In this age of computer technology, it’s not surprising that university students are demanding that schools make more courses available by way of the Internet. What is surprising, however, are the specific courses they demand. After all, when was the last time you heard a kid say, “When I grow up, I want to be […]
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Unplugged
Springfield teens are a nomadic lot, though not by choice. It seems that each time they settle into a new funky abode, where they’re free to let their fraying jeans hang low and spike their hair to the high heavens, some outside force comes along to shoo them away. Jerry Roof, a 17-year-old senior at […]
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quick takes 7-22-04
GEORGIA ON HER MIND Like many of the rumors that have circulated about Renatta Frazier — the famously former cop rousted from the Springfield Police Department on the basis of false accusations — the one about her using her settlement check from the city to buy a house in Panther Creek is patently untrue. Frazier […]
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The love bug
The love affair began at age 12, when his father let him take the family’s 1959 Chevy Impala up and down the driveway. Since then, Mario Ingoglia has been captivated by vintage cars — the ones with the heavy chrome grills, strange fins, and unique body styles. He picked up his first, a 1960 Cadillac […]
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Transit fix
Richard Fix says he has heard the same complaints since he became managing director of Springfield Mass Transit District 15 years ago. Perhaps that’s why the SMTD manager appeared bored as several local residents pleaded for the extension of citywide bus service at his agency’s monthly board meeting on Tuesday. “It’s nothing new,” said Fix […]
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The price of justice
As a professor in the Legal Studies program at University of Illinois at Springfield, Larry Golden is used to lecturing students about profound philosophical concepts and traditions of the justice system. But as co-founder of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, he is getting an eye-opening education himself in what he calls “the real nitty gritty” […]
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Navel gazing
On a recent Monday evening, 10 women are gathering in Kari Dotson’s dining room. There is much to do this night, and they arrive ready and dressed for business. As Middle Eastern music fills the air, the barefoot, bare-bellied women, adorned in brightly colored gypsy skirts and tops, begin rehearsing a Gypsy kashlimar, one of […]
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Kerasotes 9/11
Families often fight about what movies to show. But among the members of Springfield’s famous movie-theater clan, the Kerasotes family, Michael Moore’s controversial new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 has produced very different reactions. The biggest-grossing documentary in history, Fahrenheit 9/11 is drawing more customers to movie theaters than most big-budget Hollywood films do. But it still […]
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Coming together
It all began with a serial burglar. Some two years ago, in midafternoon, an intruder looted jewelry and electronics from Erin Conley’s home on the edge of Lincoln Park. The incident marked the second residential burglary that day on Conley’s block of North Fourth Street. The break-ins led Conley to help initiate a neighborhood-watch program, […]
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Grace about town 7-22-04
OK, things are getting a little out of hand here. Not in a bad way, though; on the contrary, things just keep getting better and better. I’m not just talking about My New Boyfriend, also known as MNB — although, of course, he’s in the subtext of everything in my life now. It was a […]
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Goodbye, Glenn
As co-anchor of the WICS-TV (Channel 20) 5 a.m. news show, Sunrise Today, Glenn McEntyre has spent the past couple of years living life on the same schedule as a newborn — slumbering by sunset, awake before dawn, sounding annoyingly cheerful and looking infuriatingly fresh. But that’s appropriate, because McEntyre was just cutting his broadcast-journalism […]
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Revisionist history
A former University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor has denounced recent efforts to recreate what is considered the country’s first town founded by an African American. Prominent black history scholar Dr. Juliet E. K. Walker charges that those now leading a federally funded archaeological dig in Pike County, Ill., are “distorting” history and “discrediting” her […]
