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.

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.