Berry

Berry comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to shine," perhaps for the bright colors of many small fruits.

~ Harold McGee from On Food and Cooking:
The Science and Lore of the Kitchen ~

Image by robynejay.

R.I.P. Leo Dillon

When we first met, we thought that there would be vast differences between us since we were different races and from different cultures. It wasn’t long before we began to understand that there really is no difference between people. There might be ideas that you’ve grown up with and believe are true. But you realize early on that those are really surface things; that underneath it all, we’re the same.

~ Leo Dillon ~

It's the Smart Thing To Do!

It is no disgrace to move out of the way of the elephant.


~ Vietnamese proverb ~



Photo by easegill.

Memorial Day

summer grasses
all that remains
     of soldiers' dreams

~ Basho ~

Photo courtesy the U.S. Army.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

from his hole
the snake pokes his head...
the cat slaps it


~ Issa translated by David G. Lanoue ~

Fiction

It think maybe that's why people write fiction, and why people read it, is because you don't know who you are unless you can imagine being otherwise.

~ Marilynne Robinson ~

Poetry Friday

Haiku shows us what we knew all the time, but didn't know that we knew.

~ R.H. Blyth ~










Image courtesy Library of Congress.

People ≠ Gods

I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

~ Imogen Cunningham ~





Photo © Imogen Cunningham Trust, courtesy National Galleries of Scotland.

The Internet

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

~ Andrew Brown ~

Photo by Steve Rhode.

Dreamy Shoes

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.

~ Ryunosuke Satoro ~

Photo courtesy the Virtual Shoe Museum.

Number 3 Was Unexpected!

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts--the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

~ John Ruskin ~





Mary Cassatt, "The Boating Party," courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

She rubs my chin
and purrs away,
as if I am
a game to play!

~ Aileen Fisher from "My Cat and I" ~


Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Feminist Makeover

Feminism represents all women, young and old, pretty and plain, boisterous and shy, married and single, straight and gay. That's the whole point. Instead of lumping all of us in with some generalized definition of womanhood, feminism seeks to allow each individual the freedom to define herself.

~ Digby ~

Poetry Friday

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.

~ May Sarton ~

Win-Win

People worldwide are rediscovering the benefits of buying local food. It is fresher than anything in the supermarket and that means it is tastier and more nutritious. It is also good for your local economy--buying directly from family farmers helps them stay in business.

~ LocalHarvest.org website ~




Image courtesy NH Dept. of Agriculture.

So Sad

I'm in awe of people out there who deal with Alzheimer's, because they have to deal with death 10 times over, year after year.

~ Marcia Wallace ~

Something We Never Seem to Understand

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.

~ François Fénelon ~

The Purpose of Junk Mail

Cartoon courtesy Dilbert.com.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

1. Find sunbeam.
2. Lie down.
3. Sunbeam moves just as you fall asleep.
4. Wake up cold.
5. Repeat until you are a nihilist.

~ Henri, le Chat Noir ~





Courtesy Henri, le Chat Noir

Good Job!

Once you start to see praise for what it is--and what it does--these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), "Good praising!"

~ Alfie Kohn ~

Poetry Friday

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 ~

Photo by cybershotking.

Science or Politics or Both?

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

~ Albert Einstein ~

The Original Wild Thing

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat. That's true, too.

~ Maurice Sendak ~

Children's Book Week

A great nation is a reading nation.

~ Frederic Melcher ~






Poster courtesy Children's Book Week.

Strawberry Bank

"Oh, Mother, see what we have found! The bank was covered with berries, even after we had picked all these!"

"Why, boys, it is just like the home-land! Surely Captain John Smith had described this Place well for Prince Charles to name it New England. Already I feel better, for this land is not so strange since home things grow here."

The boys found that even the sassafras could not have given her more pleasure. They went to bed that night before dark, contented with their search and anxious to return to the strawberry field.

For twenty years the land about the Great House was called Strawberry Bank. Though that was almost three hundred years ago and the name was afterward changed to Portsmouth, there are now many people in New England, and some outside, who know just what spot is meant when they hear of Strawberry Bank.


~ Edith Gilman Brewster from Some Three Hundred Years Ago, The W. B. Ranney Company, Printers, Concord, New Hampshire, © 1922 ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point--and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

~ Edgar Allan Poe from "The Black Cat" ~

Photo by spacecookypk.

Free the People!

We'll free the people with music.

~ Bob Marley ~

Poetry Friday

They are milestones to see where you are now, to perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive.

~ Richard Eberhart ~





Photo by sleepymyf.

Pretty Creepy If You Take It Literally...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

~ Gilbert Highet ~

Good Advice!

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.

~ Muriel Spark ~

Monuments

Monuments and archaeological pieces serve as testimonies of man's greatness and establish a dialogue between civilizations showing the extent to which human beings are linked.

~ Vincente Fox ~

Photo by Darkest Before Dawn.

Theater: the Original Interactive Media

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

~ Orson Welles ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

"Please--ma'am--the cat has put her kittens--in--your--bonnet!"

Such a breach of discipline had never been known before in our prim household, where there was a place for everything, and everything had a place.

My mother pushed her spectacles on to her forehead, and, looking severely at Ann, said: "Which one, Ann? My summer bonnet, or--my winter bonnet?"

"The one with the fur lining, ma'am."

"And a most comfortable bonnet to live in, I'm sure!" replied my mother sarcastically, as much as to say that she wished all cats had such a choice under the circumstances. "Another cat would have chosen the one with the lace and the violets, out of sheer perverseness. But there--I knew I could depend on a cat which had been trained in my house."

~ Charles Morley from "Peter: A Cat O' One Tail" ~

Photo by CRASH:candy.

Read!

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

~ Margaret Fuller ~


Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

...I was to learn that Mama had an articulate theory about reading poetry aloud to children, a theory not surprising for she was a pianist. It did not matter, she was convinced, if we could not understand all the words. We could enjoy the beautiful sound of them.

~ Helen Ferris ~

Author As Princess

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

~ C. S. Forester ~

(Note: the poor man must have been bruised something awful--he wrote more than 50 books! --KK)

On Being a Princess

Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.

~ Princess Diana ~

This From a Mother of Nine

I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all.

~ Queen Victoria ~

Preservation Week

More than 4.8 Billion Artifacts are held in public trust by more than 30,000 archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, scientific research collections, and archaeological repositories in the United States. 1.3 billion of these items are at risk of being lost.

~ American Library Association Preservation Week Fact Sheet ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I'm surrounded by morons.

~ Henri ~

Nature

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright ~

Carol M. Highsmith photo of Wright's Church of the Holy Cross courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

The important thing about writing is the rewriting. In order to make a poem look unworked, you have to work a lot.

~ Kay Ryan ~

He's Right!

All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

~ Richard Avedon ~

An Excellent Track Record!

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

~ Harriet Tubman ~





Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Tofu

Tofu can be used as a high-protein meat substitute, as well as a denture adhesive or tile grout.

~ Dave Barry ~

Photo by jazzijava.

It's What's Inside...

    O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!

~ William Shakespeare from Measure for Measure ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Even Jenny, the ship's cat as part of the crew, had immediately found herself a comfortable corner; she varied her usual Christmas routine on previous ships by presenting Titanic with a litter of kittens in April.

~ Violet C. Jessop ~

True Of So Many Things!

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

~ Edgar Degas ~

"Waiting" courtesy J. Paul Getty Museum.

Poetry Friday

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

~ Robert Frost ~

So Is "Pizza"

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Photo of Moroccan chicken with prunes by Mongiesama.

Pruning--Not Just For Trees

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

~ Henri Matisse ~

So Sad

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

Princely Advice!

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer ~

Photo by -Jeffrey-.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Easter greetings to all cats and their people! --KK

Postcard courtesy riptheskill.

Interesting Advice

Poetry Friday

The basic line in any good verse is cadenced...building it around the natural breath structures of speech.

~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

And Yet the U.S. Refuses to Get Behind It!

Green technologies--going green--is bigger than the Internet. It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.

~ John Doerr ~





Photo by Steve Abraham.

Eggsactly!

Q: Why did the chicken lay her egg on a axe?
A: She wanted to hachet.

~ Anonymous ~

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Great Expectations

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Literature About Chickens?

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

~ E. B. White ~


Photo courtesy Skokie Public Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats

When I grow up, I plan to keep
eleven cats, and let them sleep
on any bedspread that they wish,
and feed them people's tuna fish.

~ Maxine Kumin ~

Photo by Tom Clifton.

Memory

A country without a memory is a country of madmen.

~ George Santayana ~

Graphic courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

I think there’s been a great denial of the kinds of poets and poetries that could speak to a lot more people. Poetry has been kind of hoarded inside the schools, inside the universities. The activity of writing about poems and poetry--the activity of making it available and accessible--became the property of scholars and academics and became dependent on a certain kind of academic training, education, class background.

~ Adrienne Rich ~

If Rick Santorum Has His Way...

Women’s studies and feminism have always been attacked. I think it was in 1970 that I remember seeing an article in Harper’s called "Requiem for the Women’s Movement," when the women’s movement was just beginning to show its face. Its death is being constantly announced. But it’s an unquenchable and unkillable movement that has come and gone or come and submerged throughout the world in many different places in many different times. At this point, I think we live in an era of such global communications that that cannot happen again.

~ Adrienne Rich ~

Bullying

You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.

~ Lady Gaga ~

Good Advice for Writers

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

~ Anita Diamant ~

Say What?

If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.

~ Michael Lewis ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ J. G. Francis from A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals ~

Health Disaster in the Making

We have deferred to food companies the responsibility for ensuring that a good nutritional balance emerges. Voluntary guidelines and piecemeal nutrition initiatives have failed to create a system with the right signals, and the odds remain stacked against the achievement of a healthy, balanced diet.

~ Olivier de Schutter ~

Poetry Friday

It doesn't seem right to weigh poems like cabbage or fish, but that is precisely what the final grueling work of an anthologist becomes. And worse: Each poetrymonger applies his own rate, so the crucial question of "Who matters?" is skewed by fees that range from modest to outrageous and don't necessarily correlate to literary significance and artistic influence.

~ Rita Dove from "Introduction" to The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry ~

Probably the Reason Most Little Girls Want to Take Ballet

I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu.

~ Elle Macpherson ~



Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library

Priceless Gift

Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it.

~ Nikola Tesla ~

A Drawing

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

~ Paul Klee ~

Klee drawing courtesy Museum of Fine Arts.