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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Still teaching tolerance
Don’t worry: he’s just going to make a speech and leave. Morris Dees, the famous civil rights attorney who co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, will deliver an address titled “A Passion for Justice” Monday night at Sangamon Auditorium. But he’s not going to hang around long enough to poke into any racial problems Springfield […]
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The War at Home
On Sunday, March 16, George W. Bush flew home from the Azores Islands for a “last day of diplomacy” before starting his war against Iraq. The next day in Peoria, Illinois, Robert Wood faced a war of his own. “There are no jobs,” complained Wood, a 41-year-old general contractor, as he stood outside the office […]
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The right tracks
Last January, a small team of city planners from across the U.S.–known as the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT)–spent a weekend in Springfield sizing up the city. It then released a beautification scheme that included pulling up the Third Street tracks and consolidating them onto the railroad corridor that runs along 10th Street. The Third […]
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Native son
Tucked deep within Joe Williams’ wallet is a yellowed scrap of paper with seven names and seven strings of numbers scrawled in bold handwriting but faded by time. These names and numbers are all Williams has of his family history. This week Williams–who has sky blue eyes and blond hair, now white with age–talked with […]
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Going to waste
Days before the April 1 mayoral election, Tim Davlin dismissed the notion of using CWLP’s billing system to charge residents for waste hauling, a proposal supported by a city solid-waste task force, Mayor Karen Hasara’s 2020 vision plan, and The Springfield Project. Also in January Ward 4 Alderman Chuck Redpath, who backed Davlin, proposed eliminating […]
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Men on the street?
A few weeks ago, a small band of workers fanned out across Springfield with flashlights and clipboards and spent two hours looking for the very folks most of us would cross the street to avoid–the homeless. It was the first time such an extensive search had been conducted in Springfield, says Rita Tarr, supervisor of […]
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Highwayman
Writer John Jermaine has long heard about speed traps in the towns of Edinburg and Rochester, located south of Springfield on Route 29. With the route expanding from two to four lanes, the highway will now skirt around Edinburg. Jermaine decided to check in with Officer Dennis Greenwald, chief of the Edinburg Police Department for […]
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The Case of Sampson’s Ghost
During the summer of 1837 Lincoln represented a widow who claimed an attorney named James Adams stole land from her husband. At the time, Adams was running for probate justice of the peace in Sangamon County, opposed by Lincoln’s friend, Anson Henry. As Adams and Henry campaigned and Lincoln pushed the widow’s case forward, letters […]
