Another Case of Who's on Second or Why the Shoals Never Scores

This planet and everything on it is decaying--that goes for you, us, and certainly for the ephemera that make up much of museum exhibits. It certainly shouldn't have come as a shock to anyone that exhibits at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in Tuscumbia were deteriorating. The current question seems to be what to do to slow this process.

Since the Shoals area has several museums of various sizes and a medium sized university that also houses such exhibits, one would think there would be several curators in northwest Alabama who would be glad to assist the HOF gratis. Of course, this is not the bureaucratic way.

According to an article in the December 6th TimesDaily, a Utah librarian is having one of his students work on securing a grant from the Grammy foundation that would finance his trip here to study the problem: An associate Preservation librarian at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, Silverman has a student who is writing a proposal for a grant from the Grammy Foundation.

The same article states that HOF employee Dixie Connell, with the help of Nancy Gonce is writing the grant: Connell said she and board Chairman John Briggs met with Grammy Foundation officials this summer to discuss a grant. Their proposal was accepted and she began writing the grant proposal.

Perhaps both are writing grant requests for this study, a study that will bring Utah librarian Randy Silverman here to assess the museum's preservation problems. After all, since he's from Utah and is charging the HOF, he must be better at preservation than any local curator who might have offered the same services free of charge.

Or perhaps the article was just badly written...or perhaps we shouldn't expect anyone in the Shoals to know who's on any base at any time, much less score. We're just glad it's the Grammy Foundation's money that is being used for this project rather than Alabama tax dollars.

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Under the heading of even a stopped clock is right twice a day, we were pleased to read that the HOF has appointed Nashville attorney Hank Adam Locklin as an interim director. Locklin is the son of country music great Hank Locklin who died last year at the age of 91.

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Shoalanda