Rich Or Famous?

It's only my first week of blogging and I'm already stretching for topics. So much for being creative.

I've again turned to my bookshelf for inspiration. Gregory J.P. Godek wrote a book called Romantic Questions, Growing Closer Through Intimate Conversation. In it he asks, if you would rather be rich or famous.

I would rather be rich. Being famous has too many pitfalls. And if you are really rich, you could arrange to be famous, but being famous doesn't mean you can get rich.

Ever the pragmatist.

Another question he asked was, if you had a million dollars and had to give it away, to whom would you give it to?

That is a tougher question. I've often thought about how the lottery should be spread out among many winners, instead of one big amount to one person. Spread the joy and all that. I wonder if it would be cheating to give a lot of it to my children, enough so that they could attend any school they wanted, buy a home, invest for the future.

If I couldn't give it to them, I would perhaps choose two hundred people to give five thousand dollars to. Of course, if I chose to give it to friends, where would I draw the line? Which friends would I exclude? Would it be better to set up college scholarships for kids who apply to me? Maybe I would keep it and give it away bit by bit as causes made themselves known to me.

Or, here's a wild thought. I wonder if I could set up an orphanage - a kind and well run orphanage, unlike the Dickenseque stereotype. I think the foster care system is flawed, with kids getting shuffled from home to home, never knowing stability. Perhaps with a million dollars I could hire competent, dedicated people and purchase a building that could house a lot of kids. We'd serve them healthy food, see that they had decent clothes, a home, albeit a big extended one, and a "family" of people that cared about them.

Okay, I guess I'm not as much of a pragmatist as I professed to be. Call me a pragmatic dreamer. Heh heh.