rescued Chilean miner ~

Photo of Mario Sepulveda courtesy El Mercurio, Santiago, Chile

Poetry Friday

I am writing poetry because it seems the way I can say things that have meaning that is almost beyond language. Poetry is a hint, I guess, a whiff, of the depths of the heart.

~ Cynthia Rylant ~

Photo by Bob.Fornal

One of Eliot's Cats

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.

~ T. S. Eliot from "Macavity: The Mystery Cat" ~

Photo by Forty Two

Heaven and Earth In Your Hands!

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night--there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

~ Christopher Morley ~

Release That Prisoner!

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

~ Michelangelo ~

Sad, But Probably True

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.

~ Brian Greene ~



Photo by cokescroaks

Enthusiasm

If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

~ Vince Lombardi ~

Photo by glsims99

Poetry Friday

Never yet has poet sung a perfect song,
But his life was rooted like a tree's, among
Earth's great, feeding forces,--even as crag and mould,
Rhythms that stir the forest by firm fibres hold.

Harmonies ethereal haunt his topmost bough,
Upward from the mortal drawn, he knows not how:
The old, sacred story of celestial birth
Rising from terrestrial; heaven revealed through earth.

~ Lucy Larcom from "The Trees" ~

Note: the illustration is taken from Childhood Songs by Lucy Larcom published in 1874. A digitized copy is available at Google Books.)

Book = Friend

A book, being a physical object, engenders a certain respect that zipping electrons cannot. Because you cannot turn a book off, because you have to hold it in your hands, because a book sits there, waiting for you, whether you think you want it or not, because of all these things, a book is a friend. It’s not just the content, but the physical being of a book that is there for you always and unconditionally.

~ Mo Willems ~

A True Apple Lover

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

~ Martin Luther ~

Photo by Muffet

A Fun Idea

fold poems and quotes into origami and leave them on public transport

~ from the website 43Things ~

On The Hunger Games Trilogy

Yes, there are very relevant themes and messages present in the novel (government control, anti-war, independence, etc). I, for one, do not think they are too obvious or too didactic. They don’t interfere with the natural progression of the story, yet they made me continue to think about the novels long after I was done reading.

~ Juliann Guiffre ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it until the wind changes.

~ T.S. Eliot ~

Photo by i_marinari

I Like the Way This Woman Thinks!

Fundamentally, reading creates better societies. This is not a theory. This is a quantifiable fact: There is a direct correlation between the rate of literacy in a nation and its success.

This is why the funding of American libraries should be a matter of national security. Keeping libraries open, giving access to all children to all books is vital to our nation’s sovereignty.

~ Karin Slaughter ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.

~ Christopher Fry ~

Complicity

He who holds the ladder is as bad as the thief.

~ German proverb ~

Art

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

~ Thomas Merton ~

Ballerina by Henri Matisse. Image courtesy the State Hermitage Museum

The Simple Truth

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

~ Sydney J. Harris ~

Banned Books Week!

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

~ American Library Association ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Who among us hasn't envied a cat's ability to ignore the cares of daily life and to relax completely?

~ Karen Brademeyer ~

Photo by Digital Wallpapers

Especially a Mile-High Apple Pie!

But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese.

~ Eugene Field ~



Photo by pagehalfful

Poetry Friday

The poems come to me, I don't go to them. As soon as I see that what I'm mulling--a line or a sentence is repeating itself in my mind, like an obsessive thought, or a kind of conceit or concept--as soon as I see that it's a poem, I go and write it.

~ Sharon Olds ~

Fall

                                The squirrel's granary is full,
                                And the harvest's done.

~ John Keats from "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" ~

Photo by Rob and Jane

OMG!

In the United States, English has become increasingly irrelevant, particularly among young adults.

~ Gene Weingarten ~

Toys = Tools

Toys were lots of fun before they became capitalist tools.

~ Beth Copeland Vargo ~

Avedon

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

~ Richard Avedon ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Pussy-cat ate the dumplings, the dumplings,
Pussy-cat ate the dumplings.
Mamma stood by, and cried, "Oh, fie!
Why did you eat the dumplings?"

~ Mother Goose ~

Apologies

The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.

~ Red Auerbach ~



I guess anyone who had the confidence to wear a jacket like the one in the photo, could certainly say things like that! Last Sunday I forgot to say I was taking a little vacation from KK's Kwotes (the first since 2007). I took Monday through Friday off, but now I'm back. And, I apologize...
--KK

Image courtesy Vedia

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Never wear anything that panics the cat.
~ P. J. O'Rourke ~

Photo by doyoubleedlikeme

Something to Remember

And mankind is naught but a single nation.

~ Quran ~
Image by fdecomite

Poetry Friday

Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.

~ William Carlos Williams ~



I was greatly intrigued by this quote and found that it is from Williams' introduction to Alan Ginsberg's Howl. Ah, it now makes perfect sense. --KK

Photographs

While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

~ Lewis Wickes Hine ~

Keep On Pushin'

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

~ Helen Keller ~

Interesting...

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this--as in other ways--they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

~ John Berger ~

Happy Labor Day!

Labor Day sack race, 1940, Ridgway, CO

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

~ Aristotle ~