The Great Flood of 08

When it came time to decide what to do for my first collegiate spring break, I had many options. The beach, skiing in North Carolina, going to Chicago....the options were endless. However, I(and my bank account) decided to just come home for spring break to relax, play some golf, and catch up with the fam. My spring break started off as normal as possible. I got to hangout with my friends who had their spring breaks a week before mine before they headed back to school. On monday the 17th, I hit the links and played some golf, something I wanted to do everday during spring break, and went to the high school baseball game. And that is where my spring break stopped being normal. The events that followed will go down in the annals of history and have left a tremendous effect on the small farm town I live in. Monday night it started raining, and raining, and raining, and even more raining. It didn't stop raining until Wednesday afternoon, 2 days and 1 foor of water later. Now one foot may not seem that much. But you have to remember that that means 1 foot of water every square inch of land. Needless to say my hometown was game over. Everything was underwater. One of our grocery stores had 3 feet of standing water inside of it. Harrisburg, Illinois was underwater and everybody was feeling the affects. My spring break turned into a flooded nightmare. The local schools got out of school for 2 days because of rain...A RAIN DAY!!! So as people try to recover and dry off, the water is slowly making its way to the Ohio-Mississippi River junction where water is close to the highest it has ever been. Needless to say, I can't wait to get out of this town and be able to see land. Now I know what the Pilgrims must have felt like when they came across the pond and saw the United States for the first time.

Help make somebody's wish come true

On Thursday, March 6th, Phi Delta Theta fraternity and Chi Omega sorority of the University of Alabama are hosting the 1st annual Make A Wish cookout. This is an all you can eat cookout in the Phi front yard where all proceeds will go to benefit local Make A Wish patients. I think this is a very good cause and I hope that the turn out is good so we can raise as much money as possible. The Make A Wish foundation raises money around the country and uses it to grant wishes of children with life threatening illnesses and diseases. This organization has been doing this for over 25 years and is still working hard to make sure every kid that has a wish gets it granted. So much negativity is placed on fraternities and sororities on the UA campus, where most people think they are all about partying and getting drunk every night. Philanthropy is a big part of most of the Greek letter organizations on this campus and thousands of dollars have been raised for very worthwhile charities. I hope that if you aren't busy on the 6th of March that you can make it to the Phi Delta Theta front yard from 5-7 p.m. and eat some good food and have a good time while supporting a very worthwhile cause at the same time. Hope to see you there!

History....the natural way

When I heard we were going to the Alabama natural history museum for class this past Thursday I was pretty pumped. One because we didn't have to sit in the sauna known as our classroom and because I had never been before. We made the treck across campus, took a cliche class photo on the steps of the museum, and proceded inside. The lady at the front gave her spiel about how great the place was and what we needed to see to get the most out of the museum. So we headed out, browsing the museum for some natural history. However, I soon noticed that most of the artifacts and "stuff" inside the walls had little to do with Alabama at all. There was the Alabama state fossil and the only meteorite to ever hit a person. Besides that, there wasn't much more to look at that was from or had to do with the state of Alabama. While I wasn't expecting something extravagant or mind-blowing in the museum, I was at least expecting to see Alabama natural history, and not the natural history of other random places. I think that whoever runs the museum should look into getting more original artifacts from the state of Alabama and less from other parts of the country. This would make the museum more interesting to visit because it would be more local stuff that actually had something to do with me, which would make it a better all around visit.