I always read with anticipation when any of our news organization do a history piece.  I shared a couple with our other Board members recently from the online site "Seven Days".  One was a piece about a proposal for establishing a "Museum of Substance Abuse" at the old Spavin Cure building in Enosburg.  While it seemed like a crazy idea, the article made a reasonable case for a museum on the history of patent medicines in Vermont, many of which, like the Spavin Cure, contained the opiate derived from opium.  The second was titled "Vermont's Tiny Historical Societies Have a Big Mission: Preserving the Past" which I've excerpted below.  Thought provoking.  Enjoy, and as always, thanks for your support;  Scott

  Typically operating on a shoestring budget and stewarded by elders, local historical societies — especially the teensy ones — represent a sort of benign fringe element throughout the state. Their members meet on third Mondays or fourth Thursdays, but not always; many close down in winter or convene when members are able. Historical societies might be headquartered in former schoolhouses or freight stations; at least one is above a police station. Others have no formal location at all.

  Like the hyper-local histories they strive to document and archive, town historical societies often lead a precarious existence, dallying with obscurity in both content and form. Though their patchwork archives may read like non sequiturs, and the rewards of collecting may look slim to outsiders, what's at stake is the very identity and continuity of these communities.

  Eileen Corcoran is community outreach coordinator at the Vermont Historical Society; it's her job to act as liaison between the state and local organizations. She's known some societies to officially disband, Corcoran has known other historical societies to exist in name only.  Historical societies can also be resurrected: Ripton's relaunched in 2013, as did Hancock's in 2016.

  Corcoran described the smaller groups as "great community-based organizations that are doing the work for VHS in a lot of ways." Of Vermont's nearly 200 groups, 60 to 70 percent have some sort of physical location, she estimated. Volunteers, often senior citizens, run most of them.

  "The general demographic of historical societies tends to be an older generation," Corcoran acknowledged. "It's always sort of been that way." Managing or even participating in a historical society requires "spare time," she added, and that's something young professionals or parents of small children tend to lack. Corcoran speculated that the impetus for historical society work comes from "starting to see that kids growing up now don't know or recognize the stuff you grew up with, and wanting to preserve and share some of those [things]." Vermont, she noted, is an "old state," referring to its aging population.

  It's rare to see a new historical society form in Vermont, Corcoran added, partly because the state is already saturated with them and partly because the traditional models are "not speaking to newer generations." Nationally, many such groups were established in the mid-1970s and '80s, she said, spurred by the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial and countering the trend of widespread urban renewal.

     — Rachel Elizabeth Jones  Full article here.