Per the photo, this is the brief moment when my son and I are like nesting dolls. Not only a favorite image of mine but an increasingly favorite pair of shoes.
Reminds me of this bit from Stanford University’s Robin E. Rider in Manuscript Collections and the Biographical Enterprise regarding the Allen Ginsberg archive and its inclusion of “personal effects”:
“This last category has caught the press’s fancy, and caused Stanford much flak, since it is said to include Ginsberg’s tennis shoes, beard trimmings, and dried plant material from South America.”
Word was that the poet scored a cool million for his papers, ephemera, beard, shoes and presumably pot (his was in ’96, making it one of the biggest drug deals of 20th century). Duly inspired, I revved up curation of my own “Smithsonian Box” with the hope of someday unloading it on some sucker academy for an equally outrageous sum.
Perhaps I’ll toss our limited edition Russian Nesting Doll Shoes in the box.
Here’s a bit I wrote about the Smithsonian Box sometime back, which my pal Geoff Cain once assailed as nostalgic (the fool! It’s camouflaged self-aggrandizement and impossible to see beyond one’s own! Bwahaha!). Anyway…
