A little farther from Chicago, but The Nature Conservancy also has bison herds on restored prairies at both Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois (www.nature.org/en-us/get-in...) and Kankakee Sands on the Indiana border (www.nature.org/en-us/get-in...). Both are ~1.5 to 2 hour drives from the loop.

The show is very funny, but when Garfield is explaining the omission of his Civil War service to his daughter? Devestating stuff, Michael Shannon is incredible.

Maybe recency bias, but "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You." I had to see it live before it hit me that the "you" was us, the audience - a justification for the last few decades of Dylan's life and their relentless touring.

"I Shall Be Released" one of those songs that feels like it's been around for centuries

I think the exhibit on Lincoln as a circuit lawyer in central Illinois is interesting. It's a nice but smaller county museum. The restored prairie on the west side of the property is interesting, but gets some spillover noise from the interstate.

Big Lincoln exhibit, blacksmith shop, small botanical garden, connects west to a restored prairie and east to a forested river corridor. It is very convenient off I-74.

He was just great. Everyone on Stax had the same excellent backing musicians, but Redding completely elevates the sound as a singer. I'm never tired of it.

Mr Pitiful for the origin story of flipping a radio DJ dig about his sad ballads into a great song

An entire government of and for excitable boys

This pool was packed with non-native virile crayfish; we recovered >120 in only four traps. It will likely dry out by the end of summer, but virile crayfish have dispersed through this intermittent reach. We found them abundant in the permanent stream higher up the watershed (photos 2 & 3).

This is a good prediction.

So ... any crayfish in this small and declining habitat?

They always are, from Australia to Madagascar to Canada

Here an abundance of crayfish claws and carapaces have been cleaned out of center pivot irrigation filters that had clogged. In our study region, many farmers and ranchers identify this as a problem, but I don't think anyone has quantified these type of impacts of invasive crayfish to agriculture.

The non-native virile crayfish (Faxonius virilis) in particular has boomed in regions of the western US without any native crayfishes like the Colorado River (nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/Fact...). Given its abundance in irrigated lands, I wonder if we're missing damages and costs as an ag pest?