Sometimes our mail seems too important to pitch, so we feel compelled to pass it along to our readers. This photo arrived in an envelope with the return address, “Bruce R., Natural Resources Way, Springfield 62702,” and included the following note: “Here’s an actual photo of me after a hard day workin’ on the family […]
Fletcher Farrar
Fletcher Farrar is the editor of Illinois Times .
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 3/29/18
It’s hard for me to even find time to worry about Stormy Daniels with all the protest I’m getting from the puzzle people. What a determined group they are, pulling out all the stops in an effort to reverse our decision to put the puzzle online only starting in April in order to save on […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 3/22/18
Gov. Bruce Rauner says he’s “humbled” by his near loss to Rep. Jeanne Ives in the Republican primary, and that now he hears Illinois. But it’s not clear what he hears. Does he hear that Illinois did not appreciate the two-year budget shutdown and has no stomach for his war against public employee unions and […]
Posted inOpinion
Muddy waters
Last August the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” – an area of low oxygen (hypoxia) that can kill fish – is the largest ever measured. At 8,776 square miles, it is an area about the size of New Jersey. Scientists have determined that the dead zone is caused […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note
Two events in Springfield this week recalled more hopeful times in U.S. politics and government. In the play All the Way at the Hoogland Center for the Arts – there’s still time to see it and you should – remarkable performances by Rich McCoy as LBJ, Tony Young as Martin Luther King Jr. and a […]
Posted inOpinion
From Honduras to health care reform
When Dr. Jerry Kruse headed to Honduras in 2005 to volunteer, he thought he was going on a simple medical mission trip to a rural village devastated by Hurricane Mitch. Instead he discovered a hurricane of ideas and organization that gave him a vision for reforming the U.S. health care system. Kruse, who for many […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 3/1/18
Big policy changes can happen fast. Politics and economics can move quickly. That’s one lesson I got from Dr. Jerry Kruse, dean of the SIU School of Medicine, when I interviewed him on health care reform for my column on this page. The nation’s response to sexual harassment is changing swiftly. High schoolers are leading […]
Posted inOpinion
Adlai’s still talking sense
When the wheels come off in Washington, and Illinois enters another cycle of bad government, I turn to the Adlai Stevensons for hope about politics. The Adlai I have had the privilege to cover is number three, not the more famous Illinois governor and two-time presidential candidate, or his namesake who was Grover Cleveland’s vice […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 2/08/18
This is the moment for Daniel Biss, the unmonied egghead from Evanston who now has a good shot at the Democratic nomination for governor (see “A rise in polls could mean a rise in problems for Biss,” p. 9). Now that J. B. Pritzker has been taken down by his own telephone conversations, and Chris […]
Posted inOpinion
Alternative weeklies, 40 years later
In the fall of 1977, not long after Elvis Presley died, I took a call on one of the two phones in our Illinois Times office on Eighth Street, a few doors from Lincoln’s home. Both phones had long floor cords so they could be moved from desk to desk, but if someone walking by […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 2/1/18
Trump was pretty good – for Trump – in his State of the Union speech, but did you see the Democratic response from Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III? Could we bring that Kennedy to Illinois in exchange for his Uncle Chris? The 37-year-old grandson of Bobby sounds more like Bobby: “This administration isn’t just targeting […]
Posted inOpinion
Letters to the Editor
YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE In January, the world’s media reported that the president had made horrible comments about the nations of Africa and elsewhere, including Haiti. As I absorbed all this, my thoughts turned to two 19th century Unitarians – firstly Abraham Lincoln and then to Walt Whitman. Lincoln was a friend of the immigrants […]
