At 10:30 AM -0800 3/13/02, MisterMatt@a... wrote:
>There is more great stuff locked up in basements
>and attics of museums never again to see the light of day.

	But it's not just supposedly public institutions that are guilty of
this sin.
	I can report an experience that was a shocker to me, fairly early
in my slide down the OT slope.  I casually acquired a block plane made by a
well known but long gone maker of metallic planes operating from about 1969
to 1879 in a certain town once known as a major tool-making center in
central New York State.  I was subsequently invited by a collector of the
products of said plane maker, who was interested in checking out the plane
I had casually acquired, to see his collection.  The shocker was that maybe
50 examples of this plane maker's product, all potential museum pieces,
were locked away in antique tool chests in the collector's basement, never
seeing the light of day, not available either to the public or to other
tool people, literally gathering mold and developing rust pits from neglect.
	My thought at the time was:  "This ain't right.  These tools should
either be in a museum or in the hands of someone who will display them for
others or otherwise make them available to those who might appreciate them
more than is their present fate."
	So what's the solution?
		Tom Holloway