An heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune gives $100 million to a shoestring poetry magazine. It’s her money and she can do what she wants with it, but think of how many starving people could be, how many churches could be built in the Third World. What could the Missionaries of Charity do with that money?
That’s not to say that supporting culture and the arts is unnecessary. The Vatican is often criticized for the elaborate museums full of art that they say could be sold for charity. (I think the Vatican has a role in being a guardian of our art and culture, but that’s another tangent).
So a donation to the poetry magazine isn’t ridiculous, but $100 million for a 10,000 circulation periodical on poetry? It’s almost too much because how could you even spend it properly? Sometimes there’s such a thing as too much money to be thrown at any one cause.
