Vachel Lindsay Walks Springfield
On the last evening of National Poetry Month, I want to share with you a song authored by John C. Van Orman called “Vachel Lindsay Walks Springfield.” It is about Vachel Lindsay (pictured above, my fav photo of Vach by the way) fashioned after Lindsay’s poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” published in the 1919…
Nixon died last night
Nixon died this week, 20 years ago on April 22, 1994. Photographer Ginny Lee wrote this poem on April 28, 1994 about the man for a class. Nixon died last night Well, I guess you were a pretty good piano player. But you hated me and didn’t even know my name. Out in the…
Editor’s Note 4/24/14
Thanks to our freshman state senator, Andy Manar, for getting school aid formula reform out on the legislative table. (See “Fixing school funding,” by Lauren P. Duncan, p. 11.) The formula for determining which schools get how big a slice of the state aid pie hasn’t been changed since 1997, to the detriment of Springfield…
Poll numbers on Madigan
A poll taken for Rasmussen Reports earlier this month found that Gov. Pat Quinn’s unfavorable rating was 55 percent. That’s pretty darned bad, and perhaps the worst in the nation. But Gov. Quinn ain’t got nothing on Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. A new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll found Madigan’s unfavorable rating to be an…
Lincoln museum is a showstopper
The Lincoln Heritage Museum offers visitors a state-of-the-art, immersive experience of Lincoln’s life. I worked part-time at the Lincoln Heritage Museum in Lincoln 10 years ago, back when it was called the Lincoln College Museum. In those days, the museum was quaint, almost anachronistic. Tucked away in a small room outside the college library, old-fashioned…
Gone with the Windex
I’m a woman sharing a house with several roommates. We’re all in our mid-20s. This one male roommate and I sometimes cook meals together, and we share a bathroom (since we’re both cleaner than the other roommates) and deep-clean the kitchen together. I’ve always been attracted to him, but he spends three nights a week…
Pace undercuts Heaven
Greg Kinnear and Connor Corum in Heaven is for Real. “Pillar of the community” and “salt of the earth” are the kinds of things you’d use to describe Todd Burpo. He belongs to his town’s volunteer fire department, is a loving father and faithful husband and has no problem practicing what he preaches, which is…
Rosie Flores
A frequent visitor to Springfield since her appearance at The Alley in the early days of the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival, Rosie Flores never makes it back soon enough. The “Rockabilly Filly” is making a quick trip this week up from Austin, Texas, through Tennessee, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Mich., Indianapolis and Virginia – Illinois, that…
Oculus a clever exercise in low-budget horror
Following the maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Blumhouse Productions continues to adhere to the formula that’s made it one of the fastest growing, small production arms in Hollywood. Sticking to budgets of $5 million or less, offering profit participation to lure the occasional name actor and aggressively promoting their modest horror films,…
Fixing school funding
Senate Bill 16 sponsor Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, stands with some of the bill’s cosponsors and a copy of the 419-page bill. PHOTO BY LAUREN P. DUNCAN Illinois has seen the price of food, gasoline, shelter and most basic necessities increase. Yet for four years the state hasn’t increased the amount it pays per…
Fierce fete
One of the most entertaining and fun times to be had this year will be at the Springfield Pride Drag Race on April 25 at its new location this year in the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Contestants are judged on lip-syncing, dancing and costumes with the top winners slated to perform at Springfield PrideFest…
Foodies
Curses, foiled againWhen the police officer who stopped Douglas Glidden, 25, in Livermore Falls, Maine, found marijuana in his vehicle, Glidden insisted the pot couldn’t be his because he had stolen the car. Indeed, the car had been reported stolen, according to Lt. Joseph Sage, who said Glidden was charged with felony car theft, plus…
Visit New Harmony, historic and serene
One of two labyrinths in New Harmony, Ind., offers visitors the opportunity to meander through the shrubbery maze to a small temple in the center. The former utopian community also has a stone labyrinth modeled on the one at the Chartres Cathedral in France. PHOTO BY BRENT BOHLEN New Harmony, Ind., is a special place…
Central Illinois needs clean and green jobs, too
Last June, EPA announced proposed rules to minimize carbon pollution in new power plants. This June, they will announce proposed rules for existing power plants, like the Dallman power plants at CWLP. In June 2015, after input from all stakeholders, the EPA will publish final rules, and each state will have one year to develop…
NSA spying is here to stay
On Monday, April 14, the Washington Post and the Guardian U.S. newspapers received the Pulitzer for Journalism Public Service for their reports on NSA spying. In light of their hard work, let’s recap events of the last year. Embarrassed and irritated by Edward Snowden’s leaks, Obama charged last year at a press conference that Snowden…
Go with the green
Rain or shine, the 22nd annual Earth Fair will take place at Lincoln Park on Saturday, April 26. Celebrate Earth Day and Arbor Day with the family. There will be environmental information, games, giveaways, a children’s tent of activities, refreshments, a reused art fair, music and more. Bring your bike and ride with the Bike…
Found poem: letter from my father
Found poem: letter from my father To the editor of the Beloit Daily News: This note is addressed to the family who discarded their family cat on Colley Road just east of the I-90 underpass. This cat visited all the family farms in our area. Some fed her. She finally found our homestead which is…
April ending acts
Pimpin Henry plays Crowe Fest 14 at Crow’s Mill Pub on Sat., April 26. A sure sign of the upcoming warmer season is the opening of outdoor venues. Curve Inn, consistently chosen by Illinois Times readers as the best beer garden in town, manages to keep the music going all year, but in the warmer…
Letters to the Editor 4/24/14
The sixth annual Take Back the Night march in 2013 at the University of Illinois Springfield. Photo by Shannon O’Brien/UIS. TAKE BACK THE NIGHT The University of Illinois Springfield Women’s Center and Residence Life will hold the seventh annual Take Back The Night march and rally Friday, April 25 beginning at 7:30 p.m. The candlelight…
Monumental re-creation
Saturday evening, April 26, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign vocal artist and professor Ollie Watts Davis will re-create a historic performance at Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. Folks are eagerly anticipating this show based on the 1939 performance by renowned singer Marian Anderson who was barred for performing before an integrated audience so she sang in the open…
Crazy for cornbread
It’s more American than apple pie. The English brought apple pie to American shores. Native Americans taught the earliest European immigrants to parch, grind and mix corn with boiling water, and then bake it into thin cakes. They weren’t nearly as tasty as the cornbread into which they evolved, but made good staples for hunters…
A martyr or a menace?
Jeremiah Elugbadebo of Springfield runs Joyce’s Community Home for Adults, two houses for people with mental and physical disabilities. The houses have been cited several times for alleged violations by city building inspectors, but Elugbadebo says he is providing a valuable service for people who might otherwise be homeless. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE Correction: This…
Telling their stories
Springfield photographer Adam Smith, left, is producing a documentary film about the homeless people with whom he spent the past three months. Bill Guyer, right, is one of Smith’s subjects in the film. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE In the middle of the gazebo at Washington Park in Springfield sits a homeless man named Bill Guyer.…
The birth of the plyscraper
Illinois corn growers have been getting fat because so many Americans drive to their convenience stores for sweet drinks in cars using ethanol-laced gasoline, both made cheap by trade barriers that keep out cheaper sugars and fuel ethanol. That kind of agriculture is not sustainable in ecological or economic terms, and one day the state…
