The hunt is on!
When the April days grow warmer and trees begin bursting with buds, the phone at the Main Street Tap in Beardstown starts ringing. “Everybody’s getting itchy,” says Donnie Herter, owner of the bar. No it’s not springtime allergies he’s talking about. It’s the local customers who are eagerly awaiting their first taste of morel mushrooms.…
Overlooked and underappreciated
In a festival that celebrates recorded moments, the highlight may be a live performance. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert’s fifth Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana-Champaign will feature a special benshi performance next week to accompany the Japanese silent film, I Was Born, But. . . A benshi, Ebert explains, was a performer who stood…
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…
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…
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…
Bards of the Sangamo 4-17-03
Opening Day, A.D. 2003 Cold today; Reckon that’s a blessing My numb thumb failed to feel the fish-hook stuck through it; So much blood! Mine–or the trout’s? –John Craig Carpenter Local poets were writing about contemporary events in the Sangamo Journal as early as the 1830s. People’s Poetry wants you to share your thoughts…
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…
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…
Now Playing 4-17-03
Easter weekend is at hand. Hop on down to your nearest bar and check out some music. Pan will be grateful for your fun-loving behavior. The Oohs set up residency at Frankie’s, located in the Jewel-Osco Plaza on South Sixth, starting tonight. The kings of Springfield power pop and melodic rock begin a weekly Oohs-a-thon…
Movie Review- City of God
City of God Although overlooked by the Academy for a Best Foreign Picture nomination, Director Fernando Meirelles’ Brazilian slum epic City of God is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera. The only other…
Your Turn 4-17-03
Rockford wants WUIS To the editor: I am dismayed to learn that some public radio affiliates in Illinois will no longer broadcast the highly acclaimed State Week in Review. Airing weekly from the University of Illinois at Springfield, this panel discussion is an insightful and entertaining look at current topics in Illinois politics and the…
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…
From the top down
One of the stated major objectives of the American war in Iraq is to establish a “democratic” form of government. Yet when we look at the way decisions were made in our war policy, American democracy itself is found to be seriously lacking. The decision to go to war was one of the most important…
