When I was in my early twenties, my esteemed Uncle who had lived in the New York City area for years and who I always looked up to said something to me that was very disturbing. You see, he is the guy who I had envied and wished I had molded my life after to some degree. To me, he was the quintessential playboy bachelor. During the sixties and seventies he was living a hip and cool life in New York City, flying to the Bahamas on the weekends and dating models. What young guy living in the Midwest wouldn’t find that appealing? So when he said something to me I listened. One thing he told me that I always remembered to this day was, “aftershave in the morning, cologne at night”. I still follow that adage to this day.

So when favorite Uncle told me he dislikes watching the National Football

League, I was shocked and devastated. What was he talking about? At first I attributed it to the fact that he was a New Yorker, jaded and heartbroken by the fact that his teams actually played in New Jersey and perhaps he was just a bit jealous of my Chicago Bears. Or, having lived in the Big Apple, merely  jaded. I don’t remember why he said he didn’t like the NFL, but I tossed it aside and continued to set aside hours each week on Sunday afternoon, Monday night and soon Thursday’s to watch the most popular and successful sports franchise in the world, the NFL.

To understand what I am about to tell you, one must understand that I played football from the time I was in third grade. It was flag football to start (does anyone still do that?), followed by Junior Tackle Football (Pee-Wee or Pop Warner in other communities) followed by High School and some Community College. I played next to my friend Larry Carlson on the offensive line for almost nine years. He always at center, and I at end, tackle and guard. In high school I also played defensive line in  a 4-3 defense.  In the years I played my teams were a combined 56 wins and 10 losses. I didn’t count my last year at community college when we posted a 2-8 season. So you see, I was accustomed to winning and doing well. We never lost more than two games in a season. I loved football, I loved the fall, when I could suit up and get out and be part of a team, an endeavor to win. We were coached by some great people, some of whom are still coaching today. We were taught how to play clean, with honor, and how to be part of a team.

Today my assessment of the NFL is negative and my consternation comes from a several perspectives. Here they are:

1. The Broadcast– The amount of talking and analysis, and questioning and development of ideas that goes on  before a football game, and after  has gotten ridiculous. Five, sometimes six moderators plus former coaches, players with thick necks and ties with knots the size of small melons, all vying for attention. The bit where they go out onto a phony field in the studio and show how a play is run is silly at best. Oh look, the old guys are taking off their Armani jackets and going to show us their technical knowledge! As my friend likes to say when she is exclaiming something, “Oh, Honestly!”.  How much analysis can one give to a game or an afternoon. Please stop!

Another part of the broadcast is the game itself. The Fox “Transformer-Robot” avatar that is always doing some little dance or other gyration as they lead into each series of plays or after a break is just plain annoying.  The sound effects too are disturbing. I turned on a football game not a video game. Who are they trying to appeal to? I know there is an entire generation of video-game playing watchers of football who might recognize this icon, but is a robo-player really what we want to identify with for the NFL. Who approved this rubbish? Did I mention the breaks for commercials? After every punt, series of downs, two-minute break, (which was really designed for TV and no other reason) we have to watch a commercial. The game has turned into a game, not of endurance on the field, but who can stand around longer than anyone else waiting for a commercial break. If you are actually at the game you have to sit and wait without the benefit of actually watching the commercial.

2. The Players — Today every player needs essential skills to play the game. They need nurtured and long developed

talent. The need strength, agility, and the ability to understand complex blocking  patterns and the quick change audible. They also need to know how to skip.  Yes, that is right. Skipping is something they start teaching at the pee-wee level.  Skipping used to be what the little girls did on the playground at recess.  Today, They are teaching it to the boys that at one time chased them around. “Hey Mary, I want to be a NFL defensive lineman one day, would you please teach me how to skip?” Why skip? Every player must skip after they make a tackle, recover a fumble, score a touchdown, run out onto the field, just about anything. The “hey-look-at-me” element of the NFL started with Mark Gastinaeu of the Jets back in the eighties and has turned into a freight (fright) train of narcissistic proportions that cannot be stopped. Every little accomplishment on the field is turned into a side-skipping, chest pounding, finger pointing celebration dance that smacks of “me” and not team. I think there are a number of reasons for it, including the salaries, the pampering and the adulation we give these young 20-somethings, but I won’t analyze it here only to say it is boring and tiring to watch.

3. The Excessive length– See #1 above.

4. Other things I can think of that would serve me better in the time period spent while watching. See #3 above.

Overall, I still like the idea of football, but I want it in a simpler format. College football still gives one of that simplicity, but this ego-driven, chest pounding business is trickling down to the college, high school and even younger levels. I saw a first grader at a church league basketball game do the single-arm-fist-to-the-heart-double-tap after a layup where he failed to dribble before he got the basket. He should be happy and proud of his accomplishment, but where did he get the heart-tap routine from?  I couldn’t believe it, and as a parent I would have told my kid not to do it again. But I’m sure his parents don’t notice it as they think that is what everyone does.

I don’ t believe in the “slippery-slope” theory in most things, but this is where it really does apply. Let’s get back to the simple idea that the games we play are just that. We are cheering for a team. Yes there are “stars” that stand out, but they are actually not the ones that do the self-adulation happy-skippy dance. They don’t need to. They know everyone is watching. Let’s cheer for great effort, team play, great come-backs, unbelievable touchdown catches, awesome displays of the two-minute offense, bone crunching sacks, and all of the other great things about football. But television analysts, please, ah shutup. Yes, just shut your trap. And players, make you tackle, get up, sure high five you team-mate, and then get back in the huddle. Let the fans do the cheering, you just play the game.

Oh, and hey Uncle Jimmy, you were right. Maybe you are not so jaded after all.

Since I arrived in Central Illinois six years ago, I have had a variety of people from mayors, economic development professionals and state representatives and senators  to private business leaders and owners say something like, “Why don’t Peoria, Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana get together and promote economic development as a region?” There are other variations on that theme, such as “Why don’t the airports cooperate and divide up the air flight pie?” or “Why don’t the three communities’ largest businesses purchase more products locally?”  There a lot of well-meaning people who believe what we are doing is enough, but what does true collaboration look like? There are many ways our communities cooperate, but is there more we can do?

I’m embarrassed when people ask me that question.  I usually answer by saying that the task is too huge and my local investors and local governments may not want me spending money on these types of regional activities. But, actually, that is not true, because I have to say that my leaders are pretty sophisticated in their thinking and understand that what is good for Peoria or Champaign-Urbana is good for Bloomington-Normal, too. So, if we get it, it has to be you folks or the fine people in Peoria that are holding us back, right? My guess is that the leaders understand the issue in Champaign-Urbana and Peoria. So times a-wastin’ – let’s get going, right? There is nothing holding us back, is there?

Five years ago, we hired a consultant to do the first funding campaign we as an organization had ever done in McLean County. The first step was a feasibility study. This exercise entailed the consultant going out with a proposed plan of work and testing the feasibility of that work with local business owners and community leaders. Can the organization raise $2 million over five years? $3 million? What projects in the plan can get funded, and which cannot? Whose head has to roll before funding will occur? These are all questions the consultant asks. He gets a measure of the community: Who are the leaders? Who are the “go-to” folks? Who is going to step up in the campaign?

Our consultant came back confounded from days of interviewing up to 60 community and business leaders. He proclaimed us “bizarro world,” and before I could feel offended, he said that he could not find any hidden agendas, nobody was mad at someone else, and frankly, he couldn’t find any natural “go-to” business leaders to lead the campaign – hence “bizarro world.”  I say this not to brag, but to point out that due to a strong economy in Bloomington-Normal, we rarely have economic crises or major socio-economic issues like many of our manufacturing town neighbors who have been rocked by upheavals for most of the past 50 years.

So does the I-74 corridor represent a “bizzarro world” of sorts? Are we a community without crises? Sure, we have the State of Illinois that has, over the past number of years, represented a crisis on a perennial basis, but our overall economy along the Interstate has been pretty strong until very recently. Will a natural disaster or some major economic or industrial farming catastrophe have to hit us before we act collectively?

Our region has so much to offer: world-class universities and research institutions, Fortune 100 companies, agricultural abilities unmatched anywhere in the world and entrepreneurs ready to bust out. We aren’t and shouldn’t compete against each other. Our competition is in Bangalore, Singapore, Shanghai and Buenos Aires.  I hope we can rise up and do something soon. I‘m tired of answering embarrassing questions.

Note: This post also appeared in halfwayinteresting.com,  a new Central  Illinois Blog dedicated to issues in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and surrounding areas.

Looking at the TED web site today I came across a video on simplicity that I though proved my last blog point might I say, quite simply.  George Whitesides is a professor of Bioorganic/Physical Organic Chemistry, Materials Science at Harvard University. Leave it to him to take complex systems and explain it to all of us. He recently spoke at TED about how simplicity is the foundation of complex systems. Starting with a light switch which uses the binary system of on and off, he layers more complex systems on top of it so that eventually he can explain the internet. It is a unique and easy way to understand something and perhaps to create new ideas.

I am always impressed by how entrepreneurs can make money selling the most simple of products or ideas. Watch this video and perhaps it will inspire you to think of something in a different way. What can you layer or as Whitesides says or what can be “stacked” to create something new?

I woke up this morning thinking about simplicity. Actually I woke up about 4:15. I think I fell back to sleep, but it was still on my mind later as I actually woke up for the day. How do we simplify things and is it a worthy endeavor? I remember in high school one of my favorite classes was Anatomy and Physiology. This class required one to memorize the parts of the body and how it all worked. What I remember most was how complex the digestive system seemed to be. I had to memorize the entire system for a test. And even though I have forgotten how the system works I do remember how I learned. I broke it down into simple steps and then recombined them later. I received a high test score and was undoubtedly proud of my achievement.

Today we live in a complex and complicated world. Politics, businesses, financial systems, and various activities in the world around us seem very complex. Almost too complex to want to deal with or to make an effort to understand. We rebel against these complex systems. Why? because we understand the simple things. Yes, our brains our powerful and wonderful biological pieces of machinery, but they we really can only understand the simple things first and then build them up into complex systems.

So maybe before you get caught up in a complex world that stresses you out follow these simple steps:

1. Take what seems to be a complex matter and begin to break it down into separate simple steps.
2. Understand the relationship between these simple steps or issues.
3. Begin to recombine them to gain a better understanding of how it all works.

See, now wasn’t that simple and obvious? Yes it is obvious and yes you been thinking too hard about it. This  may be a prescription for living. Living “simply” may make the more complex moments in life easier to understand and to deal with. Breaking away from all the difficult issues and scraping away the complex by breaking them down may reduce or eliminate the stress. Give it a try. I know I will.

The Illinois development council recently had it’s annual conference her in Bloomington Normal. The IDC is a professional group of economic developers in Illinois whose purpose is to provide education to its members and improve the conditions of their individual communities by learning from each other.  I was fortunate enough to be the chair of the conference committee and therefore was able to determine with some input the type of conference theme and sessions we were going to have.

I told everyone from the start that I was not going to propose or put together a conference that covered the same mundane topics, although we did have a few of those.  What I hoped was to have a few topics that were out of the mainstream as economic development goes, but pertinent nonetheless.

One session called “Art and Economic Development” was designed to show my peers the value of art in an economic development program. Using local artists and artists from the University we showed the assembled members how art can have an impact in the community. Art is everywhere we look. Whether it is a painting on the wall, or graphic design in a logo or part of a brand, art touches our lives every day. In the major cities and unfortunately not enough in the smaller towns and burbs art plays a major role in parks and public areas. While we still see art being used in public places it seems less and less common. Our Airport, the Central Illinois Regional Airport (CIRA) got it right when they built their new building a number of years ago. There is art everywhere. One that everyone loves the is the Adlai Stevenson bench in the terminal. One can sit next to  or more appropriately “on” the locally grown politician’s sculpture while waiting for a plane.

Is art a business? Yes, art provides an income and jobs for many people. One example is Randy Ried who teaches  at the university. While he is an artist, he is more widely known among artists as  one who can help them put their projects together. Randy is involved in helping artists pour bronze castings. An artist involved in sculpture, for example is only often interested in producing the clay piece that the ultimate bronze is based on. Randy makes sure it gets from finished artist piece to bronze statue. Randy provides the logistical and engineering that makes art viewable. Randy told us that he could work full time pouring bronze for statues artists.

Herb and Pam Eaton are gallery owners in Bloomington. Herb is the artist and Pam is his wife and local physical education teacher, but also his business partner. While Herb paints beautiful paintings depicting the nearby Mackinaw river valley, Pam makes sire people  are traipsing through their gallery in downtown Bloomington. From starting a small local artists group all withing walking distance of downtown Bloomington to having small music events, parlor discussions, and even painting classes, Herb and Pam’s goal is to get people to come to the gallery, get familiar with art and feel comfortable buying it.  Their entrepreneurial outlook helps in making art a business and a toll for prosperity.

Art is an important part of everyday life in a community. Consider what art can do for your quality of “place” in a community. A community that embraces the arts will be considered a community of higher quality and attract business and residents. The bottom-line is that art is just great to look at. Weather it is a landscape, modern color tone paintings, a perfomance by a symphony orchestra, or a dance performance art is living alive and will keep you and your community on an even keel.

I once heard someone say, “I seek beauty in every thing”. I like that phrase. That could be said about art. the process of seeking the beauty in art can be applied to everything you do. Even economic development.

Note: The photo that appears in the post is a painting by Mark Rothko

When I was in high school I paid little attention to my English classes. I loved to read. I had always been a reader. Every summer my mother took me to the local branch library.  I was required to check-out and read books all summer. Later, I was allowed to ride my bike to the branch, or to the  locally parked bookmobile.  With all this reading it makes one wonder why English class didn’t interest me.

Foremost, I think it was the rules that I didn’t like. Then diagramming  sentences. Why do we have to diagram a sentence? Punctuation was also confusing. So between my first serious sentence diagram in fifth grade to my graduation from graduate school, I got by with writing very little and usually paid someone to read and make corrections if I was actually serious about something I had written.  After reading these first two paragraphs, you may say to yourself that I  still can’t write. Maybe so, but you are still reading, right?

A undergraduate English teacher I had required us to write stories. I loved that class, because I was never without a good story.  After each assignment, he would read his favorite stories, usually two or three. He almost always read my stories, and when he would pass out the papers he would always come to my desk, let out a big sigh and say, “I love your stories, but you really need to proof-read them, otherwise I have to mark them down. Your punctuation and grammar is awful”. I loved that professor because he liked my stories, and largely ignored his pleadings.

Years later I have come to love writing. I noticed that I have posted 203 blog posts on this blog and probably 16 book reviews. So you see, I still read and now I write about what I read. I am still learning and trying to absorb tips from anyone who will give them to me. I have learned that the best way to get better at something is to do it. Do it often.  Having been an athlete, I should have realized that my writing could be improved if I practiced. So this is what I do.

What do you want to get good at? What is your weakness? Try practicing something. Take some time this week to identify something you want to get good at and practice. A friend of mine who owns an art gallery with her husband swears she is social media illiterate.  I always tell her to to just dive in and play around with the stuff. Practice and it will come with you. Play and it will be fun. You will be better for it.

Food is important to all of us. I have recently become interested in this thing we call food. I am a bit overweight and need to loose some pounds. I started adding weight about 8 years ago and haven’t quit. My excuse is that I have a tough schedule that requires a lot of eating out for lunch, dinner, drinks and all types of gestural frivolity. So it’s not like I just discovered food. Food has been a very important part of my life for a long time, as is just about anyone who is alive and ambulatory. It’s just that recently I have become more concerned about what exactly I put in my mouth and where it came from.

The other day I was at the store and saw this beautiful string of garlic. The garlic looked so good it almost looked fake. When I picked it up, wrapped up in it’s little yellow plastic mesh holder I read the label attached. Grown and shipped from CHINA! I am not kidding. Our local grocery store sells garlic from China. China! Do you understand what this means? I am not sure I do, but seriously, why should I buy garlic bulbs from China. Isn’t the concept of garlic being grown in China and shipped in a boat across the ocean and then 2/3 of the way across the country to a grocery store in central Illinois just a bit preposterous? I think that is why the “local food” movement is gaining strength.

One really good reason not buy garlic from China is that you can buy Garlic from farmers who grew them right here in Central Illinois. I am an economic development professional and my job is to help the local economy prosper. So I say buy local garlic!

The video below is about food and hunger and obesity. Ellen Gustafson is an activist interested in changing the food system in America and eventually the globe. You can see more about her Project30 at her website, or learn about it in the TED video of the week:

What are your local food habits? Why don’t you give a local farmer a break and buy some food at a farmer’s market. It is one small step to change the food system in America. Buy some garlic.

I recently attended a retreat at the Edward Lowe Foundation in Cassopolis, Michigan. The retreat center was created by the same guy who created Kitty Litter and made millions on the product. Fortunately all those cats pooping in boxes of clay got us beautiful retreat center where the foundation spends time helping businesses and entrepreneurs grow their businesses and help organizations like the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) develop plans and meet to create new agendas for research as we just did  a couple weekends ago.

One of the things they always have us do at the retreat center is to think about how to relax, be creative and think about things just a little bit differently. The first night we were there we saw this TED video about how to listen to classical music. I like to listen to classical music, but it is always great to hear people talk about how to do it. I don’t know the history or have knowledge about the great composers and how and why they composed a piece, or how they constructed something.

When you are done watching this video, ask yourself, do you go through life playing “your music” on one buttock? Watch and you will understand the question:

Now go listen and enjoy!

This post is for all my economic development friends in Illinois who are members of the Illinois Development Council (IDC). The IDC is a group of voluntary members who are interested in furthering the economic base of the State of Illinois. The IDC has officially started a new year and I am honored and lucky enough to Board Chair for the next twelve months.

Thank you to those who think enough of me to lead this organization and thank you to past chairs and officers. I look forward to filling your shoes.  A special thanks to Ed Sitar of Commonwealth Edison who saw fit to select me as his co-chair. Thanks Ed, for all the work you did this past year.

The Economic Development profession is going through tough times. Budgets are being cut and projects are fewer than they have been. Many private companies that are usually seeking expansion opportunities have decided to wait and we are just beginning to see a glimmer of improvement  in the economy. This is the time that all economic development professionals should be gearing up for economic improvement.  All professionals should be ready for growth. Not highly leveraged cheap money growth, but a good long steady period of growth. The growth of the past ten years was highly leveraged and financed using dubious methods. Banks are lending much more conservatively and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But growth will occur. What can we as economic development professionals do? How can we improve our abilities? How can we serve our communities better?

As your Board Chairman this year I want to concentrate on  making the member better at what they do. Whether you are an Executive Director of a small community based public-private partnership, or the primary contact for economic development at a utility or railroad, the IDC should make your membership valuable. At the end of the year your membership in the IDC should provide you with a “value-added” experience. Here are my goals:

1. Education– We need to provide members with more opportunity to learn about the profession. The IDC can do a better job promoting classes, seminars and programs throughout the State and beyond. We don’t have to be the creator or developer of every program, we can partner with other organizations to promote professional learning. In addition, the IDC could  offer webinars and other distance learning opportunities so members can budget their time and valuable dollars. Also, let’s be relevant about what we are teaching. Let’s align ourselves with the 21st Century tools and methods that really work and help communities prosper.

2. Marketing — The State of Illinois should be marketing the State. And we should market our communities. The State has had its share of financial troubles, we all recognize that. So let’s not hold them up to something they cannot deliver right now. But let’s all work together to make sure the right industries and clusters are prospering in our communities. Yes, the IDC has had a marketing program and thank you to the volunteers who step-up to the plate to manage these programs. However, we need more coordination, and we must look to the State to play that role. So let us step up as local leaders and ask our State partners how we can help them, which in turn will help us.

3. Government Advocacy– This is the most difficult issue to manage. How about instead of trying to be all things to all people, let’s develop one or two “BIG” issues we all think will be of benefit to our members and let them guide us. We can’t possibly manage every legislative issue that comes our way. But we can be voice for the one or more issues that are important to all economic developers. And if we do want to spend more time on issues, candidate’s and other specific ideas, then perhaps it’s time for a political action committee (PAC). Then those who want to be involved in the issues of the day can engage with their dollars, and others who don’t or can’t are free and clear then perhaps it’s time for a political action committee (PAC).

4. Partnerships — Both Mark Williams and Ed Sitar along with help from our Executive, Mike Lane have done a great job developing partnerships with allied organizations such as  the State Chamber, IMA, Illinois Municipal League and others.  We need to continue to do this and be allied for a strong state government with a sound tax policy and ethical, open government. Only then, can we change the perception of  the State and make our jobs that much easier.

Nothing earth shattering here. Just plain simple relationship building, communication, and development of programs that serve our membership. Doing this will increase our numbers, increase our revenues, provide value for our members and strengthen our numbers. I hope you along for the ride with me.  Call me, write me, respond on this blog, but let’s talk about what we can do, together to be more productive.

Thanks and one more thing, let’s have a good time doing this, and don’t forget to smile!

When I was a kid, my parents insisted that we try new foods. They always taught us that we should try something at least once. “Taste it at least once and if you don’t’ like it you don’t have to eat it”,  they would say. You will never know if you don’t try. I like that idea. Here are the things on my list that I’ve tried and and don’t care for:  Olives, black or green, blue cheese (although I am still open to it), and those Greek things wrapped in grape leaves. I have no idea what they are called.  I also don’t like chicken wings. I know everyone else does, and it isn’t necessarily the taste, but all that mess and work for just a little bit of meat, doesn’t seem worth the effort (crab legs fall into this category too).

So when I hear people sit around proudly boasting that they have no time for that “Facebooking thing” or Tweeting, or social media in general I have to wonder, have they tasted it? How do they know if they don’t want anything to do with it. Maybe they tasted it, but it wasn’t cooked right.  Maybe they are missing something that might be helpful. Maybe they will like the taste of it and gobble it up.

Truthfully, I think a lot of people who are not using social media and act as if it is such a bother or a big issue and then boast of their ignorance do so because of several reasons. For one, they are often the type of person who will not adopt a new technology or method of doing something until the very last minute. “Late adopters” might be a term to use as opposed to “early adopters”. Second, they feel like they are too late in the game and might feel foolish if they don’t quite understand something right away.  Instead being critical or ridiculing social media is easier. It is easier to criticize something rather than be open to it. Last,  if it is not cheap easy and convenient it can’t be worth anything.

What is really interesting is listening to people be critical and proud of their social media ignorance in front of me, knowing full-well that I am deeply interested and open to working with the medium. Recently I was in a discussion with intelligent well- meaning people when they started in on what me termed a “social-media dumb down”.  I said nothing. If they really feel like social media is that stupid, I decided, let them feel that way. Nothing I say in that situation will help them understand or learn. In fact I think they were disturbed that I didn’t defend myself and my GenY prowess.

Go ahead, don’t taste the fruit. You will never understand how delicious  it might be.

I went to Bishop Hill, Illinois the other day to see and visit a restaurant of a friend of mine. She has a unique little place that is the highlight of the community and provides visitors with homemade country cooking  along with Swedish favorites. Bishop Hill is situated just east of Galesburg Illinois and about 90 minutes from Bloomington-Normal.  It was settled by a group of religious Swedes back in the the 1840s’ and their communal style of living lasted only 15 years before things broke apart. However their efforts included a number of beautiful buildings which still remain and have  received National Historic Site status. The town has a number of beautiful 150 plus year old buildings in various states of upkeep and repair. But for a small town in the middle of central Illinois, they have done quite nicely for themselves.

But this isn’t a story about Bishop Hill, but more appropriately Trish Nusbaum the proprietor of the Red Oak Restaurant. The Red Oak is in a former farm house and consists of three small dining room that each holds about 30 people and a couple of outdoor seating areas. Trish has managed over the fourteen years she has owned the Red Oak to create quite the enterprise of restaurant dining, pies and comfort food casseroles delivered to your home via pre-order, and mail order to anywhere in the United States.  So the Red Oak is a burgeoning enterprise in the middle of a small metropolis of 150 people somewhere in Illinois. However, if you met the owner, you would be overtaken by the enthusiasm, friendliness and tireless work that goes into her passion, the Red Oak.

Trish is one of those people who put most of us to shame when it comes to work ethic. After a long day, I usually sit down and fall asleep watching a mindless TV show. Trish is probably falling asleep at her desk thinking about how to improve her styrofoam packaging so she can ship her casseroles to the east coast without it costing an arm and a leg. When I came by on Saturday, she was manning the front of the house, taking reservations and seating people. I had a delicious meal of Swedish meatballs with homemade noodles. They were thick and chewy and the white gravy (sauce) was perfect. With it came a salad and some good Swedish Rye, no doubt made in the kitchens of the restaurant, and also available at the Farmer’s Market. I washed it down with Lingonberry lemonade, but found it a bit sweet. I wish I would have had the Lingonberry iced tea, which looked more refreshing.  The whole meal was topped off with one of the Red Oak’s famous pies. I had the quadberrry pie, which came with four berries. Don’t ask me which berries, (as if it matters) as the pie was just perfect and the crust melt in your mouth. It was topped off with homemade vanilla ice cream.  The pies are old news for me. I manage to buy a pie or a mini-pie every time Trish comes to the Farmers Market. I bought  a cherry pie for the Fourth of July party I was planning to attend, but it never made it. Trish told me that she would be available after 2:00 and I went to stroll the antique show and village. When I came back at two, Trish was still at it, and held me off by giving me some of the Lingonberry Ice Tea that had coveted earlier.

The restaurant operations are spread out in two buildings. One for the restaurant and a carriage house for the pies and casseroles. Trish, like many innovative and creative entrepreneurs has managed to develop her operations, not from a well laid out  plan, but from necessity and using the assets and tools she has on hand. If there is room for one more refrigerator than she will find a way to squeeze it in. If she needs another shelf, somewhere, somehow she will get one built. Please, don’t get me wrong, her hodge-podge “fit-it-where-you-can” style is not careless, it instead seems to have a sense of karmic order and simplicity.

I want everyone who reads this to do one of three things, or all three. First stop by the Bloomington Farmer’s Market on any Saturday morning and buy a pie or a casserole and say hi to Trish. She will be one of the nicest people you meet there. Second, ask her for a delivery menu and place an order for a delivery right to your doorstep of fine comfort food. Last, go to her website and order a nice comfort food meal and have it mailed to your Aunt in Keokuk, or you r best friend that just had a baby in Dubuque. One day, when Trish products are as big as Omaha Steaks and you see Oprah giving away casseroles as one of her “favorite things”, you can say, “Hey, I knew the Red Oak back when they came to the Farmer’s Market”

Note: To my vegetarian friends, you may wish to skip this essay.

I am writing this immediately upon finishing some grilled salmon and sauteed Brussels sprouts with garlic and balsamic vinegar. I love to cook and experiment with new foods and food related activities.  Food has always been important to me. Perhaps too important (you have to see me to understand that last comment). My family grew up with an appreciation for good food. Sundays and holidays were celebrated around the dinner table and the occasion of eating a hearty and good meal was about family, love and happiness. Every Saturday night in the summer was hamburgers, brats or steaks, and every Sunday in the cold months was a good pot roast, potatoes and corn or some other vegetable.

In high school I worked at the most popular Italian restaurant in town, Villa Capri and learned all things Italian. While I started as a busboy, I soon learned how to make pizza, and spent one summer working the pasta line. I have worked in various restaurants and pizza joints and have always enjoyed cooking and eating food. More recently I have taken interest in the local food movement and have started attending “farm dinners” and locavore dinners at  restaurants.

Recently I attended a dinner on Prairie Fruits Farm just north of Urbana Illinois. This beautiful little acreage is nestled just north of  Urbana-Champaign, home of the University of Illinois, and of course the owners of the farm have been or are currently professors and teachers at the University.  When I met  Wes Jarrell and Leslie Cooperband, owner of the farm I would have thought they were long time UC residents who hit upon a whim to start a local farm. Instead I learned that they are short-time Central Illinois residents, hailing from Madison Wisconsin. Their farm is primarily a goa- cheese producing dairy and fruit farm. As Wes said in his tour of the farm, he wanted to be able to go out and pick a ripe peach from the tree. Yes, they can grow peaches in Central Illinois, in fact there is quite a peach growing operation in the southern parts of Illinois. The Prairie Fruits farm produces delectable goats milk Chevre and a lovely sheep’s milk soft cheese called Ewe’s Bloom.  I am looking forward to tasting their Pecorino and Leslie is also experimenting with a Feta.

The name of the dinner was “This Little Piggy went to Market” and in fact three of them actually did an never cam back. My guest and I arrived on the farm and were greeted by the owners. We were lucky as the dinner was sold out and I actually secured the  dinner spots off the waiting list. After we opened our wine (which one brings with) we were also given the option to have black  current and keemum tea with anise hyssop.  Currents are a small tart berry that grows locally. As a child my parents had a red current bush I would always pick clean this time of year before the birds got to them. The skin has a translucent quality to it and they look very small gooseberry’s. On the farm we were offered the iced tea and was able to add berries to it. I thought some ice cold vodka would have gone well with the tea. Keemum tea is a Chinese tea known for its delicate flavor. The Anise Hyssop was picked locally. It is a  member of the mint family  and its leaves and tiny lavender-blue flowers  smell and taste of anise, but its square stems and opposite leaves puts it in the mint family.  While the tea was a nice idea, most people arriving were busy opening the bottles of wine they brought with them.

The tea was served along with the first course of  head cheese, pork tenderloin roulade, pickled asparagus, and salsa verde. I grew up eating head cheese every Christmas (Latvian tradition) so I was interested to see how it would be presented here. Mom’s head cheese was actually a toned done version of the original recipe in that she didn’t actually use parts of the pork’s head, but rather odd scraps of pork meat and other pork parts. Allegedly it was less offensive. The head cheese being served  on the farm was packed full of pork meat and sliced from a loaf. It was good and tasty but lacked the kick of mustard or vinegar we would schmear on mom’s  head cheese. The roulade on the other  hand was quite good, as it was filled with pistachio’s surrounding a pork tenderloin middle. I noticed the roulade going much faster than the head cheese and the “pickled” asparagus. Not even being enamored with traditionally cooked asparagus I was a good sport and tried the pickled version and was even less satisfied. I am sure the pickled portion of the asparagus dish was not meant to dominate the flavor profile of the asparagus, however again I would have enjoyed a more vinegary bite to item that is “pickled”. People who love asparagus probably loved the pickled version. The salse verde was good but not necessary to whole presentation.

So who needs all this appetizer business when the serious  eating of pig was about to begin. We were all directed to a beautiful area near the gardens where the serious consumption would occur. Wes and Leslie have constructed a platform that had two rows of pergolas. On top of the pergola were small lights and a light airy canvas, enough to provide shade but not enough to provide rain cover. The tables were decked out with white table cloth and a well set table. We settled in carefully choosing the seats we thought in several hours of eating would be exposed to the least amount of sunlight. With a temperature of about 85 degrees at game-time, er, I mean dinner time, where we sat would be important. A little sun would be better later when things begin to cool down.

Upon sitting down Wes and Leslie welcomed us to the farm and dinner. They introduced the chef for the evening, Thad Morrow of Bacaro Restaurant in Champaign who proceeded to explain the evenings porcine activities and the description of the first course. With each course it is customary for the Chef to describe the course and the intricacies of the cooking the dish.

The first sit down course was country ham, arugula, radish, turnips, pork-fat brioche croutons, topped with smoked balsamic vinaigrette. The ham was cured by the chef  at his Champaign restaurant and aged for several months. Sliced paper-thin  and placed at the bottom of the plate, the ham was very lightly smoked and did not have the heavy sugary  taste of store bought ham. On top was arugula and the smoke balsamic vinaigrette which was an outstanding addition. The arugula was liberally doused with the vinaigrette and reminded me of the consistency of a spinach salad with a heavy bacon fat dressing. Adding the brioche croutons made with bacon fat and the salad was truly amazing.  The smokiness of the vinaigrette really come through and how does one argue with something made with pork fat?

Third course  consisted of roast pork loin, bourbon braised pork belly,

Iroquois white corn bread, and cat-tail cole-slaw. Things were getting better as we finally had some real pork in front of us.  All of the pork came from Kilgus Farms a Fairbury based operation just up the road from the farm. The Kilgus boys were in attendance and explained to us that the pigs that had sacrificed themselves for us that evening has been solely milk-fed.  The pigs also didn’t get as big as others butcher pigs and the milk diet gave them a tenderness and flavor unlike the kind one can find from the local grocer’s meat department.

True to the word of the Kilgus’ the pork was oh-so-tender and melted in our mouths, the pork belly, was also very moist and melted in your mouth. For those who have not had braised pork belly, it the part of the pig that is made into bacon, therefore it is somewhat fatty, but very delicious.  The corn bread had been ground from locally grown kernels and the cat-tail cole-slaw was better than I expected. Chef Morrow explained that the stem of a young cat-tail, yes the kind you see growing in wetlands throughout the Midwest, have a celery-cabbage like consistency and taste and I agree it was one of the best versions of slaw I have had. When I saw the menu, I half expected to be chewing on the furry brown portion we see sticking up in the air.

Fourth course of pork (yes it keeps going), was smoked pork shoulder, rhubarb barbecue sauce, braised dandelion greens, and baked beans. The pork wasn’t any less tender than the previous course and  smokiness of the pork shoulder wasn’t overwhelming like it can be in some cheap BBQ chains. The pork shoulder was tender and just a bit crusty outside with some burnt bits and texture that was very appealing, the sauce with the anticipated added expected tartness of rhubarb wasn’t quite there, but like anything you do with rhubarb, sugar is the key and was obviously overtaking anything the rhubarb could offer. I know rhubarb having sat in the backyard as a kid, sucking on a rhubarb stalk dipped in copious amounts of sugar. Rhubarb is always paired with a sweeter companion (i.e. strawberry-rhubarb jam), and in this case there was no hint. Having said this the sauce was just fine, in fact I could have used a tablespoon or two more. The dandelion greens were more colorful than tasty and the beans were outstanding, soft and molasses sweet.

Another Pork Course! Yes, we were nearing the end…porchetta, glazed carrots, roast new potatoes, gremolada was the final pork course. Porchetta (pronounced por-ketta) is an a traditional Italian form of roasting a whole pig. In fact the  Italian food ministry considers it a culturally important dish and has given it such designation. Often called “Italian pulled-pork”, it is most often cooked over a wood spit and during celebratory times. Of course we were celebrating so the Chef, made the porchetta in the traditional method which requires de-boning the pig, tie-ing it up and roasting. Our porchetta was equally tender and flavorful as the other pork we had tasted that evening. I  passed on the carrots, but the roasted potatoes were very crispy and good and undoubtedly cooked in pork fat. The gremolada,  a combination of diced lemon peel, parsley and garlic gave the smokey porchetta a nice contrast of acidic burst.

No more pig, but we start slowing down with ewe bloom cheese, and mulberry mostarda. The cheese, made from sheep’s milk right on the farm, which happens to be the only organically certified diary and  cheese making operation in the state, was creamy, soft and appropriately topped off with a sweet mulberry syrup or mostarda. It was just the right touch to slow down our digestion before the final dessert course of sweet cherry cobbler, and caramel pecan ice cream. The ice cream was especially rich and cream but the crowning touch of the dessert and the entire meal was sugar laden pork rind perched on top of my ice cream! What a great way to end the evening.

In the end, this dinner was one of the best dinners’ I have had in a long time. Wes and Leslie have got this down to a science, but don’t get me wrong the atmosphere is still very relaxed and slow. Speaking of slow, if you are in hurry, don’t show up. This isn’t Chili’s or Olive Garden. The meal is meant to be slow, relaxing and mindful. Eat the portions slowly, savor the fresh ingredients, understand the quality of what you are experiencing and make friends with the folks around you.

Prairie Fruits Farm has a dinner every other week but unfortunately they are all sold out. You can email them and get on the waiting list and they will be happy to squeeze you in when they have a cancellation. In the meantime you can try their cheese by coming to the Bloomington Downtown Farmers Market every other Saturday.  Wes and Leslie are very serious about preserving a way of life and providing friends and customers with some very high quality products. The “local economy”, that is the economy that starts with agriculture  but includes local shopkeepers and restaurants and others is a way of life worth preserving. Shop local, buy local, and support your local farmer.

We ate like pigs…wait I stand corrected, we ate the pigs.

Other producers participating include: North Avoca Farm, Blue Moon Farm, Spence Farm, Stewards of the Land, Garden Gate Produce

Fourth of  July is the middle of the Summer holiday that forces people to think about the day on which it actually falls and then determine how many days they will take off.  And it also happens to be our Country’s Birthday. I am not going to wax patriotic here, because like my religion and yours, how I display or my patriotism is up to me. Whether I raise an American flag, or burn it (according to the Supreme Court) is also up to me. And whether I go to church or temple, or worship the tree out side my window is also up to me.

I think the essence of the our Country is embodied in the fact that I can express myself freely and honestly without the fear of being arrested, tortured or put into a forced labor camp. My grandfather and grandmother were placed into a forced labor camp in Siberia at the hands of Stalin. Why? Because they had an opinion. I always think about that when I hear people talk about flags, soldiers, wars, religion, or any of the typical issues or symbols of our government or our liberty.  All of it gets diminished when I think about what it is like for your country’s leader to order you to go somewhere against your will and separate from your family, take your property, and force you into hard labor merely for your opinion.

I truly relish the sacrifice my parents and their families made to get to the United States and be smart enough to know that they could come here and not be terrorized by tyrannical governments. I laugh at those who would contend that their freedom is being impinged today and that their freedom is being taken away by our current government. They have no idea what it is like to legitimately have rights taken away from them. Truly, it is laughable.

As Americans we need to celebrate  our country and our  guaranteed freedom of expression today as the greatest idea ever created by man, and the best opportunity to live in the throes of liberty.

Have a great 4th of July and be safe.

I just read the “2010 Town of Normal Water Department Water Quality Report“. It is a unique piece of information that is the result of governmental mandate given to local water suppliers by our Federal Government. I could go and say this is another example of federal imposition on our lives at the local level, forcing the local government to print something at great cost to them and having it distributed by mail to it’s residents, however let’s take a rational look at this before I make such a strong statement. Let’s really examine why this landed in my mail. By the way,  I’m sure the folks over in Bloomington are getting one also.

According to the back cover of my report, publication of this piece is a requirement of the  Federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA). This federal law requires water utilities to  issue an annual “Consumer Confidence Report” to its customers. In fact the back page also tells me that I can go and see the reports for any town by looking at the website www.waterdata.com. (oops, that link doesn’t work…)

The first two pages of the report as you open it includes a nice letter, a mission statement for the water department, which I think is commendable that they actually have one, information about the healthy aspects of water, and a little tidbit about bottled water. Did you know that the standards for the water you get out of the faucet is higher than that which you buy in a bottle? Bottled water producers are not required to issue a report like the one the Town of Normal sent me.

So what is Normal’s water like?(I know for those who don’t live here, you want to insert a joke that has some reference to the name of the town, but frankly we have heard them all, and if you want me to go down that route, you sense of humor is ill-suited for the type of snarky, sarcastic, biting humor I regularly enjoy, but if you must I will pause a second and let you think of some type of joke about the Town’s water that uses the word “normal”). the Town of Normal’s water is darn near perfect as far as I can tell. How do I know? Let me summarize. Of the 88 inorganic contaminants,disinfectants (including by-products), state regulated contaminants, lead & copper, unregulated contaminants, inorganic contaminants, synthetic organic contaminants, volatile organic contaminants, microbial contaminants, and radioactive contaminants, there was either nothing detected (90% of all cases that had the column “Highest Level Detected” and the answer all the way through is “nd” meaning “not detectable at testing limits”) or well below allowable ranges (10% of the column headed “Violation” in which all cases the answer was “no”). So does this tell me water is good? Probably.

I thought Normal did a very good job reporting their data, however, there seems to be something wrong about reading in a ten page report that indicates that the water is just fine. By no means am I blaming the town of Normal or any other local government that has to issue this report. Normal is just doing what they are required to do. I am sure someone at the Federal EPA wrote some regulations saying this is how this report has to be written and by mailing it is how it has to be distributed. OK, let’s blame those stinking bureaucrats in Washington who I am sure has a office that just sits around thinking how to mess with people and local governments by dreaming up new regulations. After all, they wouldn’t have a job otherwise right? No, I am not going blame “the government” as people like to refer to it.

In fact, I am going to blame you. Yes, you and me and everyone else who has a distinct, inherited, deep-seated feeling that we have the “right” to demand of others (you, me and the gubmint) anything and everything we feel we want (I believe this falls under, pursuit of happiness). Information, services, streets, sewer, water, the list goes on, and if we don’t get it, by God, someone is going to pay. This is where this water report came from. One day someone got angry about a lousy glass of water they drank and some well meaning legislator said, (say this like you are on the floor of the House, and you have a chart behind you, loud and angry, “The people of my district have the “right” to know what is in their water, dagnubbit” and he proceeds to introduce the “Right to Know What is in my Water Act (dagnubbit) of 1985″.

Perhaps I exaggerate  a bit, and perhaps there was a more serious incident where hundred or thousands people became deathly ill from bad municipal water, but can’t we be a little more logical about how we force our local governments to comply. We live in an amazing age of internet communication and high technology. Could we not put this stuff on the internet. Couldn’t we send out through the old school (newspaper) and new school means of communications that a single report if anyone wants to read it is available at City Hall? “Feel free to come on down and see that we detected no traces of  “CIS 1,2-DICHLIOROETHYLENE” in the water supply in 2009″. And don’t you think we would all taste it if there was any. I personally hate the taste of the stuff, as it leaves a bad aftertaste of mothballs.

When I retire, my mission in life will be to get this arcane law off the books. You with me? Join me in the “Anti-Water Quality Report Issuance Requirement Party”.  We will change the world! This is where we can save money in our government operations, but you have to quit asking for so much. Get it? Every-time one person feels personally slighted, offended and or legitimately hurt, we shouldn’t go and run and force the publication of reports like the one I just described. This is where true cost savings can occur.

Note: The Town of Normal does provide the report on-line. In fact you can get the report dating back to 2002. They even tell you that it costs them $7,000 to print it and distribute it.

I am late in writing this only because I had such a great day with my Daughters on Father’s day.  I wanted to write something about Father’s Day on the day itself, but truthfully we were all busy. So I doubt many would have read this piece. Now that the day is over please take a minute and read what I have to say here.

What Dad’s say when the their children aren’t around is different than when

children are in the presence of their fathers. When my Dad worked in a manufacturing plant, every once in  a while I would get to visit him at his place of work. And every-time I did I would be introduced to his co-workers, or his boss and every time they would look at me and say something like, “So you’re the guy John is always talking about”, or re-tell some tale about me that was either half true or not. My Dad had a penchant for story-telling and fortunately I was  often part of the story. The story was often only half-true, but because I was held up in some glorious light, I  rarely disagreed.

Today, we can all tell tales and true stories about our children  on social media channels. Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook has allowed us to let others become much more familiar with our children and their activities, triumphs and God forbid, failings. We can brag about their baseball games, put up video of that great basketball shot, pictures of their regal prom outfits, and their cute smiles and hammed up poses. Everyone gets to see who they are and what they’ve done.

In my case not too many escape a full-blown description of the great

accomplishments my children, their artwork or their prom dresses. Everyone who asks get’s an earful about how well they are doing. Just this evening a Facebook friend, who I met professionally (before we were FB friends) asked me about my daughters, probably because she can follow me and their accomplishments on-line. Would she otherwise know much about them? Probably not. Not because she doesn’t care, but because we rarely see each other and would likely stick to business topics in the little time we had.

So let me say this about my Father’s Day. I had a great time. It was so nice to just sit and talk and eat cheese, and listen to music and have a genuine good time. My daughters have grown up to be such beautiful and smart people. They care about the world around them, they have opinions about politics, art, food, wine and the things that make life joyous and interesting. They ask for my opinion on things, and they get it, even when they don’t ask. They may be defensive from time to time about my opinion, as I was with my Father, but I know as Dad, I must express my opinion and perhaps somewhere down the line, the may say to themselves, “Hmmm, I think Dad was right”. Or, in the very rare case I am wrong, point that out too.

How we Dad’s talk about our kids hasn’t really changed that much. We are proud and happy about them. Where and how it happens has merely changed.

For Father’s day, they gave me three really great gifts. First they drove two hours to see me. That was gift number one. Usually when I see them, it is in the presence of my extended family, their mother, their friends, or their boyfriends. I relish and adore having them all to myself. Second, they gave me a really cute picture album filled with pictures of them and my family, mostly from recent years, but with empty spots to fill with more pics. And finally, they let me buy and prepare dinner for them. Yes, I know we all think kids should cook for their Dad’s on Father’s day, but my girls know better. The know the best gift they could give me was letting me do what I love to do, which is to cook them a meal they will love.

Happy Father’s Day Lauren and Sarah. Your charm, honesty, love and happiness makes me a Happy Dad!