tingilinde

I prefer food as food

Not as statement art ..  but that's not a universal view.

 

when you can't remember a good poem

I first read A New National Anthem a few years ago and have been trying to find it since.  This morning I did.  It's by Ada Limón and worth the read.

 

princess kay of the milky way

A new sculptor 

 

city

A most unusual piece of monumental art.

you can search for 38.034°, -115.443°   in Apple or Google maps and get close enough

 

 

 

“A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel can’t defuse a bomb … But we are not helpless … We can sing the truth & name the liars.”

 Salman Rushdie

 

 

frog - Itō Jakuchu 1790

 

 

since trump is illegally using the presidential seal

Perhaps it's appropriate to post the version Anne Telnaes suggested a few years ago

 

a fine combination

 

 

the beautiful illustrations of anne pratt

Amazing examples of scientific illustration

 

a year before he died

In 2006 students at Xavier HS in NY wrote to several authors inviting them to the school. Only one wrote back. Here’s what Kurt Vonnegut said:

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don't make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you're Count Dracula.

Here's an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don't do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals [sic]. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut