I was sitting at my ten-year-old Dell laptop the other afternoon when I excitedly said to my wife Carol “You should see these awesome pictures of Bruce’s mussels on the internet!” I guess I didn’t immediately realize how awkward it could have come across. Of course, I wasn’t admiring Bruce’s mussels exactly, I was admiring Bruce’s colorful pictures of the […]

When I first moved to this area and heard about a “Sangamon River Music Festival” I was pretty excited about celebrating a river in song. But I’ve come to discover that “The Sangamon River Music Festival” has little to do with the actual Sangamon River. So I decided to have my own personal Sangamon River Music Festival. And since my […]

For great things to happen, all it takes, apparently, is a man with a plan. In this case, the man is Dan. Dan Waldinger, head of the Mahomet Parks and Recreation Department. A true visionary, Dan had a vision, a dream perhaps, of greatness, of an event so spectacular all of Mahomet would come together for this grand event. Yes, […]

People gathered from all around:  Champaign, Urbana, Mahomet, Dewey; from the Sierra Club, from the Upper Sangamon River Conservancy, and from the Izaak Walton League.  Some were friends and some family, and some destined to become new friends. Some were young and some were old. Some came by mini-van, some by convertible, some by old pick-up truck, and one by […]

Going with the flow

The river is fully twelve steps down at my place. The shallowest of the year. Last weeked members of the USRC led a float trip with our friends from the Sierra Club down the river from the Sangamon River Forest Preserve to Lake of the Woods. It was a fun trip  and a full day, with 17 people starting out […]