You don’t get to be your own museum

The other day I was unpacking some boxes with targets in them. Some people might say I have a problem with collecting targets but I know that I can quit any time I want.

I sorted them and stored most of them in a cabinet. A bunch of random stuff went in a pile to for my next trip to the range. but there was one from JPFO I just couldn’t take to the range. And as near as I can tell they don’t sell it anymore. But Barb correctly says, “You don’t get to be your own museum.” And since I don’t really have a good place to store it anyway I scanned it:

AllInFavorOfGunControlJPFO

It is copyright 1991.

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3 thoughts on “You don’t get to be your own museum

  1. For a long time I was attempting, I think, not to be my own museum*, but to be my own reference library.
    These last 11 years, though, since my mother’s death, now that the task of reducing 60 years of collecting (my mother collected the printed word, my father the special tool) has fallen on me, my mantra has been sung to Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party.”
    I’m all right now, and I learned my lesson well, you can’t save everything, if you want to save yourself.”
    If the family heirloom does not speak to me, and my brothers do not want it, nor my cousins, It is history. Avalon Hill Games I don’t play have been sold on E-bay.
    I’ve given to Good Will, Salvation army, St. Vincent DePaul, and the local historical society. ANYTHING related to local history, Boy Scouts, Churches, Government, even business cards, receipts, brochures, give them to the historical society. If it’s ephemera, chances are no one else has saved it, so the historical society hasn’t seen it before, and if it goes to landfill no one will, or if in 2000 years someone discovers our landfills the way we’ve discovered 10,000 year old kitchen middens, the context will be lost and no accurate concept will be had.
    It’s a job I am not finished with, but 60 years of stuff crammed into a 1500 squ foot house and a 600 squ foot garage and the back yard is a lot of stuff.

    *My college Sociology 101 professor had an interesting theory on why suburban boys’ bedrooms looked like museums, but that’s too prolix to discuss here, but it’s too complicated to type out over lunch.

  2. You can have your own museum, for a while, if you like.

    I often think of the time and expense, and whatever else, went into the huge loads I’ve taken to Goodwill and the Salvation army, pawn shops and so on. We spend all that time aquiring things, then end up in our way, and then we have to figure out how to free ourselves of them.

    Cheer up though; you’ll soon be dead and it will then be someone else’s problem.

    Ah, Young Grasshopper! Few desires; happy life.

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