happy 6th – and 5th -and 4th – i for one am very glad that with every passing day, the chances of being kept up all night with blasts are decreasing…

“the monuments men” – there’s tremendous irony that i read books that have been turned into recent blockbuster movies – and that my kids go to movies all the time – and i never do – but i read books all the time – and they never do – so with that introduction, you would think the odds would be good that if i read a book that becomes a hit movie that my kids are sure to have seen it – and of course, they haven’t b/c it’s either “too history-ee” or played opposite some romance humor whatever of the week – or was against transformers 5 – or, and if this is the real reason, i’ll laugh forever, the movie was rated R and so they couldn’t technically go (i doubt it was R – but hey, you never know)

anyway, “monuments” was my only book for the week – it took a while to get through – the scariest part to me is just how many ideas hitler had for transforming europe – in this case, steal major works of art, house them in a secret cave of a mountain in austria – and then flatten his old hometown that he deemed wasn’t “worthy” enough of him and rebuild it just the way he wanted – complete with new artwork – and before he committed suicide at the end, he still went down and looked at his models – that stuff terrifies me

so that said, “monuments” supplemented previous WWII things i knew – just moved the lens closer – in a war where the chase at the end was rescuing people being killed in concentration camps, i’m not sure the rescuing of artwork deserves the same laudatory praise, but those guys did all the good they could with the time that they had – which is all any of us can do, i guess

maf