The two Old Friends (I am told) were sitting at breakfast. Old Friend No. 1 recalled the summer nights of her youth when she would join her beau on the banks of Lake Springfield, there to mix Wheaties and water and garlic salt into a dough that was affixed to a treble hook and cast […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Criminal injustice
The feds want Bill Cellini to get at least six and a half years in a steel box when he is sentenced in October in Chicago. His lawyers have argued that the feds seem to forget that Cellini was not convicted of all the crimes they charged him with, only two minor ones. Whatever they […]
Posted inOpinion
Fiscalizing land use policy
“People,” goes an old political adage, “vote their pocketbooks.” That goes for people in elected office too. A diligent reader attended a Springfield Park Board meeting at which the Griffin Woods decision was discussed. She noted that none of the officials involved seemed to want to stand in the way of the new Schnucks store […]
Posted inOpinion
The message from the graves
The other day a passing canoeist (who else?) found an unusual pottery fragment on a sandbar in the Sangamon between Springfield and Petersburg. The find prompted the usual questions? How old is it? Who made it? How did it get there? Having some knowledge of Illinois anthropology, the boater reported the find to Michael Wiant, […]
Posted inOpinion
The twenty acre wood
Few of our readers know the words and music to “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” a mawkish ballad that was a hit in the 1830s. Instead they are singing the blues about the destruction of Griffin Woods. The Springfield City Council recently decided that those 20 acres of trees at Washington and North Bruns Lane may […]
Posted inOpinion
Kumbaya around the campfire
Jim Edgar is the closest thing the Illinois Republican Party has to a sage. His long career in elective office made him wise – wise enough anyway to retire from elective office – and he generously dispenses that wisdom from the mountaintop of the University of Illinois’ Institute for Government and Public Affairs. In June, […]
Posted inOpinion
How zoning works
If a woods fall and eight aldermen are not listening, does it make a sound? A few days ago the Springfield city council voted 8-2 to replace Griffin Woods, the 20-acre patch of forest at Bruns Lane and Washington, with a parking lot with a building on it. The building will house yet another Schnucks […]
Posted inOpinion
Who pays for what?
A seven-member team of urban paramedics known as a Sustainable Design Assessment Team recently spent three days touring Springfield’s city center, greater downtown Springfield. They were charged to recommend steps to enliven that district that will not require the city to make drastic changes. Of course, drastic changes are exactly what the city’s development practices […]
Posted inOpinion
White elephant
A planned new “patioscape” on the parking lot side of the former White Oaks Cinema will provide outdoor seating for customers of the shops and eateries expected to move into the converted theater. The enclosed mall will be slightly less so, each of the new tenants being likely to have its own entrance to the […]
Posted inOpinion
New Beijings
I have often lamented here the continuing decline in the population of Illinois’ rural parts. (See “Devoid of life,” July 14, 2011.) Like a great many readers, I have roots in central Illinois that go deep. My interest in the central question – if the present population cannot support itself on the countryside, how might […]
Posted inOpinion
Accidental sagacity
I was looking up something else on the web a couple of months ago when I ran across a reminiscence by the veteran Tribune writer Ron Grossman. “Like Columbus, I’d start with a destination in mind but wind up someplace else,” he recalled about his boyhood explorations of the family encyclopedia. “‘Pericles,’ the Athenian statesman, […]
Posted inOpinion
Nickeled and dimed
A few years ago, the executive director of the National School Boards Association said, “In a democracy, school boards are the closest thing to the ground.” “Like dandelions in a lawn,” I muttered to myself. In my too-many years as a public scold, I have learned to accept the many absurdities occasioned by government of […]
