Spring Fever!!

Remember back in August when I wrote that sad, sad post about the museum closing?

Well, I've now come full circle. My intern and I were out at the museum on Tuesday and it was buzzing. We've had unseasonably warm weather this week (30 degrees in March?!) and when we arrived in the morning there were two pickups on the grounds. One guy was working out in the washroom block, getting it ready to open, and the others were checking out our endless flooding problem in the basement and preparing for our spring clean.
One quick look at the house confirmed my greatest of joys: the shutters are off!!

In a tradition that I appear to be setting, it called for a little dance around my car, followed by a re-exploration of the house sans-shutters. Everything is different with the light of day. I feel re-energized and inspired; making me think, yet again, about that theory that museum professionals embody their museums. It makes me wonder if my figurative shutters were up all winter?
I can just feel the joy, the promise that 2012 will bring. We've got a bunch of new programs, and I've even got about 14 kids already registered for programs starting in July. (July!)

One of my new volunteers sent me a poem that a friend said made her think of my museum. It was bittersweet, but really hit home to me.

THE HOUSE WITH NOBODY IN IT

by: Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

HENEVER I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

 

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

 

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

 

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

 

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

 

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,

That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

 

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

So beautiful and sad, isn't it? I kept wavering between offended and touched.

I care about my museum. And we do take care of it, no matter what it looks like. (Haven't these people ever heard of stabilization vs. restoration!?) Regardless, the poem won't be accurate for much longer.

I'll be back there soon and both our hearts will be mended.