Archive: Opinions

Now is a good time to donate to Lansing's log cabin.  The cabin was built in Lansing on the corner of Conlon and Searles Roads in 1791 by Thomas North.  It was his son's family that moved to Michigan and named their new home after the one they had been born in and grown up in.  It spent 50 years at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn, and came home to Lansing in 2007.  Now it is time to reassemble it, both to save the logs from rotting and so that it can be seen and used as a focal point to tell people about the significant history of our town.

Ed LaVigne and the Lansing Community Council have taken up the cause, and are currently trying to raise $17,500 to try to get it put back together this summer.  At the moment it looks like it will go up in Myers Park, though there is a chance it will go next to the one room school house next to the Town Hall.  A Web site has been set up (Click Here for information on the cabin and on how to donate) and the first chicken barbeque yielded about $1,500.  So far about a quarter of the money has been raised.  A breakfast tomorrow (Saturday, June 27 from 7am to 10am at the Lansing United Methodist Church) will benefit the cabin project.

Why should we care about this log cabin?  Only the four walls are original, and some of those logs that have rotted will have to be replaced.  It is not so much the strict authenticity of the cabin that matters.  It is the cabin's role in our local history that becomes a focal point to talk about Lansing's role in U.S. History.  It is a talking point to show that we're not just some out of the way rural township, but that the people here did matter and still do.

Lansing has lost too many of its historical buildings, and this could be the crown jewel of the buildings we have left because of the wider historical significance of the North family and their connection here.  Town Councilman Bud Shattuck  has been visionary in saving the cabin when the museum didn't want it any more, and now Ed LaVigne is spending a lot of energy to get it reassembled.  No tax money is available for the project, so it's up to us.  A jewel like this doesn't come around every day, so it is incumbent on us to do what we can to save it for ourselves and future generations.

I'm planning to have breakfast at the church on Saturday, and the Lansing Star has donated to the reconstruction fund.  If everyone who reads this does the same we'll have saved a piece of our town that illustrates that we live in a significant place in our country.  We all know that we do.  This is a tangeble way to illustrate it.

----
v5i25