I have returned from six days of R & R in Muskegan, Michigan where, each day our family hiked 4-6 miles of beach and brought along enough books to start another Muskegan public library. My first day on the water, I read Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa, by R.A. Scott. It's the story of the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre and the three years the French searched worldwide for the painting before it turned up in Italy.
Originally, one of the prime suspects in the theft was Pablo Picasso (who was young and innocent at the time). For centuries now, La Joconda (the French name for the painting) has dazzled visitors and been the cause of many people going insane with love or jealousy or desire to covet the woman in the painting.
Not me, though. I was happy with the book and the cover photo of La Joconda because I carry photos of Becky in my wallet. I've always got her pressed against my buns and I kept doing push ups and sits ups on the beach to impress her. (She wasn't, of course.) Becky just looks at me like the woman in the painting, with a wry smile that says, "You may be getting a tan and trying to look buff, but you're just an old man with gray chest hair and a tattered pair of bathing trunks that were worn by your father in the 1940s. There's nothing on this beach but sand and if you touch me I'll break your cheeks!"
How much a vacation look says! But hey, I wonder if anyone has the address of that Mona Lisa chick? Is Picasso dead? From the glint in La Joconda's eyes, she seems like a real sport. Maybe I'll write her . . . care of the Louvre.
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