Fletcher Farrar

The cover article by Chicago writer Alex Kotlowitz, “Suddenly, a Terrorist?”, in the March 20 New York Times Magazine, is about a small-town Michigan restaurant owner, Ibrahim Parlak, who had been minding his own business, making friends, and raising a family for 13 years until July 29, when the federal government arrested him as a […]

At 4 a.m. in the homeless shelter, we make the notation “Quiet” in the logbook, though it hardly is. There is a racket of snoring in the basement of the Contact Ministries building, but it’s a good sound. Some 40 troubled souls are stretched out on the bunks here. Some are on medicines; some are […]

Thanks to Sen. Hillary Clinton for her recent attempt to reopen and reframe the abortion discussion. As a strong pro-choice advocate, she is looking for common ground with those who campaign against abortion rights. Both sides, she said, want to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, promote adoption, and, in general, to reduce the number […]

Ralph Laughery’s eyes light up when he remembers his neighborhood the way it used to be. “Everybody knew everybody,” he says. “It was an extremely friendly place.” After he was born, in 1932, his parents brought him home from the hospital to the house at 800 N. Seventh St., at the corner of Seventh and […]

When U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was in Springfield last weekend for a town meeting with military veterans about the sorry state of veterans’ benefits, he missed a good chance to talk to the vets about the war in Iraq. He had passed up an earlier chance to address the issue when Newsweek interviewed him for […]

To Ted Smith, East Jackson Street is more than a street — it’s the backbone of the neighborhood he’s lived in for 57 years. Abraham Lincoln lived on Jackson, 20 blocks west of here, so it’s the backbone of America, too. And the barricade that blocks cars from using the street east of Livingston is […]

My first memory of Bob Reid is the poverty series. In the early 1970s, Reid was managing editor at the Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale, and I was a staff reporter. The publisher had apparently asked for something special so that they could sell extra ads, and Bob had said, “I’ll give you something special.” […]

Every morning about 2 o’clock, the “train they call the City of New Orleans” rolls south through Cairo with its indomitable “Good morning, America, how are you?” “Not so good” might be the reply from the town at the southernmost tip of Illinois, where the mighty rivers meet. It is Cairo’s turn to say, “Don’t […]

The next time you get discouraged about Illinois politics, take a look at Kansas. Or South Dakota, where U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin spent the week before Election Day campaigning for the doomed Tom Daschle. “South Dakota was the most incredible political scene I have ever witnessed,” Durbin recalled as we sat in his Springfield office […]

As the death toll rises in Iraq, thoughts turn to the next strategy for stopping this war. The easiest way would have been to elect John Kerry, but that didn’t work. It might not have worked even if he had won the election — he only promised to be a better warmaker — but it […]

It didn’t take long in the homeless shelter for me to realize I am among exceptionally gifted people. Funny. Smart. Kind. Troubled, too. But many seem no more troubled than a lot of other people I know. I went in thinking this would be a good place to learn and cameout thinking it would be […]

As a career Quad Cities TV anchor with a three-year stint on CNN, Andrea Zinga, 54, had scheduled the press conference with a suitable TV backdrop. She would announce her 10-point education plan across the street from Millikin University’s football field. But when no cameras showed up, Zinga and I and her campaign aide went […]