Illinois' biggest solar project is underway

The first solar panels are installed at the Double Black Diamond solar project in central Illinois. Developed by Swift Current Energy, the site will generate nearly 600MW of energy, enough to power 85,000 homes, when completed in fall 2024.

Harvest season wrap up

Over the years I’ve spent time during the harvest season with several farm families, many of whom have become friends. For them, it can be a stressful period because, well, machines break down, parts aren’t available, the weather is crap…you name it. Even when things are running smoothly, the days are still long and dirty and the pace is urgent.

These pictures are from this year’s harvest. I thank them all for letting me drop in. For me, it’s just fun.

A story that has to be told

This summer, in a project for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Historic Sites Division, I produced three videos to promote the department’s new history tours in Springfield. They include a bicycling tour of the city that stops at some lesser known historic sites, hikes through Oak Ridge Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln is buried, and a walking tour through downtown that focuses on the 1908 Springfield Race Riot. During the riot, a violent white mob destroyed dozens of black owned homes and looted their businesses, and lynched two African American men. It prompted the founding of the NAACP the following year.

The race riot tour was conducted by Doris Bailey, a site interpreter with the IDNR, and as she says here, a horrific story that’s not easy to tell, but she adds, it's one that has to be told.

Listen to what it means for Doris to tell people about what happened here in Springfield in 1908.

Taking the two-lane

Scenes from a road trip through southern Indiana.

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Stormy Weather

I was on the bike yesterday and saw lots of drama in the clouds, but I managed to avoid the showers. There’s been plenty of rain this past week and farmers have had enough for now. Rain, go away.

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Harvest and Bloom

Violetta and Garrick Veenstra of Harvest and Bloom “brighten up the market” with their beautiful flowers and fresh produce. This is the fourth in a series of profiles I produced in a collaboration with the Old Capitol Farmers Market.

Moon Girl Farm

Hannah Tomlin and Ben Benach talk about their dedication to chemical-free farming at Moon Girl Farm.

Incredibly Delicious

I spent a couple early mornings in the less than spacious kitchen at Incredibly Delicious, watching the frenetic but perfectly choreographed movement between owner Patrick Groth and the other bakers preparing for the Old Capitol Farmers Market. Just as their name implies, their efforts produce the most delicious results. This is the second in a series of four vendor profiles for Downtown Springfield, Inc. and the Old Capitol Farmers Market.

Springfield's Old Capitol Farmers Market profiles

Last summer in a collaboration with the Old Capitol Farmers Market and Downtown Springfield Inc., I visited with four of the market's longtime vendors. Each week until the market's grand opening on Saturday, May 15, a new video will be featured profiling four of the farmers who loyal shoppers have come to know. First up is Mitch Cave of 4 Lees Farm.

From fire, new growth

I photographed a prescribed burn on an area of prairie grass and wildflowers. It can reduce dead plant material and help seeds more easily find the soil.

Snow geese migration


The Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge is near the Illinois River town of Havana at the confluence of the Illinois and Spoon rivers. At almost 2,600 acres, it offers a stop to migrating waterfowl in the spring and fall. Snow Geese in both their blue and white color phases arrived recently, it’s a mesmerizing sight.

The subtle colors of fall

Dana and I spent a couple hours today walking through the Nipper Wildlife Sanctuary taking in the subtle colors of fall on an otherwise gray day.

Family traditions

My grandfather, Frank Murphy, was 28 years old in August 1914 when he bought a small farm in Marshall County, IL. In the spring the following year he planted his first crop of oats and corn, and began raising cattle and hogs. That’s my sister Peggy and me with him in 1964.

He farmed during the worst of the Great Depression; my mom remembers corn that he couldn’t sell, piled on the drive. On top of that, he wrote in his journal “the crop year of 1934 was the driest ever recorded here. No rain from March until late September, awful hot.” Whatever crops survived the drought, he added, were ruined by chinch bugs.

By 1939 things had improved enough that he needed help on the farm. He hired Clarence Knobloch and it was the beginning of a business partnership between the families that continues today. By the early 1960s, Clarence’s son, Marvin, took over helping my grandfather. Today, Marvin’s sons, Brian and Daryl, and their brother in law, Jason Cresto, farm the same ground.

It meant so much to me to be there last week to see Brian harvest the land my grandfather put his life into. And to see Marvin, now 82 years old, show up to keep a hand in process. His old McCormick Farmall tractor was still on the job too, running the grain auger.

Free birds

Sometimes there’s more action than you would think on an isolated country road. While shooting pictures of the harvest season, birds that had been feeding on spilled corn rise above the road in front of me. I’ll be the first to admit that it can be a nuisance to make sure there’s always a camera within reach. Sometimes, it pays off.

Film is not dead

I can’t count the hours I spent standing in the dark in front of these two enlargers. That was years ago, but if I had to do it again I think I could pick up where I left off. The process of making gelatin silver prints or color prints was so rewarding yet at times, so frustrating, too. Yesterday I delivered my Chromega 4x5 color enlarger, a Leitz Focomat 35mm enlarger, a 16x20 archival print washer and miscellaneous darkroom items to my alma mater, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where photography students might learn to appreciate the craft aspect of the photographic process. It makes me happy that they now have a new home.

Outside is free

It’s been a long summer and I’m grateful for the regenerative nature of long bike rides and the means to travel so freely.

Coronavirus health concerns for The New York Times

Laura Richey of Springfield, Ill., who until late March worked as a driver for Uber and Lyft and fulfilling orders for Instacart, said she tried to qualify for the company’s sick pay after waking up with serious Covid-19 symptoms on March 21, including breathing difficulty. Richey was able to receive a test for the illness, and a doctor instructed her to isolate herself. But she has yet to receive test results, she said, and Instacart has told her she does not qualify for sick pay. Portraits of Laura for The New York Times.

Beach break

Thank you to Pensacola Beach for a brief respite from a Midwest winter, even though you insisted on offering a Florida winter and we still had to wear our puffy coats.

Selma to Montgomery and the march for voting rights

I recently drove and walked portions of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail where in the spring of 1965 thousands of civil rights activists peacefully marched from the small community in Dallas County, Ala. to the capitol in Montgomery demanding the right to vote. For context, at the time only 2% of African Americans in the county were registered to vote. In their first attempt to leave Selma on March 7, they were brutally beaten back on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by Alabama state troopers and county law enforcement. Fifty were hospitalized and the day is known as Bloody Sunday. It took a court injunction and protection by National Guard troops for the activists to finally reach the capitol on March 25.

Selma today struggles with economic decline. When participants in the march reached Montgomery’s west side in 1965, they walked through the heart of a vibrant black business district with locally owned grocery stores, barbershops, dentist offices and gas stations. But desegregation and the Interstate Highway Act reshaped the area forcing relocation of families and businesses. Today the area is blighted with the evidence of a past lives.

In Montgomery, I finished with a visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, sometimes referred to as the National Lynching Memorial. It memorializes the thousands of black citizens terrorized and killed, sometimes for nothing more than refusing to address a white man as “sir.” To say it was a moving experience is an understatement.

This country...