Place Matters: Looking for Mitford

The Amazon.com review pretty much hit the nail on the head:

Mix one part All Creatures Great and Small with two parts Lake Wobegon, sprinkle a little Anne of Green Gables and get: Mitford, the pinnacle of provincial life, where homespun wisdom, guarded tradition, and principled faith are the precepts of good living.

These days Jan Karon’s At Home in Mitford is on my car’s CD player each morning as I drive to work. I long for a place like Mitford. Small town. Southern. People care about each other. Know about each other. Not too much drama. Peaceful.

Oh well, this is fiction and I am only on the first book of the series. We will see if I stick with it beyond the first. But, I can see why it captured my attention as I explore my longing for what I call a sense of place – a place where I belong.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation offers a straightforward approach, calling sense of place:

Those things that add up to a feeling that a community is a special place, distinct from anywhere else.

In writing the blog this morning, I discovered that The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a This Place Matters Community Challenge now through Sept. 15 where you can pick a community and vote to support the community. The winner gets $25,000. 

I am throwing my support behind Orion, Illinois and its attempt to save Main Street. The folks of Orion say:

Our small community of Orion is "Rural America at its Finest!" Volunteers with Main Street Orion work tirelessly to avoid the fate suffered by other surrounding communities empty storefronts, shuttered homes, devalued properties, crumbling infrastructure, and shrinking population. Can it happen in Orion, too? Yes, and it has, to some extent.

The way the challenge works is communities "rally as many people around the grassroots issues of preservation in our communities as possible. This means that unlike a traditional voting-contest, participants are allowed to align themselves with one organization, one time throughout the Challenge and recruit as many people as possible to do the same."

Here's how to help Orion. Join me and see if we can help them out. After all, it's the neighborly thing to do.

And I’ll let you know when I get to my Mitford.

Happy Saturday!

PS Here is a Flickr Slideshow about the project

Wile E Coyote

Greetings from Batavia, Illinois, and Happy Saturday! Son Scott is back at Fermilab with his summer job in the computing division. He loves the people at Fermi and says, "It's like working at the United Nations." However, I think the actual environment at this massive national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy captures his attention just as often as interacting with Russians, Germans, and people from all over the world. The 6,800-acre Fermilab site contains wetlands, woodlands, grasslands and more than 1,100 acres of reconstructed tall-grass prairie. And, a cute coyote pup!


photo from June 11 Fermilab Today credited thus: "PPD's Terry Tope spotted a coyote pup in the woods on Pine Street on June 5."

In the area and want to visit:
Fermilab's site is open to the public every day of the week from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. from mid-October to mid-April and from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. when daylight hours are longer. Fermilab visitors are allowed to visit two buildings on their own: the first and ground floor of Wilson Hall and the Lederman Science Center, which is open Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. and on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. A map of Fermilab's Public Areas is available online.

Camping Renewal

Last weekend was too perfect for these parts. The cornfields stretched for miles, but with some roll to the countryside, it wasn’t a boring drive to Oregon. No, not THAT Oregon. Illinois has a little town called Oregon and that’s where my drive took me.

Past rustic red barns and horse farms, past a make-shift sign pointing to a blessing of the harvest, past so many road kill raccoons I have to make mention. Solitary but not alone, a two-lane road with so many motorcyclists you’d think they were all going to some big convention. I think, however, they just knew this weekend was one of the few left for their passion until spring.

As each cyclist passed another, they extended their left arms downward. Not being clued in to motorcycle culture, I imagine this some kind of “secret handshake,” akin to the cub scout or boy scout handshake.

On hindsight, this is an appropriate segue since scouts camp a lot and that’s where I was heading. Years ago when my son Jeff was a cub scout, I somehow got snookered into becoming a den mother. Of course trying to wrangle eight elementary-age boys into after-school crafts projects is like herding cats. Bless my friend Molly’s heart, she knew better and passed on the opportunity to lead. Her son Christian, my son, and the co-leader’s son, ring-led the other boys into all kinds of harmless mischief. I had fun but not at the time. Does that make sense at all?

Eventually, Jeff graduated cub scouts and moved onto boy scouts and his dad took over as a leader. At least on my watch, the boys didn’t try to burn down the forest on a camping trip. The boy who a attempted that was, as they say, “troubled.”

So, when Jeff felt it was time to introduce camping to Natalie and little Nicolas, I was at first reluctant. Fifty-seven year old bones don’t like sleeping on the ground in a tent. Ever the boy scout, Jeff offered up an AeroBed, clinching the trip for me. The other appeal, besides being outside on a lovely fall weekend with people I love, was Jeff’s cooking.

By the time I pulled into the crowded campground at Lowden State Park, one former Governor Rod Blagojevich closed last year due to budget troubles, Jeff and Natalie had already set up camp. Sweet! Minor items forgotten and a burnt apple cobbler in a new Lodge Dutch oven were our biggest issues. Small price to pay for stars over our heads, a roaring campfire, S’mores, great steaks, campers’ breakfast, and being with people I love.

America’s Most Stressful Cities and One That’s Not

Forbes ranks America’s most stressful cities. I’ve lived in several cities on the list: Houston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and was born in one—Washington D.C. However, I am presently located in Chicagoland—Chicago being the most stressful of all. I can agree that driving on the expressways when necessary is stressful. I try to take Metra when I go into the city. Paying through the nose to park a car only adds insult to injury.

While I love all that Chicago has to offer after you get there, I have settled in the far west hinderlands of Chicagoland. Batavia to be specific, which is ironically the only Illinois city to make Money Magazine’s list of America’s best small towns. Ranked at number 56, my little slice of Chicagoland is a stark contrast to the big-city buzz.

Here in Batavia, the biggest thing going on a Friday night is the local Batavia High School Bulldogs game—a real Friday Nights Lights just down the street from me. Life here is simpler—farmers market on Saturday, volunteer fair at the library, arts shows, bikers up the wazoo (we are on the bike trail along the Fox River). My bank, cleaners, insurance agent, hair salon, favorite coffee shop, drugstore, and the library are all within a mile or walking distance of my place. That cuts down on stress for sure. Batavia calls itself the City of Energy and the local landscape is dotted with windmills, an omage to its once booming windmill manufacturing status.

So, let Oprah Winfrey celebrate Chicago this week as well as celebrate her 24th year in TV with what the Chicago media has dubbed Oprahpalooza as she takes over three blocks of Michigan Avenue for her show, throwing even more stress onto the shoulders of commuters. It’s okay. This is the City of Big Shoulders afterall, but I think I’ll stick to my little corner of the world.

National Volunteer Week Starts April 19

Most of my long-time readers know I work for a nonprofit organization that helps low-income senior citizens and children. Heck, some of you have even contributed to HSP. So, y’all shouldn’t be surprised that I would have volunteers on my mind this week.

I recently recruited three new volunteers for our speakers’ team. These speakers spread our community outreach efforts further than our small staff ever could. What impresses me most is that these talented people are working full-time; and yet, they are called to volunteer their time when I’m sure they could be otherwise engaged. Our nonprofit’s lifeblood is the volunteer. With a lean paid staff, volunteers support us every day in our mission to alleviate some of the pain caused by poverty. I’ll bet it’s that way at most nonprofits.

Today, contrary to what was once the image of volunteers as retired folks seeking ways to fill newly acquired “down” time (we have a great bunch of those folks too), volunteers come in all ages and from all backgrounds. One of the new speakers is a young man not long out of university who plays music on the weekend in a band. Another is a working-outside-of-the-home mom with two teens. And the third is a dynamic young man who is working and going back to school. The common thread is that they are passionate about wanting to help others and have chosen our organization as the conduit.

If you have an extra hour or two, find a way to volunteer. You’ll make someone happy and that could even be yourself. And if you happen to be in the Chicagoland area, drop by for a tour this Tuesday. I’m making oatmeal scotchies.


Open House for National Volunteer Week
Humanitarian Service Project
465 Randy Road, Carol Stream, Illinois
Phone: 630-221-8340
Tuesday, April 21: 9:30-5:30 p.m.

A Cause for the Little Ones

February 23, 2008, doctors at Rush Copley Hospital in Aurora, Illinois, delivered Nicolas Bryant Noblitt at 26 weeks gestation. In case you “don’t know nothing about birthin’ babies,” that’s way too early.

Baby Nico spent 101 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, best called NICU by those families all too familiar with NICU alarms, monitors, endless tests, teams of medical professionals, and constant worry about what comes next.

On the cusp of summer, Nic came home that sunny June day with machines, monitors, and tubes and wires. Not exactly the vision most new parents have for their baby’s homecoming. Books like “What to Expect When You Are Expecting” and its cousins can hardly prepare new moms and dads for the exhausting and anxious ride they are in for when their baby is born prematurely.

So worried and hungry for more information shortly after Nic’s birth, I turned to the March of Dimes Web site to learn more about what this little guy could face. It delivered (pardon the pun).


The March of Dimes is a charitable organization I supported long before baby Nic came into this world. As a schoolgirl in the late 50s and early 60s, I remember the March of Dimes coin cards handed out to raise money. Think about it, this campaign worked! When President FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, that was the goal—find a cure. Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine against polio did just that. Dr. Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine brought even easier access to protection. Little pink sugar cubes dosed the vaccine to millions worldwide.

With the success of the vaccine for polio behind it, the March of Dimes shifted its focus to preventing premature births and fostering research into helping those little ones born too soon have a shot at a good life. And today, they fund research that gave Nic and his NICU buddies a chance. Yes, I know the organization needs to work on fiscal responsibility, and since I work for a 4-Star Charity Navigator nonprofit, the fact that March of Dimes is not there yet bothers me a bit. However, they have my support.

If you happen to be in northern Illinois on Sunday, April 26 at 8:00 a.m., join Team Nic at Pottawatomie Park, 8 North Avenue in Saint Charles. And if you can’t make it, follow the link and help Natalie reach her goal.

And visit Nic on ciao-nico. He is surely one cute guy.

Spring

The folks at Kline Creek Farm posted this photo of one of their newest babies. Located in Wheaton, Illinois, the forest preserve runs the farm to give local residents and kids an idea of what a working farm of the late 1800s was like.

I love the sweetness of new life. Spring is near.

She Stopped and Changed Course

With a slight layer of snow on the ground, a mostly flat prairie landscape has prepared itself for winter. Acres of cornfields as far as my eye could see now sport only stubs of the once flourishing crop. Almost overnight, we went from waves of green to stark barren ground sometimes dotted with flocks of Canada geese.

I almost cried the other morning on my way to work. The day, devoid of sunlight, was too much a reminder of the long, cold period ahead. How, dear gentle readers, did this former girl of the South find herself so far North? Do I dream of warmth and short winters? You bet. But most of all, I’d love to know that I wouldn’t have to worry about slipping on icy walks, steps and parking lots.

On the way back from dropping off Scott at school, a beautiful deer darted toward the road and I prayed she would stop before my car crashed into her. A small prayer was answered as she stopped and returned to the barren cornfield and I continued on my way.

I am tired. My days are busy. So busy there is little time for reflection. Maybe though this winter is just the right time—a time to beware of slippery dangers not always apparent, a black ice if you will. Maybe, just maybe, the long winter will bring a healing spring full of new growth. It’s something to look forward to.

Pandora Rocks

I’ve been listening to Chet Baker Radio today as I re-immerse myself in a long-tabled project. I have son Scott to thank for turning me on to Pandora. I’ve added a link so that you can check it out, but I am enjoying my Chet Baker and company as I work nearby.

The way Pandora works is that you pick an artist and they pick music they think you’ll like. You can thumbs up or down it and create your own little “radio” station. Fitting, in that Scott is taking a radio production class this semester away from Hendrix College at our excellent community college, Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove.

And a rambling afterthought. One of my favorite bloggers, Marsha, is soliciting view on whether her high school daughter should go away to college next year or stay at home and attend a community college. Of course, I chipped in my opinion, which I must confess is also rambling. Do y’all see a trend here? My conclusion was to weigh the pros and cons but of course this blogger is well ahead on that front.

Me, I never wanted to go to college anywhere but the University of Alabama. So, I never struggled with that decision. However, decades later when I wanted to learn design skills, I found the Advertising, Design & Illustration program at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn was excellent and my instructors were talented as well as great teachers.

Where was I? I am supposed to be working on a “long-tabled project” and not blogging. I told you I was rambling. Add distracted to that too

Saturday in Batavia, Illinois

I miss blogging. When I do finally get around to it, my posts are long, rambling pent-up words that flow as slowly as the Fox River, which is nearby. But today is Saturday and I am free and the day is mine. Why not spend a few minutes doing something I enjoy before turning to more mundane matters like cleaning the clog out of the bathtub?

It is only October and the pumpkins and Obama signs on my street remind me that we still have Halloween to get through before the election. My favorite sign, however, was perched atop a hammock. And the sign count on my block—6 Obama to 1 McCain.

Whoopi-Do We Are Still Here

The world's biggest physics experiment has succeeded in its first major test as a beam of protons was successfully fired all the way around a 17-mile tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border. From the AP

You might have caught a bit about the event on the evening news when there was talk that it could possibly cause our planet to implode into a black hole. Something like that—I am not a physics person. Well, it obviously didn’t, and the “end of the worlders” can go back to worrying.

Here in my new hometown of Batavia, we know a thing or two about energy. Batavia was once home to windmill manufacturers and we have windmills all over the place. But the biggest and finest claim for the City of Energy is Fermilab, named for Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, one of the most highly regarded physicists of the atomic age.

I reckon they’re smashing atoms and accelerating and colliding them as well, and so far everything here in Batavia seems to be just fine, and I am sure they will be fine in Geneva (Switzerland, not Illinois' Geneva which is just up the road from Batavia) too. Ahhh! We have escaped another “Chicken Little” scare.

For a while I fell off the face of the earth

I landed in Batavia, Illinois, a far-far western suburb of Chicago. Long-time readers might be curious about this journey, but for now, I intend to be discrete and mysterious about my detour along life’s pathways.

My new home, a quaint little town clustered along the Fox River, captured my eye immediately when I first drove into the downtown central business district. Yes, there is still a thriving downtown here, not yet lost to the strip-shopping centers which populate west Batavia along Randal Road where every manner of chain store or restaurant is at your beck and call. The mayor wrote this about his town, “Batavia in some ways looks like a town that time has left alone.” This part of the Fox River Valley is lovely, and I am no stranger to the river having once lived in a Craftsman-style house overlooking the Fox for a short time in Appleton, Wisconsin.

While Batavia is doing a fine job of straddling old and new, I found her charm immediately apparent with tree-lined streets of homes ranging from Victorian painted ladies to one classic Frank Lloyd Wright home. I can walk to my insurance agent, bank, pharmacy, coffee shop, and library.

The library features a mural of the art accompanying this post--John Philip Falter's "Fox River Ice-Skating," which was the Saturday Evening Post cover for Jan. 11, 1958. In the upper right corner, you can see the Challenge Windmill Factory, another Batavia landmark. Batavia dubs itself “The City of Energy,” a right fine tagline since it served as home to five windmill factories during its early years, and it has been the home of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) for more than 40 years.

Well, that’s a short introduction to my new hometown. More later but don't expect me to write about ice-skating on the Fox River or anywhere for that matter.

A Dog Senses Danger

My son called me on his way to work this morning. “Did you hear about the earthquake?” he asked.

I had and was going to E-mail him later to ask if they had felt the quake in the west suburbs of Chicago.

My daughter-in-law had been awakened by a shaking house and had tried to convince my skeptical son that she wasn’t imagining things. Only after checking the morning’s news did he realize she was right.

Now, unlike the west coast, you don’t really hear too much about earthquakes in the Midwest, but according to the U.S.Geological Survey, "this region has more earthquakes than any other part of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains." For example, the New Madrid Fault is one you might have heard about most. Back in 1811-1812, a series of earthquakes hit New Madrid, Missouri, and even changed the course of the Mississippi River. Today’s quake, which occurred in the Wabash Valley fault system, was centered in southern Illinois and was felt in St. Louis, Cincinnati and even as far as Canada. Because of the region's geology, earthquakes here tend to be felt over much greater distance.

But, what captured my attention was the strange behavior of grand-dog Monte as reported by my son. My son said that yesterday Monte was barking at the ground like he was terribly afraid. Monte's legs were trembling from fear. From past experience, I know dogs will bark at a lot of odd things--motorcycles, vacuum cleaners and especially items that are out-of-place; however, I am now convinced Monte is an earthquake-detector dog.

The National Geographic has an interesting article on the subject of animals sensing earthquakes. Next time, I think I’ll listen to Monte when he sounds a warning. I have a new level of respect for him.