Cassius Smith

This is one of the veterans who was on the second flight.  Cassius, who also goes by Ed, is a great guy with some remarkable and very moving stories about his experiences in the Pacific.  He enlisted when he was 17 years old and soon after was send to Wake Island where he was a prisoner of war for four years.  He is a true American hero, and a heck of a nice guy.

It was not my intention to post this photo of my cat Zoe, but as I opened up the program, I remembered that I had promised a friend to show her how well this cat is doing. So here you go, Frances. Zoe will be 19 years old pretty soon and as you can see, is aging quite gracefully. In fact, sometimes it's difficult to see that she is aging at all.

Weekend in Lake County

We went to Kelseyville this past weekend for the Lake County Kennel Club Dog Show. The deciding factor about attending was that our dear friend, Fr. Leo Joseph lives nearby and we wanted to visit him. He serves St. John's in Lakeport, so we attended Palm Sunday service (note the large palm cross on my lapel). It was a lovely service and a very meaningful beginning to Holy Week and such a joy to spend time with Leo.

Now to the mundane. It was cold this weekend. Really cold. And wet. The dog show was outside, and the weather changed every 30 minutes or so. It never got warm, stayed in the high thirties/low forties, and alternated between rain and hail. The course was not covered, so we huddled in the covered area hoping that it wouldn't be hailing when it was our turn to compete. Quite honestly, the weather was better than our performance. For some reason both dogs were distracted, finding really interesting things to sniff in the lawn or the breeze, or the rain come to think of it. The worst part was that Emma was fascinated with the judge on Sunday. It may have been her British accent or red jacket, but Emma kept heading towards her and ignoring my directions. Very frustrating. Amazingly, we qualified in all four runs. On Sunday, Raleigh took a fourth, and Emma got second place. The only thing I can figure is that perhaps the judges couldn't see the real performance due to the hail, and they gave us the benefit of the doubt, which I appreciate very much. Oh, the photo is of the presentation of awards after Raleigh titled in Advanced. Notice that he is looking right at the camera. I wish his focus were that good during the competition.