The Illinois State Museum has announced the dates of showing of 16 original oil paintings in its collection by Manierre Dawson. “A Journey to Abstraction.” Dawson, sayeth the curators, was a little-known artist from Chicago who had virtually no direct contact with his early 20th century European and American Avant-Garde counterparts but who independently arrived […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Branching out
In 1909 its Chamber of Commerce undertook a campaign to make Springfield “the largest city by all odds in the state outside Chicago.” Our best Babbits insisted that there was “no good reason why Springfield” (which then counted some 51,000 people) “shouldn’t become a city with a population of 100,000 within the next 10 years […]
Posted inOpinion
Manufacturing crisis
Let’s talk about manufacturing in Illinois – everybody else is. Our new honorary president and our not-so-new governor have promised to bring back good manufacturing jobs, jobs just like the old days. Only they won’t, because they can’t. The industrial economy of the 1950s and ’60s is (to borrow a term not presently fashionable on […]
Posted inOpinion
Trump explains Lincoln
Next month Springfield will mark the 208th anniversary of te birth of Abraham Lincoln. The city is familiar by now with the tributes that national and international Somebodies pay to our best citizen. Thanks to Nancy LeTorneau at the Washington Monthly, I can share with you the views of our departing president and of his […]
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Idealistic thoughts
In 1922 a reporter from the Illinois State Journal dropped by the City Hall offices of Willis J. Spaulding at Seventh and Monroe. Spaulding was then the city’s Commissioner of Public Property. Citing Joshua Reynolds’ insight that a room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts (it was a very long time ago), […]
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Our second city
Way back in 2014, when the sun still shone on America, I did a column titled New York, New York in which I ventured an opinion or two about why New York City draws to it the best and the brightest young people, or at least the most energetic and ambitious, from around the country, including Springfield. […]
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History books for Christmas
Here is a short shelf of books that explore in some way the history of mid-Illinois, as I promised in “Understanding our brave new world through the old one.” All are still in print or, if not, still fairly easy to track down in good used shops such as Springfield’s Prairie Archives. Among the anthologies aimed […]
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Understanding our brave new world through the old one
It’s gift-choosing time again, and who better than a professional wise man to ask what you ought to get those hard-to-shop-for friends? I have the perfect gift suggestion: a short shelf of the best books on Illinois history. I know. You’re saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Riots, murders, corruption, skulduggery – Illinois’ past […]
Posted inOpinion
Closing time
“Sears revolutionized American retail not once but twice, and made a lot of Americans immeasurably better off,” Megan McArdle writes in Bloomberg. “But Sears built a great business for an America that no longer exists.” Sears, Roebuck was a good Illinois company that was lifted into greatness by a Springfield native and which reshaped life […]
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A little knowledge . . . . No. 10 in a series
Public Policy Polling has been peeking under the low brow of the American public again, and found that a great many Trump supporters live in a different United States than do their countrymen. The survey found that 67% of Trump voters believe the unemployment rate went up during Barack Obama presidency, when in fact it […]
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Making America toxic again
The new president, apparently, plans to make America toxic again. The New York Times reports that Comrade Trump has put a climate-change agnostic and friend of the coal companies in charge of his Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Not to fear, however. He is doing it for the very best of reasons – because he promised to […]
Posted inOpinion
Still counting . . .
An update on the issue I raised here and here: The U.S. presidential vote is still being counted. As of December 6, Hillary Clinton leads by 2.6 million votes, which is 2 percent of the total. Donald Trump’s share is 46.2 percent. Kevin Drum notes, “Aside from the obviously corrupt election of 1876, no winning candidate in […]
