a riot of red tulips

This post continues the bullet list of qualities and experiences I think helped me evolve into the person I am today, given a shaky start.

red tulips up close

So far we have:

1. Therapy
2. Limerance

Limerance is a new word for me — I first saw a reference to it in The New Humanism, a recent New York Times column by David Brooks in which he discusses the ideas developed more fully in his new book, The Social Animal. This is how Brooks defined limerance in his column:

Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

time to make a lemon tart

The wiki entry for limerance more negatively describes the term as a neologism, originated by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov, for a state of obsessive romantic passion. Aside from a couple of intense crushes that didn’t pan out over the years, I’ve not experienced anything like the kind of unrequited love described in the wiki entry; my fears of rejection and intrusive thoughts during stage 1 — fantasy — of romantic love were symptoms of the normal dysfunctional besottedness that clears up in stage 2 — reality.

our tulip poplar tree has new leaves

What aligns more closely with my own experience is this entry on pages 208-209 of The Social Animal. Brooks writes:

The desire for limerance drives us to seek perfection in our crafts. Sometimes, when we are absorbed in some task, the skull barrier begins to disappear. An expert rider feels at one with the rhythms of the horse she is riding. A carpenter merges with the tool in his hands. A mathematician loses herself in the problem she is solving. In these sublime moments, internal and external patterns are meshing and flow is achieved. [...] The desire for limerance propels us intellectually. [...] The desire for limerance is at its most profound during those transcendent moments when people feel themselves fused with nature and with God, when the soul lifts up and a feeling of oneness with the universe pervades their being.

Exactly.

there are just a few wisteria blooms

Limerance is sort of like rapture, with a dash of harmony, a teaspoon of mastery and tablespoon of total absorption thrown in.

Blessed with a sunny disposition, a sense of humor and silliness and heapfuls of limerance, I spent a lot of time in childhood lost in other worlds, from the amusing to the sublime: gothic, mystery and animal novels, TV show sets, radio shows, phonograph records of classical and popular music, music and dance lessons and practice, school homework at my desk or the school library or the library downtown, sketching and drawing, gardening, dog walking, bicycle riding, horseback riding, sewing and swimming. I was always falling in love, with people, characters, ideas, pets and projects. It mystified me when friends would complain of boredom as I was rarely bored.

sunny me

red bud tree blossoms

During the sixteen years I lived with them, my parents, albeit lacking skills in the parental nurturing department, did, as I mentioned in this earlier post, offer opportunities for educational enrichment at times when it was financially feasible. In my case this meant tap, ballet and baton twirling lessons 1965-1967 when my father was employed in the New Jersey instruments division of  Singer Sewing Company developing guidance systems for the NASA Apollo lunar modules (that helped put a man on the moon), and, during the years my father worked for Long Island, New York Vernitron Corporation, private cello and piano lessons from a graduate of The Julliard School and an accomplished cellist in the Long Island performing arts scene of that time.

gingko tree -- new baby leaves

My parents couldn’t afford to buy a cello for me, but in those days the Huntington, Long Island public schools offered rich music programs with school instruments you could take home for practice and private instruction. There was a piano in the living room, a Baldwin upright if I remember correctly. My mother liked to play and sing hymns and old songs from this song book. I sometimes sang with her and believe these times of singing together and of watching my father listen to classical music with a look of regal delight as he conducted with an invisible baton inspired my life-long interest in music.

Get Together Songs

All the Songs You Love to Sing

I am grateful to my parents for this gift of the love of music.

On the occasion of my engagement to my second husband I asked for a piano in lieu of an engagement ring and that is how I came to own the piano pictured in this post.

I still have and love this piano, shown below along with the very good quality cello I finally bought for myself in 2005.

piano and cello as they looked five minutes ago

I do not get to play piano or cello very much these days. Practicing takes more time than ever seems to be available and anyway as members of the St Matthew’s Chancel Choir we get to sing gorgeous stuff like this.

Limerance is a quality that doesn’t fade with age. I am still always falling in love. Martin does as well. Lately we’ve both been getting lost in the world of sewing, me sewing tops and Martin sewing vintage tailored men’s shirts — he’s blogging too!

I tried saving that floral shirt by re-cutting and sewing it in a size small for my daughter but though it came out okay and in working on it I learned how to sew in the round using a serger, my daughter didn’t like the cowl neck.

V8634 size small

Actually it didn’t come out okay, at least not in my opinion. Sewing in the round using a serger is a tricky business — mistakes were made and had to be fixed with hand sewing. This would have been okay for my daughter but given that she doesn’t want the top, it will have to be discarded as a test shirt.

In Duchesse’s excellent post about eccentricity vs elegance in 50+ style, I told the story of sewing this top using a sparkly red fabric and wearing it to a party only to have someone remark “you look like a Christmas tree.”

V8634 christmas tree top

Here’s the fabric up close.

sparkles

I thought it was fun but what do you think? No red sparkles ever or only at Christmas time? Or only if the fabric is of high quality — the fabric pictured above is not as I’m still getting my sewing chops back and didn’t want to waste good fabric.

In closing, I think limerance is closely related to beauty but I can’t say exactly why I think so. It is more of a feeling.

beauty

I leave you with the gorgeous voice of gorgeous Katherine Growdon, mezzo soprano and our former alto section lead in the St Matthew’s choir, singing last Thursday at the Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church. Scroll in 3:06 minutes to skip the introduction.

See you next week!

Fallen Angel - Alexandre Cabanel

Doesn’t this dark angel seem worthy of a Wendy Brandes custom jewelry design?

Over the years people have asked how I managed to get through the challenging circumstances of my upbringing.

The answer is complicated. As a lover of bullet lists, I want to make a bullet list, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. So I’ll try to tackle one bullet point per post over the next several posts.

The first bullet point is therapy.

Therapy is a particularly loaded topic for me since my parents used it as a way of gauging my progress against their agenda, which mainly consisted of avoiding parental responsibility.

Like Sally Draper, I was sent to therapy to be “fixed” but at some level understood that I wasn’t the problem. I can still recall sitting with various therapists, legs askew, hands fidgeting while professional eyes searched my eyes, looking for clues. What is wrong with Susan?

Meanwhile I continued working pretty hard as a young cellist and pianist and public school student, keeping an A- or B+ grade point average.

My crimes, for which I was kiddie incarcerated, had to do with staying with friends over weekends to avoid being home with my angry mother, and cavorting with boys, sometimes getting a neck hickey. Okay, there was also drinking, cigarette and dope smoking, and other similar risky behaviors, in which all of my Long Island, New York friends circa 1971 were similarly engaged.

The parents of my friends were appalled by what happened to me.

Therapy continued while I was locked up in the Suffolk County Children’s Shelter and later after I was released, the focus of it being on my behavior, not the behavior of my parents. It wasn’t difficult to put two-and-two together regarding who was paying the therapy bills and the therapy content delivered. I still remember one therapist remarking that yes, it’s difficult when parents choose not to parent, as if I should know that this is a typical situation a young person needs to accept.

I tuned out.

For solace, I turned to the life of the mind, and ultimately, after an unfortunate first marriage, embraced career and motherhood during my second marriage as a primary focus.

The Third Temptation, William Blake, 1777-1827. Love the deco-looking Jesus and the typically muscular fallen angel.

Note: doesn’t the above deco Jesus remind you of the Columbia pictures gal? (Jesus and Fashion — there’s a topic!)

I tried therapy on my own during college and my twenties and thirties, but kept encountering sad-sack practitioners, from a psychologist who scribbled on a pad and stared at me yet never spoke — well maybe once during the session he’d say something like “you seem angry” — to an LMFC who talked about herself incessantly while knitting then one day crawled under her desk to avoid a process server who interrupted our session to serve her divorce related papers, to another LMFC who routinely fell asleep during sessions.

The church seemed like a better bet, though I’m not a believer in any traditional sense. It helps considerably that the American Episcopal church is widely inclusive.

There was one brief period during my thirties, when I felt particularly vulnerable, of flirting with devoutness, but generally I self-identify as a secular humanist with great admiration for the aesthetic cultural heritage of the church and its highly-developed vision of the purpose of human life, which besides being a good person, involves understanding a) life is unfair, b) there will be death and destruction, c) carpe diem!

I also embrace ecumenism — there is much to learn from other faith traditions.

Martin and I, both avid fans of Joseph Campbell, relate to pre-Christian ideas of the plant god that we figure Christianity is layered on top of (so California!) — so technically we’re pagans or heathens, but whatever, no one is carding us at the door.

I let the seasonal liturgy wash over me, giving me thoughts to contemplate as I day dream during bible readings and sermons.

For example, this is the season of Lent, during which we’re reminded of the temptation of Christ by Satan, the fallen angel pictured in the two paintings above, and of the idea of victory over sin and death. (Every year some of my church women friends can’t help noticing that in paintings of the Temptation the fallen angel is way sexier than the figure of Christ.)

There have been many notions of victory in the history of the church, most of them focused on the afterlife in which Christ is the sovereign along with his pal God.

When we visited the Melk Abbey In Austria in December, we were both stunned by the amazing crown of victory on the high alter. Martin’s first thought was that any religious/political structure that could convince the people to devote their labor to gilding this church so elaborately could convince those same people to do literally anything.

Melk Abbey - Crown of Victory - Courtesy of http://dhgorman.com/

I am slower to make those kind of judgments, but given what happened in Austria in 1939, it does make me wonder. Maybe I’ll have a better sense of things after I finish reading The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey.

My notion of victory, in the pagan/heathen context, has to with the cycle of life and death. For me, Winter is the time of death, Spring the time of rebirth.

Flowers! - looking good despite the rain deluge

As for life beyond our earthly life-and-death cycle? The Kingdom of God?

Think of Handel. Trumpets blowing. Large bouquets of lilies. Sipping Champagne.

Cherry blossoms!

Happy Spring! I wish you gorgeous flowers and romantic angels.

Note: There wasn’t sufficient interest in the Chanel book giveaway so it’s hereby canceled.

Update: Martin told me that by identifying as a secular humanist I’m essentially saying I’m atheist, but that’s not true. I believe in some kind of divine reality yet remain in full possession of my intellect in interpreting its nature.

my friend rich sent me roses

This post will be a little bit of a mish mash. Apologies in advance.

Last Sunday was my birthday, and I received lovely birthday emails, cards, facebook greetings and some nice presents, like these roses from my friend Rich in New York. I’ve known Rich for forty years, since I was thirteen years old.

i love to receive roses

My friend Jenny bought me a beautiful jacket from Chico’s. I wanted to post a picture, but my camera is charging. Next time.

they look nice from lots of view points

My friend Irina, from Russia, sent me some lip sticks and foundation powders from Silk Naturals. I tried the lipsticks, and like them, but haven’t had time to play with the foundation powders yet.

My friend Edie, from North Carolina, sent me this lovely Eileen Fisher top.

the eileen fisher top fits like a dream

I can’t believe how well it fits and I love it with the coral sweater.

it's an easy top for layering

Eileen Fisher exchanges can’t be processed until the returns are completed and credit applied, so it may be a few more days before the new order is placed let alone shipped. No news there.

The style quest is getting more interesting in that it’s overlapping other personal quests, such as a desire for a creative outlet, insatiable curiosity about anything and everything having to do with cultural history (if you’re behind on culture, Wendy Brandes’ blog is a treasure trove of information!), wanting to get back into sewing and the ongoing process of trying to understand myself.

It took awhile to finish Alicia Drake’s A Beautiful Fall, because I was doing internet research as I read to look up the names of other designers and search for photos. Here’s a lovely tribute to Yves Saint Laurent, with fabulous photos and very quotable quotes.

Yves’ own style icon? Coco Chanel. According to A Beautiful Fall, Yves felt he never reached her level. That made me curious about Coco, which is good, because I won the Sisterhood of the Traveling Book giveaway. Now I can read all about Coco!

sisterhood of the traveling book

My hair stylist, Tony, feels that creativity is motion forward, and this idea captured my imagination, because after watching Daniel Kahneman’s talk The riddle of experience vs. memory, I’ve been thinking a lot about memory and the role it plays in one’s sense of placement in time, and how I experience creativity only when fully present in the moment.

The blog has helped considerably in terms of bringing my story line into the present with an eye to the future. Before the blog, my memory was unedited. Memories of past experiences were raw and full of emotion, as if they had just happened. Now the memories live as written essays of experience, placed in perspective. If a scene replays in my head now, it is sepia toned. I see the characters from a distance. My parents have diminished in power.

This revelation, and Kahneman’s fascinating talk, made me wonder if it might be possible to re-remember experiences, this time internally saying “sorry, you are not important” to the characters who used to loom large and looking past them to see what else is there.

In thinking about memories of fashion, at first I didn’t remind myself to skip past my family and the mean girls at grade school who made fun of my hair and clothes. My mother harshly brushing the hair on the top of my scalp into a small pony tail and winding it tight with a rubber band. The girls at school laughing at the little pony tail, calling it a worm, then calling me a worm, then threatening to beat me up after school, because of the pony tail, my awful home-sewn dress, my stupid shoes. Penny loafers with bright shiny pennies.

I tried again. This time remembering to push those characters aside. What did I see?

My white go-go boots! And red fish net stockings! There I was, in my memory, sticking out my legs to admire the boots and tights. God how I loved those boots. It must have been 1968 or 1969.

What if I can re-remember a better past this way, a little at a time? Not that it can ever erase any of what happened. I’m a realist. But maybe it’s possible to access more of the happiness that was there in the midst of the chaos and pain, and in accessing it, balance the memories.

Living more in the now, I’m feeling more creative, mostly about sewing. Like View A of this Vogue pattern recommended by Kristin of K-Line.

We visited Britex in San Francisco over the holiday weekend to shop for fabric. Martin loved this gorgeous fabric.

Overcome by gorgeousness, he forgot to do the stretch test on the back of the pattern, so we can’t use this fabric for that pattern because it’s not stretchy at all.

Kristin thinks this pattern will work very well with the above fabric. I agree and plan to try it.

Meanwhile, I have other beautiful fabric for that blouse above — sorry no pictures due to the charging camera. I’ll post a photo next time. The blouse isn’t started yet because

• Martin is working on installing shelves in the sewing room,
• I want to read how to resize a pattern to accommodate my waist dimension, using the book Fit For Real People, and
• The Babylock Imagine serger — great for sewing stretch knits — hasn’t yet arrived.

In terms of the continuing style quest, Une femme d’un certain age recommended this book. At first I didn’t want to order it because my book stack is getting unwieldy, but it looks really interesting, so I broke down and ordered it.

Lots of reading.

I did want to tell the story about the pink and green bathroom, but it will have to wait until next week as we’ve got evening plans and I need to get ready!

One of the stories in the excellent New York Times series Class Matters – Social Class in the United States of America is the story of Della Mae Justice, a woman who gave up a successful legal career at a Lexington, KY law firm to return home and practice law in Pike County, KY, an area in Appalachian coal-mining country where she grew up in poverty. The career change was primarily motivated by a desire to help her family during a time of crisis, yet she also faced difficulties fitting in socially with her colleagues. She felt like an outsider. Back home in Pikeville she faced similar issues of fitting in, of feeling like an outsider, not because of her impoverished background but because of her now improved socioeconomic status.

Her story resonated with me. Granted, I didn’t have anywhere near the same difficulties she had growing up in poverty in an Appalachian holler, but I did struggle to improve my socioeconomic status and can relate to the feeling of being an outsider, both in the world of your origin and in the world of your changed circumstances.

Conversations about class in the United States are typically concerned with access — access to higher education and career opportunities. Fair access is certainly important, but merely having access doesn’t guarantee success in improving your position or feeling comfortable with it once improved. Changing one’s socioeconomic status is a highly complex process.

At 53, I still struggle with class identity.

Part of the problem is what I would call cultural incompetence, the inability to understand cultural cues and expectations — to fully decipher their meanings.

One of my favorite books for children is Are You My Mother by P. D. Eastman. I loved the story of baby bird looking for its mother. Not knowing what his mother looks like, he asks every animate creature and inanimate object, “are you my mother?”

Like baby bird, I had parents too preoccupied with economic survival and personal problems to focus on preparing children for future success. Taking up my own cause, I went looking for mentors. Unlike baby bird, I wasn’t wide-eyed and innocent in this process. The brutal politics of public school social life taught me which families were considered successful and which weren’t. I took notes.

Identifying and modeling the socioeconomic groups I wanted to be part of was an important first step in a what’s turned out to be a lifelong quest to find my place. Those early questions, of what success looks like and what steps are needed to get there helped considerably in getting on a track toward higher education that lead to a professional career.

The rest of the story, which I hope to develop here over time, is far more complicated.

For example, I’ve declared 2011 to be the year of dressing better. Why do I need to dress better and why should it take a year to do so? Actually, it may take longer. And I don’t need to dress better. All of the people in my life who love me won’t care whether I dress better or not, unless it makes me happier. I think several of my women friends think it will make me happier.

I don’t know if it will make me happier. What I do know, is that I am hard wired to revert to frugal minimalism at the slightest sign of financial stress. This has proven powerful multiple times in my life, saving literally years of financial struggle. I know what I’m talking about, because as a financial consultant I’ve watched the alternative scenarios, of over spending coming to roost, play out in living color in the lives of my clients.

I can live on radically low income, and during the economic downturn, actually insisted we do so to prove that we can.

So I haven’t replaced clothes in a very, very long time. I’ve been dressing like an impoverished graduate student. Ok, I bought two outfits to wear when entertaining or going to social events, but that’s it. It’s a ragamuffin situation.

I want to do better, but it’s not easy for me, in part because of the frugal hard wiring, but more importantly, because I don’t really know what I’m doing — am culturally incompetent — when it comes to understanding the purpose and meaning of personal style. Yes, there are the usual female body issues: I’m not as skinny or as good looking as I was once. This can’t be the real problem though, because my women friends look great! In my eyes, their aging faces and bodies look beautiful.

Well, the beauty of a blog is that one can ponder and write more later.

If you are familiar with The Adventures of Gray Kitty, the real Gray Kitty has a special announcement to make. His Mom and Dad are giving up App development. No more story Apps.

It’s a long story, but in a nutshell, both of us would rather do other things with our spare time. Martin would rather be working in the garden or fixing up our old house. I would rather read and write about stuff on this blog.

Future Gray kitty news will involve the real Gray kitty and his litter mate  Brownie, and I’ll write about them here.

The above photo is the first one we took after Christmas of Gray living his new life as an indoor kitty. At 5 1/2, he’s still mostly feral, unlike his fully rehabilitated litter mate, and he didn’t seem to be living a happy life outdoors. One time a rodent bit straight through his ear. Another time his tail had an open wound and we couldn’t catch him to get it treated. The crows enjoyed ganging up on a telephone wire to screech at him and he looked intimidated. He is scared of his own shadow and seemed to mostly be running away from people and other animals to find a safe place to hide. We had to stand by to keep raccoons and other ferals away while he bolted down food once or twice a day.

Vacations were really hard because we had to plan several days in advance to catch him. He is wise to all of our tricks.

We did manage to catch him before our trip in December. Spending two weeks in the kitty motel seemed to calm his scaredy cat behavior a bit, so we decided to try bringing him inside.

At first, he spent all of his time in what we have come to call his hovel. This is a futon couch in our downstairs TV room that we lined with plastic, then covered with a flannel sheet. We put his soft bed cushion on the couch, then draped a flannel top sheet from the couch back down over the cushy cushion and tucked it under the couch so that he’s got a little tent. That’s where he stayed for days, on his cushion inside the tent. I would show you a photo but that room is messy right now.

Then, a new pattern developed, a pattern of playing, from 2am to about 6am. Toy mice get tossed in the air, slammed around, shoved under doors and pawed back out. There is much thundering of feet as kitties play together. Bodies thud as kitties wrestle. Brownie hisses. He’s getting usurped as Top Cat. Gray is a little larger and feistier with Brownie now that he’s living indoors.

As a consolation, we’ve let Brownie sleep in our bed. Even though this means legs being pinned down by 14 lbs of kitty. Usually Martin’s legs.

During the day, Brownie goes outside to play and Gray returns to his hovel. Sometimes, when Gray is feeling super brave, he runs upstairs and crawls under the comforter on our bed for a nap.

that mound in the middle is a kitty

Gray seems happier. We can tell because when he was outside his tail was always slack between his legs. Never switching. Unless he was wrestling on the front tile patio with Brownie. Only then. Now his tail switches when he’s playing or when I bug him in his hovel. I pull back the sheet and start petting him and his tail switches and then he presents his very round tummy for rubs. He wants to wrestle but he knows I will go away if he tries to bite or grab my hands so he concentrates very hard on controlling himself.

Yosemite Valley - Last Weekend

I’ve decided to stop trying to figure out other Americans. Instead I’m going to see if it’s possible to figure out who I am, as an American. To that end, as I readjust my slipping crown, it seemed like a good idea to investigate how being a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with rural Midwestern maternal Scots Presbyterian forbears and and mysterious paternal forbears from Chicago has influenced my outlook and values, and what, if anything, I want to do about it.

So we stopped at the library to check out The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, and I read large sections of it aloud to Martin on the drive to Yosemite a week ago Friday.

The sections dealing with Calvin’s doctrine of Predestination, which compare and contrast Calvin’s ideas with those of Roman Catholicism (and of Lutheranism and other Calvin-influenced sects), are particularly interesting.

As a Roman Catholic,  you didn’t need to prove your elect status with God by diligently working and building equity from the fruits of your labor. You did have to keep an account book showing net zero or positive net worth of your good works, but this accounting was under your control. You could offset bad deeds with good ones and obtain absolution; your role in the economy wasn’t particularly important.

This description of accounting reminded us of the painting we saw of The Last Judgement in the Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile in Albi, France.

Our own photos didn’t come out well — the link above is a really good shot. The grainy image below clicks through to a site that lets you enlarge each section. The section of interest, in terms of this post, is the section showing the Elect. They’re in the middle tier, on the left side of the door, holding account books on their chests. (You can read all about this painting here.)

As a Calvinist, there’s no point in keeping an account book of good and bad deeds as a means of obtaining salvation, because the Elect have already been predetermined. You can’t get absolution either. What you must do, is live all of your life like a monk — not in a monastery, but in the world — exercising self-control and diligence in all of what you do, as sign of your Elect status.

In other words, as I heard many, many times growing up. God helps those who help themselves. You must prove your elect status with God by diligently working and building equity from the fruits of your labor. This equity is a sign of your Elect status.

Of course I am generously paraphrasing and glossing over many details, including compelling criticisms of Max Weber’s work, but this is a blog post, and I’m only trying to understand myself, not every other person from a Calvinist influenced background.

The ultimate point of Max Weber’s work is that Calvinist inspired Protestants are perfectly suited for Capitalist endeavors; their propensity for this economic activity is referred to as the Protestant work ethic.

Weber’s work helps explain why some Calvinist influenced Protestants, like me, are future oriented and work oriented. You need to work hard and take a long-term view because it takes a long time and a lot of hard work to build significant equity.

I have a strong Protestant work ethic, but for me it’s not about proving Elect status, it’s about proving that I have done and continue to do my best.

Who told me that I always had to do to my best?

Half Dome - Looking Good

That message was instilled in me by my Scots Presbyterian mother and maternal grandparents. Do your best. Just be yourself.

But those messages had other meanings as well. It was ok to do your best as long as you weren’t trying to be bigger than your britches, and it was ok to be yourself as long as that meant being quiet, obedient and helpful. I was often praised for helping mother and grandmother.

I wonder how it must have felt, to be so constrained that you would often communicate with a child about her proper place in the world, but not communicate with her about much of anything else.

And in reflecting back on these messages, I recognize the origins of a minimalist approach to life that has served me well in some respects, but may need revisiting.

Thanks for the back shot Martin!

The Mardi Gras Sports Bar by roundnoon

This post summarizes and challenges a bias against WASP elites –  especially those embracing a refined aesthetic — I’ve encountered in conversations with persons of the middle class and persons of privilege who prefer to think of themselves as middle class — over the last several months. I see this bias as a form of reverse snobbery that not only falsely stereotypes a group of people but does not serve the bias holder well in achieving goals of personal financial success.

First, you may ask, what authority do I have to write about such a controversial topic? The answer is, of course, my sovereignty as the newly self-crowned Emperor of Me. Oops. I just dropped my scepter. Okay, there we are. So let me summarize this bias as I understand it. Please let me know if I’ve got any of this wrong:

1. You can be a WASP elite as long as people want to have a beer with you in a Sports bar.
2. If WASP elites once blocked your access to power you have carte blanche to forever hold them in disdain.
3. It’s ok to be the epitome of refined persons of power and means as  long as you are not white and come across as down-to-earth and culturally inclusive, by doing things like dancing to an Etta James classic.
4. It’s ok to be rich and powerful as long you always wear a black turtle neck, sneakers and jeans.
5. You can be a WASP rich and powerful enough to influence national elections as long as no one knows who you are or cares.
6. You can be a powerful elite white person as long as you’re not Protestant.
7. If you’re Asian, it’s still hard to gain access to the US power elite because Asian stereotypes abound, but you can still get there, for better or worse; the more you embrace WASP cultural norms, the easier it will be, because reverse snobbery isn’t the issue in this case, just plain old snobbery.
8. You can build a popular life style media empire based on a traditional WASP aesthetic, despite having a criminal record, as long as you are not Protestant and didn’t grow up in privilege. In fact the edgier you are the better.
9. I think I can get away with being a WASP of means who admires aspects of the traditional WASP aesthetic because it only takes one glance at my Land’s End outfits and homey home decor to peg me, at heart, as a Midwesterner who likes referring to herself, among friends from church (a church some people think of as tony), as the Pippi Longstocking of St Matthew’s.
10. It’s ok to be a WASP elite as long as you’re a Laker’s fan married to a Jewish guy.
11. It’s ok to be refined if you earned your position, i.e., were not born to it, and if you manage to carry it off without pretense, but as a WASP, if you seem even the slightest bit stiff or formal — don’t immediately set others at ease by coming across as a down-to-earth person — you are presumed to be born to your position and pretentious unless you prove otherwise, and even then suspicions may linger.

I will admit that I was once guilty of this bias. When I first joined St Matthew’s in 1996 I felt like this Yelp reviewer and didn’t know if I wanted to come back. But I did, and must say that the people from a WASP elite background I’ve gotten to know as individuals at St Matthew’s over the years are the most down-to-earth, inclusive, intelligent and caring people I know.

I can’t develop all of the ideas circling my brain in this one post, so let me close for now by positing that the new, no longer predominately WASP power elite aren’t necessarily better leaders, and that middle class Americans, who increasingly must assume full personal responsibility for their financial success, are not served well by demonizing WASP elites as accumulators of capital and power.

Napoleon on his Imperial throne - Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1806

When my Dad died, and it was no longer possible to keep pestering him about what happened to me growing up, I started pestering my Mom. As a young person I was always a little afraid of her; as an adult I was in the habit of trying to please. Now I wanted to talk to her about the past. Mom didn’t respond well to my pestering. The more I pushed, the more she blocked, right up until our visit last year, during which she told me her own moving story as a way of explaining why she couldn’t be a nurturing mother. I wrote a post about her story; she wrote and asked me to remove the post.

That was when I started digging into my Dad’s story.

The sad, difficult stories of my parents’ early lives explain why they were ill-equipped to be my parents, but do not explain the subsequent thirty years of avoiding taking responsibility for their past actions while I was expected to move on and behave as a responsible adult and dutiful daughter. I will never understand why my parents chose not to reconcile and rebuild a loving bond with their adult daughter. As a mom, this is not what I would want.

My psychotherapist friend Tracey is working her way through The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green, a dense, difficult text about a process through which a once loving, now depressed mother is transformed in the child’s mind into a remote figure essentially dead to the child, though she’s still alive. I do not know whether this particular phenomenon applies to me. What resonates is the feeling of futility. No amount of pestering in life or digging after death will transform my parents into nurturers, yet I continue to rebel against or seek validation from my parents and other forms of external authority, as if it were still possible to engage — to restore the loss of their love.

In other words, I have authority issues.

I get it that parental authority can serve as an effective, temporary substitute for more traditional authority figures while the future citizen and worker grows to maturity. If you trust your parents to guide you then let go when you’re ready, it should feel like a natural transition to assume adult responsibility for yourself and voluntarily submit to traditional authority figures as appropriate in pursuit of your goals and commitments. Otherwise, if there isn’t trust, you may not have a clue how to assume personal authority or how to appropriately negotiate with external authority figures.

One of my favorite paintings, The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, depicts Napoleon at the moment of having just crowned himself Emperor of France and about to crown his wife Josephine Empress of France. By crowning himself, Napoleon avoided accepting Pope Pius VII as his overlord, a perfect example of cutting out a layer of middle management and going straight to the top.

The Coronation of Napoleon - Jacques-Louis David 1805-1808

In my own personal theory of happiness, you don’t have to chose between a happy life and an interesting life, or be dissatisfied to be happy, but you do have to crown yourself Emperor of You and find happiness in the process of making your life interesting and meaningful.

Visuals help me stay focused. The next time my thoughts stray towards regrets that my parents couldn’t be nurturers or accountable to their adult children or I think I need to earn another degree, publish a book, or pursue some other form of external authority, I will think of Napolean and ask myself, do I really need to accept these overlords?

When I think of myself as my own authority, I feel free to explore more interesting questions, such as what kind of authority figure do I want to be? What is worthy of my esteem? What is the nature of my relationship to God and my fellow co-Emporers?

For a long time I’ve been wanting to do some historical research and writing. I go back and forth regarding whether I should proceed or need to pursue a second Baccalaureate and Masters degree in History first.

As of today, I give myself permission to do some historical research and writing. Not quite Napolean-esque, but a small victory. I had thought of getting into sewing, but after pondering that fantasy a bit I recognized it as another desire to compulsively overachieve. I fear sewing would suck up all available time and produce little actual pleasure, kind of like what happened last year with the iPhone/iPad apps.

My historical interests are generally confined to European and American history, with a particular emphasis on the phenomenon of populism. Why do Americans embrace anti-intellectualism? Why do Americans distrust elites?

I recently suggested a blog I admire, AmidPrivilege, to a potential reader and she had a very negative reaction. The reader, a young Jewish woman, explained that the blog struck her as elitist and very “white.” She said it wouldn’t surprise her if the writer were anti-semetic and racist. I was a bit shocked by her visceral reaction, because I don’t think there’s anything racist or anti-semetic about AmidPrivilege. However, I am aware that the High WASP culture AmidPrivilege writes about is not one in which Jews have always been welcome. One thing is for sure, as soon as barriers to elite institutions and career paths were lifted, Jews flooded in and now occupy the upper tier.

I will keep reading and asking questions.

3:365 - Head miniature Tennis racquet - by Siddy Lam

For as long as I can remember, at least thirty years, my father liked to say that his dream death would be one in which he had a massive coronary playing tennis, and this is exactly what happened.

He was playing doubles, and in the midst of serving collapsed on the court. Four ICU nurses playing doubles on an adjacent court rushed to administer CPR to no avail. He slipped into a coma and died several days later, on August 24, 2001, just a few weeks before 9/11.

When I arrived at the hospital earlier that week, the shock of seeing him prone and unconscious hit me like a sucker punch. I began to tremble and sob, not out of grief for the loss of a loving father, but grief for the harsh conclusion of a primal relationship never restored.  I was told angrily, “you’ll have to work it out in therapy now.” Years of effort engaging, doing everything in my power to connect with my father honestly, to insist on accountability, had only lead to this moment of final disconnect.

My father requested a Jewish funeral, which made sense as his second wife of thirty years, my stepmother, is Jewish. My brother and I liked the plain pine coffin, the one preferred by Orthodox Jews, and stuffed drawings in it from his children, with good wishes for life in heaven.

At the burial, I felt disembodied. Earlier that morning, in a portent of what would follow, the tendonitis in my arms and hands flared so badly I had difficulty holding a fork at breakfast. My brothers and I wished to say the burial prayer from the Book of Common Prayer at the conclusion of the Jewish service, since after all, my father always said that he was Baptized Episcopalian, and his biological children were not Jewish. This was arranged, yet when the time came and my two brothers and I stood huddling alone as the rest of funeral party departed, the feeling of isolation overwhelmed me. I couldn’t read. I passed the book to my brother, relieved to let my nearly numb arms fall to my sides.

My father’s story may never be fully sorted out, but I feel closer to him as I dig.

My Dad, I think, in his way, really meant to connect. Like, let’s not get too sentimental, but as my own daughter reminded me recently, there were all those years he sent bouquets of roses for my birthday, and for St. Valentines Day.

I think he meant to win my love, not realizing it was always his.

My grandmother, Dorothy Marie Crocker, was the plaintiff in her 1935 divorce from Jack J. Carnall.

The divorce papers are posted below. There is no mention of the first marriage in 1930, only of the second marriage in 1933. The Genlighten genealogist who helped with the divorce search couldn’t find a divorce between the two marriages. She checked these indexes:

#7 Superior Court DLC by Plaintiff: 1930-1933

#6 Circuit Court by Defendant 1930-1934

Divorce Index Calumet City 1928-1963 (index covers all those years)

Divorce Index Chicago Heights #1 1903-1964 A-D

She found the 1935 divorce at Cook County Archives, 50 W Washington, Room 1113, Chicago, IL File #35-S-4528 Superior Ct. Cook Cty Dorothy Carnall vs. Jack J. Carnall.

Since she didn’t find a divorce between the two marriages and the 1935 divorce mentions only the second marriage, so maybe the first one wasn’t recorded correctly, as Kerry suggested.

What’s really weird is that Dorothy testified that there were no children! Did she mean no children at all or no children from the 1933 marriage? If Jack Carnall was my father’s father, what could have motivated Dorothy to lie about his paternity? And if he wasn’t the father, what could have motivated Jack Carnall to marry my grandmother twice?

Maybe Dorothy lied and told Jack Carnall he was the father but he was not.

Dorothy testified that Jack Carnall hit her. My Aunt Lilly Tieste also testified to this effect. Jack Carnall testified that this was not true. Dorothy asked for alimony but received none.

I doubt Dorothy would say Jack Carnall wasn’t the father if he really was, because if he was, she could have probably gotten alimony and child support. She clearly wanted alimony.