The new building

Can you believe we've come from this scene in April 2009...

...hard hats, golden shovels, and hope....

...to this in October 2009....

..to this, almost ready for occupancy, in May 2010?

It's a vision over 30 years in the making, and the full-on move-in starts at the end of this month, thanks to the state legislature, the university, and generous supporters. Offices, teaching laboratories, archives, library room, and space--finally--for the 500,000 specimens in our collections, spanning 125 years of history on campus.

The grand opening will take place this fall, which gives us three months to get most of the move done. It's not open for occupancy yet. This is the atrium, light-filled and already feeling like home. Here's to another 125 years of research and teaching in the new Paleontology Research Laboratory.

2010 is now in the building....

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) , from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 1917

Actually, it is a grey morning all morning, a week after a blizzard that brought South Dakota to a halt. It's the first day of 2010, and the morning after a full moon. These are observations, not omens. I am looking forward to a ritual Southern New Year's Day dinner with black-eyed peas, cornbread and wine. After that, I will continue quilting and thinking about the year ahead.

2010 promises great joy and will require much work on all fronts. There may be joyous and sorrowful changes. Every day, I hold a bit of the deep past in my hands and of my own past in my memories. It is time to write them down and to map them out.

Everyone who works in a museum and touches the fragments of history knows the melancholy joy of it. I seek it in the tiny buildings dotting the prairie and hills as well as in my daily work, and I sew it into the quilts that are becoming one of my own greatest joys.