.small town museum.

While Leif and I were cat-sitting for my parents a couple of weekends ago we managed to extricate ourselves from playing with the kittens out back in the soul-crushing heat for long enough that we were able to visit some local museums.

The thing about smallish cities and their museums is that while they may be, um, petite, they have much more charm than their counterparts in major metropolitan areas.  More often than not the people who are responsible for the success of these places are volunteers.  So it is because of sheer love and passion which enables these places to exist at all.  I find that admirable.

Often they are cobbled together in the best way that they can be with limited funds and limited interest from the general public.

Case in point, the Natural History Museum in my hometown occupies 22,000 square feet of what was an old Radio Shack.  It has water stains on the ceiling and not enough funds or equipment to provide air-conditioning for the entire space (as is evident in the photograph of me with my hair plastered to my face with sweat).

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Our docent?  A thoughtful sixteen year-old kid with braces and a very apparent love for dinosaurs of the scary, meat-eating variety.

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Home made signs, placards, and displays.  Too much to do with not enough resources.

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Yet these are all the things that make museums like this so perfect.  They are the accumulation of years and years of unnoticed hard work on the part of very committed individuals.  Their one goal is to pass on knowledge and inspiration to other people.  

And so you leave these museums with a sense of gratitude and a little more knowledge to boot.  What did I learn?  Aside that for the 19 years I lived in that town I was overlooking something very special?

That the place I grew up- that dusty, hot valley that has been pumping out oil for decades and decades used to be at the bottom of the ocean some unfathomable millions of years ago.