Preserving the Past by Pat Mulso

With Christmas and New Year’s over, it’s time to think of everything coming up at the museum in January. In December we were awarded a Library Legacy Grant called “Freeborn County, You Tell Us.” This grant will allow us to involve the general public in preserving a pictorial history of our community.

We will be hosting four photo workshops to collect and scan photos from members of the community to add to our collection. The first two workshops are Saturday and Jan. 24. To participate in this project you will need to call or stop in to reserve a time slot between 10 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on one of the dates. You will be required to sign a release allowing us to scan and add your photo to our collection. You are permitted to bring up to six photos to be scanned. We are looking for family generation photos, photos of businesses, organizations, events etc. We will also collect information regarding the photos. We will announce dates for February and March workshops soon. After the workshops are completed we will host a PowerPoint presentation open to the public to show the types of photos we have collected. We hope you will consider taking part in this special project to preserve our local history. We have many photos from the late 1800s through the 1950s, but from that time period forward our collection is very limited and we hope our workshops will net a peek into our more recent history so future generations will also have the opportunity to take a look into the past. This project is made possible in part or in whole with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. We hope to hear from many of you soon to secure your time slot. The phone number for the museum is 507-373-8003.

We will host a four-hour defensive driving refresher class on from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. The cost is $20 for AARP members and $25 for non-members, and this fee includes class materials and an administrative fee. You must pre-register for the class by calling the museum or stopping by during our regular business hours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Please note our holiday schedule.

The museum will resume regular hours starting Wednesday. We will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

We recently received another legacy grant which will help us to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ACT in our community. I will give you some details on that special project in the future. We were also awarded a vetted program that will take place in April and provide a $1,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation to help with the children’s program and toward the purchase of a new PA system for our meeting rooms. We have other grants submitted and want to say a special thank you for the grants we have received so far.

The end of the year has just past, and that means your museum memberships need to be renewed. We are working to pay off our building debt as well, and have lots of great ideas for new programs. Your continued support is sincerely appreciated. We are very proud to serve our community from our very young visitors to those we serve from our local nursing homes and all of you in-between. We hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year’s and look forward to serving the community in 2015.

 

Pat Mulso is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum, Library and Village, 1031 Bridge Ave.