What a great time for a magazine dedicated to Illinois politics. The Democrats own Illinois again. Its leader, Governor Rod Blagojevich, is the son-in-law of a Chicago ward boss. Its head law enforcer, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, is the daughter of Illinois House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan. Not that the other party […]
IT PICKS
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The other election
Springfield District 186 has won awards. But it also has ten schools on the state’s Early Warning List–schools with more than half the students failing to meet state standards two years in a row. It routinely wins grants for reading, technology, science, and math. Yet most of its black students perform below state standards, while […]
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Look before you leap
Taking early retirement is good if it means drawing a comfortable salary while no longer working for it. But for many state employees, early retirement means looking for another job or standing in line at the unemployment office. “A lady who took early retirement about four months ago came to see me,” says State Senator […]
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Our radon risk
Sometimes it’s not what we put into the environment that kills us–it’s what’s already there. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only smoking tobacco, killing 15,000 to 20,000 people annually. Sangamon County has some of the highest radon readings in Illinois: More than one in […]
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Splitting hares
About ten years ago, a few Christian students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were bemoaning the commercialization of Easter. “We were talking about how all the important Christian holidays have been commercialized or their actual meaning ruined or subverted,” says Mattox Beckman, who’s completing his doctorate in computer science. Beckman wanted to turn […]
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Going to waste
Days before the April 1 mayoral election, Tim Davlin dismissed the notion of using CWLP’s billing system to charge residents for waste hauling, a proposal supported by a city solid-waste task force, Mayor Karen Hasara’s 2020 vision plan, and The Springfield Project. Also in January Ward 4 Alderman Chuck Redpath, who backed Davlin, proposed eliminating […]
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The right tracks
Last January, a small team of city planners from across the U.S.–known as the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT)–spent a weekend in Springfield sizing up the city. It then released a beautification scheme that included pulling up the Third Street tracks and consolidating them onto the railroad corridor that runs along 10th Street. The Third […]
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Abraham the barbarian?
Edgar Lee Masters enjoyed taking off everyone’s rose-colored glasses. His Spoon River Anthology wipes away the facade of pleasant, small-town American life. His 1935 biography of his friend Vachel Lindsay, while complimentary, broke the news behind Lindsay’s death–that he died by drinking liquid Lysol, not after suffering a heart attack, as was widely reported. He […]
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The Lincoln Files
On the morning of Thursday, March 13, seven people gathered around a long wooden table inside the offices of the Lincoln Legal Papers. Few subjects have been written about more than Abraham Lincoln, yet these scholars are constantly uncovering new facts and interesting connections. Two groups, working independently of each other, are currently compiling all […]
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THE OTHER ELECTION
Springfield District 186 has won awards. But it also has ten schools on the state’s Early Warning List–schools with more than half the students failing to meet state standards two years in a row. It routinely wins grants for reading, technology, science, and math. Yet most of its black students perform below state standards, while […]
