So what's new at the museum, you ask?

We're getting our pavilion. The Baraga High School industrial arts class has been working on it for several weeks now. It's going to take them most of the school year despite it being a rather simple structure (basically a pole barn with no sheathing on the walls) because the amount of time they've got to work on it in each day is limited and there are going to be weather interruptions.

I kind of wish I'd been around in October when they did the posts. The frost line locally is pretty deep and the kids got to dig the holes the old-fashioned way -- post hole diggers and shovels. Then again, maybe not being around was a good thing. I'm not sure I'd want to go near a group of 16 and 17-year-olds who were starting off their day by spending an hour or so with a shovel in their collective hand. Amusing though it may have been to witness a herd of surly adolescents doing actual work first thing in the morning, they probably wouldn't have appreciated having an old lady snickering in the background.

In any case, the pavilion is going up. The poles are in place, the beams to anchor the trusses are now topping the poles, and sometime after Thanksgiving, work will resume. I don't know how much of it I will actually witness, though, because the class is there from 8:30 to 10, and I am no longer a morning person. I still wake up early, but I definitely take my time when it comes to pulling myself together to go anywhere.

Once the pavilion is done, the museum can focus on getting its logging high wheels rebuilt. Being able to store them under a roof should help ensure that they won't fall apart again, at least not quite so quickly. The high wheels are the reason the walls are going to be so tall so for sure we will have to get them rebuilt eventually. It would kind of suck to build a pavilion designed to hold something over 12 feet tall and then never get anything that high put into it.