Charles Swindoll, Christian pastor, author and educator, once said “I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.”
Harvesting ice out of Mascouten Bay was quite an interesting business during the winter. It was a beautiful body of water at the edge of the Illinois River at the northeast corner of Beardstown and was where the Indians fished and hunted just 100 years earlier. The workers at the bay would use a team of horses to pull large knives that would score the ice in 100-pound blocks. They would float the blocks of ice to the edge of the shore where a steam engine ran
One of the things that happens after Thanksgiving is Black Friday. I’ve never really understood the hype behind it all, but I know a lot of people who really love shopping on that crazy day every year.
I used to work with a friend who usually made it a family affair. They would get up in the middle of the night, leave around 4:00 a.m. and hit Jacksonville or Springfield, or both, and spend the whole day dodging traffic, shopping carts and irate, rude and unhappy people. Why?
While researching a topic, I often stumble upon something I wasn’t searching for but nonetheless found it to be of interest. Here’s a few I’ve collected over the yearsLet’s begin in Bader over in Schuyler County. Located about four miles north of Browning, Bader began life as Osceola in 1870. The name was changed to Baders in 1872, honoring William Bader who operated the grain elevator. A U.S. Post Office opened on Oct. 8, 1972, the same year the community’s name was changed to Bader.
It’s hard to criticize the beauty of the King James Version (KJV) of the Christmas story in Luke 2. Much like the Lord’s Prayer with all its outdated language (art, Thy, trespass, Thine), there’s no updating the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Mary is Joseph’s “espoused wife, being great with child.” The shepherds were “sore afraid” when the glory of the Lord appeared. And all of it “came to pass” in those days.
“I wish there was a way to know we were in the good old days before we actually left them.” That was a class motto of the 8th grade graduation class at Ladd, IL.
My grandfather was one who on Halloween would move the outhouse about three feet so that on a dark Halloween night, the boys were quite surprised when they moved his outhouse in what he called the “Good Old Days.” Instead of moving it, they fell in!
No sooner is Thanksgiving over and we jump right ino Christmas. Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with that, as long as we remember the true meaning of Christmas. Shopping is okay if you enjoy it. Gifts are nice too, but we must always remember the greatest gift of all, the gift of love.
Dear Editor, Responding to the “Should council members be held to a higher standard?” The answer is “YES.” All personnel who work for city government, including volunteers, work for the citizens of Virginia. We do not work for you. You work for us. People vote and elect the leaders of the departments they are responsible for. The lesser ranking subordinates carry our policy and procedures as written and approved by the supervisor’s division chief.
Taking the time to find God in our everyday lives isn’t as easy as it would seem. Because our lives our so busy, God often takes a back seat to everything else that is happening. After all, there is always someone or something demanding our time. Most of us seem to be in a constant state of alert there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the week to get everything done. It is so easy to get TOO BUSY to notice God, TOO BUSY to see God’s presence all around us.
Two weeks ago, Illinois became the first state to abolish a major school-choice initiative. This was a moment of great sadness for my native state.
Thanks to seven Illinois Democratic members of Congress, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Democratic House Speaker Chris Welch, Democratic Senate President Don Harmon, and teachers unions, 10,000 low-income students will lose their school-choice scholarships provided through the Invest in Kids initiative.