City Beat

           • IT’S hard to believe that we are nearing the middle of July already!!! We’ve already passed the half-way mark for 2023 at the end of June. The old saying is that “time flies when you’re having fun”. I guess I’m having fun because this year is passing like a rocket!      •…

       Now that Independence Day has come and gone the focus of many in the community this week is on the 100th anniversary of Lake Decatur. The Centennial Lake Fest & Grand Opening of the “Staley Basin” will be held July 8 and 9. This event will feature lots of activities in the Marina and…

       July, 2023, marks 100 years since the birth of Lake Decatur! To save you from asking, no, I didn’t cover the groundbreaking for Lake Decatur for the Tribune! I’m not THAT old and neither is this newspaper. It only seems that way some days. (smile)      Anyhoo, a Cen-tennial Lake Fest & Grand Opening of…

     Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, recently offered a resolution on the Trail of Death to her colleagues in the House to remember the lives lost during the brutal forced march of Potawatomi Native Americans from present-day Indiana to the western United States.      “Our nation’s history is filled with such horrific episodes of violence and injustice that…

     It seems we have a lot of special days, weeks and holidays and, sometimes, it is difficult to keep all of them in the proper observation.      Today, Wednesday, June 14th, is “Flag Day”, also called National Flag Day, in the United States, a day for honoring our national flag. The holiday commemorates the date in…

       Each year, on or near the anniversary of D-Day, when allied forces began landing on the northern coast of France, I publish a Scrapbook article (pages 4, 5 in this week’s Tribune) about that event that had such far-reaching implications connected to it.      As I wrote in the article, some argue that it was…

       Mark W. Sorensen, who is the Official Macon County Historian, has an article in our Scrapbook feature (pages 4 and 5 of this week’s print and online editions) about Decatur’s Darkest Day: The 1893 Lynching of Samuel J. Bush. The details of the article are shocking to read but in order to improve as…

       MONDAY is Memorial Day. As indicated in this week’s “Scrapbook” about the history of Memorial Day (see pages 4 and 5 of print and online editions), back in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create the convenient three-day…

         It’s so nice to walk through Central Park on my way to the downtown post office each day and enjoy the Central Park fountain that is now fully activated for the season and looking beautiful!      Believe it or not, it has been 21 years since the “new” fountain was built and dedicated! It…

       This Sunday is Mother’s Day, a day set aside to honor our mothers. One of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous quotes was about his mother who died when Lincoln was nine years old. The quote was in a letter Lincoln wrote to a young woman whose father had been killed in battle in an attempt…