Benefactress

Linda Pullman was born with a silver spoon in her mouth which, after her father invested in Mexican uranium mines and made billions, became golden.

The bonanza afforded the heiress unrestricted movement for the rest of her life. A history major with a music minor, she had been impressed by the recurrence of impoverished artists who had, in spite of or because of their financial status, nonetheless created masterpieces. Now that she didn't have to work nor marry to maintain her grand lifestyle, Linda mused about the greats of history. She wondered how many penniless artists there were like Mozart, Franz Shubert, and Vincent Van Gogh who might not be able to develop their talent because of lack of money. The question sent waves of empathy through the veins of the young billionaire and now that she had the means, she intended to keep what she thought was a travesty against art from recurring. At least in one unknown artist.

As she wondered how to reach such a person, Rembrandt and his bankruptcy raced through her mind. Also brother Theo helping Vincent. It was when the Pullman heiress read of the thirteen-year help a wealthy Russian lady gave composer Tschakowski that she knew she had to find a starving, deserving artist any way she could.

Linda began her search by creating many scenarios. Her first was that

the artist would be a man who maintained the highest moral standards. But after she noticed how a good number of artists had a shady side, she reconsidered. If he were an alcoholic, a degenerate, but still an artist of overwhelming inner worth, certainly she would support him as abundantly as any Mr. America.

Then the heiress considered where she would find him. At a concert? A music school? An art gallery? She considered asking publishing houses for clients with promise or striking potential. She also considered asking at state and national art councils to find who they considered worthy.

Then Linda investigated actively. She didn't expectherartist to fall in her lap. She spent a year and a half visiting art shows and concerts and book signings, she spoke with philanthropists, scholarship boards, she went to poetry readings, city square speeches, college classes. She attended theatrical performances until she became a night owl. Still the would-be beneficiary eluded her.

The closest she came was one evening when she sat in the back row of a vocal recital. One voice, a phenomenally clear soprano, caught her imagination for a moment. The nightingale was, of course, a woman, and that excluded her from Ms. Pullman's preconception, until half-way through the eye-opening night.

Why limit herself to men? Was it some dormant, romantic notion to find a husband? By morning she knew she had set too many parameters around her search. She must let go. Male or female, she must accept whoever seemed right. Moreover, the future philanthropist sensed that perhaps she had approached the entire project incorrectly. Maybe she would never find the artist bylookingfor him/her. And the longer she thought about it the more convinced she became that once she gave up the search the artist would come to her. Then an insidious notion presented

itself: what if her desire to help an artist would be as thwarted as the careers of the great ones that she'd read about? What if she went through her entire life searching, only to find on her deathbed that she had been unsuccessful? That's when she thought of creating the Eternal Fund. Having given up the notion of finding by searching, once she'd created an endowment young Linda Pullman surrendered to serendipity. Which is the exact moment George Carlson came into her life.

George, born of middle-class parents fifty years before the two met, had experienced a multitude of impression-bearing incidents. He'd saved his siblings from a house fire, was swept downstream during a flood and nearly drowned, fallen deeply in love with a movie starlet who returned his overtures until she fell irretrievably into to the jaws of heroin, marched dutifully at a military camp where he acquired discipline he would use the remainder of his life.

In middle age, George became a drifter, hitchhiking around the United States, Canada, and Mexico. He met prostitutes, con artists, dope addicts, fight mongers, street sleepers, dreamers who didn't care if they rotted in their own water. He also rubbed shoulders with strong hard-hats, carpenters, athletes, farmers, and many talkative bartenders. All the while he had that restless urge to keep moving, to experience all he could. Everyone agreed that he had ants in his pants.

During the twenty years he roamed, he did odd jobs to buy the next meal, always sensing there was a reason behind his actions though he didn't know what. Sensing this deeply, he decided to record his movements. George had to dig deep to come up with the first three years. Later he found that writing his experiences was not enough. A feeling of satisfaction arose only when he followed the journalistic report with an in-depth description of what he felt. After twenty years, George Carlson

possessed a set of logs, journals, memoirs, and insights that challenged the notebooks of the best authors.

By sixty, George decided to settle down. With more leisure time, he began to wonder what he could do with the volumes of personal reflections he'd lugged around for decades. That's when he chanced upon an article in a writer's magazine at the grocery store where he stacked produce. The missive said anyone can make a living, and a comfortable one at that, simply writing from his experiences. All one had to do was combine his imagination with his memories and anyone could write worthy fiction.

All the words fit. It would be a way to use his many volumes.

One day Linda Pullman went to the public library to find a book. As she cornered the shelves between O and P, she noticed an unkempt man leafing a large volume at a desk. She paid little attention to him other than to recognize that he was shabbily dressed and stared intently at his book. Later she saw the man again. On a whim, Linda found herself talking with the stranger.

It didn't take long for the heiress to realize that while the man was educated, it was not from the finishing school/Ivy League set she was used to. Also, that the self-educated man possessed a dimension that a young, university-bred woman could never fully understand: He radiated wisdom gained from experience. When she learned that he also possessed twenty years of detailed personal notes, she became most interested. And when he read a few pages, all the pieces fit for her. In George Carlson, Linda had found the person she'd been hoping for.

George lived for twenty-five years after that meeting as a beneficiary of the Pullman Fund. He received one hundred-thousand dollars a year beyond the royalties from the thirty-seven novels he wrote. Several won

the Pulitzer Prize, three were made into blockbuster movies, and he was nominated for the Nobel. George was, indeed, the person Linda had dreamed of. She gave thanks to the Above for delivering him and making her able to help.

Art is a strange thing. Artists are phenomenal. And the art public is capricious. During Van Gogh's life he was taken seriously by no one save his brother and sister-in-law. Shubert had friends, friends who helped, but his art was not bought. Rembrandt, once-famous, was ignored into poverty. Yet other creators, perhaps with less talent, have experienced unlimited acceptance, wealth, fame, and even a place in the history books.

From the philanthropic point, it doesn't matter where the works of George Carlson fit. What does matter and is supremely vital, is that Linda Pullman, Benefactress Extraordinaire, helped an artist find his artistic voice without having to suffer. After all, it's not every aging man who has the opportunity to create thirty-seven novels in twenty-five years without having written a word of fiction before. Everyone who knew Linda and read George knows that God blessed them both.