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Two U-Md. Grads Among MacArthur 'Genius' Awardees
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"All the everyday battles, I just won't have to fight so hard, or worry about how to do it all," she said. "The part I find so baffling is how I got it."
She will never know the answer to that question, as the selection process is designed to be anonymous and confidential.
"The selectors serve for no more than three or four years, and we request them not to speak about it," said Daniel Socolow, director of the Chicago-based MacArthur Fellows Program. That's so nominators can't be lobbied.
The money comes without strings attached, Socolow said, because the fellows are chosen for their creativity and ability to conjure new ways of seeing and studying and bettering the world. This year's group includes seven fellows who are foreign born.
"We're supporting the individual who is exceptional," he said. "These people know best what to do and how to do it, and we shouldn't be mucking around with telling them how to do it."
The works of jazz violinist Regina Carter, 40, have been performed the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage and Woolly Mammoth Theatre. She had just been thinking about going back to school to study music therapy. She saw the power of the music when she played for her dying mother.
"I didn't buy the lottery ticket, I didn't sign up for it," she said in a telephone interview from Detroit, where she was packing up her mother's home.
"I was really sad for a minute and thought, oh, I wish my mom was here and I could tell her. But I think she knows."
