Dr. Kenny's Horrible Hall of Mirrors
Kenneth Wolman
- Location
- Bristol, Pennsylvania, US
- Birthday
- February 23
- Title
- Front parlor piano player
- Company
- Mamie's Cathouse
- Bio
- I am 66 (oh shit), straight, divorced, an Episcopal convert from Judaism, and I've had a collection of experiences that have left me intensely grateful that I'm still breathing at the same time I'm angry at some things that have come at me from outside. Angry. Somehow, it's supposed to be a bad thing if you're described as "angry." I guess I'm doing a bad thing, then, one among many. I've seen a bumper sticker that reads, "If you're not outraged you're not paying attention," and I absolutely subscribe. People get upset, justifiably, over wars, international politics, the local legislative swamps in our backyard. But I'm not sure how many people are willing to take on and unearth the misery that too often infects daily life. If I have a mission (God, how pretentious!), that might be it. Unfortunately the life I know best is my own. So what you get from that grandfatherly looking old sonofabitch in the avatar is what I sincerely hope is directed anger, exposure of the daily pain of living in a world we can't really fix, and how we use the tools open to us--including writing--to cope with the unacceptable and, when possible, "man up" and risk telling the truth even to power. Of course, that insures that the prospective bosses who read here to prescreen me will never even call me in, right?
MY RECENT POSTS
- Tolstoy the Wonder-Cat
May 27, 2012 10:32PM - Going home
May 24, 2012 10:59AM - Going home
May 24, 2012 10:59AM - Richard Avedon’s visions
April 26, 2012 08:49AM - Working women? Women working?
April 19, 2012 03:32PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Hey, I've missed writing
to you. I've heard of
Prescott,
oddly enough. And I
must…”
May 24, 2012 08:21PM - “I can't imagine assuming
that horrible responsibility,
even
if you really need
a…”
November 23, 2011 11:16AM - “I've always thought the
world was dangerous. Maybe
that's me
losing MY father
whe…”
November 23, 2011 11:14AM - “Thanks for kind
thought!”
September 30, 2011 02:59PM - “I'm sure you've been
asked this 1,000 times, but
how did you
make it through
Katr…”
November 20, 2010 06:10PM
Kenneth Wolman's Links
Tolstoy the Wonder-Cat
I’m surprised I didn’t put a picture of Tolstoy out into the blog long ago. I’ve had him with me since July 2002. He’s quite photogenic and doesn’t mind having a camera shoved in his face. In fact, the main thing he cares about is being fed according to his own… Read full post »
Going home
I’m leaving Pennsylvania and moving back to New Jersey.
Okay, start the jokes. Which Exit? And blah-blah-blah….
Actually, the exit off the Garden State Parkway is Exit 105. It’s Long Branch, and that’s where I’m going.
I don’t have a long history with Pennsylvania.… Read full post »
Going home
I’m leaving Pennsylvania and moving back to New Jersey.
Okay, start the jokes. Which Exit? And blah-blah-blah….
Actually, the exit off the Garden State Parkway is Exit 105. It’s Long Branch, and that’s where I’m going.
I don’t have a long history with Pennsylvania.… Read full post »
Richard Avedon’s visions
I used to have an attitude toward fashion-related photograph that it was not photojournalism and so it was a technically adept but soulless practice: pretty pictures of beautiful women but fundamentally empty.
Then I saw Richard Avedon’s work and I was flipped around. Entirely.
Avedon was the p… Read full post »
Working women? Women working?
So Mitt has an issue with married women raising kids? Oh God…I don’t want to do this, so I’ll keep it brief. Anything more would be too much for Romney to absorb.
I worked during the years my former wife worked at home seeing to our two sons. At times my… Read full post »
Self-forgiveness when you can’t get it from anyone else
Less than a month ago, I wounded someone who I had no intention of hurting. I told her things about myself not too many people knew. And I told them to her (via email) because I read her books and saw in her past a kindred spirit. I may have–no certainly–misjudged… Read full post »
What is an evangelical? What is a Catholic?
So now everyone is running up against Mitt Romney as a Mormon as opposed to other candidates as in bed with evangelical Christians? Well, I’m not exactly in love with Romney but I’m also not in love with the whole issue of evangelical Christians either. What the hell is Rick Santorum?… Read full post »
Two related questions
How come Rush Limbaugh can’t refer to John Kerry without adding “…who served in Vietnam“? Hell, Rush, he actually did. Where were you during Vietnam? On a street corner in Cape Girardeau, MO, hustling percocet and oxycontin? You miserable drug addicted cretin.
%IMAGE… Read full post » The so-called party is over
I got my last Unemployment notification this morning. It was a monetary determination and a notice that said “Benefits Exhausted.”
So am I. Exhausted, that is. For over a year I’ve wanted nothing more than to work again at something where I don’t to be on my feet all day or… Read full post »
A personal hero: W. Eugene Smith, or Two Degrees of Separation
This is a man I wish I had met. I worked for a small bi-weekly suburban newspaper in North Jersey. I got to cover everything: sports, store openings, mall events, portraits. But my editor met Smith at the International Center for Photography and, after his presentation, walked up to him, clutched… Read full post »
JFK Recalled
It’s 48 years to the day that John F. Kennedy, U.S. President, was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Nobody who turned himself into one of the great Someones of American history, right up there with John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guitot, and Leon Czolgosz, I’ve heard some maniacal speed ra… Read full post »
It’s high time
I can’t travel every well because of foot and money issues, but I’ve been following the Wall Street protests since they started and began to spread. The opponents denounce the protesters as un-American, anarchistic, bums, grubby, spongers who never had to meet a payroll…well, you ca… Read full post »
S.O.L.
You know what that abbreviation means, don’t you? I define it.
I’ve begun hunting for yet another place to live. It’s dangerous here, to both my physical and emotional health. I can’t afford it: especially not since I lost any source of steady income. So I’m back to bein… Read full post »
I have an insane cat
Tolstoy is my cat. I love him to death, but he’s insane. There was a cartoon strip many years ago called Krazy Kat. in Tolstoy’s case, that fits.
This morning, I heard this thrashing around outside the kitchen Tolstoy tore through the room leaving a jet trail behind him. He looked… Read full post »
Troy Davis, RIP
Some of you may think I’m one of those do-gooders or sob-sisters who feels for the murderer and doesn’t give a damn about the victim of the killing.
Congratulations. You’re so wrong I can smell the decayed fecal matter clear from Pennsylvania.
Troy Davis didn’t die for my sins… Read full post »
Welcome to the Tenth Anniversary
I feel weird and almost ghoulish writing this. It sounds like the invitation to a party and it’s anything but. It’s a commemoration of one of the worst things that ever happened in this country. It’s certainly one of the worst things that ever happened in my eyesight.
I hope my… Read full post »
In Memory of Andrew Gold
Andrew Gold, the singer and songwriter is dead, and I feel just a bit poorer this morning than I did yesterday.
Gold helped heal me one hot evening in July 1977. I had just returned from the hospital where my wife was awaiting a therapeutic D&C the next morning following an… Read full post »
Homage to Jackie Robinson
Today,
all the baseball players in both leagues are wearing number 42 in
homage to the first Black man to set foot on a baseball diamond. He
changed everything, and his contribution is properly
recognized.
On Tuesday, April 15, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson played his first game for the hither… Read full post »
It Can’t Happen Here Until It Can
Right now I’m fighting an attempt to evict me. I’m behind in the rent because my income–culled from Social Insecurity, Unemployment, and eventual payments from a community college in Jersey that will not renew me–is leaving me in Pauper’s Paradise with just about enough… Read full post »
Emerging from the shambles after a year
“I guess some mistakes we never stop paying for.”
“I believe we have two lives: the one we learn in and the one we live with afterward.”
Roger Towne, script for The Natural, 1984
It’s January 3, 2011, the anniversary of my first year in this apartment, in Bristol, PA. Li… Read full post »
My site stats for 2010
WordPress sent me information about my readership.
<a>http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?yib=2010</a>.
I don’t quite know what it all means except that people out there read me. For which I am grateful. So thank you.
%IMA… Read full post » 
ManhattanWhiteGirl
Lyn LeJeune
Lairderg
Danielle Ofri
Living with Caer
Owl_Says_Who
Salon.com