The word for the day is axolotl, a salamander native to Mexico that is capable of regenerating all of its limbs. It is exotic and cute, but also endangered.

Sue and I watch too much television and not all of it is worthwhile, but CBS Sunday Mornings almost always is. Produced by CBS News, it has your usual news stories that you would expect, like this week’s lead story about the ongoing government shutdown. We don’t really watch it for the news, though; what delights us are the interesting “good news stories,” like the one on last Sunday’s broadcast about axolotls and a little girl who loves them. I urge you to take a couple of minutes to watch the linked video, and I guarantee it will bring a smile to your face and warm your heart.

Sundays also usually mean brunch with our good friends, Mart & Bob Larson and Martha Birney. We take turns hosting brunch with each household having its favorite or traditional dishes, ours being soft boiled eggs or French toast, always with a side of bacon. Bacon being the gateway drug for backsliding vegetarians.

Brunch is invariably followed by a couple of rounds of Wizard, a modern card game that is easy to learn, but challenging to master, requiring both skill and luck. Wizard brings out our competitive instincts, as we all like to win, but mostly it is just fun being together, laughing, bantering, teasing and imbibing a Bloody Mary, mimosa or Aperol Spritz or two.

Yesterday we extended our time together by going to the theater to see a late afternoon screening of the new film, Nuremberg, featuring Russell Crowe and Romi Malek. Sue and I have long enjoyed going to the movies. (It has often been our go to “date night.”) We have been going to fewer movies though recently–your superhero blockbusters or dreary dramas that feature the F word used as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb, spiced with violence don’t really interest us.

Nuremberg, which tells the story of the post World War II Nazi war crimes trial, is different: a thought provoking, well-produced film that speaks to history and today. The leading actors both give tremendous performances, especially Russel Crowe, who plays a mesmerizing Hermann Göring. It is two intense hours, but all of us found it absorbing. Towards the end of the film, years after the end of the trial, Malek’s character, Douglas Kelly, an Army psychiatrist who spent many hours talking with and listening to Goring, reminds us that not all Nazis come wearing “funny uniforms.”

Finally, as most of you know, I like to read, but don’t often read non-fiction, but these last couple of weeks I have been listening to Jon Meecham reading his own work, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. Few writers should read their own books, but Meecham, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, is a wonderful exception. He’s possessed of a beautiful baritone voice and a great reading style. Llistening to the book is both entertaining and enlightening. As Mark Twain said “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Hearing about our country’s history leading up to and during the Civil War gives new meaning to the events of today. Give it a try.