NEWS IN BRIEF

Center helps Santa with letter delivery

FUNKS GROVE - The Sugar Grove Nature Center will help deliver letters to Santa.

Letters may be dropped into a special box located along Imagination Grove Trail. From the Nature Center parking lot, follow the signs over the covered bridge.

Letters will be accepted from Dec. 1 through Christmas Eve, from dawn until dusk, even when the Nature Center isn't open.

Call 309-874-2174 or email infosugargrovenc@earthlink.net. Sugar Grove Nature Center is in Funks Grove, just south of Bloomington-Normal off old Route 66.

Center announces calendar artists

NORMAL - The Ecology Action Center has named illustrators whose work is in the center's 2010 recycling and waste reduction calendar.

They are Caitlin Lebel, eighth grade, Chiddix Junior High; Sarah Kowalczyk, second grade, Fairview Elementary; Ian Maubach, second grade, Stevenson Elementary; Noel Emmert, fifth grade, Hudson Elementary; Samuel Ditchen, kindergarten, Fairview Elementary; Justin O'Brien, third grade, Prairieland Elementary; Sujith Molakala, fourth grade, Grove Elementary; Kaitlyn Tammen, fourth grade, Lexington Elementary; Carli Alderman, third grade, Grove Elementary; Max Deffenbaugh, fourth grade, Glenn Elementary; Kassidy Patton, first grade, Prairieland Elementary; and Brancen Hilton, fourth grade, Lexington Elementary.

Ryan Kersten, a senior at Bloomington High School, won the billboard contest with "Recycling ... As American as Apple Pie." Prairieland Elementary won the Traveling Globe award for its recycling efforts.

Calendars are $5 each at the Ecology Action Center, 202 W. College Ave., Normal; The Garlic Press, 108 W. North St., Normal; Children's Discovery Museum, 101 E. Beaufort St., Normal; and Common Ground, 516 N. Main St., Bloomington.