Thirteen Minutes or So

As journalistic statements go, it is culturally and certainly factually questionable to state that "It's estimated that Italy is home to two-thirds of the world's cultural treasures." (By whom is this Euro-centric estimation being made, by what criteria, and using what sources?)

Full disclosure: I have not watched 60 minutes to speak of at all since they aired a suicide in 1998; at an estimate, perhaps I've stopped on the program three or four times in these seventeen years. Whatever my moral feelings upon euthanasia, my moral feelings about the sickest imaginable ratings grab are clear: I am against it.

However, I did watch "Saving History" this Sunday, and thought I would share. Combining, as it does, some of the thematic obsessions of this blog - fashion, archaeology, preservation ... and, frankly, the fascinating ethical and political questions attendant upon the initiatives under discussion - I was curious.

It's worth a watch if only to gain some perspective, if you feel you don't have any, on just what we're up against across the world, culturally, in an economy still aching from strain in too many areas. It's also worth just seeing the beauty of those areas of the Colosseum in Rome which have been cleaned with incredible care and dedication by those who have been given the chance. And to see the real extent of the filth threatening it in the first place.