Well, Bo has had a big improvement.  He is laying on his back doing his Snoopy-dog dance and throwing his pig up in the air.  I think he was just happy to be back home.  One reason Becky is so concerned is that she is afraid I will try to pick him up and he will scratch my right hand or arm and I will end up back in the hospital.  So.  I won't pick him up.  If he can't jump up into the car, he just won't get to go.  I can do that.  But this is all just a temporizing measure.  He is failing fast.

Today is the USMC birthday.  I have been to many Marine Corps Birthday Balls.  Long white gloves.  Full length gowns.  I still have a beautiful silk organdy black hand-painted gown that I wore in l964.  It is beautiful.  I have a picture of Ken and me on our way to the Ball--and I am wearing that dress.

But tonight, my son Scott will be my escort.  He is a Marine.  In every sense of the word.  I have not celebrated November the tenth in over forty-five years--since Ken retired.  But tonight, I am the "Guest of Honor" at a dinner to organize the Marine Corps League Detachment (#1422).  It was formed in the last few months and this is their first meeting--appropriately on the USMC birthday.  They have named it the Stanley-Jacks Detachment after Ken and his friend Sgt. Monroe Stanley--a WW2 veteran who made four landings in the Pacific.  Including Iwo Jima.  (If you are just now joining my blog, read about Ken from the Feb.-Mar., 2014 blogs.)  They are heroes in this neck of the woods.

So I am going to pull something out of the closet that will be appropriate.  I want to thank all of these men for their service.

Say "Thank you" to a veteran.  They sometimes feel forgotten and we owe them.  I am reading "Truman" by David McCollough and have been reminded once again of how many of our young men died in WW1 and WW2.  And how close we came to ending the world as we knew it.