April is TLC month at Duke's Ale House!

Just a quick reminder that for the entire month of April, 5% of purchases made at Duke's Ale House in Crystal Lake will be donated to The Land Conservancy of McHenry County! Just bring along a TLC coupon that you can print from our website, and present it to your server to help them keep track!

Additionally, Duke's mixologist created a special drink for the month of April called the Hairy Aster - named after a native plant (Aster pilosus). each martini-style drink sold during April will result in $1 being donated to TLC to support our land preservation mission!

Duke's Ale House has gained a reputation for their menu selections made from locally raised products including honey, beef, herbs and vegetables! They also host the monthly Green Drinks group where people gather on the first Wednesday of every month from 5-7pm to network with other people who are interested in the environment! Hope to see you there on April 7th!

Go Play Outside!

Those are the three words that American children do not hear enough. Michelle Obama talks about battling childhood obesity. Chicago Wilderness runs the Leave No Child Inside project. A whole organization called the Children & Nature Network now exists to encourage and support people and organizations working to connect young people with nature.

Results of a recent University of Michigan study show that our brains work better when we have regular exposure to nature. This echoes the results of many other studies that say there are abundant reasons to spend more time in nature. Health. Kids are less likely to have attention-deficit disorder. Hospital patients get well faster. And... there is an ever-growing list of reasons to spend time outdoors. The Association for Psychological Science has a nice summary of the Michigan study on their website.

The effects of nature on the brain are especially important during the years from birth through age 11, when many of the basic patterns and processes in the brain are being formed. The term videophilia has been coined by researchers to describe the new state we are living in. They define videophilia as meaning "the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activites involving electronic media."

Videophilia has been a trend since 1987 -- about the time that video games, home movies, VCRs, home computers, etc started to appear. Since 1987 the trend has also been that there are fewer visits to local, state & national parks. There are fewer hikers than before 1987. There are fewer campers. You get the picture.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but a good start would seem to be "Go Play Outside!"

We're Facebooking!

TLC has entered the modern world with our very own Facebook Page!

Why? Well, Facebook is a Social Networking site that helps people connect with people they know, as well as people who share interests. So, by having a TLC site on Facebook, we can start a "fan club" and then those individuals help connect us to their own personal networks.

I think the term is "viral marketing" when information spreads through a pre-existing network to increase general awareness of a product, event or organization.

If you are not yet using Facebook to communicate with your network of friends, then I'm guessing you may never start...

If you do want to start, just visit http://www.facebook.com/, and you can start your own page. All you need is an email address - really, it's that simple.

Once you are in the Facebook realm, just type "The Land Conservancy of McHenry County" into the Search box, and our page will come right up!