As a person that would love to be able to make a living making the stuff that floats through my head and explodes in my dreams, I am aware that most artists starve: maybe all the time if they don't have a day-job, maybe just a little bit--mostly soul-starvation--as they put off the making and head to work to do what buys the groceries. In a perfect world, I could make my stuff full time and eat regularly and all without the necessary, historical patron.
But in the rest of the world, we have developed an incredible thankfulness to the very rich--those community patrons that have there names on streets and public buildings and get to cut all the ribbons and attend every new community venture's opening. Having heard the incredible words of praise for those families that are the patrons of our community, and from distant relatives, the patrons of their communities, I am struck with the obvious question: "Why do so few of us have the financial ability or economic wherewithal to donate millions without interfering at all with their own luxurious lifestyle. I donate $10 dollars and have to skip a meal that week.
I love genealogy, and have a lot of characters in the past, a few brick walls--translates frequently as someone that either had no family in the record, but certainly didn't start under a cabbage patch, or that had family with the kind of past that it was best to erase. My last immigrant relative, circa 1860's, arrived from England and the fact that a person chose to enter a country during a civil war is a sign they didn't have any reason to stay where they were. His family was long lived and a story my Grandmother told of him was that he came here because in England, if you were born to shoemaker you would die a shoemaker, and that in England, the peasants had to treat the landed gentry like royalty and the landed gentry had to treat the nobles like royalty, and everyone had to treat the royals like royalty. If someone of a better class came on a train, you might as well just get up before the conductor decided you were disrespectful and put you off the train. Hint, I don't think he was a shoemaker, he was considerably poorer than that, but he came due to the rumor that in the US, we were all equal..
About those very wealthy individuals that are the patrons of cities and towns and small rural areas; what do any of us know about them, where they got their extreme wealth, how they treat the people that helped them accumulate all that wealth and how they keep making more? Do we check them out for ethical practices and kindness and general niceness factors?
Most of us just say "thank god our community has them," "Thank god." Some of us develop a kind of hero worship. Some of us try to find a way to see them from afar or even meet them in person. They are celebrities, and our saviors.
I live in a town of about 15,0000, and we definitely are still worshiping the man that started our little burgh. He was a self-made man, his mother a widow so he was raised by a woman without means. He opened an orphanage, a widow's colony, donated his home to the town and on and on and on. He passed away in 1926.
1926!
He was a man that tried a lot of things to make money, and came to Tulsa when it was an Oil Boom town. He died before the market crash of 1929. Who knows how that might have changed things, but now, ninety years later, his name is on the high school and on the widows colony, and on the road connecting us to the big city. His home is the historical society's headquarters and the town museum and its main exhibits are about him.
He is still our patron, even from the grave.
Our bigger neighbor, that city I mentioned--or didn't mention--has a long history of very wealthy, philanthropic families, also from the time of the original oil boom. It also has a few Fortune 400 families and wannabes that are in banking and convenience stores and communications. Their names and their business names are on those buildings that in times very past would have carried the name of the town, town hall, convention centers, museums, theaters, performing arts centers, exposition buildings, now all wielding the names of the wealthy and their business offspring.
We no longer get to pretend that those public buildings belong to the people, are the accomplishments of the people, are the legacy of the people.
We have now become fully patronized.
But in the rest of the world, we have developed an incredible thankfulness to the very rich--those community patrons that have there names on streets and public buildings and get to cut all the ribbons and attend every new community venture's opening. Having heard the incredible words of praise for those families that are the patrons of our community, and from distant relatives, the patrons of their communities, I am struck with the obvious question: "Why do so few of us have the financial ability or economic wherewithal to donate millions without interfering at all with their own luxurious lifestyle. I donate $10 dollars and have to skip a meal that week.
I love genealogy, and have a lot of characters in the past, a few brick walls--translates frequently as someone that either had no family in the record, but certainly didn't start under a cabbage patch, or that had family with the kind of past that it was best to erase. My last immigrant relative, circa 1860's, arrived from England and the fact that a person chose to enter a country during a civil war is a sign they didn't have any reason to stay where they were. His family was long lived and a story my Grandmother told of him was that he came here because in England, if you were born to shoemaker you would die a shoemaker, and that in England, the peasants had to treat the landed gentry like royalty and the landed gentry had to treat the nobles like royalty, and everyone had to treat the royals like royalty. If someone of a better class came on a train, you might as well just get up before the conductor decided you were disrespectful and put you off the train. Hint, I don't think he was a shoemaker, he was considerably poorer than that, but he came due to the rumor that in the US, we were all equal..
About those very wealthy individuals that are the patrons of cities and towns and small rural areas; what do any of us know about them, where they got their extreme wealth, how they treat the people that helped them accumulate all that wealth and how they keep making more? Do we check them out for ethical practices and kindness and general niceness factors?
Most of us just say "thank god our community has them," "Thank god." Some of us develop a kind of hero worship. Some of us try to find a way to see them from afar or even meet them in person. They are celebrities, and our saviors.
I live in a town of about 15,0000, and we definitely are still worshiping the man that started our little burgh. He was a self-made man, his mother a widow so he was raised by a woman without means. He opened an orphanage, a widow's colony, donated his home to the town and on and on and on. He passed away in 1926.
1926!
He was a man that tried a lot of things to make money, and came to Tulsa when it was an Oil Boom town. He died before the market crash of 1929. Who knows how that might have changed things, but now, ninety years later, his name is on the high school and on the widows colony, and on the road connecting us to the big city. His home is the historical society's headquarters and the town museum and its main exhibits are about him.
He is still our patron, even from the grave.
Our bigger neighbor, that city I mentioned--or didn't mention--has a long history of very wealthy, philanthropic families, also from the time of the original oil boom. It also has a few Fortune 400 families and wannabes that are in banking and convenience stores and communications. Their names and their business names are on those buildings that in times very past would have carried the name of the town, town hall, convention centers, museums, theaters, performing arts centers, exposition buildings, now all wielding the names of the wealthy and their business offspring.
We no longer get to pretend that those public buildings belong to the people, are the accomplishments of the people, are the legacy of the people.
We have now become fully patronized.
It is not a great feeling!
