Author: Katherine Brittain

Writer/Cultural Anthropologist

The First WASP

Oy'm Enery the 8th Oy am,
Enery the 8th Oy am, Oy am.
Oy got married to the widow next door.
She's been married sevennn times before.
And every one was an Enery-
Enery!

When King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, the Pope wouldn’t give it to him. So he started his own church: The Church of England, which became Anglican (Anglo); and further translated across the high seas to America as Protestant Episcopalian.

He still beheaded at least 2 wives for being traitors. They wouldn’t let him go hunting. At least that’s what I understood from Wikipedia.

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I’m not dissing fishbowls, but they’re not The High Seven Seas, you know

Fishbowls are necessary or we’d drown in the boundless sea of no boundaries.

It’s just…It’s just… I’d love to go adventuring with Richard Halliburton; sail the seven seas. (That’s really his ship, Sea Dragon; and that’s really his gravestone that affirms: “Lost at Sea”)

So when did he have time to write?

The Royal Road to Romance is one of my all-time favorite books.

We could have benefited from his taking notes and blogging them at the same time

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Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) 

WASP is just another name for:

Here are some synonyms for WASP and their (downlinks) according to my take on it.

High Society, or simply Society (19th century America), Fresa (Mexican), Bourgeois (Bohemians), Republicans, (Democrats, although this needs some discussion because the democrats who call republicans “WASPs,” are often “Elites”), Capitalists (Socialists),

The Gentry (19th century England), Rich (I was taught it is bad manners to call people ‘rich’), Newly Rich Middle Class-New Money (Upper Class-Old Money)

A WASP is not:  The Elite (Power Brokers), Upper Class (modern social democracies), aristocracy (pre-20th century Western European), “The 400” (How many Mrs. Astor’s ballroom could hold in Victorian NYC)

Also, look: A WASP is not necessarily a W.A.S.P. (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) Some of my best friends are Hispanics and they fit into my WASP taxonomy.  It’s a class thing.

But don’t expect some of us not to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to reach for that top rung of the ladder; which ladder social anthropologist, Emile Durkheim, calls “social organization.”  America is also the land of rugged individualism.

Most importantly for our purposes:  A male curandero motivated by fame is not the same as a female WASP motivated by desire for Individuation  (and  for the curandero).  That’s why The WASP and El Curandero is funny.

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