A friend of mine recently called Barack Obama. Just dialed his cell number, then fell off his chair when the potential president actually answered. My friend freaked and clicked off without saying anything — stunned that the Democratic nominee for POTUS would personally pick up the telephone. That’s how it is here in Illinois: most […]
Community & Lifestyle
Posted inArts & Culture
Flower power for fall
Just when you think that the perennial garden is starting to fade, fall-blooming anemones add a splash of color to the garden. These prolific bloomers will continue blooming for up to five weeks. As a group, the genus Anemone consists of 100 species of plants, including spring, summer and fall blooming flowers. The fall flowering […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Plug-in hybrids
Should we expect to see “plug-in” hybrid cars anytime soon? Gasoline-electric hybrids now, like Toyota’s popular Prius, don’t need to be plugged in — you just fill their tanks with gasoline and the battery is charged by the internal combustion engine and by energy generated from the wheels when braking (a feature known as regenerative […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Springfield’s riot in context
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of Springfield’s race riots. They left our city with a legacy we will never outlive and perhaps never overcome. As Springfieldians struggle with that legacy, especially this year, it’s helpful to put our city’s riots into a national context, to understand how they fit into the broader history of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Why can’t I grow perfect tomatoes?
One of the biggest joys of summer is eating a juicy ripe tomato. Nothing beats the flavor of a garden fresh tomato on a hamburger, on a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, or cherry tomatoes in a salad. Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow, but sometimes it’s a challenge to produce the picture-perfect fruit. They […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Messages in bottles
At least one float in tonight’s Illinois State Fair parade is going to look like trash. I know, because I saw it Monday afternoon. Designed to suggest a state capitol building, it consists of two main parts — a basic boxy structure and a dome. When I stopped by to see it, the boxy base […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The approaching menace
The Illinois Department of Agriculture announced on July 18 that the emerald ash borer had been spotted in McLean County. In the past six years this pest has killed millions of ash trees in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, as well as Ontario, Canada. Since the emerald ash borer began knocking at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Green roofs
Untitled Document How can a residential or commercial roof be modified to provide environmental benefits? Most buildings are designed to shed rain and so are built with hard, impenetrable roofing surfaces. As a result, rainwater bounces off and collects as runoff, picking up impurities — including infectious bacteria from animal waste, as well as harmful […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Pearson’s legacy
It’s not unusual to find a skeleton in a medical school, but you can’t say the same about an intact Depression-era drugstore, antique bloodletting apparatuses, or a 19th-century dentist’s fainting couch. All of these items can be found at Springfield’s Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. SIU-SM is one of the few medical schools in […]
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Explore our garden wonders
It is hard to believe that children will be going back to school in less than three weeks. Every year it seems like summer goes faster, but I guess it’s just because we are busier. Summer baseball, camps, swim lessons . . . the list goes on and on. What’s missing? Some time for relaxation. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Green-friendly pesticides
What green-friendly lawn and garden pesticides are available today? Pesticides have greatly boosted agricultural yields over the last half century, so it is no wonder, given the commercial availability of many of these synthetic chemicals, that American homeowners apply 100 million pounds of the stuff each year to make their own gardens grow bigger and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Corn plastic no answer
Untitled Document What are the environmental pros and cons of corn-based plastic as an alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastic? Polylactic acid, a plastic substitute made from fermented plant starch (usually corn) is quickly becoming a popular alternative to traditional petroleum-based plastics. As more and more countries and states follow the lead of China, Ireland, South […]
