As much as I enjoy watching them, I dreaded the Cubs’ entry into the playoffs, because that would mean I would be compelled to watch them in every game. I am offended by any team that decorates its players so they look like an 8-year-old’s bedroom, for one thing. For another, I detest watching night […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Breakfast of a champion
PHOTO COURTESY CHARLIE PARKER’S To such names as A.L. Ide, Ira Weaver and George Celani (who in the 1980s invented an express air package service out of thin air!), we should now add to Springfield’s roster of distinguished inventors that of Mike Murphy, who devised a process to turn an English muffin into a $25,000 […]
Posted inOpinion
Questions that need asking
Horseshoe sandwiches have been in the news lately, which reminded me — would a kiddy shoe with fish be half-soled?
Posted inOpinion
Let the Pilgrims land again
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin PHOTO BY HARRY E. WALKER /TNS The United States should accept 100,000 refugees from the ghastly violence in Syria, said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin recently. More than half of that nation’s people have been driven from their homes and to date at least 250,000 have been killed – the equivalent of […]
Posted inOpinion
As Portland goes, so goeth Illinois?
Back in April I remarked on the decision by Mr. Rauner to take the necessary administrative steps toward seeling the old State of Illinois Center (now known as the Thompson Center) in Chicago. The new governor judged that the building was inefficient, decrepit, and inappropriately designed for its purpose and ougt to be sold, and […]
Posted inOpinion
Winner takes nothing
As you might have heard, the merry band of ball players disguised as Chicago Cubs won for themselves a chance to go to the World Series this year as one of the two best teams in American professional baseball. Except that the two best teams were already known back on Oct. 4. They’re the Royals […]
Posted inOpinion
Lincoln and the immigrants
In “Wrong in principle” I recalled how, beginning in the 1830s and ’40s the arrival in Illinois of Germans, who spoke an incomprehensible language, and Irish, who obeyed an incomprehensible church, stirred the natives to use the power of government of the people and for the people against these people. I also recalled how Stephen […]
Posted inOpinion
Calhoun County revisited
Speaking of things Calhoun: In “Naming rights and wrongs” I remarked on a suggestion from Rich Miller to rename Calhoun County. That bucolic corner of the state, you might know, was named to honor South Carolinian senator John C. Calhoun, who in his later years was an apologist for slavery and a preacher of secession. […]
Posted inOpinion
Anniversary gifts
Attentive readers will recall that I have an unaccountable fascination with naming things – in particular the naming of public parks and schools and the like. I took up the topic here and here and, most recently, here in a column about the propriety of naming a county in a Union state like Illinois after […]
Posted inOpinion
Closing a deal
Bruce and Diana Rauner PHOTO BY ZBIGNIEW BZDAK/TNS Trust me, readers, I am no more eager to write another column about the closing of the Illinois State Museum than you are to read it. I have been moved to do it because the most important aspect of the story is the one that remains the […]
Posted inOpinion
CEO supports the arts
The other day I admitted that I was not quote convinced of the wisdom of the State of Illinois offering tax credits so that Con-Agra, a billion-bucks makers of processed foods, could move their corporate headquarters close to the home of its new CEO. (See “Home is where the boss is,” Oct. 8, 2015.) I […]
Posted inOpinion
Home is where the boss is
Well, looks like we got taken again by a big out-of-town jasper. The Omaha-based processed food giant Con-Agra – parent of Chef Boyardee, Swiss Miss and other take-in fast foods – is moving its 700-person corporate headquarters to downtown Chicago. The Tribune parroted the company line that leaving the firm’s suburban-style campus in Nebraska to […]
