Changing the world one dinner at a time

Marsha Wallace of Greenville, S.C., started the group Dining for Women in 2003 after reading about a group of friends who met for potluck dinners and collected money for needy families. Wallace liked

Hero of Hotel Rwanda campaigns for truth about genocide

Paul Rusesabagina speaks in Springfield May 12

Just when we thought Rwanda had reinvented itself into a genuine success story in Africa, and that Rwandan president Paul Kagame had become a star of international leadership, along comes the hero of

What’s wrong with the New York Times?

Placing faith in the archaic notion that journalism sells

I love the New York Times. I quote it so often my kids think I don’t know anything I didn’t read there. So naturally I was drawn to the long piece in May’s Vanity Fair on NYT publish

Archaeology and a newspaper editor

Dishes dumped “out back” yield stories of a friend of Lincoln in early Springfield

A plain white pitcher, a bowl, a broken plate and a whiskey bottle from the mid-to-late 1830s are among the finds from Floyd Mansberger’s digs on the block where the Abraham Lincoln

The questionable future of FutureGen

Political clout may not be enough to make this project work

When U. S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu met with the FutureGen Alliance on Monday to discuss whether to proceed with a large-scale coal gasification demonstration plant near Mattoon, he fa

When the Crime Stoppers dumpster came to my street

Is this good police work, or a substitute for it?

When I first heard about the new Crime Stoppers drug dumpster, I found it amusing. A trash dumpster, welded shut, painted orange, is stenciled with, “A suspected drug house is in thi

For local banks, Springfield is a good place to be

Shielded from the worst of the chaos, they ride out the recession with confidence

As America looks around for someone to blame for the current economic mess, bankers are the easiest target in sight. “No one wants to hug a banker,” reads a recent Newsweek hea

The lies and demise of Roland Burris

We need a higher standard than telling the truth

It is a sad and sickening sound, that of another good reputation gurgling down the drain. Only a few weeks ago, Roland Burris was remembered as a trailblazer in Illinois politics, who had

Two strong women I knew

The people, the animals and the stories that shape our lives

Georgina Blair died last week at 92. When I visited in her home on the family farm in Virden a few years ago, she showed me this picture of her and her father with one of his prize mules,

What if things are as bad as Obama says?

Stirring words are welcome in troubled times

People are so ready to be relieved of the Bush presidency, and to end the Iraq war, that Barack Obama could have said anything, or nothing, in his inaugural address and it would still be