Heritage Renewal

It's been an incremental process moving into the new quarters for the Center for Heritage Renewal, in the old Knox Lumber building, now officially designated by the university the West Building. Here's a photo of the library shelving up in the executive office of the center.

Executive office, Center for Heritage Renewal

Director Tom Isern has a desk over to the left of this photo. There is another staff office in the complex, a reception area, and a good-sized lab. The complex is outfitted with good industrial shelving, surplus property desks and tables, and whatever else we could scrounge. Computers are an issue, as our towers took water during the flood episode of last summer. We're looking for a little money to acquire some new desktops. In the meantime, the center is a BYOL (bring your own laptop) area.

Tom divides time each week between the center and his teaching office on campus in Minard Hall. Various collaborators and assistants, too, are putting in hours at the center.

Carole at her desk in the center

This morning I (Tom) went first into the adjacent NDSU Archives to use a rare book, and there encountered PhD student Carole Butcher doing some research. A few minutes later she was back here in the center, doing some work, I believe, on Dakota Datebook features for Prairie Public radio. We look forward to hearing these broadcast on statewide public radio.

Michael populating the social media

Another guy spending quite a bit of time in the center is Michael Black, who has done much of the outfitting work here--shelf and furniture assembly, hanging artwork, you name it. This morning he was compiling information on centennials and jubilees coming up in North Dakota this summer and posting information to the center's heritage tourism Facebook group, Heritage Trails.

We're hoping that Michael can catch up collecting data on various categories of heritage events happening in the region and get the information out to the public in time for the summer travel season. Watch for press releases and social media features over the coming weeks.

A little more about the facilities here--the lab floor was a problem when we came in. We had the carpet ripped up, and the concrete underneath was pretty rough. So we picked up some concrete patch and some paint-on epoxy flooring, like you would use in a shop, and did a job on it. Michael, Aaron Barth, and Tom laid this down over a weekend. Here's what it looks like. We're pretty proud of this DIY job.

Ed Dickey calls attention to the federal legal requirement for an alternative route for Basin's transmission line.