Category Archives: Family

More from Geneva

Today is my third day in my Italian Language School, A Door into Italy. I was assigned to a middle level group, as I expected—there are a few people here who are quite advanced and can hold sustained conversations in Italian, and then a group of relative beginners, and then there’s the rest of us. Still struggling with which tense to use and often failing to come up with the vocabulary one needs. After three days, though, I feel that I am making progress.

English, of course, is a common language for many of us, but my class of eight is very, very diverse. There is one other American man: an engineer from Hawaii on sabbatical from a job in South Sudan. The other man in the class is from Tokyo and is here in Italy working for his company which has sent him to school for three months to learn the language. The five women include a Ukrainian, a Palestinian, an Israeli, a French speaking Swiss, and finally a Tanzanian woman who met her Genovese husband online. The school’s winnowing seems to work pretty well, as we all seem on about the same level.

Yesterday, after class the school offered a guideded walking tour of the city, providing a great introduction to the city of Genova (Genoa). After several cool rainy days, the sun has come out and it feels like spring, so there are lots of people touring and shopping.

As I mentioned in my last post, my neighborhood seems to be a working class/middle class enclave. The tour took us through the heart of the city, including governmental and banking buildings, historic monuments like the city’s Duomo or Cathedral, San Lorenzo, and an area consisting of lots of small, narrow alleys with shops, businesses, galleries and restaurants.

This last area reminded me a lot of the central part of Siena. Even though the tour took us nearly two hours, we didn’t make it to what is called the Porto Antico area and the bayside promenade, which I hope to see in the next couple of days. I am adding some photos I took of our group as we wandered around.

Again, the duomo certainly is reminiscent of the duomo in Siena, although the Siena church seems to have been done by better craftsmen and artists. Still it is lovely to walk into these medieval buildings and be reminded of the bygone days of faith sacrifice.

Lilacs and Spring time in Denver

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Sue and I just got back from an afternoon drive around Denver; spring has arrived here in Denver several weeks early. Usually the peak time for Lilacs is mid-May, and it is still early April. That probably portends a hot summer and a long fire season; let’s hope that’s not the case.

Anyway, back to the drive around Denver. One of our stops was City Park. Between the lake and the Nature & Science museum, there is a lovely grove of lilac bushes, with a large range of colors and varieties. Lilacs grow well here in Denver–they can survive our normally cold winters and our frequent droughts.

I have long loved lilacs as does Sue. I used to be able to luxuriate in their smell as well as their blossoms, but sometime during the Covid Pandemic, I lost most of my sense of smell. It is not completely gone, but these days, I can only detect a slight scent of most aromas that I used to enjoy–like lavender, lilacs and baking bread.

Lilacs always remind me of our dear friend, Marie Funkhauser–perhaps the kindest and most helpful neighbor one could ever have. We lived next door to Marie and her family in Alexandria, VA for more than 25 years. She took care of Bryn and Erin when thy came home from school. We knew that the children were always safe and lovingly cared for, making our work lives just a little bit less stressful.

Each spring, Marie would cut a huge bouquet of lilacs from the bushes in her backyard and bring them to Sue; the whole house would be filled with the aroma of lilacs for many days. What a lovely memory…and what a lovely friend.

Lilacs also bring to mind the first stanza of Walt Whitman’s tribute to the fallen Abraham Lincoln:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

Happy Easter

Orchid Show at the Denver Botanical Garden

Our friend, Martha Birney, recently invited us along with Mart & Bob Larson to join her at the Denver Botanical Garden to view their Orchid Show. We are all members of the Garden, and it is one of our favorite spots in the city in all seasons. My photo library is full of flower pictures going back to the time we first arrived in Denver more than a decade ago.

This show, while not large, did not fail to impress. If you are like us, you can’t pass up the orchids for sale at the supermarket, but given the dryness of our climate and the less than ideal growing conditions in our apartment, we have to treat them almost like cut flowers. You buy them, knowing that the blooms will last a month or, if you are lucky, three; but whatever the time, once the blooms have fallen off, you are faced with the dilemma of throwing them away or placing them in some forgotten corner, never to bloom again & then to be discarded at some later time when plant shelf space becomes scarce. (Actually you can sometimes coax them into rebooking if you happen to have an facing window and a lot of patience!)

But fortunately the Garden has the staff, resources, and conditions to grow a large variety of these lovely blossoming plants. They don’t have a detectable perfume, but boy are they stunning.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit at the Garden, and then Martha treated us all to a sumptuous meal at a new Indian Restaurant, Curry & Grill 2. The food is wonderful with delicate flavors and just the right spiciness for our American palate. The staff were warm and welcoming and the service excellent. There were just a few other diners, which encouraged us to linger and talk, and we never felt any urgency to leave. We’ll definitely go back & soon.

The time spent with Mart & Bob is bittersweet these days for Martha B and us. They told us recently that they have decided to sell their apartment and move to the Quad Cities to be near their son, Isaac, daughter in law, Megan, and two young grandsons, Ezra & Jasper. Knowing how important Bryn, Joel and Charlie have been to us since our move to Denver, we can’t blame them, but we are certainly going to miss them immeasurably. Almost every Sunday, one of us hosts for brunch and then a very competitive card game of Wizard; we won’t know what to do with ourselves once they are gone!

Erin & John’s Visit–A Respite from Cuba

After a wonderful two weeks visit, John and Erin left this weekend to return to Cuba, thankfully now nearing the end of their two year assignment. They are slated to permanently leave the island in early May. Since their arrival in the summer of 2024, conditions on the ground in Cuba have deteriorated incredibly. Hunger, malnutrition, and rolling blackouts are the norm; the results of a US imposed embargo & a corrupt and ruthless regime that has no concern for the well-being of its citizens.

Recently they had a scary incident with their cat, Diego, who became very sick and nearly died. Erin first met Diego during her first State Department posting in Mexico City, when he followed her home one day. Fourteen years later, he’s like a child to both John and Erin. When they took him in for an emergency vet visit a few weeks ago, the clinic had neither running water nor electricity and couldn’t provide adequate care for the poor animal. Diego fortunately survived that illness, but they didn’t want to risk losing him if they had to rely on local veterinary care again, so they asked us if we would keep him for a few months if they brought him back to the States.

We readily agreed, even though Sue is allergic to cats, and I am not much of an animal lover. John & Diego arrived first, and when we visited their vet the next day, he was down to a little over seven pounds (down from his fighting weight of 12 pounds) and in pretty bad shape with kidney and heart disease. Still with a little care and lots of love, he is now doing much better. When Erin arrived just a few days later, she could already see how much Diego was improving. In a little more than two weeks he has put on a couple of pounds and seems content to be with the “grandparents.”

Diego will be with us for the next several months…, and, even I have to say he is a pretty special cat and keeps us entertained.

On another front, I have a book to recommend; the title is Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. I checked out an audio version from the local library and have been enjoying listening to the story. The title character is an 86 year old Portuguese immigrant to the United States, who shows up one day in a small Georgia city (a fictionalized version of what has to be Athens?) Theo, as he insists on being addressed by one and all, is a cultured man who loves art, literature, and music and sees and nourishes the good in people he meets & comes to know. Some might call the book saccharine, but Theo sees the better angels in each and every person; perhaps a lesson for us all. I’d really like to meet a real-life Theo, but perhaps I need to first emulate his kindness and be on the lookout for the good.

Holiday Greetings

2025 is rapidly coming to an end, and we hope that this Christmas Season you are surrounded by family and friends. We celebrated Christmas a little early (December 20th) with Bryn and her family, because Charlie will be with his Dad and we’ll be in the DC area. Joel made one of his usual delicious meals and lots of gifts were exchanged; and, surprisingly, almost everyone liked what they unwrapped or opened—smiles and wows instead of meek little “thank yous.”

Bryn & Joel moved into their first home this April, finding a lovely house in south Denver with views of the Rocky Mountains and space in the backyard for cookouts, picnics and family gatherings and only 15 minutes from us. Bryn has just completed a year as Comptroller with a Denver nonprofit, Focus Points, which has provided services to immigrant families in the Denver area for more thirty years. She loves the work, although it is quite challenging managing 28 separate grants and budgets. Joel is a now partner in his company and fortunately it is very successful.

Erin & John are finishing up what has been a difficult two year posting to Cuba with the State Department. Food & fuel shortages present daily challenges for the average Cuban and visitors alike. They just found out that their next posting is Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean, which they hope will be a lot less stressful than Cuba. We weren’t able to visit them in Cuba but we are already make out plans to visit them in Barbados.

Charlie will be 14 in January and half way through the 8th grade. He continues to love, breaking, surfing, and basketball, and excels at them all. We see him at least once a week, usually when we pick him and his best friend, Dylan, up after school. These days they like to come to our condo to workout in our exercise room or occasionally play cards with us; whatever, we do, there’s always a few minutes to catch up on what’s happening in his life—though I have to admit that a 14 year old boy is not the best of communicators, but we keep at it.

Theatre nigh out with Bryn, Joel & Charlie

Now we are back east with Sue’s brother John & sister in law Bonnie at their lovely home on the Eastern Shore. John spends weeks pulling out all of the Christmas decorations, and it seems like every room has its own Christmas tree—of course, it takes almost an equal amount of time to put it away! We love visiting with John and Bonnie at this time of year. Christmas morning was incredible—lots of presents for everyone.

We’ll be in the DC area until the 29th of December when we fly back to Denver—where the Christmas Day weather forecast is 75 degrees and bright blue skies. As Thomas Friedman says, Global Weirding!

2025 has been a good year for the Boyers, featuring good health, time for family and friends and some travel. I have been dealing with a detached retinue for the last 18 months; five operations later, the doctors are hopeful that one more operation will be able to restore sight to my left eye—we’ll keep you posted. Just last month, Sue had a double cataract surgery which looks to have been successful, with good clear vision in both eyes and only the need to resort to “readers” for the smallest of print. Hurray!

Sue with her favorite guitarist, Caleb, SMA

We made it to Mexico early in the year, with a week at the beach in Sayulita with Mart & Bob Larson and time in San Miguel de Allende where we were joined by Lenore Grunko and Patrick McGlamery. We finished our visit in Mexico City, an incredibly rich cultural city where it is impossible to see and do everything even if you visit again and again—art, museums, music, shopping, history, food. Carole Reedy, a native Chicagoan but now a proud Mexican citizen, is always the best tour guide & pal.

Here’s hoping for a peaceful and prosperous 2026!

Axolotls and other musings

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.

Theater Night with Family

Last evening we had a great family night at the theater with Bryn, Joel and Charlie (although we missed having Erin and John with us.) The Lion King first opened on Broadway nearly thirty years ago, but this was the first time seeing the show for all of us. Although reviews varied amongst the five of us, we all could agree that the production, costumes, and especially the puppetry were great.

Of course, the best thing was that we could all be together as a family. We are just a block away from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, so getting to the show is just a matter of a five minute walk, and we try to go as often as we can.

Being adults of a certain age, we are eligible for discounted rush tickets which go on sale an hour before curtain time. If the show is popular, it is sometimes hard to score a ticket, but more often than not, we manage to get tickets and often in a great seat. Last night was fortunately one of those times when we were able to get both tickets and choice seats!. We were seated on the aisle in the 11th and 12th rows, so when the parade of animals started coming down the aisle we were surprised and delighted.

Sue and I so enjoyed having this opportunity to spend time with Bryn, Joel, and Charlie. With work and school and crowded calendars, these opportunities are too rare, so we treasure them.

Changing Seasons

Summer is in the rear mirror; and winter is ahead, but in the meanwhile, we have the beauty of Autumn in the Rockies.

Since moving to Colorado, we have come to look forward to “Aspen Season.” Unlike back east when fall seems to linger for many weeks, your opportunity for viewing the glory that our golden Aspens provide is quite fleeting…usually lasting only a couple of weeks, before a wind & rain storm or even an early snow ends their beautiful display.

This year was no exception with snow, wind and rain playing havoc, but still what a beautiful display. Fortunately, we had two opportunities to drive up into the mountains, only a short scenic hour’s trip. Even better, being retired, we can avoid making the trek on a weekend when the traffic can be horrendous and the crowds off-putting.

This season’s first trip was with Mart & Bob Larson and Martha Birney, two Mondays ago. This is an ongoing tradition for our small group. iPhone photos can’t do justice to the beauty of the scene. The aspens leaves sparkle in the sun and whistle with every breeze; you have to be there to understand and appreciate the experience.

The second foray was with our neighbors, Reid, Ping & Emma Hawk. For Emma, who is ten and in the fifth grade, it was her first time! She liked the aspens, but perhaps even more enjoyed playing in someone’s abandoned teepee skeleton.

Both trips were very successful and delightful; it makes one feel more alive being out in the fresh air and admiring Nature’s handiwork. Whenever we drive up to Kenosha Pass, we always make sure to stop at The Shaggy Sheep Restaurant, usually for breakfast. If you find yourself there, make sure you order the jalapeño and cheese biscuits with gravy–oh my!

Finally, as some of you might know, this past week, Sue celebrated her 81st Birthday; she has long been superstitious about this birthday (her mother died a month before her 81st birthday), so it was good to get this one behind us! I

It was made even better because on her actual birthday, Charlie & best friend and honorary grandson, Dylan, were able to join us for a dinner that featured Sue’s favorite food, oysters on the half shell. Charlie says he enjoys eating a couple, but still prefers them to be fried. Dylan thought one was enough thank you.

When we got home that evening, Erin’s flowers were waiting for her; Erin & John are sill in Cuba and will be until next summer. Bryn & Joel couldn’t be with us for the birthday dinner, but they made up for it by taking us to their favorite neighborhood diner, Looking Good, making it nearly a week of celebrations!

We hope your fall is a nice one!

Focal Points

A friend recently wrote a blog in which she mentioned Chef José Andrés of the World Central Kitchen saying that he was always “looking for the helpers.” What a good admonishment for all of us. I have admired Chef Andres for a number of years, especially since his work in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and more recently in Gaza. Fortunately there are helpers everywhere you look.

Last Friday we attended a gala fund raiser or Lotería for Focus Points Family Resource Center, a local non profit here in Denver, that provides community support and outreach. The organization certainly meets my criteria for “helpers.” Their motto is “Building better communities by strengthening families.”

Lotería is similar to bingo, but uses pictures of familiar objects on its playing card. We didn’t win anything but had fun playing, knowing the proceeds were going to helping the community

Until Bryn started working for the organization last November, we were unaware of the organization and the wonderful work that it does, but attending the Lotería we learned so much more about their mission. Our friends, Mart & Bob Larson came along with us, and Bryn acted as our host. What a fun evening in support of a good cause.

We are proud and delighted that Bryn is now associated with this extraordinary organization and attending their Lotería annual fund raising gave us an excellent opportunity to learn more about all of the services that Focus Points provides. Bryn serves as their financial controller, a daunting task given the challenges currently facing organizations like hers that serve immigrant and diverse communities.

Focus Points is a strong and vital organization and has been around for thirty years. They have developed a multi-pronged program focusing on family support, community development, education for both children and adults, financial literacy, job training, creating opportunities for new entrepreneurs and small local businesses, and urban farming.

Like most non-profit organizations, Focus Points depends on community support, volunteers, donations, and grants. Until this year, this formula meant that the organization could grow and enhance its outreach.

Unfortunately, this year federal grants for cultural enrichment and services, especially to new immigrants, have been slashed. As a result, Focus Points has lost a half million dollar federal grant and will have to discontinue its Wildflower School, an English as a Second Language learning center, that has operated for the last fifteen years.

Eight experienced language teachers will lose their jobs, and hundreds of children and adults will lose access to skills helping them integrate into American society, do well in school, or find meaningful work. Bryn and her colleagues are devastated, as you can imagine, and we were appalled to hear this news. All the teachers were at the event and everyone tried to put a good face on a bad situation, but it is a blow to the organization and the entire community.

We hope to do more with Focus Points in the coming months as Bryn tells us that there are always volunteer opportunities. Denver cannot afford to lose Focus Points and the valued “helpers” who make up the Organization. Perhaps we can help in some small way to make sure that Focus Points is around for another 30 years.

Larry's Blog for Friends & Family

Ramblings–both physical & mental