On Monday Kim and I finished lunch and headed east. We drove til the highway turned into a two lane road. We turned left and headed further away from city life.

The houses were further apart. Laundry hung outside drying. On closer inspection you could see that these houses with the laundry out front had no electric or phone wires running to the house. On the right two men were pounding in fence posts. On the left, coming towards us, was a horse drawn buggy.

Not all of the households were Amish. Up another mile on the right a man pushed a power mower while behind him his dog lay watching him work. We turned in. This was the kennel where I’d left Anabelle early Friday morning.

Kim and I should have been on our way to London but a volcano in Iceland had changed our plans. As a result we were picking up our puppy over a week too early. In other words the volcano was having real impact on the owners of this small kennel in the middle of Amish country. In fact, the owners told us, they had several owners do the same thing.

We felt bad for them. The night before the local newscast had explained that the volcano would take months to effect those of us in Northeast Ohio. Thats how long it would take the ash particles to diffuse and spread and lower the temperature over this next year.

No one on the action news team imagined that this far away event would touch local people in such a tangible way.