Ostriches

Excuse me, kindly take your head out of the sand and listen up. All of you ostriches, you've been hiding your heads in the dirt and letting opportunities pass merrily by and letting other people reap the benefits and do all sorts of creative things and get mucho rewards and gain fame and fortune and do shaving cream adds and wind up on the cover of People magazine and all the while you've been snorting dirt.

Did you not understand that Coos County Cultural Coalition grants are available to individuals.

I-n-d-i-v-i-d-u-a-l-s.

Yes, you can actually get a grant to cover some of the expenses of doing your work and have extra time to be brilliant and a huge success and achieve lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless. You could be like a Kardashian, even!

You are already here and there's a link to the Coos County Cultural Coalition web site where you can find and download the forms to apply for a grant. So why aren't you doing it?

Yes, sure the deadline is October the 31^th and you are busy getting the house decorated for Halloween, and buying candy to stave off the hoards of starving chitlins who will be banging on your door on the All Hallows Eve and you can't be bothered to take time away from the busy preparation for this important holiday, what about getting an early start for next year?

You don't think you need any help or support, your project is so small that you plan to finance it with bottle returns and cookie sales, but someone said the Girl Scouts have already done that so cookies are out but there are always bottles by the side of the road so you are on the road to financial success without filling in a bunch of forms and justifying yourself to a committee of stuffed shirts.

Listen, even if you can finance your project with bottle returns, what about promotions, space and display? Didja think about that? No of course not.

The grant won't pay for capital improvements, or salaries, but you are going to con...convince your long-suffering friends, families and under-age school children to do the grunt work so you don't have to worry about that!

So what about it, do you want to be an ostrich all of your life or do you want to soar with the eagles and fly high with the wise owls? All you have to do is fill out the form, read all of the directions, not like you do with the tax forms where you open the page, take one look, and run screaming to your tax accountant! (You do know that tax accountants, tax lawyers and CPAs, cannot practice before the IRS tax court? Only an Enrolled Agent can and you better know that when the audit letter comes.)

You know you have something you want to do, you know you just need a little bit of help to do it, you know that it will be a homogeneous triumph. So get out your pen, download the forms, fill them in, send them back and this time next year you can be the one with a smug little smile on your face having people fall at your feet to praise your success and it all started with a grant from the CCCC!