Page 16 of Home Town

No one did. It was up to her.

Drawing in a breath, she said, “Or we could spread the word electronically.” After being met with blank stares she added, “Like email instead of paper mail.”

“How would we do that?” Marie Jacobs, a saint of a woman even if she had birthed that devil’s spawn, Corey, asked.

“You have an email list, right?” Josie asked.

The exchange of glances among the ladies answered that question.

So, no email list.

“We can put a form on the website easily enough to capture email addresses.” Having been met with silence once again, Josie asked, “There is a website. Right?”

Sadie shook her head.

“Facebook page? Or a group?”

Marie raised her hand. “We opened a Facebook for the Sidney Historical Society once, but the woman who had the log in retired—and then died. So…”

Jeez. Josie nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. We’ll just start from square one. No problem at all.”

She’d rather start from scratch anyway. Set things up properly, right from the start rather than fixing whatever mess they might have come up with on their own.

“I can set up a simple website, with an email sign-up. And a public Facebook Page and a Facebook Event for the celebration. We really only need a single webpage for the brief history of Sidney. Then all the details about the events happening for the celebration. Some pictures. Historical and modern…”

The design began to come to life in Josie’s mind as she spoke.

“You can do all that?” Peggy, the church secretary who was younger than Sadie but still up there in years, asked.

Josie tipped her head. “Yes. Easy.”

Good thing she’d just finished a major project and the next one wasn’t due for a bit. This was turning out to be a bigger job than she’d anticipated.

Pen poised over her notebook, she asked, “What kind of things do you have planned for the celebration?”

“Well, it will all center around the founder’s compass,” Sadie said.

“The uh, compass?” Josie asked.

“Oh, she might not know,” Marie said before turning to face Josie. “You were living away when the bequest was made.”

“That’s right,” Sadie nodded. “It was right before the pandemic.”

Like watching a tennis match, Josie watched the conversation volley back and forth between the women as she waited for some actual information to be delivered.

“So that television show with the antiques came to Binghamton. And the Foresters had been cleaning out the house after Martha’s husband’s passing?—”

“Rest his soul,” one woman murmured.

“Amen,” another responded.

Marie nodded. “Yes, lovely family. Such a loss. But when Martha’s son and daughter-in-law were cleaning out the house for her?—”

“Martha is a bit of a packrat,” Sadie interjected.

“—they found a bunch of old stuff in the attic and brought it to the experts from the show to be evaluated.”

“I went too. Waited in a line for three hours for them to tell me my painting was worth less than I’d paid for it at the garage sale.” Sadie scowled.

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