For years the Sierra Club has played the conscience of City Water, Light and Power in the absence of mayors and aldermen capable of the role. Most people can agree that having a conscience is a good thing, but no one likes be nagged by one, and CWLP is doubtless fed up with the Sierra […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Higher ed bargains
On my recent visit to the main campus of the University of Illinois, in Urbana-Champaign, the presence of Chinese, Korean and Indian students was marked. The university’s recruiting of the Asian student raises questions that after 150 years have never been resolved, and seldom even engaged. Which public is served by a great public university? […]
Posted inOpinion
Parking over time
Allow me to return briefly to the topic of metered street parking that I took up in September in “Parking smartly.” A lot of people say to me, “We should have free parking, like Decatur.” A significant fraction of local opinion (usually from small towns) don’t think anyone should have to pay for parking, and resent […]
Posted inOpinion
More, please
I am among those many Americans who believe that this country needs more immigrants, not less. (See this column and this column and this column.) I recommend to you therefore a stimulating essay on immigration policies being discussed in Washington as they pertain to Illinois, written by Sara McElmurry, assistant director of immigration at the […]
Posted inOpinion
The politics of pretty
My favorite Miss America was Vonda Kay Van Dyke (1965), forever famous as the first Queen of Atlantic City to use ventriloquism in the talent portion of the contest. She later wrote a series of Christian-themed teen advice books in which young women learned about how “that inner sparkle that only Christ can give” would […]
Posted inOpinion
The Downstate returns have started to come in
The wheels of our nation’s book review machinery turn very slowly, and only now has the first proper review of my new book, Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves, been published. It was worth the wait. My old friend and colleague, Harold Henderson, whom older readers of this paper will remember from his days at IT. […]
Posted inOpinion
Foreign exchange
A college campus is a sleepy place in the summer, which makes summer a good time to go sightseeing. I’ve always enjoyed visiting the main campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana for that purpose. One sees things one seldom sees at home, such as people reading books in public. (And people say Angkor […]
Posted inOpinion
Dumb mistake about smartphone parking
Reader John Paul of Prairie Archives points out that my account of smart phone parking apps in “Parking smartly” (Sept. 14, 2017) was misleading. Downtown street parking spaces are metered in the first place to encourage turnover that makes short-term parking available to shoppers and errand-runners. Feeding meters to stay beyond marked limits is illegal […]
Posted inOpinion
Parking smartly
Attorneys in their sunset years dream of the day when they no longer have to start a day knotting a necktie, governors of when they can complain about bills without people expecting them to know what’s in them. A certain Springfield columnist of that age dreams of never again having to write about parking downtown. […]
Posted inOpinion
How others see us
In “New Beijings” (June 7, 2012) I mentioned in passing the astonishing popularity of the University of Illinois’s Urbana campus with students from mainland China. From the excellent long piece in a 2015 number of Inside Higher Education by Elizabeth Redden, “The University of China at Illinois,” I learned this: The university’s nickname in China, I’m told, […]
Posted inOpinion
A certain despair
It is late August as I write this, a time of year when gardens and gardeners alike begin to look a little, well, tired, for reasons I explored in the column, which appeared in our paper of Aug. 27, 1987. It has been artfully revised and edited for length. T. S. Eliot was no gardener, […]
Posted inOpinion
Drawing fire
A draft version of this piece was posted in error. The version that follows is the corrected one. – JKJr. At least no one demanded that insulting images be suppressed a la Charlie Hebdo. No blood at the publisher was shed, and no one issued a fatwa against the artist, even if ritual murder was […]
