Courting favor
On the night of Dec. 7, 2011, a Southern View police officer saw a vehicle run a stop sign and then belatedly stop in the middle of the road, right in front of his cruiser. The officer pulled the driver over and noticed a smell of alcoholic beverages and the driver’s bloodshot eyes. The…
Torch Tuesday Tonight: Agent Orange and more!
Agent Orange performs tonight at Bar None It’s not just Tuesday, it’s Torch Tuesday, which is when hip-hop happens in Springfield. Tonight BET’s 106 & Park finalist Agent Orange brings his barely contained rage and tight freestyle skills to the stage. Also on the bill are the very popular Scooby da Lyricist, HSMG and a…
Downstate Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: no-brainer or non starter?
This past weekend, the SJ-R’s Dave Bakke published a column suggesting that Springfield would be foolish not to start its own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, honoring regional acts. This exhortation was somehow inspired by the fact that Bakke was prevented by weather conditions from attending the recent induction ceremony for his native South…
Iffy prognosis
In “Midlevel Health Jobs Shrink,” Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Casselman analyzes a trend I noted back in 2011. In “Living too high off the hog” (March 3, 2011) I warned that while Springfield’s booming health care economy was sound enough over the short term, its longer-term prognosis is not so positive. The boom relies…
Shining Path
.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default } Cinephiles and horror fans itching for a road trip can rejoice this weekend as Champaign’s redoubtable Art Theater Co-op hosts a double feature of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining…
Superfast road to the future
James Krohe Jr. In “Unplugged” (March 28, 2013) I wondered aloud about why Illinois’ internet service is so backward. Certainly one of the factors is the near-monopoly of such service enjoyed by the big telecommunications firms. It’s an interesting topic about which more might be said. Is the solution more competition to bring down prices…
School district seeks to rebuild trust
The Springfield School Board took the first steps on Monday night toward rebuilding parents’ trust in the district, following the leak of test data from a besieged middle school. The board unanimously voted to accept the resignation of two district employees involved in the test score leak, providing a measure of closure for parents who…
Mad genius
Springfield Theatre Center presents the four-person play, Proof, on two weekends, April 26-28, May 3-5. The story of love, trust, sacrifice and the disputed line between madness and genius, centers on Catherine, who cares for her genius but mentally unstable mathematician father, Robert. Robert dies and comes back in flashbacks as Catherine tries to prove…
Saving our ravaged planet … and ourselves
Earth Day cometh – the 43rd year of this national focus on the state of our globe. So, how is Earth doing? Should we be weeping … or cheering? Both. The first step to any recovery is recognition of the obvious: Earth has a problem. In fact, beaucoup of them. For example, despite the squawking…
Rhythm and improv
Springfield Jazz Society’s Spring Brunch will be held Sunday, April 28, starting at 12:30 p.m. in Lincoln at The Maple Club. Featured along with a tasty brunch buffet is the Rob Killam Quartet with vocals by Nathan Carls. Playing mainstream jazz and classic big band hits, the group consists of Curtis Atchley, keyboard; Michael Kennedy,…
COP CRIB
The Enos Park neighborhood has some real momentum going these days. On the heels of a beautiful new duplex on Fifth Street, built by Habitat for Humanity of Sangamon County to look like it was built a century ago, the Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement Association announced the renovation of a house on Eighth Street that…
Kirwan, Foster and Lincoln
What do the songs “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races” (“doo-dah, doo-dah”) and “Old Folks at Home” (“… way down upon the Swanee River”) all have in common? Other than most of you are now humming the tunes of these immensely popular songs, they were all written by the famed, mid-19th century American composer, Stephen Foster. Now…
Letters to the Editor 4/25/13
CLEARING CLINTON Jon Gray Noll’s complaint about Bill Clinton being picked for the Lincoln prize left me thinking “really?” (April 18, “Bill Clinton picked for Lincoln prize? Really?”) Specifically, in this forum’s limited space, two things come to mind. First, “… the Monica Lewinsky investigation ….” No such thing. There was the “Independent Counsel In…
Chicago and Downstate live in two different gun worlds
Continuing gun violence in Chicago and the right to carry a concealed firearm are at the center of a heated debate in the Illinois House. Different social climates in Chicago and downstate Illinois have stirred up a political storm that has brought lawmakers to a standstill on the issue. “The only hunting that’s happening in…
Pines a haunting look at the sins of two fathers
There’s no question that writer/director Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, is an ambitious film, the sort of work that intelligent filmgoers long to see. It tackles profound themes in an intelligent and artful way. He sets out to make a masterpiece with this Modern Greek tragedy and he nearly succeeds. This tale about…
DOCTORS GIVE DOLLARS
The Sangamon County Medical Society Alliance awarded 11 grants to 10 local nonprofit organizations and three Medical Alliance Health Program certificates. The grants were given to organizations that provide: community vegetable gardens, parent and child cooking classes, hot meals to children after school, bullying awareness programs, parent counseling and support, medical care and prescriptions, children’s…
Keeping it real
Mbanna Kantako is on a roll. From his rental house just off North Grand Avenue in Enos Park, the 54-year-old blind man talks about the advent of spring and the need to till the soil. He speaks of pollution, the Great Spirit, expectations that people gain responsibility with age and the Boston Marathon bombing, not…
Keen on green
Celebrate Earth Day with the City of Springfield at Earth Fair on Saturday, April 27. Activities will be held downtown this year at Union Station Museum and Park just west of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. Browse an array of vendors who will offer environmentally friendly products and services available in our area. Bring your…
Celtic folk
Celtic duo Switchback performs at the Hoogland Center for the Arts on April 26. The musical group featuring Brian FitzGerald and Martin McCormack will play Americana and traditional Celtic tunes. One of the pair’s songs from their first album was used by Chevrolet to promote their Chevy Blazer. “The Fire That Burns” was selected as…
marathon poem #2
marathon poem #2 two unbidden pictures keep fillingmy head neither from tv screens onethat kid younger than my grandsonslying in his pooled blood in the beachedboat waiting for the inevitable he’dsurely gathered news on his flight thedead 8-year-old others with shatteredbodies severed limbs did he feel anyremorse was it all rage defiance hismother screamed I…
Tired of budget shenanigans? Here’s an answer.
With the formal release of President Obama’s budget, the pieces are finally in place for a reprise of the Washington drama we’ve all come to know. There will be high-stakes negotiations, lines in the sand, and enough intrigue to keep Beltway insiders riveted by every piece of breaking news. The rest of us, though, are…
Keeping Springfield weird
No parent ever has an ugly baby. Even if the little darling has a head that looks like a cantaloupe from the bottom of the pile, parents don’t like strangers stating the obvious. People are the same way about their hometowns. Back in March, the SJ-R’s Dave Bakke gallantly strode forward to defend Springfield against…
Narrative déjà vu haunts Oblivion
There’s no question that Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion is a well-crafted film, sporting a unique vision of a dystopian future that delivers on the promise the director showed with his first movie TRON: Legacy. The visuals he employs are imaginative and crisply rendered as is the flair with which he presents them. Too bad the same…
CW Ayon
New Mexican bluesman CW Ayon (pronounced “I own”) began his adventure as a one-man band in 2008. Playing what he terms his “Hill Country Blues, Chihuahuan Desert, hook-laden groove,” on two bass drums, a rocking blues guitar and blazing harmonica with a gritty voice rising above it all, CW truly makes one very large sound…
The manufactured crisis over Illinois pensions
Practically everyone knows that Illinois’ public pension systems are only about 45 percent funded. But not everyone knows that 45 percent is actually an improvement over the 40 percent funding of the past. The historical record of Illinois’ 1970 Constitutional Convention shows the state’s unfunded pension liability wasn’t considered a crisis when delegates included a…
Both sides sticking to their guns
During the House floor debate over the National Rifle Association-backed concealed carry bill last week, I was told by an intimate of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan that the Speaker wanted to make sure the bill received no more than 64 votes. Because the bill preempts local government home rule powers, the bill required a…
The goodness of granola
It used to be “the lumpy woolen sweater of the food world” according to an article in the New York Times last February. It’s true that for those of us who can remember the 1960s and 70s, it can still have a vague whiff of counterculture. And it’s still regarded as inherently healthy, although these…
Fry, fry again
I walked into my apartment and, to my horror, thought my boyfriend had been electrocuted. He was sprawled on the kitchen floor by an open electrical outlet with wires sticking out. There was a screwdriver near him, and the skin on his arm and hand was discolored. I ran over and started crying and shaking…
