As you drive east through the Cascades on US 2 the first town of any significance beyond Stevens Pass is Leavenworth. I didn't know anything about Leavenworth so I was surprised to see a little Bavarian village nestled in the foothills of the mountains. A little research shows that Leavenworth is an old railroad and timber town that was dying in the middle of the 20th century when someone had the brilliant idea to turn it into an ersatz European town like Solvang, California. As fake towns go, Leavenworth was pretty impressive. They must have some tight building codes to get everyone to adopt the half-timber look!
I went into a gift shop to get my German father a postcard from a German town. There were an awful lot of nutcrackers in that shop. Then I saw a sign inviting people to visit the nutcracker museum upstairs.
There were a lot of nutcrackers in the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum. Their website says over 4000. Inside it said over 5000. Even that may have been an undercount. There were rocks that were used as nutcrackers several thousand years ago, early metal nutcrackers from the Roman Empire, lots of wooden nutcrackers from Europe, metal nutcrackers from India, whimsical nutcrackers, serious nutcrackers, way too many wooden soldier nutcrackers, schlocky contemporary nutcrackers from Germany, and on and on and on.
The museum was not very photography friendly. There must have been a dozen signs saying photography was prohibited except for a few "photo-friendly" pieces. Hence the picture of the uninteresting Karl, who is large enough to crack coconuts.
With admission only $2.50 I shouldn't complain too much but there is absolutely no reason why any museum needs to prevent photography of nutcrackers. These people are cracking their nuts before they get a chance to spread their seed.
Photography won't cause any physical harm to the nutcrackers. I am going out on a limb and predict that the total revenue loss from reduced admissions at the museum over the next century because someone saw a photo of a nutcracker online is exactly $0.00. The chance of at least one person going to the museum in the next century because they saw a photo of a nutcracker is 100%. Thus, the museum will net at least $2.50 in extra revenue over the next century if they let people take photographs of their collection.
But, wait, you might say, doesn't the museum have a book of nutcracker photos it wants to sell? The same argument holds. If someone is so into nutcrackers that they will buy a book of nutcracker photos, no amount of photos online or in their personal collection is going to prevent them from purchasing that book.
Despite that rant I highly enjoyed the nutcracker museum and would recommend anyone to visit if they happen to be in central Washington.
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