I thought I would miss it

Turns out I don't, at least not much.

I speak, of course, about the local historical society museum. I was a volunteer for 13 years, Treasurer for 12, and museum manager for 9. I truly enjoyed most of it. I'm sufficiently obsessive-compulsive that I actually liked accessioning donations and inventorying the thousands of uncataloged artifacts and documents that had been accumulated over the 50+ years of the historical society's existence. About the only volunteer chore I disliked was being a docent. I am not a people person. 

If anything,I am pretty much a total introvert - I fall so far into the psychotic loner quadrant on the Meyer Briggs type inventory I'm almost off the grid entirely - so making small talk with random tourists is not my idea of fun. But I could do a decent welcome to the museum spiel and answer questions so I managed. My favorite days, naturally, were ones where I got to write "Slow day no visitors" in the daily log. No visitors meant other stuff got done.

And then one of the newest members decided I was moving too slow on sucking up to the rather skeezy self-described millionaire who was doing lots of bullshitting about the piles of money he planned to donate in exchange for the Society building an addition to house his personal ancient artifacts collection. This was in May. At the time the only thing the dude had donated was words. Nonetheless, a couple members had convinced themselves that if the museum kissed the dude's ass more enthusiastically some sort of magic ATM would materialize and life would be wonderful. To quote a great philosopher, Bugs Bunny, "maroons." Or, even better, Robert Heinlein, TNSTAAFL. There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Bottom line was they decided it was foolish to have a Treasurer who was actually consulting with an attorney and advising the Society that maybe sucking up to someone who (a) wanted us to commit federal tax fraud and (b) had up to that point donated nothing tangible wasn't a good idea. Why they decided kowtowing to the asshat residing 2000 miles away made sense is a mystery, but then when you combine greed and gullibility grifters win. So in mid-May I got voted out. And I walked away. 

It was a bit odd. I really did think I'd miss it. Turned out it was analogous to a bunch of banal phrases: flipping a switch, closing a door, etc.  I didn't miss it. If anything, I felt relieved. I got my life back. 

I do get asked occasionally about current happenings in Baraga. I am moderately amused by some of the stuff going on with the museum -- the poor saps have been working their butts off trying to empty the storage building ASAP because the fraud dude told them in mid-June that construction would start in early August. Right. And squadrons of flying pigs would arrive to harass the geese grazing on the museum's lawn. 

At the time the new president of the Society made that statement about groundbreaking, the group hadn't even seen the architect's concept drawings, but fraud dude living on the other side of the country tells them groundbreaking is a little over a month away? And they're all so frelling stupid they reacted like it was actually going to happen. It is now the end of August, they're still working hard doing stuff they really didn't need to do, but they're all too wired on fantasies of mega donations to do a reality check -- any construction project has a distinct process, a linear progression from initial idea to concept drawings to construction blueprints to calling for bids to applying for the multiple permits required to groundbreaking. Even if fraud dude had given them a shit ton of cash this summer, it would be next year before any construction began, assuming any contractors capable of doing a commercial building project still had openings for 2026 on their schedules. 

One of my friends who has been a Historical Society member for over fifty years is worried good stuff is being discarded that should be kept. And she's probably right. The people doing the emptying are no doubt tossing stuff that should stay and carefully keeping stuff that's not important. Shit happens. The membership demographic is retirees. Several past active volunteers succumbed to dementia, and they did some odd things before other Society members intervened. I found some bizarre things while going through the attic and the storage building (a half eaten sandwich carefully encased in bubble wrap, for example). Visitors occasionally asked about things the museum supposedly had but I never did find, like a complete Michigan state police officer's uniform and the mailboxes from a small village post office. Maybe that's the inevitable truth with small, local museums. Constant turnover in volunteers and also constant shifting of skill sets, cognitive abilities, and priorities. Something the membership thought was super important in 2015 is seen as worthless in 2025. Sad but predictable. 

I advised my friend to remember all the good stuff she did as a volunteer. She's voiced her concerns, she did her best, and anything that happens in the future is not her problem. It might be depressing to witness poor choices being made, but the Museum should survive. And even if it doesn't it won't be because of decisions she and I made.