Nobody Asked Me, But...
Laurel Kenner's cabinet of curiosities. In homage to Jimmy Cannon, a newsman who stayed curious.
Certain activities widely believed to be simple to do—growing tomatoes, pruning trees, creating economic equity—often carry hidden difficulties.
Maybe you had to have been alive when Jimmy Carter was president to really understand inflation.
Taxing the value of your stocks and other holdings before you sell them—aka mark-to-market—is such a terrible idea that the progressives are pushing it.
Why is “progressive” OK in the AP Stylebook but not “pro-life”?
This Scarlatti sonata is fun to play.
Biden asked the White House legal counsel back in April to tell him whether it would be legal to forgive student loans (now $1.6 trillion). Not a peep on that since. One guess: Joe’s caretakers clued him in to the possible financial disaster resulting from massively screwing over holders of student loan-based bond. Here’s a very good article on that by Jack Du.
Here’s a lovely piece by my friend Bo Keeley—psychiatric tech therapist, veterinarian, and author:
In working in a half-dozen asylums across the country, the life lessons were to enjoy the little things, never judge a book by its cover, it gets better, and to never return.
It’s been years since I worked in a looney bin, and these days I long for it. So, it is the Slab City Doll Asylum to the rescue. The first time I saw it advertised and directed by a brilliant redhead, I was smitten with how the plastic inmates resembled flesh ones.
There is an Exorcist Protagonist and another like Groucho Marx. A few look like they bite like the old folks I used to work with in senior homes. If I had to choose a favorite it would be Baby with skull sutures like a picture puzzle not completed, who growls ‘Ring around the Rosy’— a childhood poem to many, but on the doll a rosy rash, symptom of the plague, until ‘all fall down’. Other doll names are self-descriptive like Human Transformation, Sad Clown, LSD expert, Dr. Hernia, Sit and Be Silent, Better Than Alive, and Failed Treatment.
The asylum director acquires broken, abandoned, and weathered dolls from the wash, Slab estates, donations, and abandoned meth camps, including the vacated children’s FEMA tent. Collection is the easy part, and then begins the transformation. The creator models dolls after people she knows. Each is therapeutic, like a reverse voodoo, because the models see themselves in plastic and laugh. That is healing art.
The best thing about the Doll Asylum is the inmates cannot be medicated. The message is this is what happens when you medicate human beings. They look, walk, and act like plastic.
Each doll must be insane to be admitted, which has deterred me from becoming Bo the Shrink. Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, rebels, and troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The breed that won’t fit in but are trying in the Asylum. I’ve found in the real places that one conversation with the insane is worth a thousand with idiots.
The Doll Asylum is closed for COVID, but you may write letters or emails to the better-functioning dolls.
I’m taking a free course from MoMa, Modern Art and Ideas, and came across an artist I’d never heard of, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He was among the artists targeted by the Nazis.
You really must listen to this Schubert serenade.
Y’all are always welcome to read for free, but I surely would appreciate your support. You can be a founding member for any sum, or you can pay about the price of a cup of coffee for a weekly cabinet of curiosities.
