I have until this very moment carefully avoided using the term “kitsch” in my writing.  I have a folder of photographs with that name, but I haven’t used the term publicly for fear that it is too judgmental, too superior, too patronizing.

When I use the term “kitsch” to describe elements of the wonderfully quirky front yard at 2634 McGee, I do so in a laudatory sense.  I love the lamps:

I admire the ethnic stereotype ceramic figures.  I sense irony here, not naive racism.

I confess that I am not especially fond of the bunnies, but I accept them as part of the bigger package.

Most of all I like what is best of all – the small world in front of the house.  It is not over-the-top.  It is not too much.  It is, for me, just right:

This is the only lighthouse that I remember seeing in a  Berkeley yard.  I might be wrong.  There is a stunning one on Arlington in El Cerrito.

For obvious reasons, my friend is simultaneously drawn to and repelled by small-world tableaux.   He was busy writing a short story based on this photograph:

The working title of his story was “When Timothy Leary Sat Next to Alduous Huxley in 1961.”  I am not sure where the story goes after that title, but what do I know?  I asked his opinion of the McGee small world and kitsch.