Our experience with the Case Foundation initiative has made the challenge of citizen engagement--citizen centered action--citizen dialogue--an area of study for me. Interpreting our goals to various groups, from the board of the area conservation, resource, and development body to funding sources and booster organizations, all have taken on the sense of being citizen forums. This has been a healthy exercise.

Creating a museum, a living place that will inform and entertain, enlighten and delight, is a bold step for a litle town. A little town often seen as a museum in itself, for its Main Street resists new ventures and lacks the muscle to redefine itself.

But the vision of using using this space to tell the story of journeys, of transportation, of the growth and decline of a real place, this vision is valid. The conversations and surveys about what is needed to begin to make our buildings work have only painted a clearer picture of how ambitious, how expensive, how extravagant, this project is. But there is really no alternative. This is a case of using again, or loosing forever.