Feature | Thursday, January 8,2004

Grace about town

How're those resolutions coming? Diet going well? I thought I'd do some actual research this week and count the diet books at the bookstore, but I quickly got bored. There were about 300 differe

Feature | Wednesday, December 31,2003

Grace about town

By Grace Smith

I guess it's a good time to reflect upon the past year. It was an OK year for me, all-in-all. I didn't get killed when my mom tried to capsize her fishing boat by crashing into a tsunami and I fell ba

Feature | Wednesday, December 24,2003

Grace about town

By Grace Smith

I think Christmas is really all about treats. Not that this is a bad thing; on the contrary, I would be most happy on an all-fudge-and-eggnog diet. I attended a (very glittery) party last night where

Feature | Wednesday, December 24,2003

Thom and Kevin

By Grace Smith

Springfield painters Thom Whalen and Kevin Veara met 15 years ago when they were both Fine Arts undergraduates at Eastern Illinois University. They got to know each other, driving back and forth toget

Feature | Thursday, December 18,2003

Grace about town

By Grace Smith

Mom says one good thing about cold weather is that the bottle of water she keeps in her car stays icy-cold. Who wants icy-cold water when you get into the car after being in the icy-cold coldness, is

Feature | Thursday, December 11,2003

Grace about town

By Grace Smith

The only family Christmas tradition I remember vividly from my childhood is piling into the car and driving around looking at lights while my brother and I fought in the back seat. I can't remember wh

Feature | Thursday, December 4,2003

Grace about town

The buying season

By Grace Smith

Not many days left till Christmas, have you bought anything yet? Way back in September, my friend Pam was talking about gifts she'd already purchased. Christmas was nowhere on my radar back then. Bu

Feature | Wednesday, November 26,2003

Grace about town

Gingerbread mania

By Grace Smith

For the past few weeks the house has been filled with the chaos of construction: clouds of dust, floor littered with debris, no room to set anything anywhere. Powdered sugar dust, that is. Sticky f

Feature | Thursday, November 20,2003

Gotta dance

By Grace Smith

I love to dance. Since my return to Springfield I've been out a few times, but only to one place -- The Station House, the gay dance bar downtown where the music is great and you can dance for a while

Feature | Thursday, November 13,2003

Grace about town

Back here

By Grace Smith

OK, I guess what I'm doing here is trying to prove Tom Wolfe wrong. He went back to his hometown, he wrote a very thick book titled You Can't Go Home Again, and it went on and on and on. I can't remem