Museum board talks hours, parking and dinosaurs

The H. Earl Clack Museum Board discussed, at their monthly meeting Monday evening, a number of issues, including museum hours, parking and incoming gift shop items, and also discussed presentations recently given at a meeting of the Montana Dinosaur Trail.

Board members decided not to change the museum’s hours for the summer, but did decide to put up a sign cautioning people that the museum may open a half-hour late occasionally due to the schedule of tours at the Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump.

Tours at the Jump run at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and noon, but sometimes, if the last tour gets a later start, they need an extra half hour to get the museum open, hence the need for a sign.

The board also discussed other signs including one they are hoping to have set up by the Montana Department of Transportation which will let more people know that there is a museum nearby as they pass through town.

Board member Lela Patera said she’s still waiting to hear back from MDT with confirmation, but she’s been told there’s no reason they can’t get such a sign.

Board members also talked about how and where to put up some old historic signs they still have in the museum’s back room.

Board Chair David Sageser said the signs aren’t particularly heavy, but they are large and awkward to handle so finding a place to set them up and getting them there is difficult.

Board members also agreed to hold off on displaying a dinosaur embryo fossil until they have a lockable display that they can put it in.

H. Earl and Margaret Turner Clack Memorial Museum Foundation Board President Elaine Morse also brought up a recent issue she encountered with a former museum employee who told her that she is still getting phone calls about the museum despite having left a long time ago.

Sageser said there is still a fake website for the museum out there that no one knows the origin of and he suspects that’s where people are getting that outdated number.

The board also talked about ongoing efforts to get their caboose on the Great Northern Fairgrounds repainted, but so much is going on there as summer approaches that it’s become difficult to find an opportunity.

Members of the board also talked about getting their Square-brand mobile credit card reader set up and whether they would need a new device to make the system work, though they eventually decided to see if they can get it working on one of the member’s older phones.

During the meeting Morse also gave an update on her own board’s activities, saying they recently considered installing a handicap parking space but decided against it, feeling it was unnecessary.

They did however agree to ask the City of Havre about the possibility of getting angled parking spaces in front of the museum, she said, though that process hasn’t yet begun.

She said the foundation is also gearing up for a quilt raffle and Infinity Bake Shoppe has offered to donate an additional prize.

Morse said they’ve also gotten approval for a grant application to pay for a new elevator for the museum, but haven’t made much recent progress on addressing the roofing in the museum’s back room.

They are also trying to address an issue recently identified while fixing a plumbing issue, she said, as they found that a lot of the cast iron pipes the building uses are in need of replacement.

She said they are working on getting a bid out for that project.

The board also talked about new items the museum can potentially sell, including new T-shirts, earrings, necklaces and house decorations, some of which Patera brought samples of.

Morse said she was thinking about buying an inflatable T-Rex costume as a prop for their next Dinosaur Christmas, which she thought would be fun.

During the meeting board member Vickie Clouse talked about a recent meeting of the Montana Dinosaur Trail, one that contained some interesting, if somewhat concerning presentations.

Clouse said one of the presentations was from a commercial fossil collector who was upset that he couldn’t join the Dinosaur Trail due to the fact that he sells fossils and he requested that the organization loosen its rules so that people like him can participate.

Clouse said the Dinosaur Trail has always had very strict rules preventing commercial fossil collectors from joining, as the primary goal of the trail is science and science education, not making as much money as possible, which is the primary goal of commercial collectors.

She said the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the guidelines of which inform the Montana Dinosaur Trail’s rules for participation, has always held the position that all fossils are valuable to science and organizations like theirs will not sell them for profit.

These are sentiments Clouse said she shares, lamenting the number of fossils she chose not to keep in her younger years, just because they didn’t seem like particularly important finds.

“I don’t know how many fossils I’ve thrown back because it just wasn’t a big deal, you know,” she said. “ … I‘m realizing right now that that was really a very cavalier thing to do.”

She said she is friends with people who have done pioneering research by extracting materials like collagen and other proteins from fossils and even when scientists can’t make a full skeleton of an extinct animal individual fossils, even very small ones, can be extremely valuable in learning more about these long-dead lifeforms.

Given the incredible importance to science represented by even these seemingly inconsequential fossils, Clouse said, the idea of selling them for profit is antithetical to the Dinosaur Trail’s mission.

Regardless, she said, commercial collectors continue their effort to make inroads into the scientific community, as evidenced by presentations like the one she saw recently, one that she said made her shake her head in dismay.

Morse said that allowing a commercial collector to make a presentation at this meeting decrying the organization’s refusal to include him was inappropriate to begin with, as they are fundamentally a scientific organization, not one that concerns itself with profit before anything else, as it should be.

“The Dinosaur Trail needs to remain pure,” she said.

Morse said museums need to make money of course, but selling fossils is not something they should be supporting.

Clouse said it seems like everyone at the meeting felt the same and she saw very little chance that the Dinosaur Trail would seriously consider any changes that would allow commercial collectors to join, which she is glad for.

While on the subject of the trail Patera mentioned that she was recently contacted by an author looking to write a book about the Dinosaur Trail and she will be talking with him at the museum sometime soon.