Mr.Piffka's Quotes

I have a soft spot in my heart for Goethe...

G.W. Bush Compedium
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

"I think war is a dangerous place."

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

"...the role of the military is to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place."

"We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace."

"Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."

"...and as a matter of fact, we'll decide the course of democracy by the use of force, and that is the opposite of democracy."

"Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

George W. Bush (1946-)
Twice chosen as leader of the 'free world.'

Hi osso!

"I bet what happened was, they discovered fire and invented the wheel on the same day. Then, that night, they burned the wheel."
Jack Handey (1949- )



Jjorge! I like your signature line*.

Washington Irving was an interesting character whom I've long admired. It was his interest in the ruins of Granada that helped re-introduce the world to the Alhambra. I think it was close to three years that he spent living in some of the rooms and a garden overlooking the city and writing his stories of Spain. As it happens, I visited his gravesite in homage one Halloween, too.

*(just in case you change it..."There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place." -Washington Irving)

Hi Piff!

I posted a greeting to you YESTERDAY but somehow it got lost in cyberspace!

Glad you liked the quotation. It really, really resonates with me.

Thanks for the bio info. on Washington Irving -fascinating!

I am still here in Rogue Island.
I'm behind schedule in getting my house on the market but now hope to have an open house on the second Sunday in October (fingers crossed).

I've been a little obsessive-compulsive about sprucing up the house and completing my landscape plan. I want it, and the yard to be perfect.

My friends and neighbors are 'ooh-ing and ah-ing' over it and they all say things like: "You've made it so beautiful, how can you leave it?"

Well, at the risk of sounding grandiose, I feel like it's my little work of art, and I want it to be 'finished' when I sell it.

btw In my evaporated message of yesterday I asked if you had a nice summer. I hope so. Did you take another grand tour like last year's?

Jjorge--

You don't "sell" a garden--you simply bequeath it to the next custodian.

Well, an artist sells his work, does he not?


PS nice to see you Noddy!

Jjorge--

Thanks for the kind words. You're a poster who always improves my mood.

No one said you can't get money in exchange for your masterwork.

thanks Noddy. The feeling is mutual.

- Randy Newman, God's Song

-- -- -- -- -- --

Hello Jjorge! And here, I've been imagining you in Virginia, you Rogue, you! I imagine your garden must be wonderful -- I remember photographs of your earlier one.

As for me -- no grand tours but lots of projects and events and classes. I went to South Dakota -- does that count? Among other things, I'm writing poetry and trying my hand at oil painting, too.

Here are a couple of poems that try to capture that:

VAUGHN PLEIN AIR I
Mi color favorito es el cielo.
To wit, a squeeze of Naples Yellow.

My favorite color is the sky;
Glorious! Glorious to my eyes.

Imagine the abyss of Ultramarine (deep).
I mix the pigments in my keep.
Quinacridone Rose, a natural hue
Roils on the palette… sky not Blue,
But Gray.
Silver.
Gold.
Green.
All the colors in-between.
Toned by Flake White - necessary poison --
Smeared on stretches of Belgian linen.

It is a strange brew that feeds my soul.



VAUGHN PLEIN AIR II

How can I catch
The light dappling
Evanescent reflections in constant motion
As the bay flows
Into itself?

Dapples are easy on a horse -
Feed fresh corn in tasty, broken-up chunks
Twice daily.
Include the green crisp shucks and browning silk.
A black mare will have her tell-tale spots in a week.

What snares
Silvery, golden glittering scudding breaks of surface tension
Wavering with tide and breeze:
Geomagnetic geomancy?
It eludes my magic.

Impossible to capture!
This sable brush with three singlet hairs
From some poor dead creature of the Siberian steppes,
Kolinsky and I have trouble
Despite all the time in the world.

Bravo!

Hiya, Pan! Are you safe from all the hurricanes? How are things???

safe...and sound.
Last night we played at this guys 80th birthday party. 130 people showed up to honor him. A life well lived.

Hi Piffka and all the other wise quoters. Piff, your poetry is lovely and somewhat poignant, knowing of the death, in northern California, of the plein air artist friend of osso. They do convey the beauty of nature and the difficulty of painting, trying to reproduce, something that is indescribable. Wach time Dys and I take a trip, I stutter and stumble trying to find an appropriate word to give justice to the beauty of the roadside black-eyed Susan's as well as the vast magnificance of Monument Valley. I admire your many talents. There is another talent I would love to see you pursue--political commentary. You have that ability to get right to the crux of an issue.

How's Pearl?

"In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from." -- Peter Drucker

"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." -- Abraham Lincoln

Jjorge, didn't you just move in a year ago? I admit that I don't read a2k as much as I used to, but I thought you were settled with no thought of leaving. Have anymore pics of your garden now?

Hi Piff,

I don't know what 'plein air' means but I heartily concur w. Diane who said:

"...your poetry is lovely..... They do convey the beauty of nature and the difficulty of painting, trying to reproduce, something that is indescribable..."



Diane I have been in my house for twenty months.

I love the house but the cost of living here is high and if I stay I would not be able to retire for another 5-7 years.

Further, my job here in R.I. has become increasingly stressful and frustrating.

Because of the lower cost of living (especially housing) in Southwest Virginia I can retire THERE immediately if I wish.

I also have family in Blacksburg and find the area very appealing.

Besides...I am a GEMINI! ...twenty months is a long time for us!


PS hope you and Dys are doing well. Give him my regards.

"We'll need to have five million people in Washington for the media to say that we had one hundred thousand."

(Cindy Sheehan, heroine of the anti-war movement, at a rally in Providence R.I. 9.18.05)

(Good one, Jjorge, and true.) I've missed the last couple of days... been busy.

Sunday's:
"There is one thing worse than slow, inefficient, ineffective government. That would be fast, efficient, effective government."
Phil Kennedy (1949- )

Monday's:
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."
Peter Ustinov (1921-2004)

Panzade -- I heard that parts of Florida were being evacuated. WHEN, oh WHEN is it safe to go the Keys? February?

What a great sounding party! 80th? Eeeyikes. Why does that not sound quite so old as it used to? I'll bet your band rocked. There is a young girl around here getting ready to have her 21st birthday party at the local jazz club -- JazzBones -- and I was thinking how much fun it would be to go to that. (Mid-week though... yawn... could we be human the next day?)


Jjorge and Diane -- thanks for the compliments.

Diane -- many talents is really just many decisions to try, and then to truly not care about the outcome. Of course, I want things to be good but I don't hang off them. It's like cooking dinner -- some days are better than others. You are right that the tragedy you mentioned has made me think a lot. We all need to use our time wisely.

What a blast it would be to go to Monument Valley and paint. What a GREAT IDEA!!!! I'm sure the palette colors would be quite a bit different.

Pearl is doing well and, as you might imagine, covered with dapples just now from being fed corn. I am so transparent!


Jjorge -- Plein Air is pretty much what it looks like, plain air or more correctly OPEN air. It was an art movement started in France and occurred when a way was found to put the paints into metal tubes so they could be moved around (as opposed to.... I don't know what... paints in some other kind of containers in a studio). All those cute little French caricatures of a painter in a cover-up and a hat and an easel... that's Plein Air. Mr.Piffka bought me art lessons last year and at Christmas gave me leave to buy an easel (a Jullian easel is da kine) and a bunch of supplies. Our friend is an oil painter of note and has been giving me lessons. Besides his very real talent, he has infinite patience and a great sense of humor so he is a perfect teacher for me.

Of course you are a Gemini, Of course you need change. Virginia would be very nice, especially with family nearby.

<Hugs>

"The supernatural is the natural not yet understood."
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915)

How exciting! ...and it sounds like you're having a wonderful time.

PS thanks for the hug!



PPS Here's an Auden quote I came across today:

'A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.'
-W. H. Auden