You wouldn’t believe some of the projects on which people want to spend money. For example, on my desk at the Port Frederick Civic Foundation there is a superbly persuasive piece of begging that appeals for funds to establish a Bilingual Academy of Latin Studies for Local Residents of Mexican-American Descent. A fine and highfalutin notion, right? Except that we are 1,000 miles north of the border, and the only Latino in town is the one who wrote the grant proposal, no other Mexicans ever having been stupid enough to leave that climate for this one. According to the grant application, the “project developer” is presently unemployed, but is willing to accept a sacrifice salary to become director of said academy.
Nay, José.
Then there’s the request for the many thousands of dollars it would take to levy and enforce a total trade embargo against the State of New York. This, mind you, is the State of Massachusetts.
Application denied.
My assistant director, Derek Jones, particularly likes the application that asks the Foundation to fund the construction of a “small but tasteful” massage parlor, complete with a movie theater for “short, tasteful” porno licks. All this, one assumes, for a clientele of short but tasteful men.
Close, but no cigarillo.
My favorite, however, is the one that proposes to send a dozen college students to every ski resort in the Adirondacks and the Rockies “in order to ascertain the scientific validity of the claim that it is more difficult to ski on ice than on powder.” The applicants—coincidentally a dozen fraternity brothers from the University of Virginia—envision a four-year project with expenses limited to economy airfares, cheap hotels and three-day lift tickets. (Students from more northern schools tend to request funding to study the differences among the sands of Florida beaches, Or was it tans?)
Applications also denied, but with regret.
Actually, we couldn’t fund such worthy causes even if we wanted to, which in the case of the massage parlor, Derek does. For one thing, our own charter limits us to charitable activities in Port Frederick, which knocks the skis out from under those enterprising young men from Virginia, And, as a private charitable foundation, we are also regulated—not to say hog-tied—by myriad laws that govern how we may accrue, invest and spend the millions of dollars that various donors have bequeathed over the years to this Foundation.
Most folks don’t know all that, however. So we get a constant flow of inappropriate applications from individuals and causes we can’t help. And that means that as director of the Foundation, I spend a lot of my time saying “no” to some perfectly nice and deserving people.
And to some perfect jerks.
One of whom appeared at our office that second stifling week of June, screaming holy bloody murder. It was a sadly appropriate and prophetic thing for him to do.