It's one Zell of a talk!

If you have a story to tell, Jim Zell wants you to tell it, and he wants to make sure it can be heard for generations. “This is about our history, Blaine’s history, and it’s everyone’s patriotic duty,” he said.

Zell will speak at the senior center lunch February 16 about his plans to consolidate Blaine’s historical resources. “I’ll talk about the history of Blaine but I’m also there to recruit people as sources,” he said.

Last year Zell founded the Blaine Heritage Association, now under the umbrella of the Blaine Chamber of Commerce to retain nonprofit status. “One of our first and most important projects will be recording oral histories on video tape,” he said. Zell plans to ultimately catalogue and transcribe the stories.

Another of Zell’s goals is not merely to preserve local history but make it available to everyone. “Our aim is to get all the old editions of the Blaine Journals on a CD, so anyone can access it,” he said.

“Eventually we want to promote a museum,” Zell said. The museum would serve as an archive for local historical records and a place to see artifacts from Blaine’s past.

“There are a lot of artifacts in people’s offices and homes that only they get to enjoy,” he said. “We would like to have them in the museum on permanent loan for everyone to share.”