The antics of Congressional Republicans trying to vandalize the Affordable Care Act are outside my brief here at Illinois Times, except to the extent that they threaten to do harm to Illinoisans. Happily, Illinois Issues‘ Kristy Kennedy has written the piece I haven’t had the time or space to write, and done it better. Among […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inNews
Hogs, continued
Kewanee is known to the wider world. It was officially dubbed the “Hog Capital of the World” in 1948, when government agriculture statistics showed that Henry County led the world in hog production. Kewanee is no longer the hog capital of the world, if it ever was. But the hog still figures prominently in the […]
Posted inOpinion
Pork bellies — and much else — explained
In “The hog and I” (April 20, 2017) I recalled a magazine article I wrote in 1982 about the hog industry. It was a fun piece, but the information in it is badly dated; the funniest bit is where I report that worries about the health effects of animal fats, and salt and preservatives used in […]
Posted inOpinion
White-collar flight
For 90 years, “Caterpillar” was just a different way of spelling P-e-o-r-i-a. But the company has decided to move its entire executive team of some 300 people out of the River City to Chicago’s northern suburbs. The mayor called the decision a kick in the gut, and well he might. Without these corporate Olympians, a […]
Posted inOpinion
The hog and I
I was at my desk in 1982 when the phone rang. “Hello.” “What the hell is a pork belly?” It was Lewis Bergman, calling from New York City. Lewis was former editor of the New York Times Magazine who was then calling the shots at one of my magazines, the monthly published by the business […]
Posted inOpinion
Powerful forces
That man Trump, who relishes catastrophe, has done his part to unleash it on the planet by trashing the Obama Clean Power Plan to decarbonize the electricity generation industry. This is a matter of moment for Springfield, of course, since the capital city runs its office shredders and beer fridges on juice supplied from its […]
Posted inOpinion
Palmer remembers
In “Historic omissions” (April 6, 2017) I praised Carlinville’s John M. Palmer as a memoirist. He published his Perrsonal Recollections: The Story of an Earnest Life (Robert Clarke Company, Cincinnati) in 1901. These days it’s hard to come by. It is in the collections of the Illinois State Library, Brookens Library out at UIS and […]
Posted inOpinion
Historic omissions
For some time I have been working on a history of mid-Illinois. One might ask – several potential publishers did – how one can make an interesting book of even modest size with facts and stories about such a dull place. After all, you can read a hundred county histories whose highlight was that time […]
Posted inOpinion
Projecting a better image
At first I assumed that Jesse White was trying to goose sales of specialty plates to top off his budget. Why else would an Illinois Secretary of State oblige the drivers of his state to adorn their cars with the new standard State of Illinois passenger car license plate that looks as if it was […]
Posted inOpinion
The nine-inning version
The piece about the Springfield Redbirds that appeared in the paper on March 23, 2017, was shortened by rain, so to speak. Readers interested in the complete version will find it here, as it appeared in our paper of Sept. 1, 1978. Unusually, it was not published as part of my Prejudice series but as […]
Posted inOpinion
The making of a fan
Opening Day is April 2, and in honor of the new season I bring you this column from 1978, when Springfield was, gloriously, home to the Redbirds, the St. Louis Cardinals’ AAA farm team. The piece was written in the mock poetic style beloved of lesser baseball writers and is embarrassing to read today. So […]
Posted inOpinion
What migrants?
A skeptical reader wondered how the Trumpish crackdown on unpapered immigrants might hurt Illinois agriculture, as I argued it would in “Absolutely ridiculous.” More than 70 percent of the farm workers in Illinois may be immigrants, and many of those can be assumed to be undocumented, but how many people can that mean? Migrants aren’t needed to […]
