WHY AUTHENTIC MUSEUMS STILL MATTER

I’ve been inside authentic museums of all kinds, from the Gene Autry Museum of the American West, to the Petersen Automotive Museum, to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

They all come with a suspension of disbelief.

Does everything have to be perfect?

Noooooo.

But they do have to be authentic.

I’m an Oregon guy who moved away for a few years and moved back.

I moved to Portland on the invitation of someone on a timeline I didn’t match.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage.”

I didn’t match because I didn’t take my hometown advice and find a nice ‘Bay Girl.’

Women on a timeline seemed to be my specialty.

Instead of a ‘cruise gal’ who took each day in stride, I found serious women who were ready to settle down and join the grind of spouses, kids, in-laws, friends with kids, single parent people, public education, and life long learning to show we weren’t idiots.

In each case we all came to a moment with the same question: Where is this going?

My standard answer was: Away. This is going away.

And that’s what happened. It went away.

No one had a lower standard of living after breaking up.

No harm, no foul. And no one was more of an idiot at the end than they were at the beginning.

It got to the point I expected the same question with everyone I met.

Maybe I’m one of those people who make others wonder where things are going?

In more than one way, every post on boomerpdx asks the same question.

A better writer would have a better answer than, “Where’s it going? It’s going right here, not moving. You’re the one going.”

That’s my tag line, my pitch, to get you to sign up on my email list, to subscribe to boomerpdx.

Are you feeling it? Not feeling it? Keep working on it.

 

Hometown Advice Taken, Finally

I met a bay girl and felt like the champion of the world.

Somehow I bobbed and weaved my way through the mid-1970’s and 1980’s, running and ducking, before going toe to toe in the middle of the ring in 1986.

After that it was marriage. POW.

Kids. BAM.

House. BOOM.

And the rest, the spouses, kids, in-laws, friends with kids, single parent people, public education, and life long learning to show we weren’t idiots.

CRASH, BANG, BING.

You could take the events of the past few decades of married life and create authentic museums of marriage across America.

The password is: I Do.

 

Authentic Museums In America

If you put something on exhibit and call it authentic, then it needs to be what you say it is.

Not close, not almost. It has to be the real thing.

But what if it’s not?

Then include that information in the labels.

If something is a representation of something else, say it.

Like a movie based on real events, we like to know what we’re looking at, where to start.

If something looks familiar, we wonder why? We want to know more.

It’s just a lunch counter?

 

 

Nooooo.

It’s that lunch counter:

 

 

Which lunch counter?

That one:

 

 

I apologize for any discomfort these images may invoke?

Noooooo.

American history is full of discomfort. Get used to it, not hide from it.

Shit hits the fan on a regular basis whether you get splattered and splashed or not.

I’m not over here holding a blue tarp and a hose for cleanup at the local Woolworths, or blaming the old guys in the top left and right for their passive ignorance watching the young men act out.

They probably did the same, or worse, when they were the same age.

Maybe they’ve changed their ways over the years, but probably not.

They most likely carried on with their feelings justified in their community and their churches.

What would it feel like to walk into someone’s house and see this picture on the wall and hear, “Yep, that’s my daddy holding the glass.”

What’s it like for young people looking at current baby boomers the same way?

Well, honey, that’s just the way things are.

“We’ve all changed since then,” says the man who threatened his millennial kids if they reported him for his activities on Jan. 6.

 

In the land of authentic museums saving historical artifacts for an uncertain future, keep this in mind:

The more you know, the better off you’ll be.

CBS News will make sure you know what you need to know.

 

PS: The only person responsible for what you know and what you do with it? That’s you.

 

PSS: If you read and write and work it out until things make sense to you, keep it up.

If you don’t?

Click that link and keep reading. You won’t go wrong around here.

Then ask, “Where is this going?”