Researching some Haines history from the early 1970s last week, I stopped at the Haines Sheldon Museum and was led to the town’s archives where I found what I was looking for in some old newspapers.
If the Haines Borough Assembly eliminates museum funding, such a simple research mission might become impossible.
What does closure or loss of our local museum mean? It means that our collective database, our town history, becomes a matter of conjecture or memory or opinion, not of provable facts and knowledge.
Sports fans, consider this: How do we know that hoops legend Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game between the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962?
Because there’s a record of it, namely newspaper clippings and a radio broadcast.
Because those items exist, no one can deny Chamberlain’s feat or convincingly call it “fake news.”
Unlike Wilt’s 100 points, most Haines history isn’t available on Google. It’s available in a building on Main Street, as it has been for decades. If we lose this building, or access to its contents, we lose the knowledge of who we are, what happened here, and how we became the town that we are.
It would be a staggering loss with far-reaching, negative consequences, akin to waking up one morning and finding your memory gone.
Please express to borough assembly members that continued operation of a town museum is important and not negotiable as a cost-cutting measure.
Tom Morphet