Al's Dream Guitar

[Suzy]

Interesting comment by Al Giordano at the Field. After MUCH prompting, he posted the link to the page describing his 'dream guitar.' I believe he said something about it being 'way above his pay level, or even that of Joe the Plumber' - or something like that. You know his words are always better than ours.
But I thought Field hands might want to think about, dream, imagine, what the guitar is!!!
(Per usual) I'm having trouble creating a hyperlink!
http://folk-instruments.musiciansfriend.com/product/Magnum-Pedal-Steel-Pro-Select-D10-Double-10String-Steel-Guitar?sku=518052&src=3WFRWXX&ZYXSEM=0&CAWELAID=26044184
Please go to Al's comment - can't get the link to work!!!
href="http://folk-instruments.musiciansfriend.com/product/Magnum-Pe...

[Lisa, New York]

Hi Suzy,

You beat me to Fieldhands. Here's what I was thinking...

Maybe the day after the Election (Nov 5th) would be a great day to come together and rally at The Field / Fund for Authentic Journalism to at least help make Al's guitar dream a reality? What do you think?

I mentioned this in my reply comment to Al (5:30pm within same post), because I thought we'd capture more readers, so unfortunately, Al will be onto us... Probably better to hold off until after the Florida fund raising effort and perhaps announce again as we get closer to Election Day?

[Suzy]

Oh, I don't think it has to be a secret at all - I think of it as a CELEBRATION!!!
Can you fix the @$#%^!@#$@# link I can't seem to get into the above post!!!!
So everybody can see the 'model' - bet someone knows how to get a really 'good' deal on it!!!
Day after the election sounds great to me.

Are you in NY, NY...one of my 'old' stomping grounds = from 1967 to 1976. Guess that 'dates' me, huh???

[Lisa, New York]

Hi Suzy,

Great. I'll try to work on better link. I'm with you, think it would be a fantastic way to celebrate Al's work and agree that maybe someone can find a way to swing a deal?. Where are you located? I was in NYC for 14 years ('83-'97). Moved overseas for 4 years where kids were born. Now live in Westchester County. (I was born in 1960 so I'm not really a youngster either, though I shouldn't admit that. I feel pretty young at heart most of the time.)

Lisa

[Ann Cantelow]

Hi, Lisa and Suzy. There's an extraneous "http://" in the link there. Here's what it is without that: http://folk-instruments.musiciansfriend.com/product/Magnum-Pedal-St...

It is a very lovely steel guitar! My goodness, it has pedals. I wonder if those change the tuning, the number of note steps between strings. Neat!

[Lisa, New York]

Thanks for the enhanced link, Ann.

Suzy and Ann, I am not well versed in how to navigate around the Fieldhands site.

Is there a way that we can post an announcement toward the end of this week about our Guitar idea... Ultimately, we'll probably need to include in comment section of The Field, but to prep we could start here.

i.e. Stay tuned on election night... For every state that Al predicted, for all of his chicken little inoculations, for his cutting edge perspective that couldn't be found elsewhere, for his unwaivering faith in this community that has come together, let's be prepared to drop some moolah into a "Dream Guitar Fund" and get this guy his guitar?"

Also, we will have to figure out with Al if it is okay/legit for people to use Fund for Authentic Journalism mechanism for him to accept and track donations?

Lisa Ballard

[Christi Demuth]

So how do we get this for him? Any ideas?

[Suzy]

Christi:
I've been hoping a musical Field hand who knows something about this, and getting a "good' price - will step in after the elction - it can happen quickly - once we know the BEST price available - and best quality, which I expect is what Al has put on this folk-instrument site. I don't know zilch about buying musical stuff - but was kind of hoping it might be like cameras & stuff where the price varies a lot???

[Renee Mancuso]

http://www.magnumsteelguitars.com/faq.html

Are we keeping this alive? We have almost 600 fieldhands and if we each gave $6 (that's six dollars) we would raise $3,600 which is more than enough to buy the one Al wants and ship it to wherever he wants. I will donate $60 to cover for 9 others who cannot donate. Someone else needs to figure out how to do this, though, as I am not versed in internet money raising.

[Al]

Hey Guys and Gals -

I'm responding here to some comments on The Field that I believe are generated by this thread over here.

As much as I might consider a guitar to be a journalistic work tool, I doubt very much that it is in the mission statement of The Fund for Authentic Journalism to be providing us journos with them.

I fear I may have started this by kidding around about my dream guitar, but in any case it's not in the realm of anything The Fund can be involved with.

Thanks, though, very very much for showing so much support for me that it even extends to a guitar!

best,

Al

[Suzy]

oops
my bad
well, we'll still have great singing at the community Field hand events celebrating The Organizing of the President.

[Lisa, New York]

Think we need to set up a way to gauge interest here at Fieldhands site and then follow up with legitimate source to collect pledges.

[Kris Johnson]

Hi everyone!

I did some research on paypal today re: fundraising. We would not want to use a regular personal account because there is an amount deducted per donation, so we would need a business account. However, this requires a separate checking account, potentially tax information regarding the donation if Paypal were to request said information, and a separate Paypal business account.
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/merchant...

Sorry, I don't remember the html to make that a link if it is not.
I have a few friends I could talk to about non-profit status if we are indeed interested in making a 'Field Hands' non-profit such that we could do our own separate fundraising. I do not have a business account, so if someone could see how much Paypal deducts as opposed to a Premier account, which I have that takes a rather substantial (>1%) fee.