Ghosts!

Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day.

~ Bess Truman ~
Graphic courtesy openclipart.

Is There?

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.

~ William Shakespeare from Henry V ~

Happy Birthday, Richard Dreyfus!

I don't know what it's like for most actors, but really clearly for myself acting has always been the fulfillment of personal fantasies. It isn't just art, it's about being a person I've always wanted to be, or being in a situation, or being a hero.

~ Richard Dreyfuss ~


Photo by Nightscream, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

The Same For Happiness

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~




Graphic courtesy openclipart.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

No one ever dresses as crippling self-doubt.

~ Henri ~

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to you!

~ KK ~

Poetry Friday

Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment--the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

~ Louise Glück ~

The Facts

"Just the facts, Ma'am."

~ Joe Friday (played by Jack Webb on Dragnet) ~



Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Don't Get Too Close

...no matter how well you knit, looking at your work too closely isn't helpful. It's like kissing with your eyes open: nobody looks good that close up.

~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee ~

Time

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.

~ Victor Hugo ~

As Good Today As It Was Back Then

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~
Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the kitten holds it down
just a moment...
fallen leaf

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue ~

Photo by AlishaVargas.

On Our Current State of Affairs

As surely as night must follow day, the alternative to democracy is worse.

~ Bill Moyers ~

Poetry Friday

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

~ Sigmund Freud ~
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Book Review

The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.

~ Walter Kaufmann ~
Illustration courtesy Openclipart.

Especially in 2013!

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

~ Voltaire ~

Always a Cost

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

~ Amelia Earhart ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

We're All Columbus

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

~ Henry David Thoreau from Walden ~
Photo © Diane Mayr.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I read in an article by Mr. Lord that there is a variety of tailless Cats found in various parts of the world, and he suggests that this deficiency may be due to an accident originally, but perpetuated by interbreeding. I am not quite of the same opinion. It reminds one of the old saying, "It runs in the blood, like wooden legs."

~ Charles H. Ross from The Book of Cats [1868] ~





Photo by nebedaay.

Free!

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

~ Charlotte Bronte from Jane Eyre ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

~ Alfred de Musset ~



Portrait by Charles Landelle.

Civics

We need to get back to reasoning and thinking things through. The future generation is being brought up in greed and without a true understanding of civics.

~ Richard Dreyfuss ~

There Are Laws?

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

~ Raymond Chandler ~

Music

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

~ Thomas Carlyle ~

R.I.P. Tom Clancy

Wars are begun by frightened men. They fear war, but more than that, they fear what will happen if they don't start one...

~ Tom Clancy ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

He twists and crouches and capers
And bares his curved sharp claws,
And he sings to the stars of the jungle nights
Ere cities were, or laws.

~ Don Marquis from "The Tom-Cat" ~

Might I Offer a Suggestion?

We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.

~ Marlin Stutzman ~
KK's suggestions:

Illustration courtesy Wwwfenomenaz.

Poetry Friday

Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays.

~ Nicholson Baker ~




Interesting thought! --KK

Photo by dwwebber.

Stretching

Don't keep reaching for the stars because you'll just look like an idiot stretching that way for no reason.

~ Jimmy Fallon ~
Image courtesy openclipart.

Eating Someone's Face Isn't the Scary Part?

That's the thing about zombies. They don't adapt and they don't think. Literally, you could have a zombie on one side of a chain link fence and you could be on the other side and they could be trying to get to you and six feet down could be an open door and they will not go through that door in the fence. That's why they're so scary.

~ Max Brooks ~

Photo courtesy Doczilla.

ROAR!

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

~ George Eliot ~
Photo by BinaryApe.

Happiness

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

But catnip she would eat, and purr,
But catnip she would eat, and purr.
And goldfish she did much prefer--
Mew, mew, mew.

~ Vachel Lindsay ~

Photo by northern green pixie.

Difficult Problems--Like the Real World

In case you haven't heard, education researchers began realizing a few years ago that all that self-esteem building parents and schools have been doing over the last couple of decades doesn't work. It turns out that if you just tell kids they're smart and wonderful, they have trouble when they encounter difficult problems. Cultivating traits like persistence is much more important.

~ Paul Waldman ~

Poetry Friday

There are thousands of minor poets, but poetry has ceased to be a minor subject. Any one mentally alive cannot escape it. Poetry is in the air, and everybody is catching it.

~ William Lyon Phelps ~
[Note: from The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century, published 1919.]

Impetus

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

~ Leonard Bernstein ~
Photo by Jack Mitchell.

A Simple Truth

Money often costs too much.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~



Graphic courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Robbery!

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte ~




Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Sad...

I was dyslexic before anybody knew what dyslexia was. I was called "slow." It's an awful feeling to think of yourself as "slow"--it's horrible.

~ Robert Benton ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

If Men and Women took their Pleasures as noisily as the Cats, what Londoner could ever hope to sleep of nights?

~ Aldous Huxley ~
Poster courtesy Library of Congress.

Peace

Peace is ultimately more than just the absence of war. Peace is also the presence of liberty, justice, opportunity, fairness, environmental sustainability, and other ingredients that create a healthy society. but it's difficult to achieve those ingredients when the war system is wreaking havoc as it is today.

~ Paul Chappell ~

Poetry Friday

'My poem is a conversation with you and no one else.'

~ From Swimming Home by Deborah Levy ~

Pirate

In the mind of the mariner, there is a superstitious horror connected with the name of Pirate; and there are few subjects that interest and excite the curiosity of mankind generally, more than the desperate exploits, foul doings, and diabolical career of these monsters in human form. A piratical crew is generally formed of the desperadoes and runagates of every clime and nation.

~ Charles Ellms from The Pirates Own Book: Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers ~

Dedicated

Every pioneer and musician who could carry a musket went into the ranks. Even the sick and foot-sore, who could not keep up in the march, came up as soon as they could find their regiments, and took their places in line of battle, while it was battle, indeed.

~ Joshua L. Chamberlain ~
Illustration courtesy Library of Congress.

True!

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

~ Rudyard Kipling ~
Photo courtesy NY Public Library Digital Gallery.

Perfectly Reasonable Explanation

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

~ Moliere ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Unlike the dog, which either wags its tail or does not wag its tail, the cat possesses a wide range of means to convey its emotions: It arches its back, makes its fur stand on end, meows, rubs itself against furniture and against humans, purrs, lashes its tail, spits, and hisses.

~ Philippe Diolé ~
Photo © Diane Mayr. Skippy loving the bookcase.

A Plus Name?

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.

~ John Updike ~
Photo courtesy National Endowment for the Humanities.

Poetry Friday

So variable are the uses of language, so infinitely flexible their application, that the storyteller may turn the simplest of words into poetry powerful enough to express the deepest, most complex of emotions...

~ Mollie Hunter ~

It Is Important!

If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they'll be all over it.

~ Bill Nye ~
Graphic courtesy Openclipart.

A Dot

Everything starts from a dot.

~ Wassily Kandinsky ~
"Forest Landscape with Red Figure" (1902) courtesy The Athenaeum.

Just Wow

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

~ Vincent Van Gogh ~
Painting courtesy Van Gogh Museum.

Delicious Autumn!

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

~ George Eliot ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Pussy sits beside the fire. How can she be fair?
In walks a little doggy, "Pussy, are you there?"

~ Mother Goose nursery rhyme ~

Musings From Captain Underpants

It's been said that adults spend the first two years of their children's lives trying to make them walk and talk, and the next sixteen years trying to get them to sit down and shut up.

It's the same way with potty training: Most adults spend the first few years of a child's life cheerfully discussing pee and poopies, and how important it is to learn to put your pee-pee and poo-poo in the potty like big people do.

But once children have mastered the art of toilet training, they are immediately forbidden to ever talk about poop, pee, toilets and other bathroom-related subjects again. Such things are now considered rude and vulgar, and are no longer rewarded with praise and cookies and juice boxes.

~ Dav Pilkey ~

Poetry Friday

One should be somewhat satisfied if one's work comes to approximate a true record of such moments of "illumination" as are occasionally possible. A sharpening of reality accessible to the poet, to no such degree possible through other mediums.

~ Hart Crane ~

Use It!

I believe it's time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength to change the world around them.

~ Janelle Monae ~
Photo by scannerFM.

Bravo!

I don't want to sound pretentious, but I love art, I like to go to museums, and I like to read books.

~ Rainn Wilson ~
Photo by Nan Palmero.

Do It

Go out and do it and take it to 'em. And play the music.

~ Mickey Hart ~

Happy Labor Day!

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers' stone, and the cap of good fortune.

~ James Weldon Johnson ~
[I'm not sure I know what this means, but I like the way it sounds! --KK]

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat came fiddling out of a barn.
With a pair of bag-pipes under her arm:
She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee,
The mouse has married the bumble-bee;
Pipe, cat—dance, mouse,
We'll have a wedding at our good house.

~ Mother Goose ~

The Fomenting Has Begun!

...remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

~ Abigail Adams ~

Image courtesy Library of Congress.