By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
As positive COVID-19 cases continue to spike in St. Joseph, the Pony Express Museum is cancelling its Tuesday Night Talks in January.
Museum Executive Director Cindy Daffron says that at first the talks were going to transition to Facebook Live, but after talking to other people and the speakers, the museum decided to postpone the start until February
"Just listening and hearing, and we went to four or five different sources, before we ever just said exactly what we feel like, and then an executive committee finally said, after the speakers both said we really wanna come so would you move us to February or March, that's when the decision came to just wait for January and let things, hopefully, do the turn around," Daffron tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Daffron says that Tuesday Night Talks, or as she calls them TNT, are a fun social event to gather at. The event was supposed to start its 23rd year earlier this week
Daffron says these talks are a very popular event for the museum.
"That was a great social time, it's a great outreach for the museum," Daffron explains. "One lady told me one time, she said Cindy you don't even realize the impact that your museum does, she said my husband went to Vietnam, he's had Agent Orange, and the only thing that he will tell me time after time is, we've got to go to TNT."
Daffron says the museum is still allowing visitors, on a somewhat limited basis. The number is posted on the door for people to ask if they can get in, but the goal right now is to protect museum visitors and staff.
"We've kind of adapted and learned how to make it work, and we're just appreciative that we're still here, the doors are open, and we survived, and we're coming up," Daffron proudly says. "And when they say your building back, that's exactly what we're doing, we're building her back."
Daffron says that the museum is also still doing private tours, for entities such as schools, closing the museum to clean it so that school district is safe from anything visitors might have brought in.
Tuesday Night Talks will resume, hopefully Daffron says, in February as COVID numbers begin to hopefully start going down again.