Sometimes the cornfields can get you down. I have many antidotes (several involving vodka and olives), but when my liver needs a break and my soul longs for tranquility, C-U provides me a surprising sanctuary: Japan House.

Located in the University Arboretum at the south end of campus, in Urbana, and boasting an aura marked by Japanese tea, people strolling and rock gardens, Japan House offers all comers an oasis of calm in the midst of our bustling Midwestern burg. This weekend, Japan House puts all its charms on display during its Spring Open House.

Play every note loud — especially the wrong ones.
– Dizzy Gillespie

Poet Patrick Rosal visits Author’s Corner at the Illini Union Bookstore today as a guest artist in the University of Illinois’s Carr Reading Series.

Look at his website, though, and you may not be sure whether “poet” is a label big enough for Rosal. He’s authored books of poems, sure, but he’s also an essayist, a teacher, a voiceover artist, a performer and guy who really — I mean, seriously — likes music.

The Canaan Baptist Church is a fixture in Urbana. Take a leisurely stroll down Main Street on your way to Strawberry Fields or the Farmer’s Market, and you’ll see it on your left: a pleasantly weathered building that has had a home in the neighborhood for over 30 years. Don’t let the unassuming façade fool you, though. This small church is actually a large agent of social change.

The SAFE House (Substance Abuse Free Environment ) residential program has been in existence since 1984. It offers men battling addiction a way out of that vicious cycle and back into healthy, happy lives. A new facet of the program has begun this year with the inception of the SAFE House Writers’ Workshop/Literature Reading Group, which will meet tonight. The evening’s event will include public readings by group members and graduate students in the university’s creative writing program.

Shows at Urbana’s cozy Station Theatre are always a treat. The intimate, theatre-in-the-round setting makes the spectator feel nearly a part of the performance. Certain shows lend themselves better to this atmosphere than others of course — and Deke Weaver’s upcoming play is one such show.

In C-U by way of Minnesota, San Francisco and New York City, Weaver is currently a professor at the University of Illinois’s School of Art + Design. He’s also an award-winning performer, playwright, media-artist and self-proclaimed “emperor/former-goaltender.” Those first and last bits were integral in the writing of his play The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge, starting its run at the Station Theater on Valentine’s Day.

Art museums sometimes get a bad rap. Maybe this is caused by flashbacks to unpleasant school excursions from our youth, when we were shepherded through boring exhibits while pretentious docents blathered on about Etruscan art. Maybe it’s the fear that we won’t know the artists or their work, and will be forced to face our own cultural inadequacies. Or maybe we just want some action, and feel that museums won’t deliver the goods.

But there are those other times when a museum steers clear of this bad rap by filling its space with compelling art and getting on with the business of making you wish its exhibits would never end.

This is exactly what you’ll find at the Krannert Art Museum, which is host to a new, multimedia exhibit titled Blown Away. The opening reception for the exhibit was held last night at 8 p.m.

Not this month.

Last night I was walking to Champaign’s Brass Rail, talking about Chicago, and how my friends there had referred to me as “country mouse” when I moved to Andersonville in 2000.

“Bright lights, big city,” I said. “I was used to milking cows and picking beans, and a hometown you could blink and miss driving down our one paved road.”