Hello: We don’t much of a design yet, but I should have something more presentable in a few days. In the meantime, feel free to register so you can begin posting anyway.

Instructions on how to post are available.

The Illinois Prairie Path begins on First Avenue in Maywood, Illinois, a little north of Madison Street. It is a 61 mile bike and hiking path that that branches off in several directions when it reaches the Fox River. Despite its bucolic sounding name, the scenery surrounding the first few miles of the Path is blue collar suburban rather than the swaying grasses one associates with the word prairie.

But if there is no prairie to be found near the Path when it begins in Maywood IL, there is history . On Oak Street near the Path is the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center. On hot summer days, it is filled with noisy frolicking kids escaping the blazing sun of the American Midwest. 

About 10 days ago, the AFL-CIO called for 1000 union volunteers to go help with the Katrina clean-up. I put my name in and was told they would get back to me.

A few days later the announcement mysteriously disappeared from the AFL-CIO website and I have heard nothing further.

Camus once said we must be neither “victims nor executioners”. Good advice, but what does it mean when peoples become both victims and executioners?

What happens to them when they are unable to free themselves from that deadly trap?

Welcome to our new look.The redesign and recoding of the new Route One site is progressing. We’re slowly transferring the material from the old site over to the new redesign. Right now there’s not much to look at other than the Blog and the Photo Gallery, but you are welcome to poke around and check out all of the empty digital file cabinets about to be filled with UM campus lore.

There are still a few bugs in the system, but hopefully we’ll be ready to make the new version of the Route One site public by the end of September. Some of the Blog comments didn’t come over quite right, so we’ll try to track down the problem. Then it’s on to the next stage of organizing and digitizing the mass of material that has been donated.

"Some will rob you with a six-gun… and some with a fountain pen.” — Woody Guthrie

As the reports of the armed looters came over the Internet, I was immediately reminded of Woody Guthrie’s raspy voice and his unamplified guitar. Has anything really changed since Woody gave voice to the anger and despair of the Depression Era working class?