Interesting to read all this.

Staunchly middle class with all the puritanical farmer class holdings. Old things were rarely seen as worth holding on to (there was no wealth so things were just old, not valuable), but flashy new things or spending beyond one's means would be tacky and not practical or godly.

I think my generation is the first to value the old and also to get some exposure to real class difference. Still there it is pretty limited.

I come from dirty city Irish on my dad's side and rural hick French-Lithuanian on my mom's side. We are SO not WASPS. I find it funny that I married TomW who is like the demographic epidome of WASP but is actually NSM culturally.

My parents like to pretend he is Scottish rather than British.

Unrelated to anything, I just made the o.0 face at this article headline: Hummers and the love that dares not speak its name.

(It's about the auto, not the action.)

I was just thinking about Hummers yesterday (about the auto, not the action). Not as trendy as they used to be, huh? I wonder how much of a punch in the gut gassing one of those up for daily use is these days.

GM is supposedly considering selling or shutting down the Hummer line.

Not large enough for some people: [link]

Maybe I can go punch 'em myself.

I get kind of nauseated by the talk of the right and proper way to spend money (having grown up with none in a fairly wealthy area, and having Huge Honkin' Issues where I'm often afraid that those who Have are sneering at my tacky, tacky, classless self), but I think most people can agree that Hummers are tacky, no matter where you stand on where the TV stand goes.

I think I'm too tired - I can't decide if this is cool or not:

Famous historical beheadings recreated with mantises

Artist Judith G. Klausner (a.k.a. Rogue Entomologist) has used mantises (infamous for the females' habit of biting off the heads of their mates) to stage several well-known scenes of women beheading men. Right now, she has the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland (also viewable in 3D!) and the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. The costumes in particular are incredible -- lots of great detail work at a very small scale.

The queen mantis does have a pretty dress....

Ashkenazi immigrants (from the various European and Eastern European areas) were always (and by "always" I mean, of course, the last 100-and-a-bit years, because there was hardly anybody here before that)

Ummm there were actually a fair number of people there before that - just mostly Arab .

The last photo here is freaking amazing!