It’s one thing, to come up with one or several ideas. It’s quite another to act upon one or several of them. Coming up with ideas and elaborating on them in one’s head; this is a lot of fun because then, all things are possible. Me, I feel boundless energy when, in my head, the idea comes to mind and after, I get to run with it.

Today’s idea – I was cleaning the horse pen when I came up with it. It was a catchy phrase for the fundraising campaign, the one in which I am going to head up. It was at first, “Build it and they will come.” Then I got to thinking (always a dangerous thing) what is “it” and who is going to come? It suddenly occurred to me to clarify, which turned out to be easy, “Build it and readers will come.” It, being a literacy center.

Kids' books

Pete liked it. I was emboldened by his response, so I said that as a part of a fundraiser, we could show the movie, Field of Dreams. He was rather noncommittal about this, maybe because locating a place to show the movie might be difficult. Maybe, I am thinking, we can rent the Palmer Train Depot.

These were my immediate ideas. Pete called the owner of the land we are interested in acquiring – the land has not been sold, a good thing, but he wasn’t interested in writing some of the cost off on his taxes. It then occurred to us both that we should contact Tom Sjoka, who was the realtor who sold Jim’s place. Pete called and left a message. Pete then went fat biking. I answered the phone a few minutes later.

I told Tom about the property – he sounded very enthused about this potential investment. He also said that this is a good price for Palmer downtown property. And later, when I was at the hotel, he came by, and I gave him the tour. He was very impressed. He now has a co-worker, and the two will meet with Pete and me on Thursday at noon.

We will then make an offer. Back and forth we shall go – it is currently $210,000.

Also good, Pete finally echoed my idea, that we are already doing literacy work. This, I added, is how we’ve made a name for ourselves in the community.

But this is the tough part. Acquiring this property is going to involve talking to a lot of people and asking for a financial contribution. I am discovering that people don’t easily part with their money. They have no qualms about purchasing a cup of coffee and a slice of banana bread at a bakery, but they are less apt to make a contribution for a book, or the good work that we are doing. Huh, $200,000. If every contributor gave $1,000, well this would mean that we’d have gotten contributions from 200 people.

We’ll see. I feel less anxious about this when I’m working because then I’m not thinking about the what if.