A deer hops out from a yard at West McDaniel Street and Oakland Avenue in Carbondale Tuesday.

Formidable clouds move quickly across the sky while Tom Distasio, a graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach, runs drills with a football player Monday at McAndrew Stadium. Storms riding along the jet stream from Nebraska to the Great Lakes helped cause a tropical air mass push south, leading to 60 mph winds and quarter-sized hail across southern Illinois and Indiana, according to the National Weather Service. Diana Soliwon | Daily Egyptian

Aaron Scott, of Cocodrie, La., repairs nets Thursday on his dock. Scott, a fisherman in the bayou of southwest Louisiana, has yet to be directly affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico but says fishermen in his area are anxious about how the oil will travel. “Most of them shrimpers are poor people … something like this is going to set them back if they can’t go shrimping,” he said. -- Diana Soliwon

The bayou that rounds along Little Caillou Road in Chauvin, La., snakes all the way down to Cocodrie, where fisherman Aaron Scott says his shrimping season — and livelihood — has disappeared. --Diana Soliwon

Bo Ridley, best friend to John Sconza, born and raised in New Orleans, was dressed as "oil" for a protest against oil drilling Saturday in New Orleans' Lafayette Square. --Diana Soliwon

Colleen Halley, left, of New Orleans and Sonya Train, of Houston, Texas, discuss ways to help clean up and direct the world's attention to alternate energy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. Meanwhile, Sandra Hayden, in blue, an oil company lawyer, hangs back while her husband, a Sierra Club activist, interacts around New Orlean's Lafayette Square. "This is a feel good thing. We’re not the guys who’re going to stop the oil … but I do believe in the culture of learning how to make alternative sources of energy," she said. --Diana Soliwon

Stories by Diana Soliwon and Julia Rendleman:

From the South: Oil spill reactions

From the South: Two Daily Egyptian journalists travel to southwest Louisiana to document oil spill effects

Debra Spears clutches a candle and a picture of her two sons, both in the Army, at Wednesday's Veterans Day ceremony at the VA hospital in Marion. Spears said one son had just returned from his fifth tour in Iraq and Afghanistan while the other just left for his second. A recent poll done by a military family advocacy group, Blue Star Familes, reported that out of 3,000 respondents, 94 percent of families with members in the military feel like other Americans don't understand the hardships they endure. "I just hope and pray for my boys and pray to God nothing happens to them," Spears said. "This is a beautiful thing to do for the other (soldiers) who have already made a huge sacrifice." (Photo by Diana Soliwon)

Raymond Parrish, "fire boss" for Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, stops to talk to passersby after overseeing a prescribed fire near South Highway 26 behind Crab Orchard Lake Thursday Nov. 12. (Photo by Diana Soliwon)