Wheat and Tares

It all grows up together in Southwestern Illinois--the myriad crops that have sprung from the fertile soil for decades and, more recently, residential subdivisions and commercial centers...more coming up each year.

Metro East isn't the kind of region we knew back in Western Washington--large cities with much smaller suburbs blossoming in ever-widening rings--but rather it's a smattering of small cities, villages, and farmland dotted across 1700 miles. Lot size is much larger, too--none of those postage stamp sized lots for our neighbors here. Maybe they have more time for yard work since their commute is generally so much shorter...

Geography Lesson

When we moved here earlier this year I told most people that we were moving to St. Louis; that's true in that we're in the Missouri city's metro area--one that covers two states. This part of the area is known locally as the Metro East, and it has some distinct characteristics beyond being under the legal jurisdiction of the State of Illinois.

Metro East encompasses five Illinois counties in the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2000, there were 599,845 people living in this designated area, scattered across a variety of cities and small towns, typically called "villages" here. The area's largest city is Belleville, but other large population centers include Edwardsville, Collinsville, Alton and Columbia.

What strikes us most as newcomers here from the Pacific Northwest is the development pattern. While many individual buildings date back to the early 1800s and many cities were incorporated 150 or more years ago, Metro East remained largely rural until just the past couple decades. A quick look at any aerial view--which shows St. Louis heavily developed and Metro East primarily still farmland--begs the question of why development took so long to jump the Mississippi.

But jump it has, and today the communities of Metro East continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Movie Review: Abe Lincoln in Illinois

You won't find it at Blockbuster--though it might be at some public libraries--but I'll never forget this film. Abe Lincoln in Illinois was a classic in its time, but I remember it for a reason that's even more compelling for me.

I was a child of ten and a sixth grader the November day when President Kennedy was shot. As terrible and unsettling a tragedy in its time as the 9/11 incident, the assassination rocked our world to its foundations. I remember walking home for lunch with my friend Billy Bilnoski (now a cardiologist) and that, when he ran out of his house to tell me the news, I completely refused to believe him. It wasn't until I got home and saw broadcaster Walter Cronkite on the television in the middle of the day and my mother staring blankly at the screen--lunch unmade--that I realized Billy had been telling the truth.

Good little citizens that we were, Billy and I went back to school that afternoon. My teacher refused to teach, and she spent most of her time with her head on her desk, sobbing. Some of the kids joined her in crying, and some of us just milled around aimlessly, but we were all in a state of stunned confusion.

That weekend there was no regular programming on television--it was as if the adults who worked in broadcasting were too upset to do their jobs, like my teacher and my mother had been. Coverage continued around the clock of every minute aspect of the tragedy--which is why most of the country was watching when Kennedy's assassin was, in turn, assassinated.

Sometime in the course of that long weekend, one of the networks aired Abe Lincoln in Illinois in its entirety--and entirely commercial-free. It was on very late at night, but I remember staying up to watch the whole movie and gaining a sense of security from the story about this great statesman who, like President Kennedy, had had his promising life cut short. That viewing of the film was the seed for my life-long admiration for the Logsplitter.

Now I am living in the Land of Lincoln, and I plan to visit some of the sites here that memorialize his life and legacy. It's only fitting, I think, that I recall the cinematic inspiration of my youth and use it--albeit somewhat twisted--to craft the title of this blog.

A' Blinkin' and A' Bloggin'

It's not supposed to work this way.

According to everyday opinion shaped by national media, there's a slow leak in the Midwest letting people out, and they're heading to the coasts. Almost the first thing everyone we've met here asks is why we've moved here--as if to suggest that there's must be some scandal back in the Northwest that we are fleeing. Nobody moves from the Puget Sound to the Metro East...that's common wisdom, although the truth is very different.

Well, we are doing just that--myself and my wife Anne, two daughters and a new son-in-law have all moved to join our oldest daughter, her husband and our two grandchildren. And togetherness isn't the only benefit we're finding here.

More in future posts...