Damnably Sentimental

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

~ Thomas Huxley ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Let your children love pussy, pussy loves your children; only kindly point out to them the essential difference between a plaything and a playmate.

~ W. Gordon Stables ~

Timely Thought

As anti-refugee hysteria sweeps many of our political leaders, particularly Republicans, I wonder what they would have told a desperate refugee family fleeing the Middle East. You’ve heard of this family: a carpenter named Joseph, his wife, Mary, and their baby son, Jesus.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus’ birth they fled to save Jesus from murderous King Herod (perhaps the 2,000-year-ago equivalent of Bashar al-Assad of Syria?). Fortunately Joseph, Mary and Jesus found de facto asylum in Egypt--thank goodness House Republicans weren’t in charge when Jesus was a refugee!

~ Nicholas Kristof ~
"The Flight into Egypt" by Giovanni Battista Crespi (1610-1620), courtesy The Athenaeum.

Poetry Friday

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

~ Vincent Van Gogh~
"Starry Night over the Rhone" by Vincent van Gogh, courtesy Wikimedia.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Postcard courtesy NY Public Library Digital Collections.

America's First Refugees

Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little shipload of outcasts who landed at Plymouth are destined to influence the future of the world.

~ James Russell Lowell ~

From a Man Who Himself Became Mythic

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

~ John F. Kennedy ~

Dancing

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

~ Charles Baudelaire ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Once upon a time there lived a king who was deeply in love with a princess, but she could not marry anyone, because she was under an enchantment. So the King set out to seek a fairy, and asked what he could do to win the Princess's love. The Fairy said to him:

"You know that the Princess has a great cat which she is very fond of. Whoever is clever enough to tread on that cat's tail is the man she is destined to marry."




~ Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont from "Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess" ~

Intolerance = Uneducated

It's an universal law--intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ~


Photo courtesy NobelPrize.org.

Poetry Friday

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

~ John Keats ~

Painting

One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.

~ Frank Stella ~
"View of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre" by Robert Hubert, courtesy The Athenaeum.

A Classic

The story being told in Star Wars is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not.

~ George Lucas ~

Happiness

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

~ Ingrid Bergman ~

Go Vegetable Heavy!

Go vegetable heavy. Reverse the psychology of your plate by making meat the side dish and vegetables the main course.

~ Bobby Flay ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

There was, nevertheless, some sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness.

~ Victor Hugo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

In a World Gone Insane

If it is our freedom and joy they seek to destroy, give them not that victory. Against the forces of darkness and terror, love and compassion shall always prevail. ‪#‎JeSuisParis‬

~ George Takei ~
Photo by Joe deSousa.

Poetry Friday

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

~ William Butler Yeats ~





Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Speak Out

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton ~




Photo courtesy National Portrait Gallery.

Veterans Day Prayer

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

~ Douglas MacArthur ~

In That Case, Mike, You Need a Cat

Sulley: Hey, Mike, this might sound crazy but I don't think that kid's dangerous.

Mike: Really? Well, in that case, let's keep it. I always wanted a pet that could kill me.

~ From Monsters, Inc. ~

Ukuleles!

There's something about the ukulele that just makes you smile. It makes you let your guard down. It brings out the child in all of us.

~ Jake Shimabukuro ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

No kwote today, just an informative little cat breed video!

Just Open Your Eyes

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

~ Thornton Wilder ~




Photo source: NY Public Library Digital Collections.

Poetry Friday

At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable.

~ James Fenton ~

Especially If They Move

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.

~ Walt Disney ~
Business envelop courtesy Wikipedia.

Let Go!

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

~ Joseph Campbell ~

Scary Movies

And I love a scary movie. It makes your toes curl and it's not you going through it.

~ Anthony Hopkins ~

Role Model

It's not that I have compromised or anything, but it's always been important to me to take good care of myself and be a good example. I'm not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

~ Patti Smith ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

~ From The Book of Nonsense (1870), written and illustrated by Edward Lear ~

Happy Halloween!

I bought all of these big, cold, slimy, disgusting pumpkins and tried to carve them, and it was gross, so I had to find something else to do with them. Glitter was life-changing.

~ Jen Lancaster ~

Poetry Friday

Cognitive science now suggests that humans are actually hard-wired to respond to the sort of patterned speech that verse represents. Like the songs of birds or dances of bees--but on a higher level of complexity--poetry reflects the unique cognitive capacity of the human mind and body.

~ Dana Gioia ~
Photo source: Dana Gioia Official Site.

Where the Nurture Is Stronger Than the Nature

Rich, smart parents tend to have rich, smart kids--not because it's genetic but because they can create a home environment and sensory stimulation that lower-income kids often don't get.

~ George Kaiser ~

Unusual Efforts Required

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes."

~ Clare Boothe Luce ~
Image courtesy The NY Public Library Digital Collections.

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, "I gotta use that one."

~ Paul Simon ~

Art and Artists

I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life.

~ W. H. Auden ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Halloween is rapidly approaching!

[You'd be hard-pressed to find a worse Halloween rhyme than this one! --KK]

Photo courtesy riptheskull.

Accurately!

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

~ Joseph Pulitzer ~
Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

~ Linda Pastan from "Rereading Frost" ~






[Published in 1916 with a price of $1.25! --KK]

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bats Are Not Cliches!

Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed.

~ Wolcott Gibbs ~

Over the Rainbow

I've always taken The Wizard of Oz very seriously, you know. I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I've spent my entire life trying to get over it.

~ Judy Garland ~
Original movie poster courtesy Wikipedia.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

~ Bela Lugosi ~





Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Maxfield Parris

There are countless artists whose shoes I am not worthy to polish--whose prints would not pay the printer. The question of judgment is a puzzling one.

~ Maxfield Parrish ~
Painting courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Biting and clawing is a form of "love mauling." The more pain they deal out, the more they are trying to tell you that they love you.

~ The Oatmeal ~

Score One For the Geese

...great numbers of wild geese are passing to the south, but their flight is too high for us to procure any of them.

~ Meriwether Lewis ~
Illustration courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

...in poetry our motives are utterly similar to those who made cave paintings or petroglyphs...

~ Jim Harrison ~

It's Good to Have a Choice

I fell in love with reading when I was allowed to choose whatever books I wanted to check out of the library. I was around nine years old when I began choosing my own books in earnest.

~ Adriana Trigiani ~

Tightrope

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.

~ Edith Wharton ~
Poster courtesy Library of Congress.

One Writer's Beginning

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

~ Joyce Carol Oates ~

Columbus Day

The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

© 2014, Michelle Porucznik.

Be Afraid

If there is one thing that my brother’s collection has taught me, it is that guns outlive their owners. These hundreds of millions of guns will most likely be part of our society for decades, and some even for centuries, regardless of what laws we pass now. That is something of which we should truly be afraid.

~ Charles Blow ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is sort of me looking for myself.

~ Chastity Hale ~

It's Cheese Month!

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

~ James Joyce ~

No One, and Yet Everyone, Has Ownership

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Jumper Cables?

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking.

~ Robert T. Bakker ~

It's World Teacher Day!

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

~ Carl Jung ~
"In Class, Instructions for the Young Children" by Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Veterinarians have long known the benefits of adding a little canned pumpkin to a pet's diet regularly.

~ Carol McConnell ~
"Madame Tarkhoff, Her Daughter, Pumpkin and Two Cats" by Nicholas Tarkhoff, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Just Look

The only business protected from government by our Constitution is the media--their right of free speech based in the First Amendment. Just look how the media are handling this public trust!

~ Ralph Nader ~

Poetry Friday

~ From The Book of Nonsense (1870), written and illustrated by Edward Lear ~

Bullying

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested.

~ Octavia E. Butler ~

Book Burning