Enter to win a “buy one get one ticket free” tickets to Donnie B’s Comedy Club
Enter to win a “buy one get one ticket free” tickets to Donnie B’s Comedy Club
Enter to win a pair of day passes to the Sangamon County Fair
Enter to win a pair of day passes to the Sangamon County Fair June 11 – 16.
Win a Springfield Sliders Family 4 Pack
Enter to win a Family Four Pack of tickets for a2019 Sliders game of your choice along with 4 t-shirts & 4 hats.
Win Pizza for your office from Rosati’s
Rosati’s Pizza Enter to win pizza for your office from Rosati’s Pizza Springfield.
Legacy of Giving Music Festival Tickets
Tickets to Legacy of Giving Music Festival June 7-8 1 Grand Prize:VIP Experience Package to Legacy of Giving June 7-8 (includes four tickets, four meal vouchers, eight beverage tickets, two LoG Festival shirts & two LoG Festival coozies) 4 Pairs of Day Passes Deadline to enter is June 3, 3 PM
Pedals, plays and parks in Bloomington-Normal
It’s a year of anniversaries in Bloomington-Normal, and you can join the celebrations with a 70-mile drive north on I-55. Add some punch to your summer with the twin cities’ pedals, plays and parks. Bicycle enthusiasts are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Constitution Trail, which follows an old railroad path. Multiple branches bring the…
Pritzker on pot
If Gov. J.B. Pritzker and lawmakers who back legal pot have to wait until next year, it will be their own fault. And we might be better off. With less than a month left in the legislative session, Pritzker unveiled a trial balloon, a bill most everyone acknowledges needs tweaks. Tweakers likely will start by…
Bad timing for Pritzker
If you listen closely to what Democratic state Reps. Sam Yingling and Jonathan Carroll are saying in public about their opposition to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax proposal, they appear to believe that Pritzker’s proposed tax rates aren’t high enough. Yingling and Carroll are both demanding significant property tax relief. “In Illinois,” Yingling wrote…
Letters to the Editor 5/16/19
MORE SOLAR IS NEEDED Although it is true that market pricing does fluctuate, solar power production is at its highest during mid-day of the summer months with June 21 theoretically being our best-producing day, due to the fact that is the longest day of the year (“CWLP rule would slow Springfield solar,” May 9). Coincidentally,…
Editor’s note 5/16/19
This week’s cover photo, “Julia’s Blue Moon Club, 1945” illustrates both the rich cultural history of Springfield’s African-American community and the fragile nature of its physical structures. The Blue Moon Club was among the dozens of buildings bulldozed during the “urban renewal” push of the 1960s when entire blocks of structures along Washington Street between…
Tax holidays for Illinois gambling
Gov. J.B. Pritzker could immediately raise billions of new tax dollars by simply taxing Illinois gambling at the average rates of other states. Duped Illinois legislators have shortchanged pensions, education and social services since the 1990 advent of Illinois casinos – by leaving billions of tax dollars on the table for gambling industry insiders. At…
Movies in the Park
This summer the Springfield Park District will host a series of outdoor monthly movies. Each movie will begin at dusk, or around 8 p.m. All of the movies are family-friendly and free. The park district has partnered with Ansar Shriners of Springfield to provide the concessions. The first film of the series is the 2009…
50 years since Stonewall
The 1950s and 60s were a time when gay Americans faced an anti-gay legal system. Police raids on gay bars were usual and tensions between the two groups were already high in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Many believe that…
Discovering the east side
A. Morris Williams came to Springfield as a 23-year-old cobbler in 1902. Within five years he had obtained a law degree, which he put to use helping fellow African-Americans file retribution claims against the City of Springfield after the 1908 Race Riots. A pioneer in the black real estate business, he was responsible for the…
Fiction by a fact man
Taylor Pensoneau’s name is familiar in these environs. He’s known for his long affiliation with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writing about Illinois politics, his influential role with the Illinois Coal Association and his books about former governors and southern Illinois gangsters. He’s the author and contributing author of seven nonfiction books. His most recent book,…
History on the block
Springfield has fewer than three dozen sites on the National Register of Historic Places. One of them is hitting the auction block. The Freeman-Hughes home at the intersection of West Monroe and South Walnut streets is stately in a subdued way, a place that still fits the neighborhood and has been lived in and loved…
HOTEL REDUX
The city of Springfield wants more information from developers of a proposed $56 million downtown hotel-apartment complex that would be built with $7.65 million in public money via tax increment financing. The subsidy includes $450,000 that would be paid to buy land before construction begins on property where Club Station House now stands on Washington…
Muhs leaves SJ-R
The entire State Journal-Register newsroom escorted now former editor Angie Muhs as she was walked out of the building Monday by general manager Eugene Jackson after submitting her resignation. “I was very touched,” Muhs said. “I didn’t expect that. … I have tremendous respect and admiration for the State Journal-Register staff. They’re dedicated. They’re hardworking. They care about…
Found a stray dog? You might soon be on the clock
Dog owners who have their four-legged friends microchipped hope doing so will speed the dogs’ return if they get lost. Legislation being considered in the General Assembly might also help speed that process. The Senate last month passed SB1572, which would require people who find a stray dog to bring it to their local animal…
Wick: Parabellum delivers goods, stumbles at the end
In the classic Hollywood musicals starring Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, it wasn’t uncommon for them to use props as they danced. In addition to their partners – which included Jerry the Mouse on one occasion – they utilized canes, chairs, hats and whatever other useful objects that might be at hand and would hoof…
More May music
One of these days this weather will behave as it should, but until then we must continue to grapple with what we got and enjoy the live music where we can. We like to welcome first-time performers to our patch of the world, so drop by Buzz Bomb Brewing Company on Thursday (7-10 p.m.) and…
Wild Ponies with Doug and Telisha Williams
This engaging, married duo, long steeped in old-timey music with a rock ‘n’ roll attitude, put out Galax in 2017 to meld their Appalachian roots to a contemporary concept of happening music. With Nashville-based, fellow musicians Fats Kaplin, Will Kimbrough, Neilson Hubbard and Audrey Spillman, they met with Snake Smith, Kyle Dean Smith and Kilby…
wordsy poem #1
wordsy poem #1 I’m fond of words that’s no surprise I like little big old new made-up made-down smiley saintly smutty it’s evident though that individual-one goes heavilyfor the latter it does seem to be catching–our general populace has permission to use much more freely this new normalcy of insultiture the barr has surely…
Southeast by Southwest
I jump on my bike and head to my neighborhood grocery store, a five-minute ride from my apartment. On the way I make a quick stop at Lang Bakery for a banh mi sandwich and a cup of Vietnamese iced coffee. I then cross the street and enter Super Cao Nguyen, a Vietnamese grocery store…
