The perfect storm begins

An email almost exactly a year ago from my friend, the artist Holly Roberts:

And Missy, why aren't you doing a blog?  You're a good writer, you're living this exotic life in a very foreign city, you're an artist and it sounds like you feel somewhat disconnected from your world in China.  What could be a better perfect storm?

So here it finally is: a blog that searches thru the contents of the 64 + 3 drawers of a 100+ year old Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Cabinet, a cabinet that I stocked over the course of 5 years with the puzzles & wonders of my Shanghai life.

Over the next year, I'll post a drawer a week, in random sequence as current adventures inspire...& add occasional posts on curiosities, newly discovered, that should have made it into the cabinet & posts on curiosities that just don't fit into a  x 4.25 x 4.5 inch container.

This blog will be my new wunderkammer, a 'chamber of miracles.' I hope.
(The quote is from a wonderful book by Phillip Blom, To Have & To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting.)