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More than 200 years ago French-American naturalist and painter John James Audubon traveled through our region and left us a detailed journal of his journey through the wilds that once were the wonders of southern Illinois.
Audubon was the first to draw every bird in North America in life size. He painted the now extinct Carolina Parrot near the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers at Grafton and painted the elusive Ivory Billed Woodpecker in the Cache River Bottoms.
In this final installment of Southern Illinois Wonders, Aubudon, himself, tells the story as portrayed by Brian “Fox” Ellis of his visit down the Ohio to the Cairo area where he camped with the Shawnee in the winter of 1810.
This piece will air at 6:30a, 8:30a, and 5:29p on Wednesday, May 28th on WSIU 91.9FM / WUSI 90.3FM / WVSI 88.9FM.
Brian “Fox” Ellis is a storyteller, author, and naturalist and has worked with The Field Museum, The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, and countless smaller county museums to provide docent and teacher training, develop curriculum, and present public programs. He is the Artistic Director of Prairie Folklore Theatre, a unique theatre company that celebrates ecology and history through original musical. Brian is also the author of eight books including, Learning From the Land: Teaching Ecology Through Stories and Activities, (Libraries Unlimited, 1997) and a new children’s picture book, The Web at Dragonfly Pond, (Dawn Publications, 2006). In the next year, he will be a keynote speaker as Darwin at ten state science teacher conferences from New Mexico to Indiana. Learn more about Brian.
This event is part of Southern Illinois Wonders, a series of five-minute radio programs produced by WSIU Public Broadcasting in which authors, scholars, and artists explore humanities topics and themes relating to southern Illinois on Wednesdays at 6:30a, 8:30a, and 5:29p on WSIU 91.9FM / WUSI 90.3FM / WVSI 88.9FM.
Southern Illinois Wonders will return this fall as a monthly series. Stay tuned for more information.
For more information, please call 312.422.5580.