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.

Poetry Friday

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

~ John Ciardi ~




Photo courtesy Harvard Square Library.

Drumming

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

~ Lionel Hampton ~

Not Good...

We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development.

~ Nancy Gibbs ~
Image courtesy Cafe Press.

Tell Stories!

Stories unite people, theories divide them.

~ James Billington ~
Illustration courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Angels Come in Many Forms

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers...

~ Bayard Rustin ~
Photo courtesy UIC Digital Collections.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

To the north, on bright days you may be seen
in your chariot drawn by white cats
moving across the fields, across the sky
blue-robed, your hair gold-streaming

~ Frederick Morgan from "Freya" ~

Weddings

All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful.

~ Liz Smith ~
Image courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Poetry Friday

Every poet has to develop a habit of work. You have to create a sense of legitimacy for the job and bring a sense of strenuousness to the enterprise.

~ Kay Ryan ~






Childe Hassam print courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

But Not At the Same Time, Please

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

~ Voltaire ~






Photo courtesy NY Public Library Digital Gallery.

Oops! Missed Yesterday's Post!

It happens.

Here's a longish one that will have to count for two days:

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

Discuss!

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.

~ Anna Quindlen ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

On bare new wood
fourteen tomatoes,
a dozen ears of corn,
six bottles of white wine,
a melon,
a cat,
broccoli,
and the Alligator Bride.

~ Donald Hall from "The Alligator Bride" ~

Photo by qmnonic.

Forget Angels!

Narrative building is the key to success in politics and it has been by far Obama’s biggest deficiency. He has been way too reasonable and given way too much credit where none was due. To put it in terms Lincoln would appreciate, his pursuit of the better angels in others has allowed their lesser angels to get the better of him.

~ Peter Fegan ~
Image courtesy Open Clip Art Library.

Poetry Friday

I saved up my allowance and bought the little blue, cloth-covered collected Eliot for two dollars and fifty cents and I was off. I decided that I would be a poet for the rest of my life and started by working at poems for an hour or two every day after school. I never stopped.

~ Donald Hall ~

Nobody Wants Feeble Circuits!

Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, which under normal circumstances will unfold according to a program dictated by our genes, the ability to read must be painstakingly acquired by each individual. The "reading circuits" we construct are recruited from structures in the brain that evolved for other purposes-- and these circuits can be feeble or they can be robust, depending on how often and how vigorously we use them.

~ Annie Murphy Paul ~

It Sure Isn't!

I think that you should definitely listen to what people say, because everyone says it: High school is not the real world.

~ Katy Perry ~

Admirable

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth, and the Native American shared this elemental ethic: The land was alive to his loving touch, and he, its son, was brother to all creatures.

~ Stewart Udall ~

The World of Make-Believe

As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.

~ Jim Henson ~
Photo by Dawn Endico.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Oh I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good

~ Stevie Smith from "The Galloping Cat" ~

Eadweard Muybridge locomotion study courtesy Library of Congress.

Fear No Books

When you fear the books, you also fear the truth.

~ Kelly Jensen ~

Poetry Friday

How true this is with regard to writing poetry--you have to grab it when it runs by, or it'll be lost to you. --KK

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

What Has She Been Smoking?

When I pass a flowering zucchini plant in a garden, my heart skips a beat.

~ Gwyneth Paltrow ~

Zombies!

My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly. I'm pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.

~ George A. Romero ~

Yup!

I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers ~

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 ~