Oct. 2 is the deadline for Union Pacific and Illinois Department of Transportation to submit their request for $2.3 billion of federal stimulus funds, which will allow UP to construct an additional rail line to service their new freight distribution center in Joliet, as well as increase the number of passenger trains between St. Louis […]
Opinion
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Life in the Big House
Now we know. The reason that Rod Blagojevich disdained the governor’s mansion in Springfield was to save his kids from, well, the mansion. “Growing up in a big governor’s mansion, surrounded by staff is not normal,” Blagojevich writes in The Governor. “We didn’t want our children growing up spoiled with a sense of privilege and […]
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Stopped by a train
In the early 1850s, the brand new Alton & Sangamon Railroad needed a north-south track corridor through the capital city. The City of Springfield also needed a railroad, so the city council granted the A&S a right-of-way for its tracks along Third Street. Through the city, mind you, not around it. The city center was […]
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Who gets the last word?
Poet and critic Helen Vendler has observed that an epitaph is a form of lyric that must, among other traits, “assert a final judgment.” Ah, but whose? Composing the words to adorn one’s gravestone is one of those end-of-life chores that most people put off until it’s too late, like telling the kids about that […]
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Band-aid won’t help cancer of racism
Answer: Diagnosis determines treatment.* I’m old enough to remember how much I, like millions of other Johnny Carson fans, looked forward to the visits by Karnack the Magnificent to The Tonight Show. Karnack would always have the answers before he knew the questions. Wouldn’t it be great if we all had that skill? What I […]
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Stuck in the ’70s
Last fall, the University of Illinois trustees approved the most recent UIS campus development master plan. The document maps the preferred locations of hoped-for new student housing and office and classroom buildings. Also provided for, at least on paper, is a much-expanded athletics complex — NCAA-standard baseball stadium and practice field, a golf driving range […]
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High-speed rail should use 10th St. tracks
It has taken many years, a lot of hard work, tax dollars and private investor dollars to turn our downtown into a revitalized, vibrant central city brimming with tourists, commerce and nightlife. But all this may come to a screeching halt if the Third St. rail corridor is improved with our federal tax dollars to carry […]
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Six days a week
A while back, I remarked on the spreading use of the so-called year-round school calendar to remedy so-called summer learning loss. (See “The Pause that Regresses,” Aug. 13.) The start of another real new school year brings to mind questions left unasked in that piece. What about the learning that is lost the rest of […]
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Women’s equality: Are we there yet?
Each year, on Aug. 26, we celebrate Women’s Equality Day to pay tribute to those brave suffragists, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells Barnett, who led the struggle for American women to win the most critical tool of democracy — the right to vote. Women today not only have the right […]
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Everyone saw a crash coming
Imagine that while you’re on an airplane nearing its destination, the pilot announces that there’s not enough fuel to land safely. The plane could be refueled in mid-air, but the crew won’t do it. The pilot must determine whether to steer the aircraft to a crash on land or in the water. But before he […]
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Dem bones
The scam was, said the Sun-Times, “every family’s nightmare.” Maybe not. Some families’ nightmare is that Uncle Delbert will come back from the dead to live with them. But news of the foul burial plot at Alsip’s Burr Oak Cemetery was unsettling. Caskets and their contents were removed from at least 300 graves that were […]
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The pause that regresses
The kids at District 186’s Southern View elementary school began classes in July again this year. The school is one of two in the district that operate what is almost always called year-round school, even though “year-round” school it isn’t. What is also known as the balanced or all-year schedule is merely the same part-time […]
