December 2011

To the editor,

I would like to ask people to please pray for Choate Mental Health in Anna that it will never close.

Write letters and make phone calls to support the need for Choate to our governor and representatives.  I have.

Southern Illinois needs jobs and the people who live at Choate need their home and people to care for them.

Anna will be a ghost town if Choate closes. Our businesses will have no one to buy from them. People will leave Anna to find jobs.

To the editor,

As many of you in the community may know, the State Superintendent of Education, Christopher Koch, on Dec. 23, 2011, approved the petition to form a new unit district within the territory of our four existing school districts.

In doing so, Superintendent Koch has allowed for the voters in Anna, Jonesboro and Lick Creek to have a voice on the proposition for reorganization at the regularly scheduled election on March 20, 2012.

Superintendent Koch stated in his decision that he believes the petition to be:

Hunters in Illinois harvested a preliminary total of 181,411 deer during all 2011-12 seasons. 

Illinois deer seasons closed in early January as hunters concluded the archery deer season and the last segments of the late-winter and special Chronic Wasting Disease, CWD, deer hunting seasons on Jan. 15.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources, IDNR, total preliminary deer harvest for all seasons of 181,411 compares with a total harvest for all seasons of 182,270 in 2010-11. 

Free activities are planned for young people at a Union County Civil War Weekend which is planned Feb. 10-12 in Anna.

The Anna Arts Center and the PAST organization of Union County will be sponsoring the Civil War Weekend. The events will be at the Anna Arts Center at 117 W. Davie St. in Anna.

On Saturday, Feb. 11, one of the events is a free children/youth area.

Other free events on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. include:

Civil War exhibits, open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.