Third Anniversary of Cats Out of the Box

Yes, it is that time again.  My blog “Cats Out of the Box” turns three today.  Time to thank everyone who has helped make it another memorable and successful year.

Angus, my Cat Out of the Box

• A extra special thank you to my friend Kate in Japan.  She provides me with origami paper, green tea treats, and a valuable perspective of Japanese culture which helps expand many of the topics I write about.  Thank you!
• To Joe, if not for your gentle push, this blog would not exist.  Again a gentle thank you in return.
• My friend the poet, D. Eric Hanson for letting me use his poetry in my blog (see the attached link Poetry to My Eyes and Ears).  His poetry touches my heart and enhances my life.
• To my family, you know who you are, I love you all more than you could ever know.  Thank you for your assistance, positive feedback and support as I continue to explore my art and creativity.  You inspire me to be the best artist and creative person I can be.
• To my friends, thank you for conversations that end up being the sparks that inspire blog posts.  Thank you for going hiking with me in all kinds of weather.  And thank you for being there for me.  I appreciate you.  Yes you.  All of you.
• My Readers/blog friends, who follow my blog, I am grateful for your support and that of the blog community.  I am continually inspired by all of you.  No matter where you are in the world or what your blog is about….. your creativity, bravery in sharing feelings and ideas, and support make me proud to be a part of the blogging community.
• Thank you to those that like my posts.  I appreciate you taking time to support my creative work.  You motivate me to keep writing.
• Thank you to those that post comments and provide feedback.  I enjoy hearing your thoughts about my work.  And I am so proud when something I write inspires others.  Your words mean the world to me.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ~G.K. Chesterton

Depth – 3 Day Quote Challenge – Day 3

Today is the third and final day of the 3 Day Quote Challenge.  I would like to thank Living What You Love for nominating me.  I do enjoy the challenge of finding the quotes, writing what my perspective of them is and then sharing them with others.  So again thank you Living What You Love for providing me this opportunity once again.  If you get a chance please check out the Living What You Love blog.  It inspires personal growth and exploration.

Instead of nominating 3 people to do the challenge every day, I invite everyone to try the  3 Day Quote Challenge or create a quote challenge of their own.  Meditating on a quote is a great way to get creative juices flowing.  This is my chance to invite everyone to try it.

Pick a quote.  Write down why you chose it and what it says to you.  Share this with others if you feel comfortable doing so.  If not, that’s okay too.  If it is comfortable to do this three days in a row, do it.  If it is comfortable to do this project as a quote a week for three weeks in a row, do that.  Maybe choosing a quote once a month speaks to you, then do that.  Just go out there and find a saying that speaks to your heart and soul.  Let me know what quote you found, how the process worked for you, your thoughts and comments.  Most important, did you enjoyed it.

“Stories lie deep in our souls.  Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level.  When I write a novel, I go into such depths.” Haruki Murakami

I love this quote by Haruki Murakami.  I have read a couple of his books and I do think that he does go to that deep place in his heart and soul to write his books.  I also think that this deep place in our hearts and souls is the place that great creative work comes from.

As an artist, when I am working on a project, I can tell when I am in the deep place of my heart and soul.  The work seems to have a life of its own.  It speaks in such a way that it feels authentic.  I am proud of this work.  I feel that if this work is from my heart, that it will speak to others and that this type of work allows for soul to soul conversations.

That is the other part of the quote.  Bringing people together on at this level, having a soul to soul conversation through the creative work.  It is not enough to just create.  We have to share our creative vision with others.

Do the work!  Dig deep!  Create things that you can be proud of!  Create work that starts soul to soul conversations!

Cats – 3 Day Quote Challenge – Day 2

Welcome to day 2 of the 3 day quote challenge.  Thanks goes out to Living What You Love for nominating me to do the 3 Day Quote Challenge.  I really enjoy these challenges and appreciate the thoughtfulness of Living What You Love in nominating me.  If you have a chance I recommend checking out her blog.  It is a blog that encourages personal growth and exploration.

As I said yesterday, I am doing things a little different this time.  Instead of just nominating three people to do the challenge, I am encouraging everyone to try their hand at doing their own version of the 3 day quote challenge.  Meditating on a quote is a great way to get creative juices flowing and I am inviting everyone to try it.

Pick a quote.  Write down why you chose it and what it says to you.  Share this with others if you feel comfortable doing so.  If not, that’s okay too.  If it is comfortable to do this three days in a row, do it.  If it is comfortable to do this project, three weeks in a row, do that.  Maybe choosing a quote once a month speaks to you, then do that.  Just go out there and find a saying that speaks to your heart and soul.  Let me know what quote you found, how the process worked for you, your thoughts and comments.  Most important, did you enjoyed it.

Image of Bast from the Egyptian collection at the British Museum

“In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”  -Terry Pratchett

I am a cat person.  You may have realized this by the name of my blog, “Cats Out of the Box.”  Nothing against dogs.  I have just always bonded with cats.  As I write this post, Angus, my beautiful black cat, is snoring away next to me.

There are so many things that I love about cats.  The way they sleep all curled up or stretched out looking three times longer than their actual length.  Purring.  Angus does this thing where she puts her head against my forehead.  I like to think that it is her way of saying, “Hello, my human.”  Cats choose their people.  Angus chose me.  A cats nose is like our fingerprints, no two are alike.  Every cat I have been adopted by has had their own personality.  You don’t own a cat, they choose you.  They are fiercely independent but let you know when they want attention: laying on your laptop; the newspaper; rubbing against your legs; and a million other creative ways of saying, “Hey, pay attention to me!”

Angus sleeping in the sunbeam.

I have read a couple of articles about famous people who were also cat people.  One had photos of famous writers with their cats.  Another listed 110 famous cat lovers throughout time.  You get the gist.  Below are just 10 of the many cat people from history:

1. Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln’s cat, Tabby, was the first of several cats to live in the White House.
2. Sir Isaac Newton – Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist who first described the principle of gravity, also invented the swinging cat door for the convenience of his many cats.
3. Ernest Hemingway – One of Ernest Hemingway’s most unusual cats was a six-toed cat given to him by a ship’s captain. He owned over 30 cats!
4. Edgar Allan Poe – Although Edgar Allan Poe used cats as symbols of the sinister in several of his stories, he himself owned and loved cats.
5. Florence Nightingale – Nightingale had owned 60 cats during her lifetime and was famously credited to have remarked that cats possess more sympathy and feeling than human beings.
6. Alexander Dumas – Alexander Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers, owned a cat called Mysouff.  This cat was known for his extrordinary perception of time. Mysouff could predict what time his master would finish work, even when his master was working late.
7. Albert Schweitzer – Although left-handed, Dr. Schweitzer would often write prescriptions with his right hand because his cat Sizi liked to sleep on his left arm and could not be disturbed.
8. Charles Dickens – Charles Dickens cat gave birth to a litter of kittens.  Dickens only allowed one of these kittens to remain with its mother.  The kitten was known as the ‘Master’s Cat’.  The kitten would snuff out Dickens candle in order to gain his attention.
9. T.S. Elliot – The Nobel Prize-winning British poet, playwright, and cat lover, T.S. Eliot, wrote an entire book of poems about cats. His Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was set to music by Andrew Lloyd Weber and became the long-running musical, Cats.
10. Mark Twain – Twain was frequently photographed with cats and often featured them in his literature. He kept many cats at his family home in Missouri and gave them unusual names like Sour Mash, Appollinaris, Zoroaster, and Blatherskite.

How does one end a purr-fect post about cats?  As a friend of mine, who is a cat person, said, “Dogs are fine; but cats are divine.”

Description of Creative People – 3 Day Quote Challenge – Day 1

It seems that you, my faithful friends and readers, like what I do with quotes in my posts.  I say this because I have been nominated to do another 3 Day Quote Challenge.  Thanks goes out to Living What You Love for nominating me.  Living What You Love is a delightful blog encouraging personal growth and exploration for the young lady who writes it and those who read it.

Instead of nominating 3 people to do the challenge every day, I have decided to make a general challenge or invitation to everyone who follows, reads or just happens upon my blog and is reading it for the very first time.  Meditating on a quote is a great way to get creative juices flowing.  This is my chance to invite everyone to try it.

Pick a quote.  Write down why you chose it and what it says to you.  Share this with others if you feel comfortable doing so.  If not, that’s okay too.  If it is comfortable to do this three days in a row, do it.  If it is comfortable to do this project, three weeks in a row, do that.  Maybe choosing a quote once a month speaks to you, then do that.  Just go out there and find a saying that speaks to your heart and soul.  Let me know what quote you found, how the process worked for you, your thoughts and comments.  Most important, did you enjoyed it.

Now for my quote for the 1st day of the 3 day quote challenge!

“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.” ~Henri Matisse

I agree 100% with Henri Matisse on this one.  Here is why:

• Curious – When you tell a creative person something, they want to know why.  How does it work?  Who said that?  What are you doing?  A creative person is curious and they love to learn new stuff ALL the time.
• Flexible – A creative person is willing to try different materials, methods, ideas, tools, etc. until they get the results that they are looking for.  They approach a problem from many angles while looking for a solution.
• Persistent –  A creative person sees the problem and tries many different ways to solve it.  All of the tries may include canvas, brushes and paint (it just depends on what the creative person’s area of creativity is); but I guarantee that each attempt will be unique and will provide a solution slightly different from the last one.  A creative person will not stop until they have found a solution that satisfies them.
• Independent – As my niece Sonja was known to say, “Me do it.”  It isn’t that a creative person doesn’t need other people.  They just like to do their creative work on their own, in their own way, without distractions.
• Spirit of Adventure – Creative individuals are interested in new ideas, different places and trying new things.  They are explorers, inventors, artists, musicians, travelers, innovators, etc.
• Love of play – This may be the most important trait of all.  Creative people still have childlike wonder for the world.  They think of their creative work as play.  This wonder and enjoyment of play helps them to live in the moment, see solutions to problems, and challenge the world around them.

I want to end this blog with another challenge.  If you have not seen the work of Henri Matisse, I highly recommend checking it out.  He was a painter, collage artist and also made artist books.  My favorite thing about his work is the use of color.  But don’t take my word for it.  Go explore and be creative!

 

Ship of Fools

It is almost a guarantee that if I read a book, cannot put it down, and have ideas swirling through my brain upon finishing it….. I will be writing about it in my blog.  Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo is one of those books.

Originally published in 2001, I cannot believe that I hadn’t heard about this book before.  Thanks goes out to Matt Staggs for writing an article called “So You Want to Read Generation Ship Fiction: Here’s Where to Start” and recommending this book in the article for the Unbound Worlds web site.  I have found many of the articles on this site to be interesting, informative and worth checking out.

The book jacket describes Ship of Fools as follows:

“Home to generations of humans, the starship Argonos has wandered aimlessly throughout the galaxy for hundreds of years, desperately searching for other signs of life.  Now, a steady, unidentifiable transmission lures them toward a nearby planet, where the grisly remains of a former colony await the crew.  Haunted by what they have seen, the crew has no choice but to follow when another signal beckons the Argonos into deep space – and into the dark heart of an alien mystery….”

The narrator is named Bartolomeo and is the adviser to Nikos, the captain of the Argonos.  Theirs is a complicated relationship as evidenced in the opening paragraphs of the novel.  Also in these first paragraphs is an almost palpable sense of foreboding.  I have included them below.

“We had not made landfall in more than fourteen years.  One disastrous choice of a star after another.  The captain viewed this string of failures as absurdly bad luck; the bishop, as divine intervention.  Either way, I saw it as prelude to the captain’s downfall, which almost certainly Meant my own downfall as well.

When we detected a transmission from the world that would later be called Antioch, I sensed opportunity.  But opportunity for whom?  The captain, or his enemies? It was impossible to say.  The captain’s position was tenuous at best, and everything was uncertain aboard the Argonos.”  Chapter 1, Page 3

There are many themes running through this captivating novel.  I am going to touch on just a few of them.

One theme is the class conflict between the top siders and the down siders.  Down siders do all the scut work on the ship and are not allowed to leave it.  Top siders are the ruling elite.  All captains come from this group.  There is also the crew who run the ship.  They follow the captains orders but have a set of rules all their own.  Add to this a religious group lead by the Bishop.  One of the things that I found most interesting about the social stratification of the ship was that the captain managed the ship and made a majority of decisions, but it was the Bishop who determined which star system they traveled to.

Another theme is about making decisions and the consequences of those decisions.  At one point Bartolomeo is lamenting that the captain should not take advice from him because some of his decisions had been unsuccessful.

“‘Everything you said is true,’ Nikkos added, ‘but it’s not that simple.  Your choices, your decisions, were not necessarily the wrong choices.  Sometimes, they were the right choices, the moral choices.  They just didn’t work out.'” – Chapter 50, page 333

This really resonated with me.  It reminded me of some advice I was given after dealing with a particularly unpleasant situation.  I was told that “You do the best that you can with the tools and information that you have at that time.”

Another theme of this book was what is evil?  Can we even comprehend pure evil?  I am not going to go into this theme too deeply because I would give away too much.  But it is good to keep this theme in mind when reading the book.

Some of the other themes of the novel include faith, purpose, and interpretation of objects and situations that are alien (this is a sub-category of the decision theme).

I highly recommend the novel Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo.  That said, this novel isn’t for everyone.  There are some suspense building sequences and descriptions of grisly remains that may be disturbing for some readers.  Well written with an intriguing story, this novel is worth reading.

Lo and Behold

The documentary film “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World” directed by Werner Herzog is a must see for anyone curious about the internet.  Released in 2016, this film is a meditative examination of the history, present and future of the internet.  The documentary features interviews with experts whose insights and technological breakthroughs helped shaped the internet at its inception and interviews with people whose lives have been affected by the internet, as well as hackers, inventors and creators who are influencing the internet of today and tomorrow.

The film is broken into 10 sections that examine a different aspect of the internet:

• Early Days
• The Glory of the Net
• The Dark Side
• Life Without the Net
• The End of the Net
• Earthly Invaders
• Internet on Mars
• Artificial Intelligence
• The Internet of Me
• The Future

If you get this documentary on disc, I highly recommend watching the interview of Werner Herzog in the bonus materials section.  Hearing the director describe his research, methods and why he wanted to do the film was very interesting.  He states at one point that he had never used a telephone until he was seventeen years old.  That the kids of today can’t even relate to that idea.  It makes sense if you think about how many people have smart phones today and how young children are when they start to learn how to use them.

This film is a very creative and human look at the internet.  One of the things I enjoy about Werner Herzog’s films are the questions he asks during interviews.  You can hear his curiosity.  These are the types of questions I would want to ask and have answered.

The thing that I took away from the film is that this invention, the internet, has changed the way in which we live and interact with each other.  At one point, Werner Herzog is asking scientists what the future of the internet will look like.  And of course, they all have different visions depending on their areas of expertise.  One scientist asked the question of will we need other people or will we just need the internet in the future.  I thought that was an excellent question.  One question that I keep pondering is does this technology bring us closer together or separate us further?

Lo and behold, we know not what the future of this technology will bring.

Haiku Poem #5

The news: gloom and doom

War, Terror, Hate, Rape, Murder

Where is the good news?