November 6, 2008 - Last evening driving home from Monticello my nostrils were filled with remembered smells. We have had a late harvest this year but only a few fields of corn are awaiting the combines. A few tractors were pulling chisel plows across the stubble and there was the sweet odor of the good earth blended with the dust of harvest. Looking out across the prairie was a treat of Autumn colors; brown and tan; black earth mixed with russets forming the background to white farm houses and groves of yellow and red groves and fence rows. I remembered the peaty smell of coal fired furnace smoke mixed with the tart essence of leaves burning at the street side. I heard again the rustle of leaves on the sidewalk six inches deep kicked up by my feet as I trudged down Green Street delivering the Champaign-Urbana Courier to my customers........click here for entire article

November 4, 2008 - Today those of us who have cast ballots in our national election will have participated in the process of making history.  When our solitary choices are aggravated with the millions of other Americans’ choices we will have chosen either the first President of the United States with ancestral roots in Africa or we will have elevated a woman to rap the gavel in the United States Senate and sit waiting just an aging heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world.  Regardless of the outcome we will have plated a landmark, a waypoint on America’s shared journey to the promised land of equality that Martin Luther King saw from the mountain top just before he was killed........click here for entire article