RE: https://mastodon.social/@bubakuyateh/116444984468909180
"Power is the ability to do good things for others."
– Brooke Russell Astor
The Rockefeller University » Life Trustee Brooke Astor dies at 105 — <https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/668-life-trustee-brooke-astor-dies-at-105/>
"… Mrs. Astor devoted nearly five decades to sowing a larger sense of community among the city’s erstwhile aristocracy, as the established matriarch of New York’s philanthropic circle. She regularly contributed time and money to the institutions she referred to as New York’s “crown jewels”: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York Public Library and The Rockefeller University, among many others. Unusual among her social set, however, she spent equal energy providing for the basic operational needs of homeless shelters, jobs programs, nursing homes, schools, youth centers and other such organizations. By the time the Vincent Astor Foundation was dissolved in 1997, Mrs. Astor had donated almost $195 million as its president. In recognition of her generosity, she was given many unusual honors: In 1981, the Bronx Zoo named a baby elephant “Astor” in her honor; in 1996, the New York Landmarks Conservancy designated her a living landmark. …"
If it's not (also) true that Leo Tolstoy wrote the pictured words (popularised on Facebook and elsewhere), I like to think people did something good for him. Thanks, perhaps, to Astor.
#living #landmark #power #positivity #good