BY EDITH BLAKE

There is a strange annual event which occurs on the corner of Franklin and Morse streets in Edgartown. It’s totally weird. In a lovely old Greek Revival house (that is air-conditioned) there is a sudden collection of cavalier King Charles spaniels. This year there were 21. They come in all different colors, ruby and white, black and tan, tricolor, black and white, with eyes that are much too big for the rest of the dog.

Father Thomas C. Lopes had never been to Cuttyhunk until last Sunday morning.

Traveling on a 26-foot patrol boat owned by the Dukes County Sheriff’s department, Father Lopes crossed the water to the small chain of Elizabeth Islands to offer a Mass in the Union Methodist Church on Cuttyhunk.

A Vineyard native, the 72-year-old priest had served on Nantucket from 1991 to 2000, an Island hop of a different nature. He is now retired.

For 134 years the modest cedar-shingled post office of Cuttyhunk has served as a lifeline to the mainland for this isolated community. Now with the U.S. Postal Service facing declining revenues and cutbacks, the Cuttyhunk branch faces the prospect of closure, along with 43 other post offices in Massachusetts identified in a nationwide review.