James Krohe Jr.

The folks down in Chatham are facing that dilemma so familiar to our migrant middle class families whose second homes consist of minivans or SUVs: As more and more young families with children move to the suburb looking for a safe place to raise their tax deductions, the streets become less and less safe for […]

The setting was breakfast, the mood nostalgic. I and three aging friends sat talking about mobility. No, not our corroded knees or where to buy replacement tips for our canes. We were recalling our youths, when — each growing up in a separate Midwestern town — our city was really ours. One — the spinach […]

When asked by new acquaintances which of my many achievements I am most proud, I do not mention my bird imitations or my role (admittedly peripheral) in the Great Bran Flake Robbery in 1967. I tell them I am proudest of having won the Harvard Prize Book. I do not tell them — it being […]

Having resolved to build new high school facilities it can’t pay for, the board of School District 186 is exploring several tax hike proposals that the voters won’t approve. The board’s preferred plan to bring Springfield’s public high schools into the late 20th century is likely to cost nearly a quarter-billion dollars. Some $57 million […]

For years the noise of vehicles colliding has been making the cats nervous around the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and Lawrence Avenue. And for years the City of Springfield and residents on Springfield’s near west side have disputed how best to reduce the number of accidents. The city’s traffic engineers, like most of their guild, […]

For a day or two in late November, it was just like the old days on Wall Street — well, like 2008, anyway. The National Association of Realtors had reported that house sales had risen 10.1 percent in October, several times higher than predicted, and that sent stock prices up. Only a few days before […]

The day after Veterans Day, we were reminded of another long-running war of attrition, in which clueless elected officials have been squandering resources in ways that threaten our security over the long term. No, not the fighting in Helmand Province, but in the General Assembly. On Nov. 12 the Pew Center on the States, a […]

All but a few members of the Springfield High School Hall of Fame are not in the least bit famous in Springfield. In the English-speaking bookish community, however, one of those anointed is celebrated. Robert Stuart Fitzgerald’s reworking into English verse of the Aeneid, The Odyssey and The Iliad are not only admired but loved. […]

Watching TV around Halloween — when so many rotting corpses rise from the grave to threaten the unwary that it is easy to think that it is an election year — reminded me that dead people are a waste disposal problem. Call them corruptible or call them putrescible, they rot. Frontier-era settlers learned to their […]

I was out of school, out of work and out of ideas when the new owners of the Tinsley Building hired me. It was 1968, and they had just restored the building at Sixth and Adams, believing it prudent to preserve the only remaining Springfield building in which Abraham Lincoln maintained a law office. The […]