DUAL HONOR: It’s envisioned as a day...

DUAL HONOR: It’s envisioned as a day to pay tribute not only to Martin Luther King Jr. but also the late Thomas G. Lakin, chancellor of the Ventura County Community College District. Rain has thrown the timing off a bit, though. . . . A gospel brunch honoring the pair, to have been held on Sunday, has been postponed until Feb. 5--more than two weeks after today’s national King birthday observance. Proceeds from the event at the Ventura Theater go to a scholarship fund for Lakin’s daughters.

RIVER BOTTOM: Jacque and Lois Shubert want people to know that their son was neither homeless nor a transient. His name was Willie, and he had a home; he just chose not to sleep there (B1). . . . William Lee Shubert, 31, died last week when floodwaters inundated the Ventura River bottom where he made his home. Hundreds of people scratched out a life on the river floor before the flood washed the encampments away. . . . “He was always welcome (home). He knew it,” Jacque Shubert said. “But he was just fading away from us, from society.”

SPLISH SPLASH: How many children can turn down the chance to play in a nice, messy puddle of mud? Not many. Thanks to the storms, there’s plenty of opportunity these days to get wet (B1). . . . Most adults, of course, know when to come in from the rain. “People are staying home,” said Barb Bryan, owner of Barb’s Cleaners in Ventura, during a respite between storms. But she expects business to pick up--whenever the storms let up. “They’ll snow us after the rain is over.”

GHOST TOWN: From the annals of history: Ventura County came close to having 11 cities instead of 10. . . . But plans for a town called Lexington, drawn up 108 years ago this week, never came to fruition. Pioneers had hoped the town would spring up at a picturesque spot where the Piru and Lockwood creeks meet . . . but no one followed up with development of the site.