Love her so f-cking much.
There’s a reason why Stephen King, and so many J.K. Rowling fans, took such offence to those early dumbass comparisons between Harry Potter and Twilight. One is gold, the other is ass, and it’s incredibly insulting to Jo’s great talent and her legacy to put her in the same sentence as that silly Stephenie Meyer. I mean please.
Jo is the best. And the best is also the most generous. But Jo lost her mom at 45 to MS, well before she introduced the world to Harry Potter, and it’s a heartbreak that has stayed with her, a heartbreak she does not want to share with anyone else, which is why she just donated $15 million (10 million pounds) to the University of Edinburgh:
"I cannot think of anything more important, or of more lasting value, than to help the university attract world-class minds in the field on neuroregeneration, to build on its long and illustrious history of medical research and, ultimately, to seek a cure for a very Scottish disease.”
It is not her first gift to the institution and, obviously, not the only recipient of her philanthropic spirit. She also supports the Children’s High Level Group, Comic Relief, and several women’s societies around the world.
As Jo once said:
“You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently”.
And she does.
Today then would be a good time to revisit Jo’s inspiring, spinetingling, no adjective does it justice Harvard Commencement Speech, both for those of us who’ve already watched it several times and for those of you who’ve never. To read the transcript, click here.
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Photos from Chip Somodevilla/Gettyimages.com
