| Get all our news every week - Subscribe to the Normalite | ||
|
May 9 2013 Ace Takes the Trick I’ve never seen Lucca Grill so packed. Not after a big ISU basketball victory or even a surprising Democrat win at the polls. Beer and wine flowed and there was food on tables. There was a constant roar of conversation. People may have been talking about Ace, the Cubs, or Governor Quinn. Ace once wrote speeches for a Democrat governor. He used to go to Arizona to watch the Cubs spring training. He also wrote a history of Lucca Grill, that is, the first 50 years up to 1986. Ace had worked for a drug store, for an advertising agency, and for many years in News and Publications at ISU. But it was his career at the Pantagraph that is most memorable to me, especially his story about my father-in-law Roy Doland. The story has only a slight but still important connection with Lucca Grill. It’s about the Saturday night Reverend Doland married a couple three times. The first time was at the parsonage in Bloomington. When he turned the license over to sign it, he noticed that it had been issued in Champaign County not McLean. He told the couple they had to be married in Champaign County to be legal. So they set out past LeRoy in McLean and Farmer City in DeWitt to Mansfield. Here at the side of the road the couple repeated the vows, and Rev. Doland, confident he was within legal sanctity, signed and dated the license. They returned to Bloomington, the Reverend to work on his sermon, the couple to celebrate at Lucca Grill. But when Mrs. Doland learned what had transpired, she grew alarmed and consulted a map of Illinois. Just as she suspicioned, a corner of Piatt County wedged between DeWitt and Champaign and in that corner was Mansfield. If “probity” was the Reverend’s middle name, nothing less than “rectitude” could describe his wife. She marched into his study and informed him that the couple was about to consummate an illegal if not unsanctified union. The good Reverend, never suspecting the union might already have been consummated several times, called Lucca. He warned the couple of the urgency involved since he had dated the license and there was less than an hour to midnight. At the bar, having put Sunday’s Pantagraph to bed, was intrepid reporter Ace Adams, who overheard the story and followed the wedding party on a fast drive to the town of Mahomet. There, underneath the lights of Charlie’s Market while the station on the car radio was signing off with the Star Spangled Banner, Rev. Doland pronounced the couple man and wife for the third time that night. And at that moment Ace Adams leaned in and took the picture that would soon be on the Associated Press wire going around the world. Gardeners Tips May 9 2013 Save the beesWe have been reading and hearing a lot abut the Colony Collapse Disorder of Honey bees, CCD. One third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants and honey bees do 80 % of the pollination. Wild bees, bumble bees, wasp, moths and humming birds also help to pollinate. The California almond crop uses 1.3 million colonies (hives), which is about 1/2 of all the honey bees in the United States. The bees do much more than just make the honey for our biscuits. According to Phil Nixen, an Extension Entomologist at the U. of I., who is helping with a study on the CCD, pesticides, parasites and stress could be the cause of the loss. Stress can be linked to when the bees are being moved from one field to another to pollinate the different plants. The parasites in a hive can be treated once the owner discovers the problem. It is believed the insecticides and pesticides either kill the bees or cause them to forget how to get back to the hive. Fungicides may interfere with the microbes that break down the pollen in the honey bee gut, making them sick. When the honey bee takes the food back to the hive, they share it with the other colony members. When the queen feeds on it, she dies and then they all die. When bees get sick, they go outside to die. The is why the hive is empty when the owners check on it. Some research has shown that imidacloprid, (which is found in a lot of tree and shrub products), thiamethoxam, and clothianidin have been linked to reduction of the bees. Imidacloprid is no longer used in France. A good source of pollen which the bees collect is found in common lawn weeds such as dandelion, creeping charlie, clover and wild violet, all which consumers treat with chemicals thereby harming the bees. Some people have been using trees and shrub systemic on linden trees and roses to stop the Japanese beetles. That is also killing the bees and other pollinators. Do not use the systemic on anything that has flowers and do not spray when the bees are active. |
May 9 2013 Dehuntshigwa’es Comes to Illinois WesleyanOR IS IT Da-nah-wah’uwsdi? This will be a tough one to sort out; we’ll work at it as we go along. Early French missionaries, as far back as 1636, according to Wikipedia, called it le jeu de la crosse (French name for field hockey) or crosier (a hooked staff carried by bishops). At Illinois Wesleyan University, they’ll simply call it lacrosse. American Indian tribes introduced this “stickball” game to European settlers, explorers, and missionaries as early as the middle of the 17th century. Variations of it were played by tribes from the east coast clear to the Mississippi and even in the South. Plains Indians, particularly the Northern tribes, relished the game as well, as did some Southern tribes. A form of the contest was popular right here in Illinois among the five major tribes that constituted the Illini Confederation. Dehuntshigwa’es in the Onandaga tongue meant “men hit a rounded object,” while da-nah-was’uwsdi (“little war”) was the game’s name in Eastern Cherokee. If you want Mohawk, that would be tewaarathon (“little brother of war”). This info too comes from Wiki. American Indian tribes took this game very seriously, often preparing in advance as if going to war. The night before squaring off, particularly if competing against another tribe, participants adorned themselves with war paint; they sought blessing from the tribe’s medicine man or shaman, then had their hands and sticks blessed as well. Participants on game day might number in the hundreds, while the field itself could extend several miles, even as far as the enemy village. These games were often played to settle disputes such as territory rights, water rights, or the perimeters of hunting grounds Thus, the game we now call lacrosse was at one time that elusive Holy Grail, the “moral equivalent to war.” MANY OBSERVERS have noted the sport’s popularity, so well established in Eastern states, is growing dramatically in the Midwest. At IWU there won’t be war paint or the laying on of hands, but varsity men’s lacrosse is in fact coming to campus, starting with a full schedule in spring, 2014. The following year, women’s lacrosse will be added. The intrepid new coach is Zach Iannucci, a native of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, who starred as lacrosse captain for Lenape Regional High School. Iannucci (eye-a-noochi) has been quite the travelin’ man. Although this is his first head coaching position, he has served as assistant at Lenape, defensive coordinator at Hendrix College (Ark.), and most recently, defensive coordinator for Oberlin College in Ohio. He’s had enough traveling. “I’m glad to be settled,” he says. “This (IWU) is a place where coaches come to stay. They tend to be permanent. Coaches come to IWU and stay here because you have everything you need to be successful. Wesleyan is the perfect balance between academics and athletics and as a coach you can’t ask for much more.” Iannucci earned his head coaching spot the old fashioned way. He saw the job listing on one of the lacrosse Web sites and decided to apply. “I didn’t really know anybody here or have any connections. I knew of the school mostly because of the high profile of Titan basketball.” HE WAS HIRED last November, pretty much without high school coaching contacts in our state, so has spent the past six months as you might expect - networking by introducing himself to coaches around the state, recruiting players, scheduling, and settling in. “Lots of phone calls, lots of miles,” is how he puts it. According to the new skipper, most of his recruiting energy has been spent in the Chicago suburbs, where “About 60 high schools have established lacrosse programs.” He has been persistent and persuasive enough to get nearly 30 verbal commitments from high school players. Suburban high school players who have committed to IWU lacrosse come from Waubonsie Valley, Warren Township, Marist, James B. Conant, Glenbrook South, and Carl Sandburg, among others. It doesn’t begin and end in Illinois, however. Iannucci has used contacts established at his former coaching positions to secure verbals from as far away as California, West Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The three other schools in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin with varsity lacrosse teams are Carthage, Augustana, and Elmhurst. The schedule for next spring, which runs from February 22 through April 19, has the Titans facing Elmhurst and Carthage, but not Augie. IWU will play 8 games on the road and 5 at home in its inaugural season. Home opponents include Capital University, Olivet, Hope, Dubuque, and Carthage. The action will take place at Tucci Stadium. A spring break trip will take the team to Hendrix, Arkansas, Centenary, Louisiana, and Millsaps, Mississippi. It is Iannucci’s goal to build a “championship caliber program.” Considering all that he has achieved in six short months, it appears he may have the energy and skill to get that done  Get your copy of Best Look Magazine today! Every story has a photo, every photo has a story McLean County's Sports and Leisure Magazine Published Feb 15, May 15, Aug 15, Nov 15 |
May 9 2013 Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com
Alan Look Photography - Bloomington - Normal's Best Look in Sports Action
Photography |
