GREEN & GLOVER: Musical diplomacy

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By Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover

Green and Glover have learned that President and Mrs. Obama met privately with Emilio Estefan, the producer husband of Grammy-award winning singer Gloria Estefan at the White House this week.

"He's a very warm man, and there is so much energy in the White House now," Mr. Estefan tells us.

Speaking of warm, Mr. Estefan, a Cuban-American, is lobbying the president to have dinner at his house on Miami Beach's Star Island to discuss the kinda-sorta thawing of Cuban-American relations with people affected by the nation's communist regime.

"We would like to invite various people and many generations, because every generation sees Cuba differently," Mr. Estefan says. "My children will never understand what our parents went through because they were born in the United States."

Mr. Estefan says that he would like to see Cuba release political prisoners and allow a free press and full access to the Internet for its citizens.

"We just want freedom," he declares. This goal will not be achieved until "they both disappear," he says, referring to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother and successor Raul, who, Mr. Estefan says, is "more militant and criminal" than his older sibling.

Mothers, children

Jennifer Garner came to the nation's capital on May 5 to lobby on behalf of "Save the Children," an organization that works to insure the well-being of children in 120 countries.

Along with the organization's managing director of U.S. programs Mark Shriver, the actress released the 2009 "State of the World's Mothers" at Rosemount Headstart Center in Washington's Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Shortly after presenting the report, which revealed that two-thirds of America's fourth-graders are reading below grade level, Ms. Garner read to an eager group of head start students.

The "Alias" star and wife of actor Ben Affleck reminisced about a family Mother's Day tradition that she's now passing on: "My mom used to give us two dollars and wait outside the store and say, 'There's a strainer in there I could use in the kitchen.' And we would give it to her - so proud, as if we'd thought it up and made the money! So just yesterday I was at the grocery store and bought a Mother's Day card and let my daughter pick it out and said, 'Here, you can give this to me.' But Ben is much better at making sure that kind of stuff happens."

• To contact Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover with a tip or to request event coverage, please e-mail undercover@washingtontimes.com.