Two of my short stories that have recently appeared online are set
primarily in museums. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who knew
me as a child. As a kid, I volunteered at a museum—as does the main character in one
of the stories—and I also had my own museum in a little storage building
behind our house. I took my museum very seriously. It was filled with displays
of minerals and fossils, as well as other natural objects like bird’s nests and
insects. I also had a certain number of ethnological artifacts including
prehistoric arrowheads and traditional pottery from Mexico, and “Old West”
objects like antique bottles and buttons. Other kids in the neighborhood would
also donate interesting specimens, and visitors to our house always got a tour
of the museum. Whenever I visited another city, the first thing that I wanted
to do was see the museums. I actually didn’t visit the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago until I was an adult, though. One of the stories is set in the Field
Museum. At one point in my life, I really wanted to work in a museum when I grew
up. But other interests intervened. However, the years I spent running a fair
trade store were in many ways like managing a continually changing folk art
museum. And I certainly still love visiting museums.
