Quote of the Day

If you meet the Holocaust, you can never escape its grip.  You are obliged to feel it reverberate through all things for the rest of your life. 

-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things

Quote of the Day

How much I love things and the stories they tell. 

-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things

Quote of the Day

When I think about (Cézanne and his wife Hortense) disagreeing, bickering, being sullen, brooding and moping and then him painting cherries, or trees, and painting her over and over, I am heartened.  And settled inside.  Because every day is a struggle, and it is not easy.  But if you can paint a bowel of cherries, that is something.

-- Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things

Quote of the Day

Art is a guaranty of sanity.

-- Louise Bourgeois 

Quote of the Day

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.  When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.  When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement.

-- John F. Kennedy

Quote of the Day

Stay in the music.  It's safe there.

-- Alene Bryant

Meeting Curtis McMillen

I met author Curtis McMillen last night at Out on the Lakeshore, where he spoke about his book, Brandon and Wilson at the Catch.

Quote of the Day

All these prizes are nice, I appreciate them.  I don't go crazy about them -- you have to do your work whether you're recognized or not.  The real deal is doing it the best you can do it and that's it.  That's its own reward.

-- Sonny Rollins 

Quote of the Day

These words are shared in the spirit of Motherhood with gratitude to those who nurtured and held us, and with the knowing that we must ultimately learn to give that same tenderness to ourselves.

-- Richard Blanco

Quote of the Day

The humility of being a student is crucial to being a good musician, to being a good human being.  When we stop being a student, we become an old fart.

-- Flea 

Quote of the Day

(My students) remind me of the belief in endless possibility and the thrill of discovery.  That moment when a student encounters a sentence that names something they felt but never had language for, that's profound.

-- Henry Louis Gates Jr. 

Quote of the Day

That's why I loved [Lucy Dacus' album] Historian.  I love what (Dacus) had to say about you being a historian of all the moments: If you don't write it down or take documentation of it, people won't know.

-- Janelle Monae

Quote of the Day

Sometimes art is showing us what is wrong or good or fun about the world we inhabit, but other times it's showing us a made-up world, with, for instance, trolls and mermaids, or magical old-lady detectives. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 84

Quote of the Day

The things we care about are the things we make art about.  We frame them with our attention.  Art is proof of care. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82

Quote of the Day

What an artist chooses to write or make drawings or songs about, can draw our attention to certain worlds.  It tells us that somebody takes something seriously, perhaps finds it beautiful or threatening, and invites us to rethink how we feel about it. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82

Quote of the Day

Art is how adults play.  Art is the continuation of play into adulthood.  We keep playing as adults because we need to keep learning.  Play is research.  In art we research our feelings. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 72

Quote of the Day

Art is effective because it is safe.  You can read a novel and experience the horror of a prison or the beauty of deep love -- but you don't have to endure the real-world consequences of those things.  You can shut the book.  You can leave the gallery.  You can stop dancing, close your eyes, exit the movie theatre.  You can go away and you can get back to your life.  But you can take with you some memory of the feelings you had and that can change you. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35

Quote of the Day

Art can have a tremendous effect on the world -- that is why dictators have been so eager to lock artists away or employ them as propagandists. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35

Quote of the Day

There are many examples of art changing the course of history, advancing revolutions, bringing stone-cold people to tears and horrifying conservative parents. 

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35

Bookin' It in 2025

For a plethora of positive reasons, I was only able to finish reading a mere five books in 2025.  They are as follows.

1. Emerging from the Cracks: My Journey to Authentic Living by C. H. Danton (second time)
2. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson 
3. Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (second time)
4. Keith Haring Pop Up Book 
5. 107 Days by Kamala Harris