Thinking Green
Should the question arise as he campaigns downstate, the Rev. Dan Rodriguez-Schlorff plans to answer: “Yes, I identify as queer.” And young. Part Filipino. A minister. A venture capitalist. A former Republican. A Green Party member. It’s a good thing for Rodriguez-Schlorff that most of those qualities don’t necessarily count you out of an Illinois…
Lightweight Lion
With the success of Chicken Little, Disney Studios has shown that it is capable of competing in the computer-animated-film business, even if its wildly successful distribution deal with Pixar Animation is a thing of the past. In producing a big-screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ beloved The Chronicles of Narnia series, the Mouse Factory hopes to…
Serenity then — and again
here are comebacks, and then there are comebacks. The gap between British folksinger Vashti Bunyan’s debut, Just Another Diamond Day, and its follow-up, Lookaftering, lasted 35 years. By music-biz standards, that’s an eternity, at least enough time for one pop tart to be born (or, more accurately, spawned in the lab), to enact three or four…
In the middle
Republican gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka is somewhere in the middle on abortion issues. Because of that, both extremes hate her. Last week, Planned Parenthood and the pro-choice group Personal PAC held a press conference to urge reporters to find out whether Topinka is pro-choice. The groups claim that she has flip-flopped all over the…
Shaping trash into treasure
One person’s trash is another’s treasure, and Dick Oglesby, 76, has taken the old saying to heart by creating a holiday display consisting of old jewelry donated by the women of Oak Terrace Active Retirement Community, where he also lives. “In June, I asked the activities director to ask the ladies if they had any…
Predator
If you lived in Riverton a decade ago, you might remember her.She was the woman who walked through the neighborhood every day for more than a year. She was fat. Gradually the pounds came off until, at last, she became a woman who turned heads. After marrying young and spending her entire adult life as…
Letters to the editor
Letters policy We welcome letters, but please include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number. We edit all letters for libel, length and clarity. Send letters to: Letters, Illinois Times. P.O. Box 5256. Springfield, Illinois 62705. Fax: (217) 753-3958. E-mail: editor@illinoistimes.com BUILD A HEALTHIER SPRINGFIELD I read with wonder the “Up in Smoke”…
Her name was Lisa
Whenever you start a new job in a new town, someone gives you a stack of letters, e-mails, and press releases that no one else was interested in and calls them story ideas. Check these, you’re told — there’s got to be something here to get you started. Usually there isn’t much. In this stack,…
Earth Talk
Dear “Earth Talk”: What’s better for the environment, a fake or real Christmas tree? — R.M. Brandt, Nutley, N.J. Although there is no crystal-clear answer to the age-old “real vs. fake” Christmas-tree debate, most environmentalists, “tree-huggers” among them, would agree that real trees are the better choice, at least from a personal and public-health standpoint.…
Evangelical environmentalism
It’s obvious to even a casual observer that the Lord works wonders in mysterious ways. Just ask Jim Inhofe. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who chairs the U.S. Senate’s environment committee, is the favorite pet of corporate polluters whose industrial emissions are cited by scientists as the leading cause of global warming. Not only has Inhofe…
Jacqueline Jackson
Massachusetts poet J. Lorraine Brown has used an unusual image in “Tintype on the Pond, 1925.” This poem, like many others, offers us a unique experience, presented as a gift, for us to respond to as we will. We need not ferret out a hidden message. How many of us will recall this little scene…
Host with the most
Seems as though everyone knew a beautiful dreamer when they were in high school who said, “I’m heading to California to make it in a rock & roll band.” At Pleasant Plains High, our traveling man was Bill Laymon, and he did go to the land of the do-re-mi — and guess what? He did make…
Primary concerns
Sam Cahnman, a Sangamon County Board member and Democratic candidate for the 99th House District, wants freer elections, but one local party leader and another candidate say that Cahnman is pushing a bad idea. Since late October, Cahnman has been collecting petition signatures to get a referendum on next spring’s ballot asking Springfield voters whether…
American Life in Poetry
Massachusetts poet J. Lorraine Brown has used an unusual image in “Tintype on the Pond, 1925.” This poem, like many others, offers us a unique experience, presented as a gift, for us to respond to as we will. We need not ferret out a hidden message. How many of us will recall this little scene…
Partners in crime
Mr. & Mrs. Smith depicts the fantasy world of hired killers in what approaches comic-book silliness. John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) Smith are the world’s deadliest assassins, yet neither knows the other’s true identity. All marriages have their secrets. They work for rival secret organizations that assign them to the same target, which…
