Just for a moment, let’s ignore the fact that the likelihood of someone who is truly rich reading this blog is roughly the same as Jerry Falwell getting his nipples pierced. In fact, let’s forget that this blog is probably not read by anyone in particular.
Suppose you were a person of means. Or more to the point, someone who had more than enough money and was wise enough to know this. Perhaps you are wondering, now that you have provided for the necessities of life and whatever luxuries you enjoy, about your legacy. Not the kids, if you have any, but what will remain after you to perpetuate your values, your civic spirit, your aesthetics. It’s a natural question that starts to tickle the wealthy mind in middle age. How will you be remembered?
In the old days, the rich sometimes served as patrons of the arts and sciences. While the Medici family in their time ruled 15th century Florence, we remember them as the family that almost single-handedly bankrolled the Italian Renaissance. Not a bad legacy at all. For today’s Cosimos and Lorenzos, there are plenty of education programs, local symphony orchestras, theater companies, ballets, or other groups who can use your generous donations–and donate you should. Such lively artists are the soul of our civilization, “For,” as Hamlet reminds us, “They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
But patrons of the sciences and scholarship are fewer and further between, and this is unfortunate. I am not suggesting that one should support some garage experimenter because he or she might be the next Steve Jobs, although there is a remote chance that could happen. No, there are other reasons, just as worthy. Many people take the enriching effect of public arts on a community as a given, without considering that public scholarship or public science can do the same thing. Moreover, it is clear that the United States is falling steadily behind in the sciences in an age where national power and prestige is directly tied to technical prowess. It is rightly seen as a matter of national security. If you want young people to take up science, they need to see that science matters.
Monty Robson is a retired airline pilot and a passionate amateur astronomer who lives in New Milford, CT. He and a few friends undertook to design, fund, and build a research-class observatory at a local high school. A fund-raising campaign among local businesses raised $250,000, enough to build a small but world-class facility. They created training programs for the kids, who are now doing serious research. The John J. McCarthy Observatory applied for and was accepted as an official member observatory of the International Astronomical Union, code 932. Not only students, but local enthusiasts and members of the public can use this facility for education and research. Among other things, this remarkable observatory has discovered several new astroids and done important work on the tracking of near-earth asteroids.
Would you leave a legacy that will do you honor? Be a patron, but consider patronage of a local scholar or amateur scientist or a project in support of them. The investment may not yield entirely tangible returns, but the dividends can be very, very real nonetheless.