The article on Illinois Indian language by Michael McCafferty that I referred to in “Mis-say it loud, mis-say it proud” appears in Protohistory at the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia: The Illinois Country on the Eve of Colony (Illinois State Archeological Survey, Studies in Archeology No. 10, Urbana, 2015), a collection of articles edited by […]
Opinion
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Most depressing news of the week– so far
The Chicago Tribune, summarizing the day’s events in the General Assembly: A Senate committee advanced several measures that would overhaul the Illinois Constitution to eliminate the lieutenant governor’s office, replace the flat income tax rate with a graduated system based on income and overhaul how legislative districts are drawn. . . . All of those […]
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Mis-say it loud, mis-say it proud
The French misheard the Indians and the Americans misread the French. I was in the waiting room at the doctor’s office the other day. I’d already read that week’s OK! magazine at home, so instead I picked up a copy of “Illinois Voices: Observations on the Illinois-Miami Language,” by Michael McCafferty, an Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan […]
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No sidelines in fight against climate change
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans hit the streets to protest the environmental effects of more than 100 years of uncontrolled fossil-fueled industrial development. It was the first Earth Day. What was intended to be a college campus teach-in soon spread to every community and city across the United States. It was and remains […]
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Selling off the family silver
Endangered. Photo BY DAVID HINE Bruce Rauner’s campaign to destroy the Illinois State Museum risks losing tourist income, the services of top scientists and administrators and priceless artifacts, not to mention any claim Illinois might make to being a civilized commonwealth. Might there be yet one more loss – the loss of the museum building […]
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It’s tax time, but corporations aren’t paying
Tax Day offers a stark reminder of the difference between those of us who pay all our taxes every year and the big corporations that don’t. While families and small businesses scramble to file their returns each April, multinational corporations are free to indefinitely ignore a $700 billion U.S. tax bill they owe on $2.4 […]
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Being all you can be
This week I dust off a Prejudices column from June 3, 1993, when same-sex marriage was illegal in Illinois and many Springfieldians still believed that same-sex love should be too. Tom Chiola, by the way, went on to serve as a judge of the Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County from 1994 to 2009; he […]
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Too much secrecy in government
We have a secrecy problem. This may seem odd to say during an era in which the most intimate details of individuals’ lives are on display. Yet government is moving behind closed doors, and this is definitely the wrong direction. In fact, I’m dismayed by how often public officials fight not to do the public’s […]
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Ghost houses
When the National Park Service in 1971 took over the blocks of Eighth and Jackson streets around the Lincoln home, it ruthlessly cleared them of any structures that had not been standing when the Lincolns lived there. The resulting grassy lots surrounded by wood fencing look like pastures or paddocks that suggest a country village more than […]
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More jet-age wonders
Space limitations kept me from discussing all of Springfield’s International Style buildings in my recent column on jet-age architecture. You’d think that the basic building model for the state fair and similar expositions is the barn, and so it is at the state fairgrounds, but one of the barns at the Illinois State Fairgrounds is […]
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If you don’t market it, will they come?
Photo by Alan Solomon/Tribune News Service You wouldn’t think that a town that boasts the burial place and the only adult home of a man famed around the world as not only America’s greatest president but America’s greatest citizen, a town furthermore that is just down the road from the reconstructed village where that man […]
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Illinois has seen its share of disasters
Like most states, Illinois has endured its share of disasters during its history. The catastrophes have ranged from natural to manmade, and from industrial to recreational. Some of the worst disasters in state history have involved coal mining. On Nov. 13, 1909, an underground fire broke out in Mine No. 2 at Cherry, in Bureau […]
