Where, I wonder, would they put a statue of Mike Madigan? In July, the House speaker announced that he wanted to see the statues of Pierre Menard, a slaveholder, and Stephen A. Douglas, whose wife owned slaves and who was a nativist bigot, liar and opportunist, removed from the east lawn. It took Madigan 78 years […]
James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Lyric flights
John Prine died on April 7, killed by COVID-19. If you don’t recognize the name, you probably won’t care that Gov. JB Pritzker in June proclaimed Prine the first Honorary Poet Laureate of Illinois. A much-loved character, Prine grew up in Maywood and got his break in Chicago and lived there for a while. He […]
Posted inOpinion
Zone defense
Organizers with the City of Springfield and the Springfield Regional Planning Commission held what amounted to an informal design charette the other day. Citizens were invited to imagine a future Springfield as part of the process of devising a new 20-year land use plan for the capital. My eye was caught by remarks made to […]
Posted inOpinion
Selling off the family silver
Endangered. Photo BY DAVID HINE Bruce Rauner’s campaign to destroy the Illinois State Museum risks losing tourist income, the services of top scientists and administrators and priceless artifacts, not to mention any claim Illinois might make to being a civilized commonwealth. Might there be yet one more loss – the loss of the museum building […]
Posted inOpinion
“You look fabulous, really!”
When it was built for $150,000 in 1906, the Ferguson Building housed the Lincoln Bank. PHOTO COURTESY SANGAMON VALLEY COLLECTION The U.S. economy, having finally recovered from the bankers’ attempt to poison it, is up and about again, and Springfield is seeing a modest uptick in spending on the rehabilitation of historic downtown structures such […]
Posted inOpinion
Political economy
Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford PHOTO BY TIM WARD VIA WIKIPEDIA.ORG “Because economic decisions are made by elected officials every day,” said Rockford state senator Dave Syverson to the Register Star recently, “we need to have officials who understand the economic impact of what they do.” Illinois lawmakers who do not understand such things, in the […]
Posted inOpinion
New York, New York
It is natural in this season to think of New York City, but this year I have been thinking of it in a happier light than the 9/11 anniversary casts on it. I had reason to read the interview that banker George W. Bunn, Jr. did before he died in 1973. The Bunn family in […]
Posted inOpinion
Gwyneth knows
Matt O’Hara, Illinois Natural History Survey, holds a 15-pound silver carp that had jumped into the boat while O’Hara and his crew sampled the Illinois River’s fish populations. PHOTO BY RACHEL WELLS It is satisfying to contemplate that unbridled capitalism might in some cases be harnessed to rectify the damage done by unbridled capitalism. In […]
Posted inOpinion
Promised lands
James F. and Margaret (Keyes) Reed, who were members of the Donner Party. During four Junes since 1994 I’ve moved to and from Illinois and the West Coast. On that first trip, orange and yellow U-Haul and Penske rental trucks settled on the big roads by the hundreds, like migrating ducks lighting on an interstate […]
Posted inOpinion
Dense voters
Emily Badger, who covers urban policies for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, flagged for her readers a recent Wall Street Journal article about how once-Republican inner-ring suburbs of our big cities are turning Democratic. The results, she writes, suggest a larger relationship between population density and politics. In the 2012 election…Dems overwhelmingly have a lock on […]
