One of things I’ve missed is extemporizing about the interesting books I’ve read and the movies and series I’ve watched. Well, I will share two offerings with any old LD hanger’s on who have been waiting for me to write something other than my Reader Columns. BTW I sent one in Saturday. It remains to be seen if its hard nosed new editor will accept any more. My intention is to write something weekly on education including a little dishing about the School District. That would be over 20 800 wordish columns before the Novemeber general election. The editor offered me a wait-and-see attitude.
On our way down to St. Louis last Thursday to see my Brother and sister-in-law after the quarantine distancing we finished off an audio book. It was about subterranean places by Robert MacFarlane called Underlands.
I suggested it to Claudia because among other things it would talk about the French Caves decorated by Cro Magnon man that we will be visiting in September and October. I heard the author on Terry Gross on NPR and thought it might keep us awake. It was a little more poetic than I’d hoped for but I enjoyed hearing about the caves and other underground places the author had visited over the six years of compiling the book. We have also been watching the French series Lupin which are both greatly entertaining and good French listening exercises for me. But after a few hours it was a little too easy to mentally wander off from the reading.
When we got to St. Louis for the weekend my Brother and his wife were enthusing over an audible offering called Real Dictators that they were devouring. We listened to it on the way back and when my brother inquired if we’d listened I wrote him our ten hour drive home had taken us from Korea (the Kims), to Russia (Stalin), to China (Mao), to Haiti (Papa Doc Duvalier)
In return we suggested that they might like Escape to the Chateau a quirky series on Duluth’s PBS channel about an eccentric British couple who plunk their life savings into buying a money pit French Chateau and their coming ten year effort to make it a thriving hospitality business. We found it free on the Peacock Channel and watched the first four episodes with them. Since then they have surpassed our four seasons of viewing the series. It was a fair trade.
The thing I like about good books and programming is that such things can fill in holes in my understanding of the world. I’ve read about four books on Hitler with a few on my bookshelves yet waiting to be opened. This broadcast did a wonderful job filling in details of Hitler’s life between his being a German corporal in the First World War to where I stopped listening today his demanding dictorial power over the NAZI’s just before he goes to jail for attempting a coup d’eta.
As I was listening to a very simple explanation of why the Nazi’s incorporated the word socialist into the Acronym that would become so infamous I thought someone ought to send the series to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. It could plug up one of the many abysses in her knowledge of the world.