One point of clarification. I had written NCKRI is happy to accept donations of historical significance but I did not mean to imply that all donations would be displayed per Stephens comment below Veni has said NCKRI would take it and display it. Many museums have far more material in their archives than they could ever display. I hope NCKRI finds itself in that position someday. Such material is saved for research, special exhibits, and preservation for posterity and from destruction.
Currently we are wrapping up our exhibit designs and expect to have them finished this summer. Well then also have price estimates for their fabrication and well start looking for the appropriate sums of money to build them. If NCKRI was given the proclamation, I would not expect to display it. Since we are the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, our exhibits will be nationally and somewhat internationally focused, not on New Mexico. That already gets a lot of play just down the road at Carlsbad Caverns. In any case, I want to be clear about NCKRIs plans so I dont unintentionally give the wrong impression on what we would do with the proclamation should the NSS not want it (unlikely since the NSS President has said he does) and/or the region decides to give it to NCKRI. George *************************** George Veni, Ph.D. Executive Director National Cave and Karst Research Institute 400-1 Cascades Avenue Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215 USA Office: 575-887-5517 Mobile: 210-863-5919 Fax: 575-887-5523 gv...@nckri.org www.nckri.org From: swr-boun...@caver.net [mailto:swr-boun...@caver.net] On Behalf Of Stephen Fleming Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 11:44 To: Steve Peerman; Blake N. Jordan ; Kathy Peerman; NM Caver List Cc: Lynda & James Sánchez; 'Aaron Stockton'; Ron; Pete Lindsley Subject: Re: [SWR] Proclamation Peerman's comments clearly lay out the root of the problem. One other thing before I continue. This discussion, like a number that occurred during the 50th planning, started out as a fairly inclusive conversation which devolved into a discussion among a small group of FSCSP participants about things that are not FSCSP issues and excluding the larger interested parties of the SWR. As I have noted before, not everything occurring at Fort Stanton is the exclusive purview of the FSCSP, or the SWR, or the state monument or the BLM. Their interests often intersect but often do not. This is a case where the discussion ought to be (and is returning via this note going to the list) among the SWR membership. So, the discussion of the resting place of awards and memorabilia needs to involve the SWR when the artifacts are related to the organization. That is not happening at the moment. So, the point of this is the next time you want to discuss this topic, send it to the SWR list so everyone can see it. In this instance, I have added the two other SWR officers who were not party to the earlier rounds on this. Okay, now I will summarize some of the comments I've received since posting the proclamation (some were to the list, some to me only). I think all interested members should have a voice. That probably would mean a large number would agree with the idea of keeping it in NM, but those wanting such also should provide feasible and suitable alternatives as to where and how to display it, not just 'keep it in the state'. The suggestions so far are these: NSS NCKRI New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources museum, on the campus of New Mexico Tech Carlsbad Caverns Visitor Center Ft Stanton bunk house BLM refurbished headquarters on the quad NCA/FSCave Room of the Fort Stanton Museum As Peerman notes, the SWR membership and interests are far broader than Fort Stanton and the FSCSP. The FSCSP represents a fraction of NM cavers and most of them are SWR members. It is a subset of caving in NM, nothing more. The SWR just happened to be formed at Fort Stanton in 1962 and has no other connotation relative to the cave and the area than that. Some comments on the above suggestions. First, none of the locations is even close to ideal, but some are better than others. Veni has said NCKRI would take it and display it, but thinks it more appropriate for the NSS to have it due to organizational alignments. I agree with George's view, though I'm not opposed to it going to NCKRI. Plus, it's a long way out of the mainstream for most to go see it. The only location I am adamantly opposed to is letting any unit of the NPS touch it. The NPS has done nothing with or for the SWR compared to other agencies. That said, I also would not give it to BLM or any other governmental entity. It is not a BLM award, and putting it in the BLM office at Stanton is tantamount to it disappearing as access is and will be extremely limited. On that point, access will always be an issue since no location is convenient to even a small majority of folks that might be interested in seeing it in person. The bunkhouse is a no-go due to lack of control of the facility plus, as Peerman notes, the connection to the FSCSP. Anything put in there can disappear and such loss would not be apparent for some time due to the limited use of the building by cavers, but clearly unrestricted access by anyone that cares to wander in. The document and other items (the BLM national volunteer award and the Tularosa banner) need to be in some public facility where they will be secure. The Fort Stanton museum would qualify, but it has the same issues of access (unreliable hours being the main one) plus, face it, the cave room is mostly an afterthought and the facility does not do much other than tolerate its presence. Plus, the geography issue is the same as for the bunkhouse and the BLM office. While the proclamation would easily fit, the banner would not. If we're going to solve this we need to think about all the items now and those that may accrue in the future. The NM Tech suggestion qualifies as a public facility that likely has much more reliable hours of operation than the Fort Stanton museum, plus it clearly is in a central location. But, would anyone know to go there? Probably not. Would they even want to display the items? Maybe, but I'm guessing that since that facility is predominantly a rock shop, paper and fabric would be of little interest to them. The overarching concern about where to place these items ought to be accessibility and security. And by security I mean that it be somewhere that the archivists understand and appreciate the nature of the items and they do not someday achieve the status of the Gary Davis painting of Feather Cave which someone in BLM decided was (framed and matted) trash and was almost lost in the dumpster had Bilbo not seen and rescued it in a fortuitous alignment of the stars. If a facility does not have a preservation focus for a particular area, those items become discardable at some point, as in the Gary Davis instance. Therefore, any facility that is not expressly a museum of some type is suspect and unsuitable in my opinion. Now, to address the concern that the document stay in NM. Fine, but where? NCKRI and NMT satisfy the museum standard but are not ideal. My preference is to send it to the NSS. It will be no more or less accessible to NM cavers than the items Peerman has been holding, for decades in the case of the banner. How was that more useful and accessible to cavers? It wasn't and isn't. I did not even know he had them and I suspect a great majority of other SWR cavers are likewise in the dark. Well, they may not be at present, but the memory will recede. It would be better to have the items in a museum where they can be cared for rather than stored in a closet or wherever. Along those lines I have a second SWR banner that I bought when we made the current one. It's slightly smaller and I frequently ask myself why I thought it necessary to get it. I would send it to the NSS along with the other items. Face it, most cavers will only ever view these things as graphics on a website. What exactly do they gain by standing in a room somewhere in NM and looking at it in a frame? Nothing and they have to make the effort to go there. The NSS museum arguably will protect it better and it will contribute to the national caving exposure in a facility expressly dedicated to caving, where it will not end up in a dumpster someday, or deteriorating in a closet, or eventually lost to memory. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Stephen Fleming On 06/02/2012 9:53, Steve Peerman wrote: Lynda, It is a problem -- the SWR has no physical headquarters, and we're a diverse bunch. The people that you see, Lynda, are the ones who participate in the FSCSP, but there are others whose focus are the gypsum caves in the eastern and southern parts of the state, and still others whose focus are the great limestone caves of the Guadalupe Mountains. And there are a great many SWR members who are "armchair" cavers who no longer actively cave anywhere anymore. Despite the work project at the fort that we did to get the cafeteria, I don't think most SWR cavers would feel close ties to the fort. If the FSCSP had exclusive use of the bunkhouse, I'd have no problem displaying these awards there, but there would be SWR members who would object to that because the FSCSP is independent of the SWR. But I have to agree with those who object to the proclamation going to the NSS archives, because most SWR members would never see it there. Perhaps you noticed the banner from the 1986 NSS convention at Tularosa at the cafeteria last week. Kathy and I have kept that banner since the convention, because her dad was the one who painted it. We discussed donating the banner to the NSS archives at one point and we brought it up to the person who was in charge at the time (but I don't recall who that was). He recommended against it. He said that they have all kinds of stuff in the archives, and it sits there gathering dust -- no one ever sees the stuff because they didn't really have a place to display the materials or the staff to properly document and organize the stuff. Now the NSS is getting a new headquarters facility and they may have more resources for the display of such materials, but until we know that, I would suggest we keep these things in the area. On Jun 2, 2012, at 8:20 AM, Lynda & James Sánchez wrote: Good morning...Well that is also great news Steve, and I agree, it would be nice to have it, them, displayed. So SWR has two special awards/proclamations. I would reiterate again what I said below. SWR, because of the volunteer carpenter project completed on bldg. 9, has a good working relationship with both BLM and/or State Monuments. The most attractive place and the area that it will be seen the most would logically be the Museum on the Quad. BLM is not going to have their building complete for a while, but the NCA room area would really be nice. Could we ask someone like Knutt Peterson to help frame them either separately or together and place them on the special fish line hangers they used for the other cave exhibits/map etc in the NCA room? If not that, then does anyone else have a thought? Carlsbad would also be great. Lynda -----Original Message----- From: Steve Peerman Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 9:15 PM To: Lynda & James Sánchez Cc: Ron ; 'Stephen Fleming' ; John Corcoran ; 'Aaron Stockton' ; Pete Lindsley ; Wayne Walker Subject: Re: [SWR] Proclamation The region also got a national volunteer award from the BLM, which I have at my house. If there were some place that these things could be displayed it would be great. On Jun 1, 2012, at 6:38 PM, Lynda & James Sánchez wrote: All, you know, I was kind of thinking that too. A good copy could be sent to NSS back east, but keep the original in NM. Maybe even in the BLM refurbished headquarters on the quad once it is put in order, and in the meantime at the Bunkhouse or Carlsbad Visitor Center. But still in NM. And what better place than at Fort Stanton vicinity. Or, we could have it kept in the NCA/FSCave Room of the Fort Stanton Museum. That is a really beautiful and historic location and has photos of the cave. At any rate, I bet we could come up with a safe place for it right here.
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