Reconciling Materialism

Everything is weird. It's strange to see so many people panicking about having to live the way my family and I have been living anyway. It's not without its challenges, sure. Coexisting in a home can be difficult at times, and sharing the workload is one of the major challenges. My own generation has some odd issues in that regard. We grew up in bedroom communities - in houses which were largely vacant during the workweek, so it's hard for us modern folks to know how to relate to our families during that time. It's one of the challenges families face when they first begin to homeschool.

I remember when growing up, we were all tired in the evenings. My dad had a job he really enjoyed, thankfully, but my mom worked for the school district and as terribly underpaid office staff, a person who had to interface with "the public." I had a lot of homework, but not the amount the kids have now. As my sister and I grew older, it was difficult to feel the togetherness we had as a family when we were younger. We all became a lot more independent, and so to foster togetherness, and take some pressure off my mom, we ate out a lot. We had a small kitchen, so it wasn't practical for everyone to help cook. But if we went to a restaurant, we could talk about what was happening in our lives as a family and reconnect somewhat.

We weren't big vacationers in my family when I was growing up. I know people now who fill every single federal holiday and school vacation with exotic trips, and I think about how hard they work to earn money to maintain a home that they never really want to be in. Maybe these people will be finding out right now, during quarantine, why they haven't wanted to be in their homes. Hopefully they are really little reasons that can be addressed easily!

I confess, I did my fair share of running around, until the Universe put a halt to it. I got sick from it! I actually needed to stay at home to get better. And in that time, I was able to gain a new appreciation for the home I had made, and care for it and myself better.

Our house is probably too big. When I was looking for it, I was looking for a home in our budget that would provide space for solitude for each family member, and also space for creation. I didn't want the yard to be too big, but we wanted privacy. The yard we have isn't too big, and grass is relatively easy to care for, but mowing in general is a waste of resources. I feel like I actually chose pretty well, even though because we have all this space, I have the tendency to forget what we already have and hoard things. So, after I rested and recovered enough last summer, I started tackling my overabundance of stuff. Over time, as I went through the various rooms in my house, I realized that I was essentially reconciling my relationship to the material world.

My mom was raised by her grandmother, who was born in 1901 and lived through The Great Depression. My impression of my mother's childhood is that she didn't have a lot. Her "mom" was a bookbinder, and her "dad" was a house painter (there were a couple house painters in the family, actually). When she has spoken of this time, she tells me that she did not have her own bedroom. She slept on a convertible sofa in the living room. I know at one point, she had a turtle named Tippy, and she also had a small teddy bear, and she has also mentioned quite a few times that she had a Toni doll, which she would sew clothes for. Sewing was an important part of her childhood - a skill she learned from her great-grandmother, who was a constant presence. It sounds like it was a pretty simple, non-dramatic childhood, and they didn't have an overabundance of things. They never owned their home.

My dad's parents were born in the 1910's, so they also lived through The Great Depression. I get the sense that his family had a lot of ingenuity. His father spent time as a brick layer, an electrician, and a house painter, depending on the era. I don't know if he had his own bedroom or if he had many toys. I am sure they had a lot of tools around, and I know my Mom's dad did, too, because we inherited a lot of them. My dad said he spent a lot of time at the library. His parents actually did purchase a house, and it sounds like it may have been pretty large for the time, but was in a small town with not a lot of work, so his father was away quite a bit.

So all of that is to say that sewing and tools have always had importance in my mind, and that making things, without some of the difficulties I had growing up in our smaller inner city home, was important to me when I was purchasing this house. The kinds of things I collected in abundance over the years were largely books and art supplies, and I was a bit of a clothes horse because my weight can change so drastically. There's too much stuff in the kitchen, and a lot of that was gifted to us.

I have a hard time throwing broken things away, because I imagine some day I might make something with them. When life isn't going at the speed of light, sometimes we even fix things! Some people might see this as a problem, but what with all this apocalypse stuff, I'm seeing a lot of my trash as treasure, again.

When I was growing up, the spaces we had for making things were the partially unfinished basement where my mother keeps her kiln and wheel for throwing pottery, the small area at the end of the basement stairs where she keeps the sewing machine, and the small one-car detached garage which back in the day was storage for a lot of things that might otherwise walk off in an urban setting. That meant that some of my dad's projects were done in places my mother really didn't like, but they were usually projects that were improving our lives somehow, so she learned to deal with it, and now he has an old wooden picnic bench he can work on and a clean garage.

Our accommodations for making things in my house are a lot more elaborate, and we still don't use them as we could, because up until now, we always had too much stuff, and not enough time.

*****

I don't really know where all the time went. I spend a lot of time wondering about that, actually.

I'm currently smack dab in the middle of my 40's, and something kind of frustrating is happening. I am losing a lot of days to hormonal issues, and my doctors haven't been a lot of help. In retrospect, I think this has been going on for quite a while, but because I was so socially active and had lots of distractions, I didn't see it. When one's life gets pared down to its basic components, suddenly, one becomes acutely aware of how one is feeling.

Take, for example, the certainty I felt that I was coming down with coronavirus the other day. Saturday, I started getting a headache, and then by the evening, body aches had set in. And then I got a sore throat and felt feverish. In the past, I have described how I feel around ovulation and the end of my menstrual cycle like I am getting the flu. Also, I have allergies to some things that are popular to grow in Colorado yards, and it's that time of year again. I have been largely home bound for quite a while, and frankly haven't been exposed to many people. None in the last two weeks, from the onset of my symptoms, in fact. Everyone else in our house seems okay so far.

My hormonal symptoms can vary a lot, and when we're not in the midst of an apocalypse, I have a pretty good handle on them. During my isolation, I was actually able to figure out some significant factors which make them worse. Stress is a big factor. I have PTSD and a brain injury, so sometimes little things can stress me out, particularly if I am dealing with other larger stressors not under my control. And, I generated a whole bunch of karma by getting married and having children, so larger stressors not under my control are occasionally a part of my life.

Right now, there's obviously a lot more stressors. We all have a lot more stressors, now! As if there weren't enough before! Right now my family is trying to stretch our food further, and that causes metabolic stress. It's harder to think straight, which means it is harder to feel confident. I'm having to learn new ways just to go to the toilet because of the "toilet paperpocalypse." I'm having to get more creative with feeding us. For example, I knew people would balk if I fed us tuna sandwiches again, so I cut up the dregs of the celery and rescued a turning cucumber to make a tuna salad instead, and served it with toast points and some fruit that really needed to be eaten the day before. Ordinarily I am not good at catching food before it is too far gone. But when I was growing up, we ate a lot of stuff that was "going bad," because since we ate out at restaurants so much, it was a thing that was always happening somewhere in the refrigerator.

I do cut the mold off cheese, and apparently my daughter did not know that this is okay. A lot of things I have done over the years in the name of sustainability, I didn't make obvious to the kids, so this is going to be a real learning experience for them.

On the financial front, it has been a little scary. Our revenue stream comes from Southeast Asia. But our customers went to a work from home model, suspended travel early on, and have otherwise encouraged their employees to be safe, so that is encouraging. My partner was supposed to travel, but that got canceled, which was a great relief to him and us.

This situation is easier for one kid than it is for the other. My son had been attending a local University, but was struggling with his health because of the food on campus. So we had already discussed with the University what we could do if for some reason he couldn't live on campus anymore, before this whole coronavirus thing happened. And now all 30,000 students can finish the semester online, anyway! So now he's having to do college amidst all the distractions we have here, but he has some practice with that because he already has his Associate's Degree.

My daughter, however, has been sitting tight for a long time while my son was getting his 2 year degree, and was ready to start taking classes this summer. She was ready to not be at home all the time, so I really feel for her. We were hoping she could get out and meet some new people. That's what you're supposed to do as a young person, right?

Other than my health issues and trying to keep the house supplied with whatever we might need, my biggest challenge is our insurance. It is a policy I found before the Affordable Care Act, which got grandfathered in. I kept it for a long time because although it is high deductible, the deductible for a single person is the same deductible as for the family, and after that, 100% is covered. The only hitch is that mail order prescriptions aren't covered, which I felt was an okay compromise when I chose the plan, but during this pandemic it is proving to be a real hassle. I would really like to be able to get my prescriptions by mail right now, or at least only have to go to the pharmacy once every 90 days, rather than once every 30 days. When I call my insurance company, the person I talk to on the phone is just the messenger, not the person in control of the terms of my policy. At least they decided to cover COVID-19 testing.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if we made a lot less money so that we could have socialized medicine, because my friends who are less economically privileged have a lot less stress about seeing the doctor than we do. A doctor's visit used to cost us $172USD, without any tests or prescriptions. We don't get compensated for benefits like a traditional employee does, so there's no Social Security, disability, health insurance, pension or 401k matching. We do have an odd situation where we get time off, but that's been really difficult to quantify and use effectively the way the arrangement works. I read somewhere that these benefits are about $40,000USD per year, so if we actually purchased these things ourselves, it would be like we made $40,000USD less. Our health insurance cost actually went up a lot last year, despite the fact that we have avoided going to the doctor for many years, and the plan hasn't improved.

What this means is that I had an exceptional amount of pressure on me as a mother to also be a healer, and that we also have to take extra care not to get injured in order to save us money, so that maybe, someday, we can retire. Talk about stress! This takes a lot more time than one would think, especially in this day and age, because one has to be fully educated about the risks to health that exist in every day life. This cuts into my time and energy for creativity and friendship.

*****

There's a great article in the Atlantic, written by Rebecca J. Rosen, Money-Rich and Time-Poor: Life in Two-Income Households covering a 2015 Pew Study of division of labor in families with children. My very favorite part is the end where she references a 2013 article about tranquilizer use in the 1950's by housewives, which has been taken down, but can still be accessed using The Way Back Machine. I find it particularly interesting, given my observation early in parenting that most of my stay-at-home mom counterparts were on some sort of antidepressant, and I have struggled with depression off and on for most of my life, and more recently, anxiety. Betty Friedan wrote about educated women who lost their minds in the 1950's while trying to stay at home in her epic work The Feminine Mystique, which was quite eye-opening.

But anyway, along the lines of Rosen's article, it became pretty apparent to me early on that my role as a stay-at-home parent was to essentially "patch holes in the ship." The special benefit of me staying at home was saving us both time, and money. Over the years, through observation, I became more aware of where the biggest holes were. They were medical costs, car repairs, and overdone birthdays and holidays. (Should it cost $500USD to barbecue for extended family at a child's party? This happened more than once). Beyond that, we got a lot of our furniture used, and don't remodel or move much, and that saved a tremendous amount of money. We never got involved in club sports, and for many years didn't use much in the way of cosmetics, so that saved more money. I cut the boys' hair for many years, until I decided I wanted a break and that it would be good for my son to get used to someone else touching his hair, because we were so isolated from the touch of others. For a little while I made my own cleaning products from things like baking soda, borax, vinegar, club soda, and "natural" liquid soaps, and used simple alternatives for things like shampoo (baking soda wash, vinegar rinse) and lotion (coconut oil).

Elizabeth Warren made a compelling argument for single income households, or at the very least basing a family's spending on just one income rather than two, so that if there is job loss, the effects are less disastrous. While my income after staying at home for 18 years may never approach that of my husband, we have tried to live such that if I had to go to work, I could make enough to support us, albeit more meagerly. At this point, if we sold our newer car and got a roommate, I feel like we could weather whatever happens to the US economically with mindful use of our resources. We all have marketable talents, too.

I am not a coupon clipper. I feel like coupons are inhumane, and I don't like to play inhumane games with my intellect. I feel like couponing in general has a sexist history, and is used to market products to people (specifically women) which may not even be good for them. I feel like wealthy people who play into the game are hurting us all, to boot, by creating demand for things there might not otherwise be demand for. Coupons, in my mind, feed the green-eyed monster.

Someone may have asked me once if I was a prepper. I really was just trying to get the best bang for my buck, so I bought things like grain in bulk, and even used to have a grain mill, until I discovered that I have big problems with whole wheat (not celiac). I gardened for a few years, but had a lot of frustrations with it, and ultimately decided that for the number of calories I was expending on the garden, I wasn't getting enough in return. In the face of this pandemic, I am re-evaluating that, and am considering planting more root vegetables for their nutrient and caloric content, as well as their ease of storage.

The only low-calorie things I am considering gardening are peppers (because I have had tremendously good luck growing them hydroponically) and herbs, because they make everything taste better. If I plant squash, there is a good chance I may be murdered in my sleep, but I haven't had good luck with these anyway, and I suspect there will be an overabundance, as there always is, on both the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 local gardening trade markets, since gardeners in general seem to plant way more of this awful stuff than they actually want to eat. Okay, I don't think it's that awful, especially if it is in a nice muffin. But weeks on end of sauteed squash at the hottest part of the year is... yeah. No thanks. That's one of the things I would like to leave behind on the Old Earth.

There is just a lot about domesticity that feels kind of hellish to me, like a never-ending Groundhog Day. I really don't know how some people do it.

*****

A wonderful article by Dr. Raymond Peat about the Dark Side of Stress and learned helplessness, offers a timeless look at how forced boredom and busyness affects us on a neurobiological level. It is an argument for enriched environments and autonomy, and I feel, important in the context of the above discussion on the frustrations of being a stay-at-home parent, but also existing, as we all do, in an increasingly institutionalized society. An excerpt:

"Geneticists used to say that 'genes determine our limits,' but this experiment shows that an environment can provide both limitations and opportunities for expanding the inherited potential. If our environment restricts our choices, our becoming human is thwarted, the way rats' potentials weren't discovered when they were kept in the standard little laboratory boxes. An opportunity to be complexly involved in a complex environment lets us become more of what we are, more humanly differentiated."

Besides collecting a lot of books, art supplies and tools, we also collected a lot of media over the years. We got the game consoles, and many of the games for both those consoles, and the PC. I collected a small number of our favorite movies, too. There is always something to do. Despite having collected many books, I haven't read a lot of them. In my mind, it's a really luscious collection, a complex environment of its own. When I was growing up, the most interesting people I knew were makers who had cluttered environments. I have trouble relating to people who don't read and who aren't interested in creating things. It seems like discussions with these people tend to circle around discussing purchases and politics, and I prefer a different kind of show and tell.

Relating this back to being stuck at home and the use of substances, I'd like to bring up the work of Bruce K. Alexander who did the famous "Rat Park" experiments on addiction. For those not familiar with his work, he also raised animals in either standard laboratory conditions or enriched environments, and found that animals raised in enriched environments were much less likely to self-administer addictive substances. For those who like cartoons, here is the famous cartoon explanation of his work.

As a side note, the majority of animals used in experiments for behavioral and medical studies are not in enriched environments, so the validity of such studies as they apply to a human being with free will is debatable. They may be more applicable to potatoes.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that staying home with kids, or even being stuck at home can be a real challenge for mental health if our environments are too sterile. So moms, you might want to take that Real Simple magazine with a grain of salt, and embrace a little weird.

A Sex Object Manifesto

In the Fall of 2018, I enrolled in a modern art history class taught at my local community college. At the beginning of the semester, I noticed on the syllabus that we would be doing a reading response to Linda Nochlin's 1975 article, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

At the time, I was in the beginning of my midlife crisis, feeling defensive about all the efforts I had put toward various projects which I gave up near completion, and so I anticipated having a powerful response to the reading assignment, which I did.

It became my manifesto, which I shared with numerous friends. And so, I put it out to the Universe.

***

Amy Lewark
ART 207 - Art History 1900-Present
November 8, 2017
S. Newton

Reading Response to Linda Nochlin's Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

I have been curious about this reading since the day we were given the syllabus. There is a
certain amount of frustration I feel from growing up being told I could “achieve anything I put my mind to” and then experiencing the reality of being a grown female in the world, with or without children. A little validation goes a long way for me, psychologically speaking, and Nochlin’s article provided just that. I spent enough time in academia and the working world to understand what that looks like from a female perspective, and now sixteen years as a stay at home mother to see the “other side” of it. So my thought, originally, was that I could write a dissertation on the subject, but I will spare you, as I would probably be “preaching to the choir” as they say, anyway.

The first important point Nochlin mentions is that feminism must deal with scholarship, not just
real problems with everyday life. Certainly, aspects of everyday life are greatly affected by being female, and I do think that understanding traditional gender roles can help explain why even if there are actually some unrecognized great female artists, why there are so many fewer great female than male artists. I spend a fair amount of time reading sociological commentary on gender roles, being the parent of a boy and a girl, and living in a fairly non-traditional household (we are all home most days of the week due to our choice to homeschool and the way in which we do it, and my husband works from home and has a lot of free time). There was an article going around from Oprah.com a few months ago which a friend shared with me addressing many of the frustrations of being a working woman (Calhoun). I found it to be a little long, and somewhat of a diatribe, but a thorough discussion of the problems women in our generation still face. Through reading it, and also pursuing a line of inquiry of gender roles and human sexuality, I decided to turn my own midlife crisis into a body of art work. I am coming up with ideas fairly regularly which try to address the existential realities of being a man or woman in this world, and how modern societal framework helps exacerbate the negative implications of gender roles. That is a subject for another time, but I wanted to mention it because it is directly related to this reading and also to what I have learned regarding great modern art in the western world. The interesting thing about the Calhoun article was that although it was directed mainly toward working women, I shared it with the other stay-at-home and semi-employed women (not career-seeking) I know, and they still connected with the article. There was a particular part of the article which stoked our ire, all of us being the children of the women of the second wave of feminism, taught to believe we could accomplish anything with persistence, and it was this: men still largely shirk care giving behaviors. Even when there are no children in the picture, a woman is more likely to end up caring for an aging in-law than her husband would be. He is more likely to throw money at the problem.

So it is my observation that this generation X that is in mid-life, which is the most evolved mid
life generation in human history, still suffers from the problem of previous generations not grooming  men to be caregivers, due to an economic system that rewards itself for generating tangible goods and money over care and culture. Yes, women are “incapable of greatness” in the sense that their time and mental energy available for the creation of great art is, on the whole, much less than what men have.

I particularly liked Nochlin’s discussion of how listing the “great female artists” ignores the
question which can help us get to the root of the problem. In this class, we learned about Bonheur, Morisot, Cassatt, Claudel, Delaunay, Kollwitz, Modersohn-Becker, Goncharova, Hoch, O’Keeffe, Colter, Brandt, Hepworth, Savage, Lange, Karr, Krasner, Kahlo, and do Amaral, but only a few of those were ever household names (Cassatt, O’Keefe and Kahlo) compared to the dozens of male artists who most living adults would recognize. I believe most of these women never had children, which certainly simplified their cognitive load. Another troubling pattern in the art world is the role that women end up playing to male artists, which helps those men to be great artists. Think about Morisot’s body of work compared to Manet, Claudelle’s to Rodin, Sonia’s to Robert Delaunay, Kahlo’s to Rivera, and Krasner’s to Pollock. The women had far fewer recognized works compared to their lovers or husbands, but were no less skilled.

The one exception to this rule is probably O’Keefe’s body of work to Stieglitz, but she broke from him to save herself and thereby saved her art. I learned of two more troubling examples on my trip to Eastern Europe: Alphonse Mucha, who I had assumed married a woman who was from outside the art world, but he married a model who was also an artist. I don’t know if she gave up on her art to support his work and their children, but there are no examples of her art in the Mucha Museum in Prague and none in the book produced by the Mucha Foundation. Maybe her work was mediocre, but I will never know.

When I was young, my mother had a book laying around the house called “Second Banana” by Dottie Lamm, wife of Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. I remember finding the title humorous and asking my mother what it meant, and she responded with the well-known phrase, “Behind every great man is a great woman.” It is actually a term used by comedians, another way of describing a “Double Act” where the comedic effort is uneven, but supported mainly through efforts of the “Second Banana.” A good example of this technique is the comic duo Penn and Teller. Teller has never uttered a word on stage, but without his supporting effort, Penn would certainly be a loudmouthed flop. Even Einstein was unable to do his work without a harsh agreement with his wife that she would not talk to him or otherwise get in the way of his thought. But he needed her to bring him food and otherwise take care of his needs so he could direct all his energies to his brilliant thought experiments. It is one thing to have a financial patron in order to pursue one’s passion, but yet another to have one taking care of all the human needs we have for food, clean clothes, someone to listen and provide validation and very importantly touch, and largely, throughout history, all these needs of the brilliant minds of our time have been met by women, because men have been unsuited to meet them, and generally do not meet them for women. The exception to this rule is in aristocratic life where it is possible to secure these services through servants. Again, men are able to throw money at the problem, whereas women must throw themselves at the problem. This is probably also why the great women artists that did exist were from families of some means, whereas great men artists come from diverse economic backgrounds.

The second example addresses a lot of the other concerns Nochlin raises in her article. Gabrielle Munter (1877-1962) has an enormous special exhibit at the Lenbachhaus in Munich which is home to many of the works of Der Blaue Reiter’s Wassily Kandinsky (a household name) and Franz Marc. I had not heard of her before, even after studying Der Blaue Reiter in our class. But it is my opinion that Der Blaue Reiter would not even exist without her. Did Stokstad even think to mention her? She received great amounts of private instruction from childhood onward, and dedicated herself to the pursuit of art. She traveled all over the world, spoke five languages, painted various subjects, met many famous artists, and kept on top of the avant garde trends in art. She was a prolific artist. The special exhibit at the Lenbachhaus makes a point to illustrate her diligent practice (she would paint the same scene many times) and intense curiosity about artistic experimentation. She never had children, and personally placed a priority on her art, probably rendering such “important” lifestyle tasks such as having clean dishes or freshly pressed or new clothes to the bottom of her task list. So, her mind was fully available to pursue her passion and develop her talent, and the relationships with other artists that would help inform her work, and theirs. She was the glue in her artistic community through her intense interest in and dedication to art. Not many women, even 100 years later, get to dedicate their lives to art in this way, either because they are married, or mothers, or because they are liberated and they now have the right to get paid as men do, so their “talent” is directed toward more lucrative professions (ultimately serving the patriarchy). Those who do pursue art or have a little free time to do it are either considered dilettantes, or consider themselves dilettantes on some level. (And, as Nochlin mentions, aristocrats don’t make particularly good artists, probably because their lives are not well-informed about the human condition.) This is part of the western white male narrative, which places value on money over cultural efforts to boot.

So why didn’t we learn about Munter in class? She is the entire reason Der Blaue Reiter
collection exists at the Lenbachhaus because she was a collector of her instructor Kandinsky’s works, as well as Marc’s. She carefully hid artworks in her house in Germany during World War II and they were never found, so that when she was much older she was able to give them to the city of Munich for display in the Lenbachhaus. Nochlin writes about the fundamental defect in Art History – that it is from the Western White Male perspective, and I think this is probably a big part of the problem with the lack of inclusion of Munter in Art History texts, valuing the same Western White Male qualities in artists. As Nochlin states, Art History accepts the “great artist as primary, and social and institutional structures within which he lived and worked as mere secondary ‘influences’ or ‘background.’” There had been rumors that perhaps Einstein’s first wife had participated in the writing of his 1905 Relativity Paper for which he won the Nobel Prize, and in fact their divorce agreement stated that she would receive half of the proceeds for the Prize, but even a female researcher, Galina Weinstein, who investigated the letters from both Einstein and his wife determined that because her letters did not contain references to relativity, she must have been no more than a “sounding board” (MIT Technology Review). Gabrielle Munter started out as a student of Kandinsky’s, and although Kandinsky was married, their teacher student relationship evolved into an extramarital affair. I propose that by being involved with Kandinsky sexually, the view of her by Art Historians may have been colored as to see her as part of Kandinsky’s support network, rather than as a great artist in her own right.

Women have long complained and known about being seen as sex objects, and I wonder how
many great artists who were peripheral to a male are discounted because of amorous relationships with male artists. How many of those women’s careers suffer due to the pitfalls of becoming Second Banana, and how many male artists, due to the emphasis society places on men being success objects, become energy vampires for the equally talented and hardworking female artists in their lives? I think that in order to break this pattern, not just for women, not just for artists, but for all people, parents need to be aware of these false dichotomies and raise all children, regardless of gender, to be self aware and generous human beings. If I am never known for being a Great Woman Artist, I hope at least to accomplish this with my own children, so that any relationships they have can be cooperative in nature and so that no one person is Second Banana in all realms of the partnership. If we can accomplish this goal on a societal level, it is my hope that men will have less pressure to be success objects, and that women can achieve greatness in whatever field they choose, but also that the larger effect will be to shift the economy to one that values caregiving and culture just as much as it does monetary and tangible ends. To this end, I hope to raise awareness of these patterns and their implications through my art, and I shall continue to eschew the status quo to which many women dedicate their lives in reinforcement (to the detriment of humankind, but the benefit of the monetary economy), in order to free myself to make art like my life depends upon it.

What I have learned so far in this class reinforces what Nochlin writes regarding the concept of a “mystique” surrounding great artists. The secret to great art is the diligent pursuit of the passion (eudaimonia) without regard to the question of success. Great art requires collaboration with like minded individuals. The belief that individuals are somehow imbued with a genius does a great disservice to society. Along these lines, there have been scientific studies showing that praising gifted children for their intelligence encourages laziness, and so I have always been careful to thank or recognize my children’s effort to encourage effort in general. Giving them time to pursue their interests has enabled them both to appear quite “talented” in their respective interests (computer programming for my son and art for my daughter) while also fostering their general intelligence.

It has been my observation that families in which the Puritanical (dare I say Patriarchal?) mindset of busy-ness for busy-ness’ sake reigns engender a general environment of anxiety, stress, a lack of self-reflection, a lack of “talent”, mindless behavior, and overall mediocrity. In the 18th century, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville noted a different mentality in the US from that of Europe, where Americans had a higher degree of stress due to the relentless pursuit of (empty) status, because there was no ceiling for what one could theoretically obtain through diligent work. I believe this mindset has engulfed our society, made people unaware of how their status-seeking impairs not only their own happiness, but also success, and how all the “status” we seek comes at the cost of someone else’s life. The question of women’s role in art is but one good example. Ironically, it was Einstein who wrote a note to a bellboy in Germany in 1922, when he did not have money to tip the bellboy, about how to achieve happiness (this note recently sold for $1.5 million at auction): “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” As Generation X women, this is what our mothers failed to acknowledge. Our mothers recognized our need to self-actualize outside the home, but they did not recognize the qualities or repercussions of empty, passionless success through servitude to the patriarchy. The second wave of feminism brought birth control and the ability to work in any field we desire, but it came at the larger cost of lost societal genius, as well as the growth of sociopathic and selfish behavior. When Nochlin wrote her prescient musing, women were still not allowed to wear pants to work, even though they were allowed to hold jobs and control the results of their own sexuality. Developmental stages in a child come in fits and spurts, with advancements always bringing chaotic behaviors as the new skills are assimilated within the context of old, outdated behaviors. I believe this is the typical trajectory for any sort of evolution, from the level of the cell to the level of society, and right now society needs to recognize that relentless pursuit of status is at direct odds with happiness, and also greatness. There will be no truly great female artists until there is equity among the sexes in caregiving, and also not until women recognize the potential in their free time and use their cognitive surplus for more meaningful pursuits than are currently encouraged by society (the patriarchy). It will require an irreverent disregard for soccer games, bake sales, mowed lawns, clean dishes, thank you notes, or anything else not proving meditative for the woman performing that task. It will require the ability to not worry about things that don’t necessitate worry, and for more behavior that, from the outside, might look selfish, but that will encourage more independence from the traditionally “cared for” populations (husbands, children). It will require us to be there emotionally for husbands and children, so they can learn to do that for others, too. As I like to say, “What’s good for the mothership is good for the fleet” and my pursuit of happiness through art is good for my fleet, it is good for me, and I hope it will prove to be good for society, too.

[EDIT 4/12/2021]:  This is how I feel about "The Male Gaze."

And here's how I feel about art, capitalism, and the use of my body.

Finally, here's how I feel about having used my body to share my message on social media.

 
Works Cited

Calhoun, Adah. The New Midlife Crisis: Why and How It’s Hitting Gen X Women.
http://www.oprah.com/sp/new-midlife-crisis.html

Jones, Josh.  Albert Einstein Imposes on His First Wife a Cruel List of Marital Demands.
http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-on-his-first-wife-a-cruel-list-of
marital-demands.html

MIT Technology Review. Did Einstein’s First Wife Secretly Coauthor His 1905 Relativity Paper?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/427621/did-einsteins-first-wife-secretly-coauthor-his
1905-relativity-paper/

Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Art and its Histories: A Reader – Section III, Gender and Art. 1975.

Dear Mister Rogers

“The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.”
― Fred Rogers 

Dear Mister Rogers,

Thank you for being you. I also like you just the way you are. No, I love you just the way you are. I think people have screwed up the word "love." I think they confuse it with a feeling of desperation and possession. I think they confuse it with lust. Sadly, many people also equate money and love. Thank you for showing me how to love unconditionally, to meet people where they are at, and let them go while still loving them. It hasn't always been easy, in fact sometimes it has been so hard I was sure I wanted to give up entirely, but what you taught me has come in handy almost every day of my life.

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

I watched you regularly as a child, and you filled some holes where my teachers would have been, if they weren't getting to know thirty new students each year. You filled holes where my grandparents might have been, had they been alive. You filled holes where my aunts and uncles might have been, if they had lived closer. You filled holes where my parents might have been, had they not had so many struggles with their adult relationships and careers. You helped me feel wanted in the big, cold universe. You, and others like you, who stepped outside of the grownup world to be with me, helped me see how important love is in the world.

“Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me. ”
― Fred Rogers

Some people say that your message of unconditional love, that we are all "special," led us all to believe we are entitled to things, and to special treatment. I know you didn't really mean that, because you lived a fairly humble life yourself, content with yourself for your ability to love your neighbor. You simply believed that everyone deserves to feel worthy of their life here. Sometimes it is hard to feel worthy of the life we are given, when so much value is placed on aesthetics and wealth. Many people suffer because our society values image and money over kindness. People who choose to value kindness over status end up struggling because they chose caregiving professions which require them to work long hours for little pay. Some of them give up because they cannot afford housing and go into a profession which makes better money, but leaves them feeling lonely at the end of each day.

“The thing I remember best about successful people I've met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they're doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they're doing, and they love it in front of others.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

It was very challenging at times, especially due to the isolation which I had to fight constantly, but I was able to take your message with me into my adult life - nearly half over, now - so that I could do my best to raise two children into secure adults. I chose to give up my career as a scientist so that my kids would know without a doubt that they are wanted and loved in this world. Sometimes I feel guilty for bringing people into this world because I feel like most people have given up on the idea that being a kind person is enough. It seems that some people feel like kind people are faking it, or are just boring. Often I feel that people only like me for what I can do for them, and so I try very hard to please people. I worry all the time that I have failed at helping my kids feel loved, because I know it will be difficult for them to feel like they are "enough" just being kind people. Many times when I meet people and tell them I chose to educate my children at home, I get the feeling they think I thought I could do it "better." It wasn't like that at all. I received an excellent public education and got a graduate degree in a difficult field. I have no doubts about the educational system's ability to make economy-supporting individuals. Doors to many occupations are open to me because of my education. I chose to educate my children at home because I wanted to protect them from the stress and bullying I experienced growing up. I didn't want them to feel badly about their bodies, their interests, who they love, their haves or have nots. These are the worries that I have that keep me from succeeding in the "real world." They are worries I did not want my children to have. Learning at home is easy in the context of following our hearts and intuition, spending time with others who made the same choice for the same reason we did - they want to raise children who feel loved, who feel excited about learning at their own pace, whose confidence hasn't been stripped away by the trickle-down economics of narcissism that prevails in this country.

“You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”
― Fred Rogers

Mister Rogers, I know that you were deeply saddened by the events of September 11, 2001. I was, too. I was alone that morning, nursing my 4 month old baby boy down for his morning nap. I had no deep friendships in California where I was living, and our families were so far away. I had brought another person into this cold, lonely world. We had made the decision to move back to Colorado to be near family, near where we thought we would find love again to support our little family - where we could be more than an employee in a company, a house in a planned urban development. But Colorado had its problems, too. A few years earlier, I watched, horrified and alone in California, packing my suitcase to go defend my thesis in Ohio, as helicopter footage of the Columbine High School massacre streamed across my television. In that moment, I had felt that the bloodbath was the result of children who did not feel love for themselves or other people. Very disturbed youth took vengeance on the community they felt had failed them. In the years since your death, entire industries have arisen to protect us from the wrath of the unloved, and people are becoming more and more distrustful of each other. Our elected officials are increasingly people who value money over kindness, and display these values in their business, career, and lifestyle choices. Political alliances end up being more about career advantages than helping constituents or communities. Me, me, me, the world cries, as everyone wonders why even though they got that bonus, they still feel empty inside.

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”
― Fred Rogers

I can tell that people are scared. I am scared, too. But I do think that what we're dealing with is nothing new. It used to be that the common man had no choice in his life, and so this question of wealth and power over people was largely left to aristocracy alone. But in this democratic state, now everyone has the chance to "make it big." To live the "American Dream." To prioritize status. As more and more people have chosen paychecks over people since the 1970's, the basic things we need - shelter and food - have gotten more expensive. And it takes more time to earn the money needed for these basics, so there is less time to love one another, and that empty feeling seems to be growing.

“Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.”
― Fred Rogers

This is, I think, a huge opportunity for change. If, instead of frantically trying to fill that empty feeling, each person were to take the time to notice it, to become really aware of it, to really feel it, and then fill it with acts of kindness to others, rather than material acquisitions, the world would change. I really believe that if we were put here for anything, it is to love each other. A friend once asked me, when I proclaimed that I was certain that the reason I am here is to love other people, to help them feel less lonely, "But how do you deal with never getting love back?" Well, I thought in that moment two things (which I did not say), 1) that finally I had met someone who tried and understood how challenging it can be to love, and 2) how sad I was that this person had not felt love. This is, I feel, a casualty of people conflating love with possession and lust. If love of the variety that you practiced were everywhere, maybe we wouldn't be so afraid to really love one another. Love wouldn't be so much about loving and losing, as abundant love.

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
― Fred Rogers

Mister Rogers, I am afraid that people will read this and think it is a bunch of malarkey. I do hope they will take the time to see the movies made in your memory - the recently released Won't You Be My Neighbor? as well as Mister Rogers and Me, which is currently available on Amazon Prime. I can't imagine what the world would have been like without you. You were the only one giving an unadulterated message of love to many of the children of my generation. You made it okay to feel anger, sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, joy, hope, love... all of the feelings. Yes, I was a huge fan of yours. I know you met many, many people during your career. Do you remember spending 20 minutes with a little brown-haired brown-eyed dimpled girl in the narthex of your seminary colleague's church in Denver, sometime in the 1980's? Do you remember that the little girl gave you a snake scarf she knitted herself with a rick-rack tongue and button eyes? You were that girl's hero, and you were exactly the beautiful loving person she hoped you would be in real life. You are the reason that every time her heart breaks, she tries even harder to love more deeply next time, even though it's becoming so rare that people think she is weird and often hurt her.

“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
― Fred Rogers

Please, I ask you, help me to not give up on the world. It's so hard, and I hurt so much. I'm so tired, and I am having trouble being optimistic as my kids become young adults. People keep telling me this is a good way to be, but I just don't know if I can do it anymore. But I'll try, just for you. For humanity.

With all the pieces of my broken heart,

Amy

The Elusive Laurie Bennett

I grew up in the Clan of the Pod People.

What this means is that my grandparents were all dead by the time I was eight years old, and that every couple of years we would make a long car trip back east to the New York area and visit our cousins, from both sides of the family. My mother is technically a fourth-generation Coloradoan through her adopted father, so I have those cute "Pioneer" license plates with the covered wagons on my car, which anyone with an extra $50 can now get. But since she was raised by her grandmother, she grew up in Colorado, and her mother got (re?)-married and moved to New York. There are a handful of my great-grandmother's family members who were in Colorado, but there wasn't much communication with them during my childhood.

Not having had very much contact with my extended family, and since my sister and I both married into fairly large families, spending holidays with them, and seeing how they all resemble each other and have common mannerisms, I have become curious about my own roots. Remembering some of my encounters with my cousins in the past (and thankfully more recently in the last year), and having been stricken by this feeling that these are my people, I really want to know more. My father and maternal aunt, apparently, were also interested, because they beat me to the punch in getting a subscription to Ancestry.com.

My father's entire family lives back in the Eastern US, within a couple hundred miles of where their family lived for a very long time. Except for his grandma Josephine's (or was it Marie?) parents, Albert Volckman (or Volkman or Volkmann) and Emilia (or Amelia, nee Wandke), who came over from Stolp in Pomerania (now called Slupsk, Poland) in 1881 on the ship Silesia, the other parts of the family had come to the area in the southern part of New York and northern part of Pennsylvania anywhere between just after the Revolutionary War, and about 1854.

Interestingly, the most elusive part of my father's genealogical puzzle has to do with the surname I grew up with, McMullen. Back when I was in high school, the Denver Public Schools required all freshman students in English classes to do a genealogical project, which required corresponding to at least two older family members about family history. One of the family members I contacted was my great-grandfather George Adam McMullen's second wife, Lola Adele McMullen (nee Wiggs), shortly before her death. I was so incredibly busy with all the things that are expected of a fifteen year old back then, that I didn't really have a chance to carefully read her response, and rather, I tucked it into my project and forgot about it until sometime last year. Ah, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. If I had been more present, I would have had it in my mind to write for some clarification on what she wrote.

So, when I restarted this investigation, the next obvious thing to do seemed to be to order George Adam's birth certificate. I knew that he was born in Coudersport, PA from his World War I draft card, which I had found on Ancestry.com. Hooray! Easy peasy!

Not so much. It turns out that the State of Pennsylvania did not start keeping birth records until after 1900.

However, and this is one of the neater parts of this story, my father remembered that George Adam had passed away during a trip to visit the family in Spencer, NY in the mid 1960's. I would have been relatively stuck here without his important clue, since he was buried in North Carolina with Lola, and they resided in New York (according to the Social Security Death Index entry for him, as well as the 1957 Rochester, NY City Directory).

However, I was able to contact the very tiny Tioga County, New York office where Vital Records are kept, and get George Adam's death certificate sent. His father was listed as John McMullen, and his mother was simply listed as "Bennett."

Their names may as well have been John Smith and Mary Jones. Even George Adam himself did not have a particularly unique name. There were at least three George McMullens who were living in that immediate area in 1900, if memory serves correctly. And, if you have not ventured even a tiny bit into genealogy, you probably are unaware of the fact that the most helpful records for researching families, the United States Federal Census, were destroyed for the year 1890 in a fire at the Commerce Building in Washington, DC in 1921 (which led to the formation of the National Archives).

So, turning back to step-great-grandma Lola's letter from 1990, we latched on to a few details to guide us in our search.

1) "He was born in Pennsylvania." (This is corroborated by his WWI draft card).
2) "When he was five years old, his father died."
3) "His mother was Laurie Bennett."
4) "They moved to New York State after the father's death."
5) "There were four McMullen Children."
6) "She later married Dr. Davies."
7) "From that marriage, there were three children."
8) "George often spoke of his favorite uncle, Adam McMullen, who was twice Governor of Nebraska."

While Lola did also say in her letter that the McMullens didn't talk about themselves much, and apologized for not having much information to share, what she did share would turn out to be critical in our search for our McMullen heritage.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many hours I looked for Laurie Bennett in the 1870 and 1880 census records in Pennsylvania, without luck. I did have a lead, or so I thought, with my father's closest DNA cousin match on GEDMATCH, a second cousin who also had Bennetts in his tree, and a large part of his tree is also in this area around this time. I tend to throw a lot of questionable stuff into my tree as "placeholders" (perhaps this makes me a bad genealogist), and at the time, I was pretty certain that our Bennetts (his from Sullivan, PA) were closely related. So, I forced a relationship there, in the interest of place holding, but never found a Laurie Bennett in his tree, only potential parents for Laurie Bennett -- a James Bennett, married to a Catherine Sullivan, and it was comprehensible that their first child might have been Laurie. But, that was pure conjecture on my part. Nonetheless, I left it that way for many months.

I looked for John McMullen deaths in the New York/Pennsylvania area on Ancestry and Find A Grave for many hours. No luck.

I looked for a Dr. Davis or Davies living with some McMullen children in the 1900 US Federal Census for many hours. Bzzz.

Finally, I decided to look into the family tree of Adam McMullen, who was twice Governor of Nebraska. Alas, he had an older brother, who would have been the right age to marry and sire a child (or four), and whose name was John FP McMullen. Only, as far as I could tell, John FP did not die. He married a sweetheart (Celia Clark) from his hometown of Wellsville, NY and moved to Chicago, living near his older brother Alexander McMullen. Did my second great-grandfather run away from his family, and did his ex-wife make up a story about his death?

On Ancestry.com, there is a kind of social networking function, where you can link your tree to cousins' trees to get updates. I got hints that the descendants of Celia Clark and John FP McMullen had trees, but I was so unsure about the connection (did Lola literally mean Adam McMullen was George's "uncle?"), that I did not connect the trees. Their only child married a man named Richardson.

On 23andMe, there is a cumulative list of surnames shared by cousins, and Richardson is one of the top matches for my father, so that made me more certain I was barking up the right tree. But then, upon closer inspection of my own tree, I found I had Richardsons in another branch. Ooops.

I decided I would flesh out "Uncle Adam's" tree, in the interest of finding any clues. Since Adam was Governor of Nebraska, it was possible to find enough information about him to research his tree pretty easily. A quick Google Search yielded a Wikipedia article, a bio on the National Governor's Association website, his grave at Find A Grave, a profile at NNDB (an intelligence aggregation tool), and a list of items related to him that is curated by the Nebraska State Archives. So, my dad and I had it in our minds that sometime we would take a quick trip out to the Nebraska Archives and see exactly what those 13 boxes and 44 items contained.

Right before we left on our trip to Lincoln, my father put in several more hours looking for the elusive Dr. Davies married to Laurie Bennett, living with some McMullen children in New York, and his persistence was rewarded. He found Anna L (or S) Davies (b Sept 14 1886 in NY), living with James G A Davies (b April 16 1838 in England), Mary E McMullen (b Jan 3 1886 in PA),  George A McMullen (b Jan 2 1888 in PA) and Mattie S McMullen (b July 6 1894 in PA) in Burns, Allegany, New York. When he found it, there was an indexing error, and George A was listed as Matilda.

This was a pretty exciting finding, on the eve of our trip to the archives, as Burns is very close to Almond and Wellsville, NY (both in Allegany County), where Nebraska Governor Adam McMullen's family lived before they moved to Wymore, Nebraska in the 1880's. Also, Lola's memory of George's family having moved to NY after the departure (?) of his father was accurate. Note that next to Anna's entry, she has indicated that she had five children, four of whom were living at the time, which is consistent with Lola's 1990 account.

Having found Anna "Laurie" Bennett Davies, I figured the task of finding her in the 1880 US Federal Census would be worthwhile. Indeed, I found, in Ulysses, Potter, Pennsylvania (not far from Coudersport where her son George Adam McMullen was born), Anna L Bennett (age 13), living with her father, E O Bennett (age 39), her mother Mary L Bennett (age 33), and her brother, William Bennett (age 7). They must have moved to Ulysses sometime between 1867 and 1873, as Anna was born in NY, and William was born in PA.

Sure enough, I found Edwin Bennett (age 28), wife Mary (age 24), and daughter Laura (age 3) in the 1870 US Federal Census, living in Starkey, Yates, New York, which is about 30 miles away from the epicenter of my father's NY ancestors.

Since I had established the origin of Anna Laura Bennett McMullen Davies, I was curious about finding the three Davies children (which would be related to my father and I, being half-siblings of George Adam McMullen), as well as the fate of my father's elusive second great-grandmother. Skipping ahead to 1910, I found them in the US Federal Census, living in Cohocton, Steuben, NY:  Anna L Davies (age 43, 9 children born, 6 living), Olwen Davies (age 9), Leona Davies (age 4), George McMullen (age 21), Mattie McMullen (age 15), Mary Foltz (age 23, 1 child born, 1 child living), and a granddaughter, Ruth Foltz (age 3). James GA Davies is not too far away, likely at his office (?) in Nunda, Livingston, NY (age 72, married).

New York had a state census in 1915, and Laura Davis (age 48) is listed on it in Cohocton, Steuben County, along with her children, Burton Davis (age 4), Mattie Davis (McMullen, age 21), Olwen Davis (age 14) and Leona Davis (age 9). I have not found any evidence of James Davies after 1910. He would have been 77 years old in 1915, around the time of this census.

I haven't found any data yet for Anna (Laura) in 1920. By 1920, George Adam McMullen was married and living in Detroit, MI, with his wife Marie J (age 27), son George R (age 6), and daughter Betty M (newborn). His sister Mary and niece Ruth were also living in Detroit, Michigan, Mary now married to a man named George Higgins.

Leona (age 14) and Burton (age 8) Davies were living in the Masonic Home in Attica, NY. If I were to make a guess, I would say that Dr. Davies had passed away, and Anna (Laura) was unable to raise them, and had to send them off to a home for some time. I believe I found Mattie (Louise) McMullen at this time living in a boarding house in Binghamton, NY.

But in 1925, Anna Laura Bennett McMullen has married Henry Johnson, who lived nearby in 1915 (listed on the same census page), and she is living on West Main Street in Cohocton, Steuben County, NY, with him (age 59, she is 58), and her daughter Leona Davis (age 19).

On the 1930 US Federal Census, Annie L Johnson (age 63) is living with Henry Johnson (age 63) and her son Burton J Davies (age 18), on West Main Street in Cohocton, Steuben, New York.

In 1940, the US Federal Census lists Annie Laurie Johnson (age 73) living with Henry Johnson (age 73) in Cohocton, Steuben, NY

According to the internet resource, FultonHistory.com:

From The Naples Record, Naples, NY, February 2, 1949:  "MRS. LAURA JOHNSON— Services were held Salurday at 2*00 p. m. in Dansville for Mrs. Laura Johnson, 82, a resident of Atlanta and North Cohocton, who died Thursday, January 27, 1949, while visiting in Detroit, Mich. She leaves four daughters, Mrs. Louise Moore, of Dansville, Mrs. Mary Higgins, of Detroit, Mrs. Olwen Davies, of San Antonio, Texas, and Mrs. Leona Tranquill, of New York; two sons, George McMullin, of Rochester, and Burton Davies, of Unadilla; five grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren. Rev. Dalton Scott, of St. Peter's Episcopal Memorial Church in Dansville, conducted the services. Burial in Clearview cemetery, in North Cohocton."

So, that is more or less what my father and I found just before we left for Lincon, Nebraska to look for evidence of an actual relationship with Adam McMullen, twice governor of Nebraska. It's no wonder we had such trouble trying to find "Laurie Bennett," given that she was married three different times, and flip-flopped between Anna, Annie, Laura and Laurie.

Stay tuned for the exciting next installment. Now that my scanner software supports Windows 8, I have a lot of content to share!