Closing Time- for Now

a (tragi-)comic by Anton Worblewski

honoring Former UWYo Geological Museum Long-Time Director Brent Breithaupt

The University of Wyoming Geological Museum will close on June 30, 2009, at 5PM, indefinitely, as former director Brent "Bud" Breithaupt announced in a Laramie Boomerang interview. With your help, Friends of the SH Knight Geological Museum is committed to seeing that this is not a permanent situation.

Yesterday afternoon I was in the museum helping a grandpa, who happens to be a Friend of the Dinosaurs, get two t-shirts (they are going fast!) for his grandkids. The museum was packed with people, as it has been pretty much daily since the announcement it would be cut completely from the University of Wyoming budget and closed to the public. As the man and I spoke, several people edged up around us to listen to the conversation.

The Friend was concerned that all the money he and the rest of us as Friends of the Dinosaurs had contributed to the museum over the years would be used for another purpose by university administrators, or would go to waste. I assured him that it is our sincere hope that any monies remaining after closure will revert to the funds being raised to reopen the museum, and told him about the new Friends effort, inviting him and the kids to visit us in Washington Park here in Laramie on the 4th of July. The grandkids were excited to come to the park and see us. The little girl, though, said something that struck me like little else in the way of commentary had yet.

She asked, "Where will the dinosaurs go?"

I told her they would remain, at this point, behind the closed doors of the museum.

"They'll get dusty," she said.

And those two kids just didn't want to leave the premises.

Let's get this ball rolling before the dinos- and the new handcrafted display cabinets by local woodworker David Gregory sit filled with other unique exhibits exclusive to Wyoming- start to gather dust.

Respectfully, Lisa

(Link to Boomerang article will be found at http://www.laramieboomerang.com/ in the June 24, 2009, archive, titled "Extinction." Yesterday's news has not been posted yet today.)