Friday, December 31, 2010

Poetry Friday



It is as good an hour for song and dance as any other, and I will make a tune for a sunny May evening, and you shall sway among the grasses like any flower on the bough.

~ Eleanor Farjeon from Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard ~

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Applause!


I take people on a musical journey while getting kicks myself and I’m loving it! When you get that reaction from the audience, it’s like a bloody drug. That’s the drug I’ve indulged in the most: applause. I can’t sit around the house as there’s no adulation to be had!

~ Tom Jones ~

Photo by cyberdees

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Clamor of Tracks





True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

~ Edward Hoagland ~



Photo by herzogbr

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Famous Last Words...




Now run along and play, but don't get into trouble...

~ H.A. Rey from Curious George ~

Monday, December 27, 2010

Blizzard!


Blizzard

Origin:
1820–30, Americanism; earlier: violent blow, shot; cf. Brit. dial. (Midlands) blizzer, blizzom blaze, flash, anything that blinds momentarily; prob. expressive formations with components of blast, blaze, bluster, etc.

~ Dictionary.com ~

Photo by dalboz17

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote





Slowly, slowly,
You rise and stretch
In a glossiness of beautiful curves


~ Amy Lowell from "To Winky" ~





Photo by Martin Cathrae

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

~ Erma Bombeck ~

Friday, December 24, 2010

Thursday, December 23, 2010

...Deep Thinking


But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance.

~ Diane Johnson ~

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Self Knowledge






The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Have Yourself a Tacky Little Christmas!


There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime.

~ P.J. O'Rourke ~


Photo by Sterin

Monday, December 20, 2010

A Christmas Test




I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

~ Maya Angelou ~



Photo by shoothead

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote




Keep your whiskers crisp and clean.

                  ~ Nancy Willard ~



Photo by Picture Zealot

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Make Music!

To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

~ Truman Capote ~

Friday, December 17, 2010

Poetry Friday






Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

~ Gustave Flaubert ~

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Give a Child a Book This Season


There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

~ Marcel Proust ~

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Let It Shine!


So you treat your love like a firefly, like it only gets to shine for a little while.

Catch it in a mason jar, with holes in the top, and run like hell to show it off.


~ Miranda Lambert from "Me and Charlie Talking" ~


Photo by B Rosen

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Sewing: A Metaphor for Life


Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that--one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~

Monday, December 13, 2010

It's Coming...














Be merry all, be merry all,
With holly dress the festive hall;
Prepare the song, the feast, the ball,
To welcome merry Christmas.

~ William Robert Spencer ~

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote






Joy and Love will both be yours,
   Minnow, don't be glum.
Happy days are coming soon--
   Sleep and let them come...

~ Elizabeth Bishop from "Lullaby for the Cat" ~






Photo by hilali

Friday, December 10, 2010

Poetry Friday


Fortunately I remember pretty well what I used to like to read, think about, and do. I find, even today, that if I write something I like, children are pretty apt to like it too. I guess what it amounts to is that I never grew up.

~ Aileen Fisher ~

Thursday, December 9, 2010

They Don't?


Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.

~ Fran Lebowitz ~

Photo by esti-

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Sounds Like a Plan!


Let's get away from sleigh bells, let's get away from snow
Let's make a break some Christmas, Dear, I know the place to go
How'd ya like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?


~ Lyle Moraine from "Christmas Island" originally recorded by The Andrew Sisters ~

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Comic Book Empowerment




It’s a natural human reaction to dream of what it would be to being empowered, to be able to solve things that you can’t otherwise.

~ Paul Levitz ~

Monday, December 6, 2010

A Gentle Spirit

I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word--politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.

~ Emma Thompson ~

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote















Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

Photo by JKönig

Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Important Stuff




Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

~ Robert Motherwell ~




Photo courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum

Friday, December 3, 2010

Poetry Friday





To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

~ Robert Frost ~




I hope it's not fatal! --KK

Photo by Elizabeth Thomsen

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

At the Ministry of Stories



You'll be able to find the Ministry of Stories through a secret door inside the first shop in the world to supply the daily needs of monsters of all shapes and sizes.

~ Nick Hornby ~

Photo courtesy Ministry of Stories

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen


Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen): Can you fly this plane, and land it?

Ted Striker (Robert Hays): Surely you can't be serious.

Dr. Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

~ from the film Airplane! ~

Monday, November 29, 2010

Science






Overall, the key criterion of science is that it provide a clear, rational, and succinct account of a pattern in nature.

~ from the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks ~






WPA poster by Shari Weisberg courtesy Library of Congress

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote
















The white saucer like some full moon descends
       At last from the clouds of the table above;
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,
       Transfigured with love.


~ Harold Monro from "Milk for the Cat" ~

Photo by tillwe

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Shopping Season


If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

~ Richard M. Nixon ~

Photo by jpellgen

Friday, November 26, 2010

Poetry Friday


The pleasure a writer knows is the pleasure all sages enjoy. Out of non-being, being is born; out of silence, the writer produces a song. Laughing winds lift up the metaphor; clouds rise from a forest of writing brushes.

~ Sam Hamill ~

Thursday, November 25, 2010

On the Plymouth Rock


Hear me, I beseech you; get up an auction and sell Plymouth Rock! The Pilgrims were a simple and ignorant race. They never had seen any good rocks before, or at least any that were not watched, and so they were excusable for hopping ashore in frantic delight and clapping an iron fence around this one. But you, gentlemen, are educated; you are enlightened; you know that in the rich land of your nativity, opulent New England, overflowing with rocks, this one isn't worth, at the outside, more than thirty-five cents. Therefore, sell it, before it is injured by exposure, or at least throw it open to the patent-medicine advertisements, and let it earn its taxes.

~ Mark Twain ~


Engraving by Joseph Andrews courtesy Library of Congress

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Remember This...


...an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.

~ Henry Ward Beecher ~


Photo by Sharlee H

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Simple Math




Nature has given men one tongue and two ears, that we may hear twice as much as we speak.

~ Epictetus ~

Monday, November 22, 2010

I Kid You Not!


Roadkill is an alternative designer toy boutique, creating original toy characters. We make toys with a twist. Toys as dark as the inside of a goth’s wardrobe. And they all have one thing in common. They’ve been run over. We’re calling it Squash-Plush.

~ From the RoadkillToys.com website ~

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Sunday's Kat Kwote


I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says
that animals have no need of speech and Nature
abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He
converses when he wants with me.


~ Robert Duncan from "A Little Language" ~


Photo by magdelana_b

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Imposed Amnesia

Imposed amnesia is the modus operandi of the current moment. Not only is historical memory now sacrificed to the spectacles of consumerism, celebrity culture, hyped-up violence and a market-driven obsession with the self, but the very formative culture that makes compassion, justice and an engaged citizenry foundational to democracy has been erased from the language of mainstream politics and the diverse cultural apparatuses that support it.

~ Henry A. Giroux ~

Friday, November 19, 2010

Poetry Friday



A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

~ Jean Cocteau ~

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Escape!



Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.

~ Dean Koontz ~

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Everything's Comin' Up Roses!

You could probably get us to set fire to our own trousers if there was a good laugh to be had in it somewhere . . . so after all the praise and awards that have been Heaped Upon Us, we decided it was time to add some substance to a phrase we often hear...with the launch of our special edition of Rose fragranced Poo-Pourri™ we can now proudly boast that we are the only company on earth (and possibly in the know-able universe) whose poo literally smells of roses.

~ News release on Sheep Poo Paper™ website ~


Image courtesy Sheep Poo Paper

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Never Forget


God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.

~ Simon Wiesenthal ~


Photo of Kristallnacht courtesy USHMM

Monday, November 15, 2010

In Other Words--Practice!


You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.

~ John Singer Sargent ~


Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts

Saturday, November 13, 2010

What a Sad Metaphor


Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.


~ Salvador Dalí ~

Friday, November 12, 2010

Poetry Friday

















If I should make no poems any more
    There would be rest at least, so let it be;
Time to read books in other tongues and listen
    To the long mellow thunder of the sea.


~ Sara Teasdale from "Leisure" ~

Photo by explorer056

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Veterans Day


Being a soldier, fighting for this country, is neither Republican nor Democrat.

~ Max Cleland ~

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

David Livingstone

Livingstone was equally at home wandering the wilds of Africa and making small talk over tea with the Queen. The public made his books best-sellers, his speeches standing room, his name household. Livingstone was beloved in Britain, and so famous worldwide that one poll showed that only Victoria herself was better known.

~ Martin Dugard from Into Africa ~


Photo courtesy National Trust for Scotland

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ha, Ha, Ha


Whiskey is by far the most popular of all remedies that won't cure a cold.

~ Jerry Vale ~


Photo by OctopusHat

Monday, November 8, 2010

Good Food All Over the World!


Good food is a global thing and I find that there is always something new and amazing to learn--I love it!

~ Jamie Oliver ~


Photo by hradcanska