Editor’s Note

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof noted this week that President Joe Biden has been talking increasingly tougher to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the humanitarian toll in Gaza caused by Israel’s war tactics. But Netanyahu continues to ignore the White House. Kristof quoted Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan, speaking to an American in 1967. […]

A group that has organized 103 annual banquets can be expected to know how to manage conflict with understanding and forgiveness. At its event Sunday, the Springfield branch of the NAACP kept its program moving while its usually vocal local director, Teresa Haley, sat quietly at a front table. Nobody said anything about her having […]

Several at the graveside service said they were surprised at the size of the crowd, 50 or so, that assembled at Oak Ridge Cemetery that sunny morning last week. They didn’t know “Cowboy” Bob McClure, who was 68 when he died Feb. 12, had so many friends. I knew him as a neighbor who would […]

Here’s an appeal for readers to be writers. We all know “senior moments” have gotten bad press lately, as tired politicians occasionally wander. But seniors have a lot of moments, and few of them involve forgetfulness. For the spring edition of Illinois Times’ quarterly magazine REGEN, we’re collecting stories about Golden Senior Moments. These touches […]

Waste Management’s quick exit from providing residential garbage service in Springfield may stir up calls for reform of Springfield’s antiquated and inefficient system of private haulers contracted by individual homeowners. There is little enforcement of the rule that requires each residence to have trash service, so rampant fly dumping plagues neighborhoods. Maybe the city needs […]

Thank you to history columnist Tom Emery for reminding readers (p. 10) that this is the 75th anniversary of Adlai Stevenson II becoming governor of Illinois. Less than four years later, Gov. Stevenson would become our state’s gift to the nation, famously beginning his first presidential campaign with, “Let’s talk sense to the American people.” […]

No wonder he got Nikki mixed up with Nancy; they’re both from his same nightmare. The worst fear of a would-be strongman is a strong woman, and Nikki Haley is strong in the right places. Running against a character, she has character, along with political experience and life experience. She knows race and racism from […]

It was a coalition of the challenged, this group of 750 or so Springfielders who came together Monday for the Martin Luther King Day breakfast, the 49th annual event hosted by Frontiers International. Here, wearing the gold coat of the Frontiers and taking tickets at the door, was a prominent leader of Illinois Republicans, surely […]

We’re hearing that democracy is on the ballot in this presidential election year. But it’s such a vague concept. Will it sell? Voters care about inflation, the border, interest rates, etc. What is democracy anyway? The ballot box, of course, and majority rule, including peaceful transfer of power. Government of, by and for the people, […]

We spent much of our holiday break reading Adam Nagourney’s 2023 history of the last 40 years or so at the New York Times. It’s called The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism. Unlike Gay Talese’s 1969 history of one of the world’s great newspapers, The Kingdom […]

The Springfield Immigrant Action Network and its president, Veronica Espina, had the most helpful response to recently exposed divisive anti-immigrant rhetoric from Teresa Haley, Illinois NAACP president. “We need to stop using the lenses in which we see ‘us’ versus ‘them,’” SIAN said in a statement. “What we need instead is an analysis in which […]

It is the world’s largest bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, so of course it knows better than to continue to operate a small downtown Springfield branch if it can save a little money by sending small customers like me to the far east or far west edges of town. I should have known when the bank […]