Letters to the Editor
Untitled Document We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com. I’M PRO-CHOICE AND ANTI-ABORTION As someone who truly is pro-choice, I think I can answer Paul Gesterling’s questions [“Letters,” April 24].…
Scallions vs. green onions
Untitled Document Q. What’s the difference between scallions and green onions? Can one be substituted for the other? — Bill A. There is no difference. Zip, nada, zilch. Whether they’re called scallions or green onions seems to be largely a matter of geography. In the mid-Atlantic coastal states and New England they’re more likely to…
Selecting the best crabapple tree
Untitled Document The recent warm temperatures, it seems, have caused all of our spring-blooming plants to flower at once. Some of the most noticeable bloomers right now are the crabapple, flowering dogwood, and redbud. These trees are showstoppers, adding splashes of brilliant color to the landscape. Although it is tempting to select a tree on…
Suited up for fun
Untitled Document As of late the big question regarding Jon Favreau’s Iron Man hasn’t been whether it will please the comic geeks who are eagerly awaiting it but, rather, whether there will be any surprises left when it hits the screen. In a massive ad campaign to raise awareness of the character — not as well…
What’s a Creole?
Untitled Document Dr. Sybil Kein was devastated after Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans. The storm destroyed not only her home, her car, and her 5,000-plus books but also her entire collection of Louisiana French Creole research — one of the largest in the world. Kein began traveling in the 1970s from the University of…
The pigeon
Untitled Document “It had better be a job where you can make some money.” That, apparently, was what Gov. Rod Blagojevich told Ali Ata about Ata’s quest for a state job during Blagojevich’s Navy Pier fundraiser in 2003 — an event that pulled in almost $4 million for the governor and appears to have put…
The corporate McCain
Untitled Document Who is John McCain? His spinmeisters paint a picture of him as a straight talker, Washington outsider, maverick reformer, determined foe of the special interests, champion of the average Joe. Gosh, what a guy — only that guy is not the real John McCain. The real one is the corporate suit who has…
Burning wood
Untitled Document Every time I eat at the Lake Pointe Grill, I feel a twinge — and sometimes more than a twinge — of jealousy. It’s not because I want a restaurant that’s been busy since the day it opened. That naïve dream died years ago when I found out just how complex and difficult…
People’s poetry
Untitled Document shimmypoem #1 the letters to my dad atcollege exhorted studyfrugality morality on thissubject grama sent clippingsa madison pastor saying nosin among those that over-whelmed ancient civilizationsis not rampant now this sheunderlined and a chicagoproprietor of the midwest’slargest public dancehall saidhe would urge all dancehalloperators to ban the shimmywoddle toddle drag-waltzshuffle-step tango and cheek-to-cheek…
Cap City
Untitled Document NOT SINGING THE BLUES We’ll just go ahead and call it a Cinderella story. At the beginning of their season, we said the Springfield Jr. Blues wouldn’t go down without a fight, and, boy, they lived up to the expectation. They ended up losing the Central Division Championship to the Alexandria Blizzard last weekend,…
We must do better
Untitled Document As our economy sputters, utility bills soar, the number of home foreclosures skyrockets, and pollution builds, wouldn’t it be great to have a solution that addressed all these problems at once, one that didn’t require higher taxes or a greater burden on Illinois’s stretched budget? Although it may not sound sexy, increased energy…
Flying green
Untitled Document Measured by pollution, airlines are one dirty business. What efforts to “green” the air-travel industry are under way? Environmental battles over the siting and expansion of airports are as old as the air-travel industry itself, but only in recent years have the airlines themselves been under pressure to go green. And there’s no…
Revolutionary spirit
Untitled Document Until last weekend, the biggest party Joshua Foster ever hosted was a backyard cookout attended by 50 people. Then he got this crazy idea to host a festival at Harvard Park Elementary to raise money for musical instruments and art supplies. He lined up enough bands to fill two stages all day, art…
In Lincoln’s voice
Untitled Document I’ve been reading, over the past week, the 61 poems and their commentaries that make up Dan Guillory’s The Lincoln Poems. It’s been a more moving experience than I thought possible — not that I doubted the poems, but I’ve never been a “sustained” poetry reader, and I have also been so surrounded…
Free jazz and cool country
Untitled Document What do free jazz and cool country have in common? For our purposes, nothing much except time and place: Performers of the two musical genres make appearances in central Illinois during the next week. For once can we please leave the “It’s free because no one will buy it” jokes at home and…
Grammar and the governor
Untitled Document Punctuation and grammar, used well, can not only make us communicate better, and look better for having done so, they can also make us feel better. Commas and colons and active-voice sentences can even make us be better persons, argues Lawrence A. Weinstein in his new book, Grammar for the Soul: Using Language…
California dreamer
Untitled Document One man’s medicine is another man’s . . . felony charge? Guy Lewis Shively, a 19-year-old California native, learned that lesson the hard way Monday when he was arrested near Nashville, Ill., for possession of more than 30 grams of cannabis. Shively and his buddy Mike Frank were driving from California to North…
Dog gone
Untitled Document Nick Bartolomucci admits that his dog Pepper was an amazing creature. Rescued by Bartolomucci as a starved, dehydrated, mangy 5-month-old pup, the pit bull/Labrador retriever mix returned the favor by nursing Bartolomucci through the death of his mother, the breakup of a 19-year romance, and the loss of his job. “He was my…
Friend-in-Deed in need
Untitled Document For 10 years, Barry Locher was responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships with key Springfield businesses, double-checking hundreds of pages of information, ordering corrections, working within a limited budget, and meeting deadlines — and when he wasn’t doing all that he was running the newsroom of Springfield’s daily newspaper, the State Journal-Register. In…
