Museum Board discusses winter closure and Christmas

The H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum Board discussed, at a monthly meeting Monday evening, its upcoming Dinosaur Christmas event, as well as when to close for the winter.

Dinosaur Christmas is scheduled for Dec. 3 from noon to 2 p.m. at the museum’s old location at the Holiday Village Mall, just before Cookies and Books with Santa, also at the mall at 2 p.m.

The event will have arts and crafts, a Christmas tree and dinosaur eggs for children to open.

The board also decided that the museum will close Jan. 1 for the winter.

At the meeting they also accepted a couple donations to the museum, including some large tin signs from the old days of Clack Oil, as well as a restored stationary engine that could have been used to run a variety of equipment back in the older days of the town.

They also discussed some clothing items, but decided to take a closer look at them before making a decision.

The board also heard from H. Earl and Margaret Turner Clack Memorial Museum Foundation Board President Elaine Morse who delivered a report on that organization’s recent activities as well as the museum manager’s report, as Manager Emily Mayer was not able to be at the meeting.

Morse, reading from the manager’s report, said emergency exit signs with maps had been made for the new museum location, and work is being done to get their temporary History of the Telephone exhibit set up.

She also said they’ve been working on updating the job description language for the manager position with a more defined duty list.

She said she believes shoveling snow, something that hasn’t been done recently, should be part of the general outside upkeep part of the manager’s duties and not doing it is potentially hurting attendance.

Morse also said she, along with Board Chair David Sageser and member Lela Patera, who were absent from Monday’s meeting, were also working on ways to improve daily operations at the museum including better tracking of payments and inventory.

“There’s lots of things that could be improved,” she said.

The board also heard from Morse about a new set of display cases the museum received which have been moved into the back room.

Morse said the cases are really nice, but also very heavy, so they will take some work to move around.

She also said they recently got a bid to install a new floor in the back room.