“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau
One upside of being at home the last two weeks is having time for reading and reflection, so I am now (finally) reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Thoreau writes that “Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house…”.
My question for this week, exactly 175 years from when Thoreau took the first steps on his two-year experiment in simple living, is what can we begin to build during this unexpected season we have been given?
Our team at KEDCo will be working remotely for at least another two weeks, yet we remain available by email or phone to work with business and community leaders to make connections to existing resource partners and to develop programs and services to meet the needs of local businesses.
We are now working with a handful of companies interested in producing medical supplies to support our healthcare systems. We continue to work with companies planning job creation and investment projects. And we are connecting companies to resources such as SBA economic impact disaster loans.
How can we help you? We have a baker’s dozen responses so far to our KEDCo Q2 Needs Assessment Survey (link HERE). Again, we are asking local business leaders to invest 5-10 minutes to share feedback on their current needs so that we can identify opportunities to provide connections, build solutions, and share best practices.
We’re all being impacted by the measures put in place to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. To again borrow from Thoreau, “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” Let’s make something of the costs we are paying to combat this health crisis by investing in ourselves, our families, our businesses, and our communities.
– Alan Tio
