The Scots poet Robert Burns famously said (I’m using the version in English) “Oh, would some power gift us / To see ourselves as others see us!” For me, that power turned out to be YouTube. I am a latecomer to the video blog posts of transportation planning and engineering consultant Ray Delahanty, known professionally as […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inJames Krohe Jr.
Dumb. Outmoded. Unusable.
When people who live in the rest of Illinois complain about being fleeced by the sharpers in Springfield, they usually refer to state legislators, but the locals used to be pretty good at it too. Drop by the Levee district a century ago and you were likely to leave a poorer but wiser man, having […]
Posted inOpinion
Power grab
Cyrus the Great of Persia was a king who lived in the fifth century before Christ. An able general, Cyrus used both force and diplomacy to bring under his sway now-forgotten kingdoms such as the Median Empire, Lydia, even, eventually Babylonia. The territory of southwest Sangamon County is seldom compared to ancient Babylonia, except maybe by […]
Posted inOpinion
Illinois’ George Washington
Every December, Illinoisans celebrate the commonwealth’s admission to the Union as the 21st state in 1818. Well, some do. Actually, hardly any do. Most Illinoisans seem reconciled to their membership in the commonwealth but seldom proud of it; a not insignificant number of downstaters hereabouts daydream about secession that might free them of that yoke […]
Posted inOpinion
Scarecrows in the cornfields
Often, when driving on I-55 to and from Chicago, I while away the hours with word games. (How many words mean “dull”?) Until I reach McLean County, that is, when the towers of the Twin Groves Wind Farm come into view. Even though they’ve stood there for years – the farm was built way back […]
Posted inOpinion
Springfield’s city plan at 100
Rampant and haphazard growth after the Civil War left Springfield dirty, dangerous, unhealthful and inconvenient. The race riots in 1908 left the city’s worthy citizens with what we might call a reputational problem, so progressive-minded locals undertook a municipal housecleaning. The 1911 commission reform promised to fix politics. The election that same year of Willis […]
Posted inOpinion
The devil’s trumpets
In the Christian Book of Revelation we read that angels will sound seven trumpets to signal the apocalyptic events that will lead to a new kingdom of Heaven. I heard such a trumpet on my first night in my new apartment and it wasn’t announcing hail or blood or a mountain thrown into the sea. It […]
Posted inOpinion
Cracks in the earth
“Lutheran high school as hellmouth?” is a headline that I’d hoped to read when I heard that the ground at 3500 W. Washington beneath Springfield’s new Lutheran High School opened up beneath it in 2022. Disappointingly, no bloody hand had thrust up out of its grave to pull innocents down into the bowels of the […]
