The Chinese New Year starts on January 23, 2012 and I am writing this on New Year's Eve.  I wish all the friends and partners of the Mendocino County Museum a happy and healthy new year.  I wish the Museum an especially prosperous new year. 

The Year of the Water Dragon is the 40th Anniversary of the Museum.  Dragons are one of the most auspicious of Chinese symbols.  This year is predicted to be transformational, and for the Museum it will be. 

• This is the year that we'll celebrate 40 years of taking in amazing artifacts, caring for them, and sharing them with people in Mendocino County.  
• This is the year we say good-bye to Carl Purdy and welcome a new ongoing Native American exhibit.
  
• This is the year that we will establish a non-profit partner of the Museum. 
  
• This is the year that we will create a balanced and sustainable public-private partnership that will allow the Museum to prosper for another 40 years.
  

In mixed good news-bad news, we are starting the year so busy that we are unable to host the Chinese Lantern Festival dinner as we did in 2010.  We have made much progress in getting word out about the Museum, but we still have a ways to go.  We have increased programs and events, but our resources just barely allow us to do so.  Our internal systems, from fiscal tracking to donor appreciation, are rickety.  If it weren't for the energy and creativity of our great staff and our wonderful volunteers, and the support we get  from our dedicated friends - all of you, dear readers - we couldn't do what we're doing.

During Chinese New Year, referred to in China as the Spring Festival, families get together; they eat special foods, and they wish each other harmony and wealth in the new year.  We are in the process of creating a Mendocino County Museum family that stretches across and even beyond this county. 

May the Museum have "The energy of a dragon and a horse" and "May money and treasure be plentiful!"     Guò Nián Hǎo     过年好    Happy New Year!

We're putting the finishing touches on our schedule for 2012 and it's going to be wide-ranging, educational, and fun.

My first year as Director in 2010 was a chance to figure out what the Museum was all about.  We featured a couple of traveling exhibits, "Gold Fever!" and "Past Tents: A History of Camping", and we experimented with several community events, from the Chinese Lantern Festival Dinner to our first Heritage Ranch Tour and Campfire Programs. 

Last year, 2011, we exponentially increased our activities and launched our first Countywide Artwork Outreach with the "Why Mendocino?" Collage Project, our first home-grown exhibit with "A Passion for Plants & Place: Carl Purdy of Mendocino County", our first Wine Heritage Brunch, and our first Holiday Open House. 

This new year, we are focusing on anchoring our most successful programs and including different topics and directions that exemplify Mendocino County, from wine history to veterans history, from ranch heritage to solar energy, from reactivating our dark room for photography to celebrating our do-it-yourself heritage with a Mini Maker Faire. 

What happens behind-the-scenes is just as important, though our limited resources have most negatively affected this area.  To date, we have not been able to implement or update a computerized system for donors and donations, for documentation of collections and exhibits, or for our store and publishing program.  Research access to artifacts and archives is currently almost impossible to arrange.  Nor have we yet been able to address necessary facility repairs.  We hope to make progress in these areas as well this year.

Being the Museum for all of Mendocino County is not a one-shot, narrow-range endeavor and trying to encompass all that has gone into making us Mendocino is exhilarating and daunting at the same time.  We need the ideas and involvement of the people and communities from throughout Mendocino County.  Especially as we get ready to celebrate our 40th anniversary!

Do you know where your Mendocino County Museum is ???  Check us out.  Tell us what you think.  Discover your story!  ~ Alison