The persistence of vision is a wonderful thing. I can still see my father handing over a few dollars to a man bathed in a single white light, his head swarming with moths and June bugs swirling up to the light and the neon sign above. We move into the darkness, slowly rolling into the […]
News
Posted inNews
The other election
Springfield District 186 has won awards. But it also has ten schools on the state’s Early Warning List–schools with more than half the students failing to meet state standards two years in a row. It routinely wins grants for reading, technology, science, and math. Yet most of its black students perform below state standards, while […]
Posted inNews
Husch-hush investigation
It was the kind of lawsuit that seemed almost hopeless. The Winchester ammunitions plant in East Alton had laid off about a quarter of its salaried employees, and a group of these workers banded together to sue, claiming age discrimination. A similar case, filed by a single worker, had already resulted in a $850,000 judgment […]
Posted inNews
Look before you leap
Taking early retirement is good if it means drawing a comfortable salary while no longer working for it. But for many state employees, early retirement means looking for another job or standing in line at the unemployment office. “A lady who took early retirement about four months ago came to see me,” says State Senator […]
Posted inNews
War stories
“War is Hell,” according to William Tecumseh Sherman. Ovbiously, he knew what he was talking about. Watching the invasion of Iraq on television, writer John Jermaine wondered about the naivete of the young soldiers under fire. What did they expect before they entered battle? He decided to visit with three older veterans of foreign wars […]
Posted inNews
Money for Nothing
On January 13 Governor Rod Blagojevich announced that the state was in danger of spending $5 billion more than it takes in this year. The next day a report appeared criticizing the state for having put hundreds of millions of dollars a year into feel-good economic development programs that aren’t paying off. Taxpayers, it made […]
Posted inNews
History in the making
November 8 was cold and windy, with gray, overcast skies threatening rain, but that didn’t stop a group of archaeologists and volunteers from walking over a tilled field about 65 miles west of Springfield. They were looking for remnants of the past. The field was once part of New Philadelphia, the first American town founded […]
Posted inNews
Earth first
Now that the Democrats have control of the statehouse, expect to see these environmental issues on the legislative agenda: • Thanks to a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision, more than 150,000 acres of isolated wetlands in Illinois no longer have any federal protection. Only three Illinois counties–DuPage, Kane, and Lake–have laws to protect wetlands, making […]
Posted inNews
Our radon risk
Sometimes it’s not what we put into the environment that kills us–it’s what’s already there. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only smoking tobacco, killing 15,000 to 20,000 people annually. Sangamon County has some of the highest radon readings in Illinois: More than one in […]
Posted inNews
The dog ate their homework
Kathy Hulcher is standards coordinator for Springfield Public School District 186, which means she’s in charge of making kids take all those achievement tests. And when Kathy Hulcher heard this yarn a couple of weeks ago, she thought it was an April Fool’s joke. It’s not. But it could make an interesting story problem. So […]
Posted inNews
SPD’s “Culture of Deniability”
The Springfield Police Department had no legitimate excuse for failing to correct erroneous and salacious accusations against former officer Renatta Frazier, according to the summary of a report released last Tuesday night. Furthermore, the summary says, many people in the department knew the truth and had multiple opportunities to remedy the situation. The Peoria law […]
Posted inNews
Splitting hares
About ten years ago, a few Christian students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were bemoaning the commercialization of Easter. “We were talking about how all the important Christian holidays have been commercialized or their actual meaning ruined or subverted,” says Mattox Beckman, who’s completing his doctorate in computer science. Beckman wanted to turn […]
