WGLT-FM: Assorted stories from WGLT-FM : NPR

You’ll hear from a master Lego building, who renders everything from the Mona Lisa to Soldier Field. Also, Judy Valente speaks with an Illinois author who successfully did what many authors try to do—convert their book into a movie. And Jon Norton talks to the lead guitarist for the country-rock band Black Jack Billy, playing Friday night at Six Strings in Bloomington.

Illinois author Gary W. Moore is mainly known for his non-fiction writing. In "Playing with the Enemy," he wrote about his father's experience teaching German prisoners of war to play baseball. Another book, "Hey Buddy," chronicled the 1959 plane crash that killed performers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Moore now has written a novel that contain threads of a real life story. The Kankakee-born author will discuss his novel, "The Final Service," Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the

There's the insects we all welcome to our yards, like butterflies and ladybugs. And then there's the baddest bugs on the block that we can't bear to see invade our property. Their mission? Crush, kill and destroy your lovely plantings. If you see this ghastly trio, better act fast if you have any hope of defeating these voracious pests.

The annual Perseids meteor shower looks to be very promising this year. 2016 is being called an outburst year for the celestial event, meaning more meteors than usual will blaze across the sky. And it’s all thanks to a certain enormous planet.

Today’s programming is made possible in part by GLT Day Sponsors Tom and JoAnne Bierma, who would like to welcome new and returning college students to the Bloomington/Normal community. They wish all students a productive, fun, and safe school year.

The most visible and widespread waterway in Bloomington-Normal is getting some T-L-C. Hear from the Ecology Action Center's Executive Director Michael Brown talks Sugar Creek, and the impact of being downstream. In the mid-1970s, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine was a student at a Catholic high school in Kansas City run by the Jesuit order of priests. One of his mentors was Father Mauricio Gaborit tells GLT's Judy Valente that Kaine's time in Honduras shaped the rest of his life.

The most visible and widespread waterway in Bloomington-Normal is getting some T-L-C. Hear from the Ecology Action Center's Executive Director Michael Brown talks Sugar Creek, and the impact of being downstream. In the mid-1970s, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine was a student at a Catholic high school in Kansas City run by the Jesuit order of priests. One of his mentors was Father Mauricio Gaborit tells GLT's Judy Valente that Kaine's time in Honduras shaped the rest of his life.

The most visible and widespread waterway in Bloomington-Normal is getting some T-L-C. Hear from the Ecology Action Center's Executive Director Michael Brown talks Sugar Creek, and the impact of being downstream. In the mid-1970s, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine was a student at a Catholic high school in Kansas City run by the Jesuit order of priests. One of his mentors was Father Mauricio Gaborit tells GLT's Judy Valente that Kaine's time in Honduras shaped the rest of his life.

The most visible and widespread waterway in Bloomington-Normal is getting some T-L-C. Hear from the Ecology Action Center's Executive Director Michael Brown talks Sugar Creek, and the impact of being downstream. In the mid-1970s, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine was a student at a Catholic high school in Kansas City run by the Jesuit order of priests. One of his mentors was Father Mauricio Gaborit who tells GLT's Judy Valente that Kaine's time in Honduras shaped

When Father Mauricio Gaborit hears vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine break into Spanish or speak movingly about the poor, he says he is watching the flowering of seeds planted decades earlier in Kaine at a small Catholic mission in Honduras. Gaborit, a member of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuit order of priests -- met Kaine in 1976 when he was working in the village of El Progreso in Honduras. The Virginia senator was then a senior at Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit-run academy in Kansas

Workers are feverishly putting the final touches on the thirty five million dollar Center for Integrated Wellness just north of the airport in Bloomington. The Center combines several services and business entities in one place, a fitness center managed by Advocate BroMenn, METHOD Sports Performance, and McLean County Orthopedics. Such facilities are becoming a trend across the U.S.

Don't look for Illinois State University to curb its long-time practice of granting dismissed administrative workers a year's severance pay. Many universities bring supervisory workers on board by promising them a year's salary if they're let go, but recently Western Illinois changed to paying for six-months of employment. During Sound Ideas, ISU President Larry Dietz said paying benefits and salary for a year after dismissal is needed now more than ever, since more than a hundred positions have