Albert's Legacy

I renewed my membership today at The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. For $25 I get unlimited visits for a year, which seems like a great bargain, even if it were only for the great collection of Atomic kitsch.



What really interests me there, of course, is the small collection of old planes in the museum's back yard.



Up front are an F-105 and an A-7.



The B-29 and B-52 bombers were trucked over in pieces from the near-by Kirtland Air Base about a year ago and just recently reassembled.



While there is an over-all emphasis on Twentieth-Century nuclear technology development, the museum is mostly a memorial to the Cold War years. Having spent half my life in those chilly times, I feel a strong sense of familiarity among the exhibits. I wish they would dump the drippingly nostalgic WWII ballads that are played constantly in the background. There can't be many visitors anymore for whom such tunes have real relevance, and they really don't fit the museum's time-frame theme well. Elvis and the Beatles would really seem more appropriate, though I'd probably tire of them just as fast.