A Love/Hate Relationship

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

~ Claude McKay from "America" ~

Culture

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

About Bestsellers...

Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

~ Anthony Burgess ~

Oscars

Every time an Oscar is given out,
an agent gets his wings.

~ Kathy Bates ~

It's Just a Matter of Time

The Disney industry has not yet attacked 'Hansel and Gretel'...

~ from The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal...one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.

~ Theophile Gautier ~

This cat does not want to be friends!

It's National Pick-on-Dog Owners Day!

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing, right in your ear.

~ Dave Barry ~


I made up that holiday!--KK

Hope

Hope is a thing made only for people.
a scrap to hold onto
in darkness and in light.

~ from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate ~

Ha! Just Try It with the Canard de Bain!

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout "Bang!"

~ George F. Will ~


If you enjoyed the picture of the giant duck, then check out the other works by the Dutch artist, Florentijn Hofman. I particularly like the "muskusrat."

Fresh Strength

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Castro Steps Down

My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.

~ Fidel Castro ~

President's Day

It has been my experience that folks with no vices have few virtues.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Photo of Cassie courtesy of Lucinda McQueen

King Tut's Burial Chamber Was Opened on This Date in 1923

Dancing by the Nile,
Disco Tut, Tut
The ladies love his style.
Boss Tut, Tut
Rockin' for a mile,
Rockin' Tut, Tut
He ate a crocodile.

~ Steve Martin ~

On the Start of a Three-Day Weekend...

Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies.
~ Sydney Pollack ~

I was born and raised in New York, and nearly every Saturday found me at the movies!

Yeah, Me, Too...

I'm a hopeless romantic. It's disgusting. It really is. I've seen "While You Were Sleeping," like, twenty times, and I still believe in the whole Prince Charming thing.

~ Jennifer Love Hewitt ~

Poor Girl, Imagine Making Her Wait in Weather Like We Had Today!

I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me:
She will tarry there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.

~ Thomas Hardy ~

Money

If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.
~ Dorothy Parker ~

Origami

from the Peabody Essex Museum
The most extreme violation of the Western separation of the medium from the message is to be found in an art-form like Japanese origami. Whereas Western art focuses upon the freedom to move images around on paper or canvas to create fixed patterns, origami ignores the separation between the image and the paper. The paper becomes part of the image, and is twisted and folded until it is the picture, not merely the surface on which it lies.

~ John D. Barrow ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A dog is prose, a cat is a poem.

~ Jean Burden ~

Regrets

I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth--I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

~ Henry James ~

Chinese New Year

So exert ourselves to the utmost here tonight,
I still admire the exuberance of our youth!

~ Su Shi ~

It's Snowing Again...

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

~ Andy Goldsworthy ~

Tea with the Mad Hatter

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

~ from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll~

Tea

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

~ C. S. Lewis ~

Dreaming

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

~ Marcel Proust ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.

~ Dan Greenberg ~

Happy Groundhog's Day!

Don't you think the nation is ready for an official female groundhog?

~ Jan Kruse, an Massachusetts Audubon spokeswoman ~

To learn more click here.

Listening

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.

~ Brenda Ueland ~



I suppose that can be be turned around when eavesdropping is involved!

Following in the Tradition of Yogi Berra...

Men, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl.

~ Bill Peterson, football coach ~

Brrrr!

A library is thought in cold storage.

~ Herbert Samuel ~

I Can Relate!

I would especially like to recourt the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

~ John Updike ~

She Doesn't Mince Words...

The person, be it gentleman or lady,
who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

~ Jane Austen ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

I catnap now and then, but I think while I nap, so it's not a waste of time.

~ Martha Stewart ~

Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~Robert Frost ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

~ Carl Sandburg ~

Amen!

A home without books is a body without soul.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero ~

Eat Your Broccoli

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.

~ George H.W. Bush ~

OMG!

It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.

~ George W. Bush ~

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, "What are you doing for others?"

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

"It is a VERY inconvenient habit of kittens," said Alice, "that whatever you say to them, they always purr."

~ Lewis Carroll ~

Why Does Political Polling Immediately Pop into My Head?

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

Still We Love to Dance

We dance around the ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

~ Robert Frost ~

I Think There's Something to be Said for Plain and Boring!

People have passion. It runs through all we do – who we love, what we do for a living, how we worship and how we spend our free time. So, why, when our lives are so full of passion, do funerals – events designed to celebrate a life - have to be so plain and boring?

~ from the webpage of Eternal Images designers of "brand name funerary products" ~

Ouch!

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

~ H. L. Mencken ~

What Every Children's Writer Hopes For

The 2008 Newbery Medal winner!

When a book is named a Newbery winner, it means that probably every public library in the nation, and most schools in the nation, will have a copy of this book. Plus, it will be one that will be gifted to children everywhere. It will be discussed, and it will probably never go out of print...

~ Barbara Barstow ~

Snow Day!

Notice the big snowman "thumbs up!"
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

~ John Ruskin ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.

~ Eleanor Farjeon ~



More funny pictures

Sitting at Home Suits Me Fine!

Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.

~ Ogden Nash ~

Truth

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

I Love That Smell!

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~

Okey dokey

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

~ Pythagoras ~

Monopoly Anyone?

Board games do not discriminate based on gender, or age for that matter. Board games have greater appeal across generations than video games.

~ Kevin Howley, Assistant professor of communications, arts and sciences at DePauw University ~

See, It Works!

I have seen the times when the grassroots has moved the Congress. We listen way more often to our constituents than the lobbyists. And the grassroots are going to have to do it.

~ John Linder ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

indoor cat
chasing a squirrel
window to window

~ Larry Rungren ~



Many thanks to Larry Rungren for permission to use his haiku.

Today, with Temps in the 40's, You Might be Able to Get Away with It!

And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

~ John Dryden ~

Don't Forget to Vote on Tuesday!

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson ~

Hey, It's Not Junk!

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

That's What Friends are For

...Mole suffered himself to be dragged back along the road by his imperious companion, who by a flow of cheerful talk and anecdote endeavored to beguile his spirits back and make the way seem shorter.

~ Kenneth Grahame, from The Wind in the Willows ~

Happy 2008!

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.

~ John Burroughs ~

Another Reason for Always Having a Book at Hand

It is necessary to relax your muscles when you can. Relaxing your brain is fatal.

~ Stirling Moss ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

If stretching were wealth, the cat would be rich.

~ African proverb ~






Photo of Lila courtesy of Lucinda McQueen

A Light Extinguished

Militancy and greed cannot become the defining images of a new century that began with much hope. We must refocus our energy on promoting the values of democracy, accountability, broad-based government, and institutions that can respond to people's very real and very urgent needs.

~ Benazir Bhutto ~

Dawn

Night's darkness is the bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ~

One Man's Opinion...What's Yours?

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

~ Lewis Mumford ~

How Sad...

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.

~ Kin Hubbard ~

Merry Christmas!

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

~ Charles Dickens ~

Think Globally This Holiday Season.

It is imperative that we continue the fight for peace on earth for the whole planet, because peace can only be achieved in this day and age if it is global peace. And justice can only be achieved if it is global justice.

~ Barbara G. Hilton, NH Peace Activist ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Books and cats and fair-haired little girls make the best furnishing for a room.

~ James Mason ~