Before beginning your tour of the museum a bit of history seems in order. For many years, sisters Paula and Ann exchanged gifts of rare junk on each and every festive occasion and many other times as well.  As time went on they became almost obsessed, well,  “only almost” obsessed, with this endeavor.  Years of gift exchanges inevitably produced an ever growing number of bags and boxes filled with our invaluable stuff. As our inventory grew we were confronted by the question, at first only occasionally, but then almost constantly, “What do we do with all this stuff which is taking over our homes?”

A conundrum of the highest order. Hmm. Our options? Hmm.

Opening a thrift store occurred to us as this was where we had purchased most of our treasures. But the more we thought about this idea, the more we hated it and for good reasons. We would need a location for the store which would cost money to rent. We would need a phone number. We would need a sales consultant, one of us, to be available at the store. We would have to sell and thus part with our treasured junk. Yikes! Impossible! Utterly untenable! We couldn’t bear the idea of parting with our stuff especially at a fraction of its real value. Perhaps even worse what if no one bought our stuff?   Consensus was quickly reached. A thrift store was out of the question. And so relief was felt.

But we had not solved our problem. As a solution of sorts founder Paula created a Museum Of Nostalgic Artifacts in her home. Her sister was all for this as it meant that she could get rid of all her junk by giving it to Paula. A perfect idea.  And so the MONA museum became a part of Paula’s home.  Her husband, Bob, and her sons, Mike and Sean, knew better than to argue with her about this and so wisely they didn’t.

After being set up, not an easy task to be sure, Paula invited guests to see it and even made a videotape of the MONA — A good start to sharing her treasures with others.  The MONA had found a happy home in Southern California.

And then in 2001 MONA joined founder Paula as she moved from Palos Verdes, California to Incline Village, Nevada (on the shore of Lake Tahoe). MONA moved from a room of its own to a portion of Paula’s oversized two car garage. It found its place next to her car on four high long rows of plastic shelving units, as well as in the empty space in front of her car.  It adjusted beautifully and began receiving excited visitors but only in the summer months when the weather was nice, i.e., temperatures above freezing with the snow all melted.

As time went on the next step became apparent — creating a website that would provide any interested viewer with a tour of the MONA. Thanks to her son Mike a website was created at www. m-o-n-a.com. Things were good.    Over 40,000 people per month from all over the world tuned in and enjoyed MONA. An awesome happening.

But as is too frequently true with good things something went wrong and things got bad. The website was gone just like that. The reason — the site didn’t let Paula know she owed money to continue the MONA and sadly Paula didn’t realize it. So it disappeared. 

Tears of sorrow were cried over months, in fact, years, by the founder Paula who decided upon her most recent visit to Sydney, Australia in March 2012 to see her son, Mike (the web creator), his wife, Michelle, and their children (her grandchildren) Max, four years old, and Madeleine, a mere three months old, to ask if perhaps he had a copy of the information he had entered on the MONA website. And he did! Yes, he did! And so during her visit Paula procured a thumb drive with all the photos and text from the first outing of the museum on a website.  Cheers, the first step in revitalizing the museum and returning it to the internet had been accomplished.

And so now a full six months later it seems ready for its come back. Hooray!

Thanks to all who made MONA’S return possible. Again a million thanks to  my older son, Mike Bender, at Rubber Ducky’s Revolution for creating and designing the first wonderful website without which this rendition could never exist.  And merci to my sister and cofounder Ann whose undying loyalty to MONA, as well as her never ending support of me, Paula, is well noted and infinitely appreciated.

And last, but hardly least, my thanks to Amy Guinan, my webmaster et al., for her guidance, creativity and never ending ability to put up with me while at the same time designing and bringing this website to fruition.

To all of you out there  — ENJOY – and let me know if time, energy and other life events permit about your experience at http://www.monamuseum.com and please share your pleasure with your friends and invite them to drop by and see it for themselves and remember it’s FREE!  Information on how to get in touch with the curator and museum related stuff is included in the very next part of this section,” Contacting the Creator. “

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