I spy a white three legged plastic chair and a 55 gallon plastic barrel of blue.  I spy four cans of Miller light, three cans of Busch light, three Coke cans and a Pepsi Can, too. I spy a whiskey bottle, a wheelbarrow, big and plastic with two wheels. I spy a bottle of Bud Light, a quart Bud Light […]

  Sometimes it’s interesting where crossing a bridge can lead. I was out at the Hazen Bridge recently on a misty Saturday morning helping out with one of our regularly scheduled maintenance weekends. And I crossed the bridge over to the other side. And there I saw a man standing in the mist that no one had noticed before.  He […]

  Now I’m not trying to imply anything, but the best way to get to know the Sangamon River may not be to sit back in your LaZBoy, prop your feet up on the coffee table, have Fido fetch your slippers and flip open your Mahomet Citizen to read “Notes from the River.” No, the best way to get to […]

  Spring, 1970: the year many credit with the birth of the modern environmental movement. On April 22 of that year our nation celebrated the first Earth Day.  Earth Day is a worldwide celebration, held on or near the Vernal Equinox, to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth’s natural environment. And in 1970, here on the Sangamon River somewhere […]

In the end, it’s all interconnected. To demonstrate, this column is really going places. We’re headed to the horse latitudes of the North Pacific, to Stafford England, to Starved Rock State Park, and to the ‘hydrofracturing’ natural gas extraction wells of Pennsylvania and beyond. It all starts on Illinois Highway 47, just north of Mahomet.  Some of you may have […]