I only scratched the surface of my topic in “Form over function” (Jan. 26, 2017). Under the old commission government, each of the five commissioners were both administrative and legislative—as individuals they ran major departments and, as a council, passed laws. Whatever the system’s faults, it did demand that every one of the five had […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Seeing things whole
In her recent conversation with Bruce Rushton (“Can we talk?,” Jan. 19, 2017) Lisa Clemmons Stott, executive director of Downtown Springfield, Inc., said that Springfield lacks a vision for its city center. “We don’t have this collective understanding of what the neighborhood wants to be.” This is not inaccurate but it is insufficient. What Springfield […]
Posted inOpinion
More parking downtown?
First it was going to be the site of a courts complex, then of a new Lincoln museum. After that hope fizzled it was going to be home to a showcase mixed-use development, but the City of Springfield backed out of the deal. “It” is the YWCA block downtown, the graveyard of broken dreams, two […]
Posted inOpinion
Homework
The outgoing Obama administration reportedly prepared hundreds of memos — more than 300 from the National Security Council alone — to aid the Trump transition. Those memos, apparently, were never read. Citizens ought to do some reading to get ready for a Trump presidency too. I suggest we start with The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Posted inOpinion
Form over function
I’m terrible at anniversaries, so I wasn’t surprised that I’d forgotten that this year marks 30 years since the City of Springfield changed from an at-large commissioner form of government to its present aldermanic form. For those readers who were too busy growing up to notice, the switch was the result of a 1987 consent […]
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George Washington foretells Trump
George Packer in The New Yorker reminds us that George Washington, in his farewell address upon leaving office in 1796, said this about the danger of partisan demagoguery. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door […]
Posted inOpinion
Red brick roads
Springfield has no yellow brick roads leading toward Oz – I know because I looked for one for 40 years. It used to have plenty of red brick ones, though, gorgeous streets the color of aged wine. Bloomington is thought to have been the first Illinois town to pave streets in brick, in 1877. As […]
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Manierre Dawson in town
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 […]
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 […]
Posted inOpinion
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), […]
