Last week Julie Bartlett Benson got a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran into a hotel, where he could stay until Feb. 2, when his check comes in. She got a pregnant woman off the street for a week. The woman is trying to get into rehab, but she has a dog so couldn’t get into a shelter. […]
Fletcher Farrar
Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 01-26-23
Maybe now we’ll get some reform in the classified document system. Of the millions of documents now classified, insiders say some are as banal as how to make a ham sandwich. If the nation had fewer secrets, it wouldn’t be so easy to carelessly take some home to Indiana or the Delaware garage. Of the […]
Posted inOpinion
Old Times
One of the founders of this journal told me long ago – when he feared that I, as the new owner coming from the world of daily newspapers, might put out a prosaic product – that my predecessors would always try to include something special, a gem, in every issue. We tried to continue that […]
Posted inOpinion
War doesn’t work well. Here’s a strategy for peace.
In the Ukraine city of Bakhmut, fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops has been going on for six months now. The city had 100,000 residents before the war; now only 7,000 remain. Many neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble by Russian artillery. The city has little strategic value, but it carries symbolic value for both […]
Posted inOpinion
Editors note 1/19/23
This year’s health and wellness issue comes with plenty of friendly advice, on topics including mental health, beginning yoga and how to motivate yourself to meet your goals. Here’s another tip: Don’t try this alone. The social aspects of exercising with a partner or a group provides motivation you won’t find anywhere else. Friends celebrating […]
Posted inOpinion
A new bid for a new year
It’s a new year, and I need a new bid. Maybe we all do. I just read “The Art of Bidding, or How I Survived Federal Prison,” a long essay by Eric Borsuk. On his first day of a seven-year sentence a cellmate told him, “Man, you gotta get a bid.” A bid, he learned, […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 01-12-23
Gov. JB Pritzker is right, as he said in his second inaugural address, that he and the legislature got “big things done” during his first term – things like improving state finances, protecting reproductive rights, instituting nursing home reforms and criminal justice reforms, plus responsibly steering the state through the pandemic. There have been more […]
Posted inOpinion
Editors note 1/5/23
It makes for a happy new year to welcome to Illinois Times our new intern from University of Illinois Springfield’s Public Affairs Reporting master’s degree program. He is Don Howard, 61, from Georgia. These days journalism as truth-telling attracts all kinds, so it isn’t unusual to find an atypical student reporter. Don is a former […]
Posted inSpecial Issues
Remembering
Our annual REMEMBERING edition, the last issue of the year, reminds us small-town folks that people we thought we knew we didn’t know as well as we wish we had, and those we didn’t know, we wish we had known. It reminds us that many more have died this year than we could possibly write […]
Posted inOpinion
Editors note 12/22/22
“On earth, peace” was the hope of the angels, but practical peacemakers must get the snowball started. Two efforts are noteworthy. Dr. Robert W. Smith, dean of the College of Public Affairs and Education at University of Illinois Springfield, has called for a National Conference on Restoring Civility in American Politics. He suggests the home […]
Posted inOpinion
Editors note 12/15/22
When the red-suited, white-bearded, overweight man walked into a Springfield holiday party for children this week, a second-grader confronted the Santa character. “You’re not real,” she shouted angrily. “You’re not real!” Come to think of it, in a world where many adults believe in Elon Musk but not Dr. Fauci, that’s not a bad impulse. […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 12-08-22
Democrats now have a solid majority in the U.S. Senate, and a lock on both houses in the Illinois General Assembly. What are they going to use their political power for? It’s time for a full-scale debate on a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, the kind that have been used in multiple […]
