We understand that mowing is a means of employing a lot of people who might otherwise be unemployed. Yes, mow a narrow margin alongside the highway, as this is required for safety for cars that must stop for some reason. However, NOT mowing the median strip and even planting shrubs in them would improve safety, as it would protect drivers' vision at night from on-coming car headlights and even prevent some collisions. Planting in the median area is done in other states, but apparently we in Illinois are too accustomed to seeing vast emptiness in the landscape to think that MORE vegetation there would serve us well.

But already this year a clump of tall, attractive common reeds has been ruthlessly cut down beside 1-57 at Chebanse. Now we must look at this ugly pile of brown, dry leaves scattered there for the rest of the year. In the past, when I have called to complain about this mutilation of the roadside flora, it has been justified with the need to keep the water moving. This Chebanse patch 0f unsightliness is on an elevated bank and is situated in such as way that it has nothing to do with drainage.

With one hand the state plants shrubs along the highway for beautification, and with the other, it ravages any natural beauty which nature gives us free. The planted ones have been decimated in the recent years of drought. Why not accept nature's gifts which can fend for themselves? One is not more beautiful than the other. We need the man-planted ones as well as the volunteers. If you want to keep citizens employed, let them water the struggling plantings which were planted rather than doing so much destructive mowing.

The state of Texas -- and now Florida and other states -- are not only allowing their natural wildflowers and shrubs to grow undisturbed along the roads, but are even planting additional ones in order to make the monotonous, long drives on interstates more interesting to the motorist. This also provides a little cover for wildlife, which has so callously been squeezed out by horizon-to-horizon farming here, which has come about from pressures of governmental taxation and the megalithic corporations extracting their toll from natural resources. Why can't Illinois allow beauty to grow beside its roadways? What kind of mindset considers our wildflowers ugly while other states see their beauty?

Why is it that Illinois trees along the highway are over-pruned just because mowers didn't want to dodge them? (See east side of 1-57 to the south of Kankakee) And why are the planted roadside shrubs allowed to die in dry periods? (See along west side, largely, of 1-57 from Kankakee to the forested areas in the southern part of the state) Why is it, when we have such drying winds the complete growing season the entire length of the state, that so much mowing is done on the highway right-of-ways? Keeping the grass short increases evaporation of moisture from the soil. And farmers don't even get it -- when it is plain to see how their tidy mowing of ditches beside their fields jeopardizes their crops in dry spells where these border on their corn, beans, and wheat. Somehow Illinois men's brains are so programmed -to neatness that they miss the obvious regarding soil moisture, soil erosion, etc.

The main purpose of this letter is to request that you NOT mow the grasses, reeds, wildflowers, etc., alongside 1-57 as it approaches and flows beside Kankakee (and all along all the interstates in 1llinois). Unless we are experiencing absolute flooding; we should WANT the water to course away as slowly as possible so as to nourish the landscape for as long as we can keep it -- and to allow that we may feast our eyes on the native plantings, even in winter. Every year when the machines whack down all that shrubbery and leave it to rot, there is nothing to look beautiful against the snow and nothing to catch the snow so that it evacuates as slowly as possible. The federal government requires farmers who receive its subsidies to leave stubble in the field for the expressed purpose of holding snow as long as possible, prevent drifting of snow, and to prevent wind erosion. Illinois should find a way to ENCOURAGE retention of soil moisture in the flatlands and discourage drought and soil depletion by wind and water.

In any case, please don't make us look at all those plant carcasses strewn beside 1-57 on the approach to Kankakee where we have to look at it every day on our way to work~ Leave us with the impression of lushness and abundance which summer brought. Even dead and dry, these roadside plants are much more attractive to view than all this vegetation flattened by the mowing tractors.

One more thing: The practice of zapping every sign and stake along the interstate with herbicides is dangerous to the health of soil, animals, and people of this state. The individual who must squirt the toxic substance at everyone of those things is being irresponsibly exposed to carcinogenic materials--as well as every animal which lives in the vicinity of them, to say nothing of every passing motorist. All it takes to get this stuff into our systems is to breathe the air above it or touch it. By spraying it, you are greatly increasing the cancer risk of every citizen in the State of 1llinois. The economic moguls demand that we purchase their intoxicants for the sake of their greediness and profit-making -- but we are stupid to buy and use it and thus contribute to the oncoming complete ruination of our planet. You are fouling our hometown, home state, and home planet by distributing herbicides so widely. Government, like individual persons, need to do unto others as it would have others do to it, for surely it is true that we all reap what we sow.

What is needed is a WHOLE NEW POLICY REGARDING ROADSIDE MAINTENANCE AND CARE which will be in harmony with the Well-being of the citizens of Illinois and the world.

By F.C. English