Friday’s round up or NPR sometimes makes me cry

As I was driving to work, as usual listening to Morning Edition, I got all misty eyed and all that, and it was not allergies or cold, it was NPR. They were showcasing Ken Burns’ new documentary about II WW, and I have always been interested in that war, it to me the greatest conflict of the 20th century. But it was not the political and military aspects that made the piece so interesting, Burns has chosen to tell the story through three cities in the US, and cover the three main theaters of the War – from an American point of view – the Atlantic, the Pacific and the home fronts. The documentary chose Luverne, Minn. Sacramento, Calif., Waterbury, Conn., and Mobile, Ala., as the places where start, and covers the impact of the war on the towns, and the places where the town’s men and women went to fight the war. It is not the horrors of the battles that made me sad, but the stories told by an Alabama newspaper, where a writer chronicled what was happening in town with candor and feeling, on of his stories is about a Friday, when the town is shutting down, but there is a rumor that a telegram is coming for a certain family that lived in Magnolia St, as the husband was walking home, he asked which of his 4 boys it was, and when he got the name, we kept walking home to break the news to his wife. It is those stories that help me keep perspective and realize that our trials and tribulations are not as epic or grandiose as they seem to us.

The documentary will air on PBS this Sunday, but here is the link to the NPR story.

Also the pic in the post today is from the extension of the Prado Museum in Madrid, I was reading El Pais, and they had this gallery and article on the expansion of the Museum, and it looks so pretty, so amazingly pretty, that I decided to post a picture and give you a link to the gallery. Moneo, the architect, did a terrific job, he expanded the building in a modern way, not replicating the XVIIIth century building yet making it feel warm and light. You know I was thinking of the architects when I saw the pictures.