Mark Hanna knew the first question at the Citizens Club of Springfield’s Dec. 19 public policy forum regarding the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport would be something along the lines of, “Any new commercial airline routes coming soon?” Not much to report, Hanna said, although there have been some preliminary talks about possible Allegiant Airlines routes […]
Adrian Dater
Adrian Dater, a longtime former sportswriter in Denver and author of seven books, moved to Springfield in 2023 to get his first taste of life in the Midwest.
Posted inNews
The cost of free speech
Larry Criscione has it pretty good by most people’s standards. He’s a nuclear engineer who paid off his house many years ago. The Springfield resident owns 17 rental properties in the area and, at the age of 57, recently took an early retirement pension package from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at $3,350 a month. That […]
Posted inNews
Women’s Professional Baseball coming to Springfield
Springfield, the site of the very first paid professional women’s baseball game of any kind, will soon be home again to women’s professional baseball. The inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League will be played at Robin Roberts Stadium starting Aug. 1. Four teams, from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and New York, will […]
Posted inNews
The “American experiment itself” at stake
Steven Herman, the former White House and chief national correspondent for Voice of America, gave a 45-minute speech at Illini Country Club Wednesday night that that the Trump Administration surely wouldn’t have liked. In a packed room that included U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Herman chastised the government’s incursions on freedom of the press that have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A redneck ruckus
Below its muddy banks, the water is as quiet as the village of Bath itself, which is just how the easily spooked invasive Asian silver carp that pour down from the chutes of the Illinois River like it. Normally, the voracious carp that plague the ecosystem of the rivers and lakes of the Midwest would […]
Posted inOpinion
Route 66
The 100th birthday of Route 66 is Nov. 11, 2026, and the Mother Road has obviously seen better days. Once chock-full of busy, neon-lit motels, gas stations and greasy spoons, good portions of the original 2,448-mile Chicago to Santa Monica, California, route are now tumbleweed ghost towns. But if it’s true that, at some point, […]
Posted inOpinion
Great Race coming to Springfield
Springfield traffic court is usually a very crowded place, as the city has a well-known reputation for being tough on speeders. On June 23, a lot of old cars will come speeding into town, but perhaps in their cases, the radar guns will be more forgiving for going 50 in a 35 that day around […]
Posted inOpinion
Field of dreams
Things are progressing quite nicely with Scheels Sports Park at Legacy Pointe, according to all the principals involved. After years of uncertainty over its viability, a 180,000-square-foot dome is slated to be inflated in the latter part of June, with sports activities expected to start in October. The grand opening of the park’s primary money-making […]
