Keep in Touch, Dutch!

I got lots of great emails about the photos of Phil, Beryl and Sailor. I took the liberty of posting some of your notes as comments after those entries. Hope that's ok with y'all.

I also received some wonderful photographs.
Alice sent a lot of fun images from the last six months or so.
Here's one with her caption:

"Mommy got me a peticure, pretty color huh?"


My friend Ben collects cat photos (his mom tells me) so I created a new category here called "cats4ben". If you like pictures of cats, just click on cats4Bben (over in the right column, Mom!) to see posts with cat photos. If you'd like to share pictures of cats that you are actually acquainted with (there are already lots of cute cats out there on the Internet, so please don't send those - no need for us to reinvent the wheel) just email them to me and I'll post them here.

Jenni(fer) is going to kick off our new cats4ben series with CatFink the Supreme Ruler:

(and yes, he looks JUST like Sailor - probably inevitable that my earliest longtime friend and I would eventually end up with twin cats!)

Jenni says, "He was rescued out of a plastic bag in a dumpster (along w/his brothers and sisters) eight years ago (shudder). He's been reigning supreme ever since (nickname: The Dog). GRIN"

Will You Marry Me, Harry Carey (gee) ?

OK - It's supposed to rain more this weekend (jeez!) so I thought I'd give you all one of my favorite movies to watch. John Wayne is very appealing in this movie, but let's not forget what a cool dude is Harry Carey. He's also wonderful in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which you may remember him as the sympathetic but stern presiding officer of the Senate who sits up front with a gavel. He was a leading man himself in several cowboy movies during the early silent years of film and John Wayne really admired him. He's right up there on my short list of skinny old men that I love and would gladly marry. [The other people on this list include: Fred Astaire (dead), Pete Seeger (beautifully alive) and Leonard Everett Fisher (alive & well and living happily in my town with his lovely wife, so shhhhh!]

John Wayne produced this film himself and I think he did a pretty good job. He chose a nice simple story (innocent but clever Quaker girl falls in love with wild but good-hearted outlaw and reforms him), a beautiful and sweet leading lady and a good supporting cast (the doctor bugs me a bit, but I love Penny's family...and did I mention Harry Carey?) The opening scenes are filmed in Monument Valley (probably the Duke's little tribute to his friend, director John Ford) but then we switch to Sedona, Arizona. Now THAT'S a little town that has changed...nobody could go to Sedona to film a wide-open-spaces movie like this now.

The quality of the recording is fuzzy in the beginning and you have to wait a bit patiently for the movie to begin - hope it improves.

Need a Mitten, Kitten?

It's hard to believe that little baby Sailor (now known alternately as Demon Cat, Sailor Longpaws or Big-Ol'-Handsome-Man Cat) arrived two years ago today. It was a cold rainy midnight and he was under my truck in the driveway where my car headlights found him screaming for his mama. I had a split second to decide whether to brave the monsoon and rescue him or to let him fade off into the night. Thus do our lives change in a heartbeat.

Over the Moon, June!

Phil & Beryl up in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
(for 53 years)