Just trying to thermoregulate
Just like Daphne the crocodile looks fierce while gaping in this photo, the reality is she's just lying there, functionally panting. Alligators and crocodiles open their mouths like this when they're overheated. It's called gaping and is a form of thermoregulating. Shortly after I took the photo this week, she backed into the water.
In other words, she may look tough, and honestly, she is, but she's just a sweety trying to survive and mind her own business. I can relate, I think. I may look big and tough, but I really just want to take a break in the sun and be left alone. I think most of us can relate to that.
But most of us also know that that's not always possible.
Finite Disappointment
Operation Tidal Wave made the news Wednesday night, and I again find myself in tears. Hardcore World War II "history buffs" (I do not like the term history buff, but I digress) will note that Operation Tidal Wave was the name of a 1943 Allied bombing campaign on Nazi oil refineries in Libya. Why this name would be recycled is beyond me. But here we are.
Historic Interlude
April 22, 2000: Elian Gonzalez was seized by US officials.
A raid under the cover of darkness led to the photo above as Elian Gonzalez was seized by the US Government and returned to his father in Cuba. As the video below says, he was found adrift three miles off the coast of Florida at the age of five on Thanksgiving, 1999. While his American family and his Cuban father wanted to figure out how to make Elian happy, Fidel Castro stepped in, put pressure on the Clinton Administration, causing the US Government to settle on essentially kidnapping the boy in the night.
Below is a piece written in 2020 on the 20th anniversary. It is long but good. I recommend reading it all. It includes this quote:
"The story was always reported with a slant against Cuban-Americans, so it was misunderstood by everyone north of the Miami-Dade County line," says Lourdes Tester, a legal aide at the law firm Colson Hicks Eidson and the wife of Hank Tester, a TV journalist who covered the Elián story.
Vanessa Garcia
As former Miami mayor Manny Diaz, the attorney for Gonzalez's family in the United States in 2000, put it, the backlash over the event was felt in November of that year when Al Gore lost the Florida vote and the presidency by about 500 votes in Miami-Dade County.
The four-minute video is excellent.
Infinite Hope
Holy Celebrations
With Eid just a few weeks ago, and Passover last week and the two major Christian calendars aligning for the first time in some time on Easter, I found a lot to like about this past weekend. The church I attend "hides the alleluia" for Lent and brings it back in for Easter. The person selected to bring it in is the child who, during our Mardi Gras service, finds the feve (the small trinket hidden in the cake). This year it was a small little guy that Pastor Laurie told in the picture above that the sign was as big as he is.
Seeing Miami alive with celebrations was lovely, as was introducing my mom to my friends at this church. I don't want to make this all religious, I'm just saying community is a wonderful thing and I hope everyone had a meaningful week, whatever their religious tradition.
Pope Francis
While I am not Catholic, I join my Catholic brothers and sisters in celebrating Pope Francis's life. Some time ago, the Pope accepted a pizza from a man who had run up to the bulletproof Popemobile to offer the Pope a slice, a moment that immediately made him relatable to me, a fellow great lover of pizza and impulsive decisions. I admired him for his humility, love of justice for the poor, and his love for pizza. Pizza is my comfort food too. '“The only thing I would like is to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza,” he told an interviewer in 2015.'
Melissa Locker
New Protesters
1199SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East, protested in front of Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar's office on Thursday to demand Salazar protect your healthcare. There were about a dozen passionate protesters there and as usual, lots of honking.
As I've said, I love living in a country where protests are legal. Whether I agree with the protesters is less important to me than their freedom to protest. That being said, I love Service Employees International Union, SEIU.
It is worth noting that when a rich guy called the Representative out last week, she took to the Miami Herald to respond. She is right to say she's done more than most Republican members in Congress. But if you read this piece by her, you'll notice that she spends almost the entire piece talking about things that happened in the previous two Congresses, not the current one. And while she did help one immigrant detained by ICE in Florida a month ago, and that's truly commendable, Operation Tidal Wave showed this week rounded up hundreds of other immigrants needed her help too. She doesn't mention that.
I talk to a lot of protesters in front of her office and at the Torch of Freedom, and no one seems to think that she's done anything. I'm sure many others would come to her defense, but people are desperate right now and scared. She took time to respond to a rich guy who runs a medical business, but I've heard nothing addressed to the hundreds of protesters over the last months.
I did sit down with a member of her staff a couple of months ago and that staff member was very courteous--while making the same talking points that the Representative made in the Herald April 25--but, again, having a bill stagnate in the previous congress is not exactly encouraging. It's not enough. These are intense times. I hope she's up to the challenge. I mean that sincerely. I believe she is. But we need more.
Peacocks
My mom and I visited the abandoned zoo in Crandon Park on Key Biscayne last week, where I saw the crocodiles. Though we saw no crocodiles, much to my mother's disappointment, we did see plenty of peacocks.
Three different peacocks strutting their stuff. The final two photos are of the same bird. Copyright Philip Cardella 2025