December 23, 2008

A Feast of Deadlines

There is nothing like a close deadline to make the eggnog-saturated body rebound from the table or couch and do right now what has been put off too long! Thus, as we approach the final week of the year of 2008, we contemplate the open fields of possibility in 2009...if only we act.

A Feast of Program Ideas

I'm delighted to report that the terrible economy has not stifled people in Missouri museums from thinking of good things to do! Here is a short list of grants we've made recently. Our grants help local people add value to local institutions. A project might help a museum become more interesting by involving people in the area. A project might help a library and historical society work together on a digitizing project. (I'm hoping to see great things in Poplar Bluff next year because of how the Butler County Historical Society is working with the library.) Here's what I mean about creativity:

Sameboatness in Missouri

Our museum services are coming together in several places to help local organizations plan together and work together to achieve common goals. Sedalia is one place where collective planning and thinking followed the magnificent restoration of the KATY Depot. Three years ago two gifted museum consultants (Alisha Cole of Kansas City and Carey Kaplan of St. Louis) created a planning exercise for a group representing all the cultural concerns in Sedalia. I was there to see the fruits of their labor, and the experience changed the way our museum services have evolved. Carey and Alisha developed activities that helped people imagine the motivations and interests of various kinds of visitors. By imagining the visitor (as well as who the visitor's aren't), the cultural leaders could develop a vision of a city that could generate better visitor memories. In most human enterprises, we have to remember that our product is a memory. Too many bad memories are toxic for our enterprise, whether we are a hospital, a museum, or a city.

Lately we've begun to nurture cultural planning in St. Joseph and Ste. Genevieve. For 2009, I pray that with "the saints on our side," we won't founder in talk of the economy. No matter how bad times will be, people will seek ways to make life interesting. Museums and libraries and schools and family networks are the institutions that make life interesting. In St. Joe and Ste. Gen, people know they are in the same boat. It's a leaky boat, and it has always seemed to have more than one rudder. Also, there is confusion about whether the boat moves because of sail, oar, or luck. Nothing new about that; it's part of God's plan, apparently. Life would be dull if we didn't have things to sort through and the hope that we can do what our predecessors couldn't.

We have a good list of client organizations for museum work in 2009, but there is room aplenty at this table. Come in, please. I want to bring the best consultants your way next year.

Words

I have a writer friend who revels in turns of phrase and who has friends with the same funny taste. In their area, a "Super Center" is renamed a "Stupor Center," and something irrelevant is "ear elephant." Hats off to word people! I work with an incredible one, Julie Douglas, who has written a magnificent short piece on making holiday gifts with words. Oh, Julie, how do you do it?

A Blog about Museums and Memory

I hope you'll look at Art Mehrhoff's short blog at the MU Museum of Art and Archaeology. He poses an interesting question in the world of culture. Is a museum a community's "memory?" I would add a question to sharpen the issue. What is the difference between a museum that is a community's memory and a museum that is a community's attic?

A Blog about Passage and Continuity

Tomorrow I will make a Christmas dinner alone for the first time in my life, and it will not be a sad occasion, as some worry it will be for the grieving widower. One thing I have learned about the sadness of loss is that it resembles the passing clouds, just as anger or frustration seemed to me twenty years ago during the first marital squabble I was able to step out of as easily as I could step out of a pair of pants. From time to time we have these experiences of being separate from the things that happen to us. I treasure the onset of that knowledge. "I" am not my feelings any more than Cambridge Avenue is the winter mix that will fall on it tonight and then pass on. In memory of my departed San, though not about her, my last blog of 2008 contains a short poem that allowed me to express her passage and my connection with her and with the eternal source of her.