Residents were angry and surprised by a proposal that would put a homeless shelter in their neighborhood. PHOTO BY BRUCE RUSHTON It sounded like a Seinfeld episode. The Salvation Army buys a building on Ninth Street for a new homeless shelter and spends half a mill fixing it up, only for Mayor Jim Langfelder to […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Lies, damn lies and governors
A useful reminder from Charles Wheeler, writing at Illinois Issues. “Speaker Madigan’s Democrats have controlled our General Assembly for more than 30 years. Speaker Madigan’s Democrats have controlled spending in our state government for more than 30 years,” Rauner said. “The Democrats have spent our state into the toilet for 30 years.” Apparently history wasn’t […]
Posted inOpinion
Pots and kettles
The late Mike Royko, Sun-Times columnist Bruce Rauner is trying to divide Downstate from Chicago over school funding. It’s a low tactic that has a long tradition, as I noted in this column from the IT of June 5, 1981. The much longer original will appear on my blog, Second Thoughts. Chicagoan Mike Royko declared […]
Posted inOpinion
Tree Cities Illinois
Bits and pieces about trees pile up on my desk like autumn leaves in the yard. Last week I mentioned Barrington, Illinois, as a Tree City USA. It is not alone. In addition to the U.S. flag that it flies at its city hall, the west-suburban town of Hinsdale proudly flies not an Illinois flag […]
Posted inOpinion
Re-treeing
My recent column calling for the re-treeing Springfield – “Something there is that doesn’t love a tree,” which of course should have been titled “Someone there is who doesn’t love a tree” – didn’t say quite everything that might have been said on that topic. A seldom unremarked-upon aspect of the history of Illinois is […]
Posted inOpinion
The blossomy haw, remembered
Paul Scott Mowrer Paul Scott Mowrer was born in Bloomington in 1887 and lived there until he was in the sixth grade. In short, everything important that can happen to a boy in the normal course of growing up happened to him in mid-Illinois. While he never came back to live, pursuing instead a career […]
Posted inOpinion
Something there is that doesn’t love a tree
Clear Lake Avenue needs more trees. PHOTO BY BRITTANY HILDERBRAND Careful readers of his paper will know that Sustainable Springfield is encouraging businesses and landowners to allow the organization to plant native and/or non-invasive tree species on their properties, starting with the Clear Lake Avenue corridor. Any proud native who wishes Springfield to make a […]
Posted inOpinion
The virtues of thrift
Back in January I repeated one of my time-worn rants about the environmental damage being done by factory-style cultivation of corn. I stated, A good field in mid-illinois these days is likely to have more than 30,000 corn plants per acre. Such intense corn production is responsible for increased fertilizer use (and consequent water […]
Posted inOpinion
Undesirables
In 1983 Springfield was working on a new idea – geting more people to live downtown. This week our look back over IT’s 40 years is occasioned by the City of Springfield’s halting efforts to redevelop the Y block. Hopes that a residential building here will magically transform downtown are extravagant, as this column from […]
Posted inOpinion
Playing the suckers
Kenneth C. Griffin PHOTO BY PAUL ELLEDGE Homeopathy figures prominently in the annals of medical quackery. It is based on the idea, or rather the hope, that “like cures like,” meaning that a disease can be cured by whatever produces similar symptoms in healthy organisms. Homeopathy has been relegated to the fringes as medicine but […]
Posted inOpinion
Why don’t we do it beside the road?
Mark Mahoney, city public works director, at the April 21 open house to show off IDOT’s alternatives for MacArthur Boulevard. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE You wouldn’t ask a carpenter how to build a happy marriage. The residents and business owners along MacArthur Boulevard between South Grand and Wabash did something similar when they asked traffic […]
Posted inOpinion
Guelzo on Blumenthal on Lincoln
I am grateful to the Washington Monthly — not for the first time — for alerting me to the release of a new biography of Lincoln that focuses on his Springfield years. Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, reviewed Sidney BLumenthal’s A Self-Made Man: The Political Life […]
