Erroneous Algorithms

They keep coming.  Pictures of mansions I cannot afford, mostly owned by celebrities who I recognize.  Pictures of excessive sandwich plates from deli's I would not eat at.

It's not that I object to mansions.  Not at all.  On my travels, I often seek out the grandest of the grand.  Hearst Castle on my first trip to California.  Winterthur and Nemours near my home.  A few days in Newport.  The Biltmore when I go to visit The Great Smokies next month.  FDR Home and the Vanderbilt Mansion on a short stay in Hyde Park.  At one time I aspired to having a McMansion of my own, even visiting a few for sale at Sunday Open Houses.  Nearly all the grand estates I visited depended on inherited wealth, monuments to the self.  Forms of  look at me and visit when I am dead but not invited when I am alive sort of wealth.  While I can never attain a large fortune, and in late life I really don't want one, I do the same things in my very ample suburban development house that they do in theirs, though on a smaller scale.  I have a kitchen, though I produce from it what I want to eat without delegating anything to staff.  The public mansions I visit have no wastebaskets on display.  They have no paper scattered.  They have little open storage, other than elaborate bookcases.  My house has all these things.  I entertain, though less frequently, less elegantly, and on a smaller scale than the Grandees who built their estates more to impress than to enjoy.

FB feeds me something much different, and something not terribly appealing.  The sprawl in Florida or California by tech moguls or TV celebrities or athletes shout look at how much I have for myself.  Unlike San Simeon or the Newport Mansions, it is much less a shout of let me share with my guests what I created.  Undoubtedly, the Beautiful People have intense travel schedules that keep them from their pools or tennis courts.  They are displays, and an ostentation that FB thinks will have me coming back for more.  I try to Hide them or Snooze them but to no avail.  Their algorithm, I think erroneously, doesn't take the hint to try something else.

It misconstrued my fondness for Jewish deli's.  Every day I get photos of overstuffed corned beef on rye originating in multiple cities.  Virtually never kosher.  Perhaps I undermine myself in their algorithm placement by looking up the named restaurants to search their menus.  Always with a Reuben option, not kosher.  Katz, the granddaddy of them all, from its founding never made any pretense to being adherent to dietary laws. They promoted ethnic, and to be fair, avoid products inherently non-kosher irrespective of preparation.  

But not only are the pictures of the sandwiches lacking the standard I would set for myself, but they are excessive.  It would be unthinkable for me to pretend that a mound of pastrami, yes I am a sucker for kosher pastrami, would have the slices of rye bread as an afterthought.  Instead, when deli is available to me, I make my variations.  Sometimes mustard on the bread.  Often coleslaw atop the meat.  Never been a fan of Russian dressing but that was one of the most ordered options at the kosher Psychedelicatesin of my university years through the 1970s.  Those were sandwiches for a Sunday night treat, even a Sunday night destination or study hiatus.  And always amid people I knew.  The destination was never the pile of sliced cold cuts.  It was the ability to choose from a Kosher menu without restriction for a satisfaction that would not reappear for another week.

Facebook misjudged my likes.  I don't like ostentation.  It is not enjoyment.  I don't like envy, whether I wish I could have a house or a sandwich like that.  My pleasure is in making the most of what I have.  My house with its lawn, deck, kitchen, comfortable bed, climate control, and suitable guest areas.  For as often as I use a pool, or probably the celebrities are able to use theirs given their travel obligations, I can bundle the dip with my hotel stays.  I have enough food, maybe excessive food.  As much as I relish kosher pastrami, the barrier has been my willingness to choose that as my luxury, and to a lesser extent its availability.  I once lived in a place that had kosher delis. It's not like I've never experienced one.  I would not go there on a whim or very often.  FB photos of ostentatious heaps of corned beef don't change that.  

I don't know why their algorithms think that it might.

Old Mansions

Economic inequality, that gap between the rich and the struggling, has gotten a lot of attention in recent years as the gap widens with some untoward public consequences.  Even so, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous had its mass audience.  People visit palaces where kings resided all over the world.  In America we have mansions, often monuments to the self as much as places to live and entertain.  Recently I toured one near my own home, not having been there before despite living nearby just shy of forty years.

Nemours is the estate of Alfred I DuPont, one of the largest stockholders of the company that bears his name and at one time its most influential individual.  While he never lost contact with the powder workers he supervised early in his career, he was not above some indulgences.  He collected clocks and played the violin.  His wife collected chairs.  He slept upstairs, entertained lavishly on ground level and created a Mancave for himself in the basement.  He had a swivel chair at his two desks, early versions probably not as good as the ones at my desk.  Two lanes of bowling, one ten pins, one duck pins, with a mini-movie theater occupied one room.  He had two billiard tables, one with pockets, one without.  He liked to hunt and at one time a living area had animal head, reduced to a single bison head over his main desk at the insistence of his last wife.  The rifle collection seemed ordinary, kept in a secure case in the billiards room.  Basically he knew how to pursue his highest level of amusement, the same pleasantries available to anyone else though without the private ownership of the means.

As I tour many of these gilded age homes, and this one in particular, I think about which elements are adaptable to my much more modest means.  What do I like to do?  Cook for sure, entertain not so much.  Sit at my own desk, high priority.  Hunting, not something Jews do.  Fishing, pleasurable but not a destination in itself.  Sleep in comfort, high priority.  Have a pretty yard, yes.  Do heavy work to maintain my pretty yard, no.  Collect vintage anything for the purpose of having it, no.

Mansion tours expose what is possible but they also offer a means of shopping downward to assess the features and set realistic priorities for my own less lofty comforts and indulgences.