In a recent column I described the razing in 1978 of the Hotel Abraham Lincoln. Readers interested to learn more about this consummate act of stupidity might enjoy this piece I wrote a few weeks before the building’s execution. It was published under the title “Adieu to the Abe,” and appeared in our paper that […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Imagining revolutions
PHOTO BY Anthony Souffle/TNS Drowsy after a heavy holiday meal, I settled in to finish Stefan Zweig’s classic 1934 biography of Marie Antoinette. As I drifted in and out of sleep, the Versailles in Zweig’s account of the final days of Louis XVI and his queen faded and was replaced in my imagination with the […]
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Going, going . . .
For years, sagacious observers have warned that the real threat to prosperity in Illinois is not high taxes or low politics but stagnant population growth. I addressed the issue in a 2014 column titled “Stuck in Illinois . . . “ Emily Badger at the Washington Post gives us the most recent demographic data about […]
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A shooting
Demolition of the President Lincoln Hotel at Fourth and Capitol. COURTESY OF THE LINCOLN LIBRARY SANGAMON VALLEY COLLECTION As part of our 40th anniversary observances, and in light of more recent events, we will revisit some of columns from James Krohe Jr.’s Prejudices series that ran from 1977 to 1994. Typos in the originals have […]
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The death of the Abe, in pictures
This is week in my print column I dusted off a column from my old Prejudices series that recalls the demolition in 1978 of the Hotel Abraham Lincoln. I was pleased therefore to learn that a series of still photos depicting that very event will be part of a new exhibition of more than 40 […]
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Childproofing culture
While visiting an old friend in Evanston last weekend, I attended a Ceremony of Lessons and Carols at Northwestern University’s Millar Chapel. It was typical of such performances – hard benches and good music, and this time a polite “says who?” delivered to the scare-mongers among us in the form of lessons delivered in Spanish […]
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The yuletide flood
I’ve put this off until the last minute, as so many of us do when it comes to Christmas errands. There’s still time, however, to share one of my favorite treats — Christopher Hitchens on the humbuggery of the season. These lines appeared originally in The Wall Street Journal of December 24, 2011, and are reprinted […]
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Bird menace, 1977
This week in my actual column, Dyspepsiana, I recall my time as a tenant in the Ferguson Building at Sixth and Monroe in downtown Springfield. The building is now undergoing redevelopment by new owners Rick and Kim Lawrence, but these worthies already have done the city a service by removing the metal cheese-grater façade that […]
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The recycling drop-off
PHOTO BY METRO CREATIVE CONNECTION Saving the world, even this very small part of it, is a tricky business in every sense of the word. Lake Area Disposal is closing its popular recycling drop-off center, at least for a while, after losing money on it for a couple of years. The closing of the drop-off […]
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Saying thanks
At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, I pass along this suggestion for your next Thanksgiving dinner from the late Christopher Hitchens, which appeared in a 2005 piece in the Wall Street Journal in the new posthumous collection of his occasional pieces (And Yet . . . , Simon & Schuster). Hitchens recalled the […]
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Our gift from St. Nicholas
A happy buyer with his take from one of several going-out-of-business sales at the St. Nick in the mid-1970s. PHOTO BY JESSIE EWING I often reflect on the past while washing the dishes – usually, trying to remember where I’d laid the scrub pad that I’d had in my hand a minute ago. But yesterday […]
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The melting pot boils again
“The Battle of Nauvoo.” PAINTING BY C.C.A. CHRISTENSEN Consider this nightmare scenario. Thousands of religious refugees whose beliefs are radically outside the mainstream, acting with the connivance of compliant politicians, establish a theocracy within the borders of the Illinois commonwealth. Believers vote the way their prophet tells them to and establish their own courts. Social […]
