Armament Internship

May to June 07 – This blog is very late. It was supposed to go live in May when I began my internship at the United States Air Force Armament Museum. Unfortunately that did not happen. It is not a loss, however, for nothing of particular note happened during this time. The museum was as slow getting me started in the internship position as I have been getting this blog set up. Between the day I started which I believe was May 17th, and the end date for this first blog, June 7th, almost every day I was at the museum I sat at the front desk and greeted museum visitors. 4 hours every Sunday is what I did until the 7th, which was the last day of desk work until they were able to finally get me a schedule proper.

The desk was not necessarily bad. One gets to meet a variety of people there, some interesting and some dreadfully dull. One unique fellow came in and asked about the war. Which war? I wasn’t sure, in fact, I could barely make out the word “war” through his thick southern accent. After showing him a map of the building, he went in to look around. About an hour later he comes back with a lot to say. I believe he wasn’t quite sure what building he was in. It was hard to make out, but he seemed to think this was some kind of Civil War museum. At one point he accused the White House of stealing artifacts from the museum. He talked for a very long time before finally leaving, yet through all of his talking I understood very little.

I did get to do some actual museum work during this time. Once our volunteer coordinator, Brian Olmsted, tasked me with taking several photographs of the museums gun vault display. It wasn’t much and there wasn’t much to it, but it was at least more interesting than sitting at the front desk. Eventually, on the 7th of June, Brian came to the desk with my schedule for the rest of June. Starting the following Wednesday, I would finally get to do something.