Alma Mater in Roses

In case you hadn't heard, the Fighting Illini are playing in the Rose Bowl on January 1st against the USC Trojans. Illini fever has swept the campus. The most charming proof of Rose Bowl excitement is the Alma Mater statue (she is flanked by Labor and Learning) decorated with roses. Some art and design students adorned the Alma Mater with red, blue, and orange roses to celebrate the upcoming bowl game.

See more pictures of the bedecking here.

See the official "Tournament of Roses" website here.

School's out, snow, etc.

We got several inches of snow yesterday and last night. Here's the view from our front porch:

Today our church meetings were postponed until 11 a.m. so that hopefully people will be able to get there. For the last two weeks our church meetings have been canceled, so we're happy that we'll get to go today (but just for one hour instead of the usual three -- I know my little brothers are so jealous right now). Mike is outside shoveling the driveway as I write this.

I finished the last of my coursework for this semester on Friday and it feels great to be done. It's remarkable that I was able to finish my final paper under these working conditions. Simone was sleeping on the laptop!

Simone is my little helper

On Thursday we're leaving for Cache Valley and we're so excited! It will be a really long road trip, but we're checking out a bunch of audio books from the library, loading some podcasts on the iPod, and we're praying for good weather. Hopefully the roads will be good and we won't drive each other nuts cooped up in the car for ~20 hours together.

I hope that you are enjoying the run-up to Christmas and that you feel the joy of the season. I felt the Christmas spirit arrive the other night when we watched Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the end, the Grinch has a realization:

Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Isn't that true? It's easy to get caught up in all of the exciting gift-buying, gift-getting, decorating, going to parties, eating lots of food, etc. But that's not what the holiday is all about. I recently read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and was impressed with this quote:

I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. . .

Merry Christmas!

(You can see a video clip from the Grinch here or read about the making of the Grinch here. Both links are from NPR.)

The Presidential Politics Edition: The Good, the Bad, the Funny

Hello to our faithful blog readers. This is Mike, composing a few thoughts on the race for the White House. For those of you who know M & M, you know we're both interested in politics, so you had to see this one coming.

Let's start with the funny. By now, you may have seen the video of Chuck Norris stumping for Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. If you have seen it, come on, you know you want to watch it again! If you haven't seen it, here it is for your viewing pleasure.


I don't want to dwell too much on the bad (there's plenty of that to go around when it comes to politics), but I'd have to say that the worst part of the presidential race, so far, has been the media coverage. How many times have we heard that Mitt Romney needs to make a "JFK-style speech" about his religious beliefs? The fact that reporters keep making the comparison between Romney and JFK without much analysis highlights the shallowness of media coverage of the campaigns so far. (I did hear some in-depth reporting on the Romney-JFK connection on NPR a couple of days ago, after Mitt made his long-awaited speech. Here's the link to the story I'm referring to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16981132.)

Like I said, I don't want to harp on this too much, but I've also been frustrated by the way the media uses the language of fist-fighting and boxing to describe candidates' disagreements, and I'm tired of the media's constantly emphasizing "top-tier" vs. "second-tier" candidates. Listening to, watching, or reading the news, you almost feel like it's a foregone conclusion that the general election will be between Rudy Giuliani and Hilary Clinton. Sometimes it feels like reporters forget that it's up to voters to decide who will win their party's nomination.

Where's the good in all this? Allow me to quote Barack Obama. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes, "a polarized electorate isn't good enough. What's needed is a broad majority of Americans - Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill - who are reengaged in the project of national renewal, and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interests of others" (40). Is it possible for citizens who are sharply divided along party lines to unite for the common good in some way? I hope so, and I'm very glad to see at least one candidate who is talking about cooperation and unity across party lines. Whoever wins in 2008, I'm hopeful that the "project of national renewal" Obama refers to will become a reality. Until then, enjoy the circus of Election 2008!

Happy Thanksgiving

It's hard to believe that the holiday season is here. We're counting the weeks (4) until our Christmas trip to Cache Valley!

We had a really wonderful Thanksgiving. I baked pies and rolls and Mike cooked the apple and yam dish. It all turned out great! And I only called Mom twice on Thanksgiving morning to find out what to do with the rolls.


Mike carved up the turkey after we were done eating. We've got a ton of leftovers in the fridge, but we're sure enjoying them!

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the Holms, a sweet family from our branch. Kira and Steve Holm are a couple of years older than Mike and me and they've been living here (in St. Joseph -- about 15 miles from Chambana) for the last few years while Steve has been doing his residency in oral surgery at Carle Clinic. (His supervisor is extracting my wisdom tooth this coming Tuesday!) Kira and Steve have three kids: Maci (almost 4), Micah (2), and Caitlin (1). They are a high-energy herd.

This is Micah and Maci. We were playing while Kira and Steve finished getting dinner ready and I asked the kids if I could take their picture to show to my family. They suddenly got very awkward and Micah's hands went straight to his nose.

Micah likes to play rough sometimes. He enjoyed running and jumping onto my lap and Maci enjoyed running to the kitchen to tell her mom that Micah was being rough. Ahhh, big sisters.

Maci took this series of pictures of me, Micah, and Mike:
We missed being with our families very much, but I felt a lot of love from the Holm children. All day they were saying, "Sister Terry! Sister Terry!" and sharing stories with me. They gave me lots of hugs and kisses and made the holiday very happy. We hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too.

St. Louis again

Last Saturday we went to St. Louis with our friends Heather and Devin. We went to the temple and then we went to the arch and to the Museum of Westward Expansion. The museum has a really interesting layout -- it's designed in concentric circles, beginning in the center with a statue of Thomas Jefferson and the year 1800 and then it moves out decade by decade. Wayfinding was a bit confusing at first and I felt that I was always going "backwards" since we started at the outside edges and moved towards the center. I didn't fully understand the layout until I got to the middle of the museum and saw the concentric circles unfolding around me. Then there was an "ah-hah!" moment when I saw what was going on.

By the way, I took the above picture and I call it "Arch in Autumn." When Devin saw me taking the photo he said, "You're getting the leaves in the photo!" And I told him that I wanted the leaves so that the season would be represented. But he's an engineer -- one can't really expect him to understand art. :)

Last week there was an article in the New Yorker about libraries. It starts with an anecdote about the New York Public Library, then discusses the Google Book Search project, which the University of Illinois is participating in. Google is scanning and digitizing millions of books from some of the most important libraries in the U.S. to create a digital library, accessible anywhere. Microsoft and Amazon are competing with their own projects, and there is also an Open Content Alliance that is working on a similar project, but it is a non-profit.

The article gives a brief but fascinating history of libraries, starting with the Alexandria library of Egypt and analyzes the possibility of a "universal library" -- but concludes that we will always need physical libraries, even if they turn out to be museum-like archives of very old books. See what you think -- read the article (it's short). and post any comments that you have here.

Allerton Park

What a beautiful fall day -- today was perfect for spending time outside. Michael and I went to Allerton Park, in Monticello (about 40 minutes from Chambana). Allerton Park is the estate of a very wealthy Illinoisan who donated the property to the University of Illinois in 1946. There's a working, diversified farm; many formal gardens with extensive statuary; a Georgian mansion built in 1900; and miles of hiking trails through woods and gardens. We spent a few hours there hiking the "yellow trail" and seeing what we could see.

Michael at the pillars at the end of the cross surrounding "Death of the Last Centaur" statue

Death of the Last Centaur

Collection of Foo Dogs, seen from upper-level of House of the Golden Buddhas

Melissa on the upper level of House of the Golden Buddhas

This is a hedge apple -- something we'd never heard of until today. They're gooey and heavy, and may have shattered that rear window in the picture. (Don't worry, that's not our car.)

Girl with Scarf. (This Allerton guy must have had a thing for boobs.)

The mansion, which is now used as a conference center.

Foo Dog!

Soup of the Day

This is Mike, making my debut as an official blogger on Adventures in the Midwest. I know you've all become great fans of Melissa's blogging style, so I hope I don't disappoint you, our faithful readers, this week. If you're interested in new and interesting food, I think you'll like what you're about to read.

Melissa and I love to try new recipes, and the soup recipe we attempted a few days ago turned out so well, we knew we needed to share the goodness. When I first tasted this soup, I immediately thought about my parents and brother, who are currently freezing their @*$es off in Alaska. Mom, Dad, Nick, and other culinary adventurers out there, I hope you like the "Easy Mulligatawny Soup" from our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup chopped apples (2 small)
1 cup chopped carrots (2 medium)
1 7 1/2-ounce can tomatoes, cut up (we used a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes)
1/2 cup chopped celery (1 stalk)
1/3 cup long grain rice (we'll probably use twice this amount of rice next time)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup raisins
1 tablespoon snipped fresh parsley (dried works too)
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground mace or ground nutmeg (we used nutmeg)
1 1/2 cups chopped cooked chicken or turkey

Instructions:
In a large saucepan combine chicken broth, apples, carrots, undrained tomatoes, celery, uncooked rice, onion, raisins, parsley, curry powder, lemon juice, pepper, mace or nutmeg, and 1 cup water. Bring to boil; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in chicken or turkey; heat through. The recipe says it makes about 4 main-dish servings, but we found that it made closer to 6, probably because we added the extra tomatoes and a little bit more of a few other ingredients than what the recipe calls for.

If you like vegetable soup, apple cider, and chicken curry, you're bound to enjoy this invigorating combination. It's great for a cold autumn or winter day.

Bon appetit!