Another world

I've been staying within a stone's throw of the Radnor Hunt. When I run in the morning, I see hundreds of acres of mowed fields (mowed!) around very large and imposing homes. Talk over drinks the other night was about the price the M. Knight Shamalayan (sp??) estate sold for--and the implication for other estates on the market. Much of the conversation is about lawsuits. For example, wealthy family A builds homes for its four daughters and gives each $1mm. Then the daughters start divorcing and the husbands want the money and half the value of the houses. Wealthy family B gives each child $600K (millions more in trust for the next generation). This causes a big falling out because the married siblings don't think the gay son (not married, no children) should have gotten an equal cut. The $40,000 portrait of each child. The $3,500 Hermes bags (I wrote "gags" and had to correct to "bags", so Freud was right). Lots more stories. I'm at a restaurant and not plugged in, so not enough battery to share more tales of the unfathomably wealthy. Private jets, real estate on multiple continents, African safaris for all the partners and their kids, etc.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm squirming. Everything I see is a Piketty proof point. The surprizing thing is how I'm put off balance by my admiration for my Aunt K. She's talented, smart, generous, and fiercely loyal to her clan, including my Aunt Rosemary, whom I adore. It was Aunt K. who had hundreds of dollars of roses delivered to Aunt Rosemary's 92nd birthday dinner, made sure pink linen was on the table, ordered the birthday cake (with roses, natch) and so on. She's a self-made woman and it's hard to quibble with that. She's the 10th of ten children (my mom's 9th). Anyway, it's fun to squirm and to pit my Judgmental Self against real people who don't conform to my stereotypes. Damn them!