Morning nap

Muggy August evening

Sleepytime Friends

Villa Park Fire Department

Midsummer evening at LaSalle

Midsummer at LaSalle

Lasalle Lasallefish and nature area July 18th 2026

Morning Walk

We got out here about 9:30, which was a little later than I wanted, but still earlier than we usually do. It's starting to get hot and stuffy, but I think we still have some time before it gets really disgusting.

I noticed there are so many birds singing right now. This must be a good time of day for them because they're everywhere—all different kinds, from songbirds to crows.

I just saw a tiny little cricket or grasshopper or something. It looked like a grasshopper, but small. It had a long brown stripe running down its green body.

I just saw two blue damselflies puttering around on the path. The dogs are strangely uninterested in going in the water. They just seem like they want to hang out and eat grass, which I know isn't great for them.

There are a ton of bluish dragonflies buzzing around everywhere on the trail.

I saw a monarch butterfly go by, and later I saw several American lady butterflies flitting among the fleabane. There were also a number of bright yellow sulphur butterflies.

A couple of sandhill cranes flew overhead and landed in the trees. I could hear them calling, and then I started hearing cranes calling from another direction too, so I guess there are quite a few of them out here.

I spotted what I believe was a green heron perched quietly on a branch over the channel. What struck me most was how its neck seemed impossibly long when it stretched out, then disappeared again when it folded back.

The wild blackberries are starting to come out on the branches, but they're definitely not ripe enough to eat.

There's a beautiful stand of pokeweed out here that's just about ready to fruit. It's too bad they're such a nuisance, because they really are an attractive plant.

There's a beautiful stand of fleabane, crown vetch, and a little bit of phlox. It's so pretty. I tried to take a picture, but I don't think I really captured it very well.

The hibiscus are blooming now too, light pink all around the edges of the channel.

The cattails are also starting to ripen. It won't be long before they start to explode into white fluff.

The mullein is about finished bolting. It always amazes me how they go from little, cute, fuzzy foliage plants to these giant flower spikes over the course of the summer.

The nightshade is blooming now too.

It's too hot out here. It's time to turn around and go back. We only made it to the first corner, but the dogs are already panting, and it's getting really hot and muggy.

I wish I'd come out a little earlier so we could have had more time. On the other hand, my back probably didn't need that much of a workout today.

Well, they finally went in the water when one of the dogs couldn't get back out without help. There are a couple of places where it's really easy to get in and out because there's a nice gentle slope, but those places also have a lot of duckweed, and apparently the dogs are opposed to duckweed.

They went over to the channel on the other side of the road, and Scout slithered down a four-foot embankment into the water. He didn't actually jump—he more or less slid. Then he couldn't get back up.

So, with my bum back, I had to sit on my butt and slide down the embankment, grab him, and shove him back up.

Meanwhile, Max came around to see what was happening, happily jumped into the water, swam in circles the whole time I was trying to pull Scout out, and then climbed right back up the bank like nothing had happened.

I really could have done without hauling seventy pounds of wet dog out of a ditch full of water.

---

Reflections

Part of my reflection on this walk is that this whole season of stepping back has really been one of reflection and healing.

This incident with my back is just another reminder that I'm playing a young person's game here. I came into EMS late in life, and in some ways I've always been struggling to catch up or keep up. Today I'm going to sign up for the critical care medic fellowship that I want. Having my back betray me right now is another reminder that I need to take care of myself. Better it happen now than a few months ago, when I was still on the FTO track.

One of the many challenges in this season—and I didn't realize there were going to be so many—has been resetting my health. At first I thought this was just going to be a time to rest and go dormant. Then it became a time to let my nervous system heal. Then a time to organize my life and improve my professional knowledge. Now it's also become a time to let my body heal.

Beyond just healing, though, I think things are starting to turn. I'm taking a more active role in my life. I've been actively organizing things, actively trying to solve my finances, and actively moving toward the life I want.

I don't think I'm moving out of a period of let me breathe and into let me sprint. It's more like let me start getting my life in order. I'm not in a hurry, but I do feel like I'm moving forward.

No... that's not quite right.

I feel like I'm on a swing bridge. I walked out onto this swing bridge when I came off the FTO process, and then I just had to sit there while it slowly rotated. Now it's finally coming back around to where it will connect with the tracks on the other side.

That's the right analogy.

I'm not sure how long it will take before it lines up completely, but when it does, I want to be ready. That means taking a more active role in my health and fitness, moving forward with my professional education, and making sure I've got everything organized and squared away before I start the next phase of my life.

I also realized that I don't feel like I have to go so fast anymore. When I left TTI, I was about fifty-two years old. In my mind, that still felt closer to fifty, and I figured I had thirty years of working life left and so many things I wanted to do. Now I'm fifty-seven, which is objectively closer to sixty, and in some ways I feel like I've lost a decade.

At the same time, I've given up on rushing. Trying to go too fast never really did anything for me. I tried to jump straight into paramedic school while I was leaving TTI, and that ended with me failing the course and having a nervous breakdown. I tried to jump straight into 911 work as soon as I graduated instead of spending a few months in transport first, and that led me into what turned out to be a terrible job and burned a lot of bridges. Then, when I started at Carle, I kept trying to push forward because I wanted to get back onto the medic track as quickly as possible. All that really did was create a lot of stress.

Looking back, I think the best thing Derek could have done for me was offer me the chance to step back. At the time it felt like a setback, but now I think it was exactly what I needed. It gave me the space to heal, learn, reorganize my life, and prepare for whatever comes next. I don't need to sprint anymore. I just need to keep moving in the right direction.

I thought I was just going to go dormant for a while, but that's not what happened. I kind of hate to use the butterfly analogy, but maybe it fits after all. It's not that I just went into a cocoon and waited. Everything has been changing around and reorganizing. When I do come back out, I won't just be rested—I think I'll be stronger and better prepared to get back onto my path.

I started this season with a lot of misgivings, trepidation, and feeling like a failure. As I'm coming through it, I'm finding myself in a place of anticipation instead. I'm able to imagine a future beyond just the next step.

For years, the only goal in my life was becoming a paramedic. Once I realized I wasn't going to get there right away, at least not in a stable job, it was hard. It was disheartening.

But now I'm looking at it differently. I'm not standing still. I'm preparing for whatever comes next. When that swing bridge finally lines up with the tracks again, I want to be ready to move forward.

CTA blue line entrance at Jackson

Threshold blessing

Living Irish Witchcraft – Today's Journal Entry

This is a threshold blessing.

Stand in your threshold. Take a breath. Put your hand on the doorway and feel the wood. Then say:

«What comes in supports my well-being.

What goes out is released without harm.

I stand in my sovereignty.»

Take another deep breath and pass through the doorway.

the great silence in Irish history

This morning I watched a video from the Irish History Podcast that talked about what is referred to as the Great Silence, a period during which historians did not write much about the Great Hunger. It lasted for about a hundred years after the famine ended. The Irish president, in 2014 or 2016, referred to this period as the Great Silence. His interpretation was that people were so traumatized they didn't want to talk about it. Another version of the same interpretation is that people were ashamed or embarrassed by it, and apparently that might have had something to do with it because they had to do some pretty extreme things to survive.

In reality, ordinary people were talking about it all the time. It was just that academic books were not being written, and government officials and other people in power weren't talking about it. Cecil Woodham-Smith published The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849, which became a bestseller and was even serialized in newspapers. Folklore researchers around that time discovered that stories of the famine were very common in Irish folklore, and even songs had been written about it. The Fields of Athenry is a famous song about the famine that is still popular today and is sung at soccer matches, similar to the way we play the national anthem.

The historian in the video made a good point that there are still villages and isolated huts all over Ireland that were abandoned during the famine, and it would be very hard to ignore these very obvious signs of it. My own opinion, which he didn't mention but makes sense to me, is that newer generations would naturally want to know why they have family in America, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere. That question would be impossible to answer without mentioning the famine if that was the reason their ancestors emigrated, as so many did.

So, in reality, it was just that official and academic books weren't being written. There was a huge revisionist movement at the time, where people were reluctant to write anything that was overly critical of the British government. According to the historian Mary Daly, she was reluctant to write about the famine because she didn't want to produce a work that might, in some way, support the IRA, and she believed other historians felt the same.

Ironically, some of the next books to become popular with the public were written by English historians, including Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849 and Terry Eagleton's Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture.

Paxton IL

Black Oak Bayou at LaSalle

Nature Journal – Bayou Walk

I finally made it to the woods. I meant to come out a lot earlier, but by the time I woke up and got moving, it was already as hot as it was going to be for the day. I'm already hot and tired, and the dogs are already hot, and I felt like this was not going to be a fun trip. Less than satisfactory, I guess.

I opted to take a different path because I wanted to stay out of the sun, but the mosquitoes were terrible. I rounded them up and got back in the car, and we drove down the road to the bayou. It's not as sunny, but it's also not super shady, and I was hoping there would be enough bird predation to keep the mosquitoes down.

Right now I'm sitting in the car just enjoying the fact that there's actually a breeze here, which is nice. I already saw a bunch of great blue herons and some great egrets. I saw a goldfinch while we were driving, and I heard a mourning dove.

Walking along the bayou turned out to be a lot better. There's enough air movement to keep the mosquitoes down, and there's almost kind of a little breeze. The trade-off is that I have to watch and make sure the dogs don't jump in the river because Max has no sense. There are patches of shade mixed with the sun, and there's more grass and trees, so overall I think this is a better choice.

As soon as I got out of the car, I realized something smelled dead. It didn't take long to figure out why. There were dead fish everywhere along the shoreline—hundreds of them, with one every few feet. Even the little beach I wanted to go to was contaminated with dead fish.

The whole place has sort of a prehistoric or post-apocalyptic feel to it today.

I also saw a killdeer, a flock of about seven goldfinches, a sandhill crane, a double-crested cormorant, a box turtle, and a small family of what I think were geese, although they were so far away it was hard to tell. I found what looked like the remains of a recently hatched turtle nest in the sandy soil.

I was also thinking the oxygen problem is more likely the issue with those poor dead fish. They're mostly on the end closer to the boat launch. This year they pulled out all the water lilies in that area because they were getting unbearable.

I don't know what they did with all the vegetation. Since this is an area managed by professionals, specifically for fishing and hunting, I would think they would haul it up and throw it away somewhere. It doesn't make sense that they would leave it to rot if this is a predictable outcome.

Unfortunately, because of the heat, my underlying stress today, the dead fish incident, and the rest of it, this was a sadly unrestorative walk. 

Wildlife List – Bayou Walk (July 8, 2026)

Birds

• Great blue heron (multiple)

• Great egret (multiple)

• Sandhill crane

• Double-crested cormorant

• Killdeer

• American goldfinch (flock of about seven)

• Mourning dove (heard)

• House finch (tentative)

• Small family of probable geese (species uncertain)

Reptiles

• Eastern box turtle

• Evidence of a recently hatched turtle nest (species uncertain)

Other wildlife

• Frogs (heard)

Notable observations

• Large fish kill, concentrated near the boat launch, with hundreds of dead panfish along the shoreline.

Irish Prosperity Magic

What I Learned Today: Prosperity Magic

Laura O'Brien was talking about prosperity magic. She didn't give an actual spell this time, which she usually does, but instead talked about her own prosperity practice.

She has a little money bag that she occasionally picks up and shakes to stir up the money energy. I don't totally understand the backstory of it or how she originally set it up, but she said she got the bag for free somewhere. It was green and kind of cute, and it appealed to her. She would occasionally put coins into it, which makes sense as adding to the money energy.

One day she picked it up and discovered it had a hole in it, and money started falling out. She started panicking a little because she thought, "This is our money, this is our prosperity, and now look, it's all falling apart."

So she found another bag that she liked even better. It was bigger, golden-colored, and made of velvet. She said that just holding it, shaking it, and moving the money around was a much more sensory and satisfying experience.

Her first thought when she started using the new bag was, "Oh, this is so big. I'm never going to fill it." She used that as an example of how much of what holds us back in doing magic is our own self-doubt and those little voices in the back of our heads that tell us all the self-sabotaging things.

She also said that the energy comes from the experience of handling the bag.

She talked about having a small prosperity altar in her home office right beside her computer where she does her work. I wish she had shown it. She said everything on the altar represents abundance. She's not pursuing money for the sake of money so much as trying to create comfort, stability, and security for herself and her family so that she can then put her effort into doing good in the world.

She also said that whenever they have a slowdown in their income, the first thing they do is give something away. Then they start thinking about how to correct whatever is going wrong or how to improve their income.

One thing I noticed was that when she talked about her work, she described it as "putting things out into the world." When she talked about giving things away, she used exactly the same phrase. I took that to mean that what she's putting out into the world isn't just donating money. It's also creating free content and giving from what she already naturally lives in, which is her faith and her work with the school.

Summer Solstice in Ireland

What I Learned Today: The Summer Solstice in Ireland

Contrary to what they seem to be saying over at Irish Pagan School, apparently the summer solstice was kind of a big deal way back into ancient times. It wasn't just because they were celebrating the longest day. It was also because this was about the time that last year's harvest was starting to run out.

The really poor people lived almost entirely on potatoes for most of the year, but about this time the potatoes were starting to run out and the new ones weren't ready yet. In order to fill the gap, they grew cabbage, which has a much shorter growing season. They actually had to eat so much of it that their skin in the summertime had sort of a greenish-yellow color.

People think of the Great Famine in the 1840s because everybody knows about it and it was so huge and catastrophic, but there were also a bunch of other famines that happened earlier than that. They were just shorter and less widespread.

Eventually, the summer solstice festival was Christianized and changed to St. John's Day or St. John's Eve on June 23rd because, of course, they had to change everything, but not too much. People believed that if you didn't burn a bonfire on St. John's Eve, your crops would be unlucky that year. St. John's Eve was also a big festival day going back as early as the 1300s.

Another sad thing that happened during the solstice festival, and later on St. John's Eve, was that farmhands would be hired out. Kids as young as twelve or thirteen were often hired out as labor. How they were treated pretty much depended on wherever they landed. Some families were good to them and treated them like another one of the kids. Other families treated them worse than their work animals.

It wasn't just that people were hoping the kids would earn wages to send back home. It was also a way to send them away for the summer and get them fed somewhere else because these families didn't have enough resources. Sending the children out to work temporarily reduced the number of mouths to feed until the next harvest.

Meadowbrook Park Sculpture Garden

I worked overnight last night in Tuscola, and I stopped on my way home to pick up some things I left at Jeanette's. I drove by this pretty sculpture garden, so I decided I had to stop and check it out. Turns out it's a sculpture garden and part wildflower walk.

I should come back and do this walk again. There is a QR code on the sculptures that says, "Scan for the University of Urbana official tour," so that would be kind of cool. But right now I am just enjoying the day and taking pictures of things that are interesting, mainly all these sculptures, and listening to birds and bugs. Cicadas are out in force.

I saw a fat bumblebee on some coneflowers, and I got a decent picture of it. But then, when I tried to zoom in, apparently she realized I was watching and took off. I wonder how they know. I've noticed birds do that too. It's almost like they can feel you looking at them, and then they decide that it's not safe to be watched so closely, and then they take off.

I think one of the things I love most about this form of journaling is that if you don't have to be precise, you don't have to decide what you want to keep and what you want to throw away, or what's worth saving or what isn't, because the space is literally unlimited. If I take a picture I don't like, I can throw it away later. I can take two or three angles and decide which one to keep later on. If I want to keep everything and not touch any of it, that's fine. If I feel like later I want to go back and edit it heavily, that's okay too. It is literally like the most flexible way to do anything.

And in spite of what I said earlier about the bumblebee not wanting to have their picture taken, some of these insects have been so amazingly cooperative today. I've got a bumblebee and some other kind of a honey bee, and a lightning bug on a flower, and a dragonfly hanging out on the sidewalk. So far this is a beautiful pollinator field, and I bet I'll find a lot more if I pay attention.

I got a great picture of a young bunny rabbit just hanging out next to a sculpture. He had little light-colored circles around his eyes, and he made me think of my bunny Guinness.

Speaking of which, wildlife sightings have been pretty much what you'd expect in a city park. Besides my bunny rabbit friend, I saw a squirrel and all the bees and insects I mentioned, red-winged blackbirds, robins, a grackle I think, some starlings, and I'm pretty sure I hear a cardinal.

I collected so many pictures on the sculpture garden trail that when I changed over to the wildflower trail, I actually had to start a new entry. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but it seemed like the thing to do.

Now I also saw a black butterfly with blue spots. It was some kind of a swallowtail, and a monarch butterfly zipping around here. I found so many new plant species, I started snapping pictures of all of them to add to iNaturalist so I can put them on my life list.

I think I've discovered a way to add more interest to my summer while still keeping up my hours. If I choose to work overnight on a Sunday or a Tuesday or Thursday, then I can spend time enjoying things in this area. There's a horse ranch in Potomac that does Fallen Fridays for veterans every Friday morning, and if I worked overnight it would be easy to get there without incurring more expenses at Jeanette's, because right now I'm thinking I'm going to continue thoroughly enjoying this garden, and then I'm going to stop for lunch.

I guess I shouldn't have split my entries, because even on the wildflower walk and all the way up into Meadowbrook Park there are sculptures everywhere. So it would have made more sense to just make one long entry, but I didn't realize that at the time.

Meanwhile, I have discovered there's also a huge prairie behind this park that I'm going to come back and explore another day, because I'm already hungry and I've already found so much I've just been...

I was just lamenting how my summer calendar didn't fill in the way I had hoped it would, and I didn't have a lot of interesting things planned after all. A lot of veteran cycling things were in June and I missed them, and a lot of other things are going to coincidentally land on days when I have to work. But if I start also looking for things to do in this area, I will have more opportunities to find fun things to do. I can also start looking for halfway decent mystery shops in this area as well, because if I'm down here and there's something good, I might as well pick it up.