Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Quick Update of a Really Long Two Weeks

Monday evening Deneen and I attended a formal dinner at the Governor's residence. This was the culmination of our week of raising awareness and funds for the Trouvadore project. The dinner was a small event with several government officials and a couple guys from Carnival. Dr. Donald Keith presented the history of the museum and projects that we have done, leading up to the current project. I provided the closer, batted cleanup, and hit them with the slam dunk, in sports metaphors anyway.

The closer is that this small museum seemingly in the middle of nowhere, 30 years ago found and documented the oldest ship ever found in the America's. After 30 years, this is still the oldest ship ever found and fully documented. For the last four years we have been working on a project searching for the slave ship Trouvadore, which wrecked off of the Caicos islands in 1841. If the ship we have found is in fact the Trouvadore, this will be the first slave ship ever found and fully documented that was sunk while carrying a human cargo.

These are two internationally significant discoveries that are right here around the small islands of the TCI. I continually point out that locally, the museum is often taken for granted. But internationally, we have been able to complete unbelievable underwater archaeological projects. This is same for almost all museums, except for the underwater archaeologically.

All week last week I was in Pine Cay and Provo attending meeting after meeting after meeting. I am spending so much time with Deneen and the boys here. When I was in England for four weeks in 2006, I did not miss my family at all. Here, I am gone for four days and miss them terribly.

Fund raising has not gone as well as expected. Many people on Provo are nervous about the economy and were less than committal about how much support they could lend this summer.

On Tuesday, I presided over my second trustee meeting. Here, I presented our annual report, my first, and submitted our budget for 2008. I have been working on these for most of February. The museum is not in a great position. Serious fund raising and development issues will need to be decided in the very near future. In the end, I will spend the next six weeks working on development scenarios, capital improvement estimates, and architecture programs for new museum buildings to present at another trustee meeting in April.

Not too much pressure, this work will only decide the success or failure of the national museum of a small country.

No comments: