I started living openly gay in 1987. I lived in a house in Laketown and I moved my lover in with me and my sons. Many in the gay community seemed unimpressed by my story. I don’t understand that. Maybe it’s because they were accustomed to such things, and I was in my late 30s […]
Martha Miller
Martha Miller was born in St. John's Hospital and has lived in Springfield most of her life. When she was in her 30s she started publishing reviews and short stories. For years she wrote a column for the Prairie Flame called "Martha [Lesbian] Living," a funny take on that other Martha, the domestic goddess who topped her by ending up in prison. In 1989, she started collecting stories for her book, Tales from the Levee. It was published in 1995 by Harrington Press. The book is only available in ebook all these years later. Her ninth book is coming out June 1. A retired English instructor, she lives in Springfield with her wife, two unruly dogs and two cats.
Posted inArts & Culture
Fiction recalls terrible Springfield crash
But For the Crash, George A. M. Heroux. Connecticut: Eloquent Books, 2010. Paperback $13.95, Kindle Ed. $9.99. ISBN 978-1-60911-453-4. George Heroux lives in Springfield and is an attorney and the executive director/attorney for Victim Impact Speakers, a nonprofit organization that assists families and victims of drunk driving crashes. He has worked for Mothers Against Drunk […]
Posted inOpinion
Teaching Millennials some manners
In an article for The New Yorker, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, a social network that has had its problems with privacy, claimed that privacy is an “evolving social norm.” Since the death of Tyler Clementi, the college student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge because his dorm-mate used a webcam to broadcast […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Angel of Death Row
Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer. Andrea D. Lyon. Kaplan Publishing, 2010. Hardcover. $24.95. Kindle edition $9.99, contains only “A Mother Accused,” a single chapter of the hardcover book. Andrea Lyon was dubbed the “Angel of Death Row” in an article in the Chicago Tribune. She was the first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Late-in-life journey
In an old Cher movie called Moonstruck, Olympia Dukakis is talking to her 40-plus-year-old daughter (Cher) about getting married and having a baby. Cher protests that she’s too old for a baby. Olympia says, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Yet most of us think of old age as a time of reflection rather than […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The man who emptied death row
November 8, 1994, the day George Ryan was reelected secretary of state, Ricardo Guzman, a Mexican native, was driving a truck on I-94 near Milwaukee. A bracket over a mud flap assembly dangled from the rear of his truck. Other truckers tried to warn him over their CB radios, but Guzman understood no English. Next […]
Posted inOpinion
The examined life
Last week I drove to the Avon Theater in Decatur to see Capote. I shouldn’t have to do that, but here we are, a few years into the 21st century, and the local theaters still avoid running films with gay content. Most of the films that the folks at Kerasotes run are Hollywood blockbusters such […]
Posted inNews
Why teens still smoke
“The last cigarette smokers in America were located in a box canyon south of Donner Pass in the High Sierra by two federal tobacco agents in a helicopter who spotted the little smoke puffs just before noon.” –Garrison Keillor, “End of the Trail” I tell my students that when Garrison Keillor wrote this satire in […]
