Big Business

The "gluten-free" label has become one of the best ways to sell a product. The industry is worth upward of $4 billion, and is expected to exceed $6.6 billion by 2017. Many books, diets and self-proclaimed medical specialists have taken advantage of this new trend. It has become so trendy, in fact, that even gallons of milk, that contain no gluten to begin with, have started to get the "gluten-free" stamp.

~ Maggie Beidelman ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

~ Jeanette Winterson ~
Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Homogenization

I think it’s ironic that in the last 15 or 20 years we’ve had the interest in multiculturalism and diversity, but at the same time we’re going through a real homogenization of our culture, from economics and technology.

~ John McIntyre ~



Photo by kke227.

Poetry Friday

The power of responding to the intuitive and the poetic is greatest in childhood. If we can wake in children a response beyond their immediate need--if we organize to accomplish these things, we shall never, never lose the nightingale.

~ Frances Clarke Sayers ~

Written in 1920 (But It Could Have Been Written Today)

Here in America to-day, we are fighting another War--perhaps an even greater one--a war against selfishness and materialism and intolerance and despair.

~ Frances Noyes ~

The Secret

The most direct path to achievement whether you're an entrepreneur, a company executive, or a pro soccer player is to be a great performer and a great team member. This is also the secret to a meaningful career and self-fulfillment.

~ Maynard Webb ~

Nice Hat...

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

~ Benjamin Disraeli ~
Photo courtesy New York Social Diary.

Everyone Should Have a Bookshelf!

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

~ Justin Cronin ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat sits on the ledge inside the window and watches me returning
through the dusk. Predictable as the hands of a clock,
the eyes of the cat are on my return.

~ Ciaran O'Driscoll ~
Photo by Chris Carter.

It's the Least You Can Do

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

~ Dorothy Parker ~

Poetry Friday

And what is "the wild mind," anyway? Can we find a way to bring it into our poetry? Might poetry itself be a kind of "wild mind" on the page? And I love the way we glimpse a wild creature sometimes—with a fleeting sense of its presence that immediately vanishes into its own world. The effect is like poetry itself, sometimes.

~ Michael Hettich ~

Good Thing He Was Never Asked!

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

~ Winston Churchill ~

Ha, Ha!

Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.

~ Dave Barry ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Chess

...what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

~ Stanley Kubrick ~

You Can't Beat a Good Knock-Knock Joke!

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Little old lady?
Little old lady who?
I didn't know you could yodel!

Sundays Kat Kwote

If it be true that all remarkable human beings resemble animals, then Walt Whitman was like a cat--a great old grey Angora Tom, alert in response, serenely blinking under his combed waves of hair, with eyes inscrutably dreaming.

~ Edmund Gosse ~






1854 Whitman photo courtesy Library of Congress. Cat photo by Valerian Gaudeau.

Not Obvious Enough!

I think to a great degree, we humans still divide ourselves into two species, even though we are monotypic. There are males and females. We see them as different and not equal. Things get better when women get more equality. That is a bit obvious but I think it leads to better results up the road. If it’s a man’s world as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.

~ Henry Rollins ~

Poetry Friday

Click here for an article about Moore.

Remembering Marc Simont

Armed with his small "Scribble-In" brand sketchbooks purchased at a five-and-ten-cent store near the Academy, Simont drew in subways, bars, and other public places around town where, as he says, it was possible to work unnoticed, like a "bug in a fold in the curtain." Sketching in this way became a lifelong habit.

~ Leonard Marcus ~

When Playing Cards...

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

~ Oscar Wilde ~
Photo by Sam Teigen.

The Patty Group

Mother Nature clearly intended for us to get our food from the "patty" group, which includes hamburgers, fish sticks, and McNuggets--foods that have had all of their organs safely removed.

~ Dave Barry ~
Photo by Christopher Chen.

A Lighthouse

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.

~ Charles Simic ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Performing cats, however, are seldom to be seen in circuses or vaudeville. They are most difficult to train, not because they are stupid but because they are too intelligent to be interested in such nonsense. A cat is never vulgar and this sort of thing undoubtedly strikes a cat as vulgar.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~






Poster courtesy Library of Congress.

Truly Regrettable

The only thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.

~ Francoise Sagan ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

To him, all good things--trout as well as eternal salvation--come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy.

~ Norman Maclean from A River Runs Through It ~
Renoir's "Rainbow Trout," courtesy The Athenaeum.

Is This a Good Thing?

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

~ Wallace Stevens ~

Ah, the Seashore...

Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.

~ Bill Bradley ~
Photo by Jody Roberts.

You Are a Fountain?

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, courtesy NYPL Digital Library.

Fishing

It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

~ Stephen Leacock ~




Illustration courtesy NYPL Digital Library.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

IV

The cat walks across the board game.
The whims of fate
cast furry shadows.

~ Tabatha Yeatts from "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Emma" ~

Photo by Eleftheria G .

Everyone's Reading!

WPA Art Project poster courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Happy 4th of July!

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

~ Adlai Stevenson ~
"Independence Day" by John Califano (1900), courtesy The Athenaeum.

A Balanced Diet

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

~ Fran Lebowitz ~

What Is It?

It ain't the heat, it's the humility.

~ Yogi Berra ~





Baseball Digest, September 1956 issue cover courtesy Wikipedia.

What To Do This Summer?

Summer is a great time to visit art museums, which offer the refreshing rinse of swimming pools--only instead of cool water, you immerse yourself in art.

~ Jerry Saltz ~
Photo by Robert Banh.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

~ Rupert Brooke ~
Photo by Atomische * Tom Giebel.

Downstream

I feel there is an extraordinary shift of consciousness that effects every aspect of our life when we realize we travel on 'spaceship earth' (sharing one sky, one earth plus the air we breathe and the water we drink). We really have one shared destiny. We all live 'downstream' from each other so how each of us lives effects the whole.

~ Shiva Rea ~

NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data provided courtesy of Chris Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center). Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense.

Poetry Friday

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

~ Robert Frost ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Writing only leads to more writing.

~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette ~




Photo courtesy Peter Lanczak.

You Can't Defy Mother Nature

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.

~ Paul Hawken ~

Sweet Passions

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.

~ Vladimir Nabokov ~
Photo by katybird.

Another Variation on "Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover"

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

~ R. Buckminster Fuller ~
Photo by TrombaMarina.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

...it takes an aristocrat with a Persian soul to understand the soul of a cat.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~








Image courtesy Walters Art Museum.

Criticism

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

~ Robert F. Kennedy ~

Poetry Friday

...one tries to convince oneself that the older one gets the less time it takes to say what one has to say. I attribute this canard to the miscalculation of hope over experience, and a certain amount of truth.

~ Charles Wright ~

Not Exactly a Picture Book!

When I was 5 years old, my mother read me 'Gone With The Wind' at night, before I went to bed. I remember her reading almost all year.

~ Pat Conroy ~

Aren't We All!

I'm not over-weight, I'm under-tall.

~ Garfield (character created by Jim Davis) ~

Good Question!

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?

~ Bertolt Brecht ~
Photo by arbyreed.

Not a Bad Compromise

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?

~ Princess Diana ~
Royal Monogram courtesy Wikipedia.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I said something which gave you to think I hated cats. But gad, sir, I am one of the most fanatical cat lovers in the business. If you hate them, I may learn to hate you. If your allergies hate them, I will tolerate the situation to the best of my ability.

~ Raymond Chandler ~
Photo by swhsu.

So Much Easier

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

~ Frederick Douglass ~



Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Poetry Friday

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

~ Albert Camus ~
Photo by MartusJaav.

True Love

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~

Book Reviews

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1. those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2. those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

The Art of the Ordinary

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

~ Russell Banks ~

It Can't Compete!

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers--and never succeeding.

~ Gian Carlo Menotti ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.

~ Amy Lowell from "The Garden by Moonlight" ~

Photo by ladybugbkt.

Frances Perkins

I wrote the profile of Perkins for Women of the Empire State: 25 New York Women You Should Know, she was one fabulous lady. If only we had followed her advice, we would have had universal healthcare 70 years ago!

Poetry Friday

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

~ Emily Dickinson ~





Photo courtesy Amherst College Archives.

Anxiety

Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

~ Rose Kennedy ~

A ha!

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

~ Edmond de Goncourt ~
Photo by tanakawho.

Still Possible?

Our earth is but a small star in the great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color, or theory. Grant us that courage and foreseeing to begin this task today that our children and our children's children may be proud of the name of man.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Sobering for Sure!

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

~ Alan Shepard ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat goes to a monastery, but she still remains a cat.

~ Congolese proverb ~
Photo by juicyrai.

Soul Food

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.

~ Luther Burbank ~