"The year speeds along," Neil wrote. "Here it is, April already. There's been plenty going on. In writing this report, I think of Mark Twain who once said about a letter, "I'd have made it shorter if I'd had more time..." and on and on he went, detailing programs and events, Cake Decorating Workshops and a program for kids that compared classical and folk instruments from guitars and lutes and banjos to diverse percussion instruments including maracas, bongos, congos, and coffee cans. The Camperdene Art Guild had held their annual show -- not a pretty sight.

Neil remembered that when he'd first come to Camperdene, "We don't pay you to be happy," Wheel Barrow had told him, sardonically. "We hear you are religious," Wheel Barrow had said. "That's good, because you're going to have to be religious to get through what's coming."

In May, the new Museum of the Year 2012 Board Chair, Veronica Pillsbury, joined with Neil and past Chair Ben Mulvane, attending the Massachusetts Museum Coalition sponsored Museums Legislative Day at the State House. The welcoming ceremonies were held in Doric Hall, with several speakers of passion and eloquence backing the two museum bills before the Governor and the General Court. Camperdene's state representative, Laura Mercer, told reporters, "Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is doing right in the presence of fear." Neil shook the hands of Senators and other Representatives and followed up later with letters advocating for museums, asking the assorted legislators for more money.

As new technological developments wove their way into museum services, or washed over the heads of trustees and/or curators, Neil became more and more convinced that the role of the museum in the future was going to be that of, simply, "a clean, well-lighted place." Libraries, archives, and museums were going to be, more and more, places for the "have-nots" in America and elsewhere. Electronic access to information had created a revolution in society, perhaps equivalent to the printing press. How would this revolution now shape up? Librarians, archivists, and curators, to be vital to their communities, could not afford to remain the same. It was a time of profound and fundamental change, from a print-based to an electronic-based society. And yet -- and yet.

Neil recognized, in the depths of his spirit, that what still mattered in the world was what happened in the human heart. Everyone was talking about how technology was changing the world, and could even save the world. But all the stories being played out were stories woven around the dreams and nightmares of the human heart in its encounters with society -- culture, politics, arts and sciences, friends, lovers, enemies, fruits, successes, failures, creativity, suffering, joy, disgrace, and the rest. It was as if the world was still evolving or unravelling in Biblical times -- ancient times. There was no new technology. There was no saving machinery. There was no miracle cure for the spiritual turmoil in the human heart.

As part of a package grant awarded to the town of Camperdene, the Museum of the Year 2012 would reap still more munificence and benefaction. The State Department of Education gave out nine awards of $150,000 each to communities across the state for "family oriented" charitable services and programs. After Neil informed Museum of the Year 2012 trustees about that, and the Strategic Plan for the Future of Museum Services in Massachusetts, telling how the Information Networks were linking libraries and museums through existing automated resource sharing networks, enabling all of the networks to be linked to the Internet, growing the worldwide library/museum virtual catalog, Wheel Barrow raised the ire of his colleagues, saying, "Why, we'll be needing a still larger museum building for housing all this stuff. We'll have to add six or seven new Benjamin Mulvane Memorial Wings."

This last arose from a comment made at an earlier meeting, when it had been suggested by Ben Mulvane that trustees should not be competing to bring in new items for the library's collections by the truckloads. The stuff was coming in faster than it could be stored or even shelved or stacked, let alone catalogued, Mulvane ridiculed. The energy and passion of the feuding Board of Museum of the Year 2012 Trustees could perhaps be focused, or waylaid, Mulvane proposed sardonically, by adding another six wings to the existing structure -- one for each Trustee.

One night, Neil had to leave just such a meeting to go take care of a situation that came up -- two young guys racing through the museum, breaking display case glass and pulling precious artworks down from pedestals, screaming like banshees as they went. Just plain nuts. Three police officers showed up, but the kids got away.

It came almost as a shock to Neil one day when he realized, reflecting on it, that apparently he was free of any symptoms of burnout. He felt quite fit, in fact. Having endured so long amid mad people, he had to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming. He still had such good health, passion, energy, and peace of mind. He still could fall asleep so soon as his head touched the pillow at night, and he still felt eager to get out of bed on any given morning.