Gay Abe?
It would be difficult to describe all the factual errors and failures in historical judgment in C.A. Tripp’s The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln in a short review. But I will try. I did not know Tripp, though I had heard about his work over the years. From all accounts, he was a generous man with…
Internal bleeding
Just last year, congressional Republicans had a powerful scapegoat in Congress. Anything they couldn’t accomplish, they blamed on Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Unable to confirm President George W. Bush’s controversial judicial nominees? It was the “obstructionist” Daschle’s fault. Couldn’t get the energy bill through the Senate? Daschle was to blame. And then Daschle…
The Lincoln reader
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That high lonesome sound
When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated into his first term, the country did not know much about its new president. Asked to describe his education for a biographical sketch in the Dictionary of Congress, Lincoln replied with one word: “defective.” Members of the cabinet and Congress worried that Lincoln’s backwoods education and inexperience as an administrator…
movie review
Hide from this clunker Is Robert De Niro, arguably the greatest actor of his generation, so insecure that he’d appear in almost any movie that’s presented to him? To look at De Niro’s choices over the last five years, you’d certainly think so. Although no actor who has appeared on the screen for 35 years…
Jacqueline Jackson 2-10-05
lovepoem #1 I don’t know who put the nickel in but the lights are going blinker blinker blinker and the bells are going dinger dinger dinger and I am hanging on like crazy afraid afraid afraid of TILT © Jacqueline Jackson 2005
now playing 2-10-05
It’s not every day a Grammy-winning artist comes to Springfield. In fact, it’s not even every year. Dave Alvin won the award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 2000 for Public Domain, a collection of obscure folk songs. He began his musical adventures in early childhood, listening to old 78s and 45s with his brother,…
Much ado about nothing
The reaction by the religious right to the passage of a gay-rights law in Illinois has been predictably loud and aggrieved. But the law’s critics have universally zeroed in on one key argument: a claim that churches and religious institutions will now be forced by the government to hire gays and lesbians. They’re wrong. Their…
The speed demon’s green dragon
One hundred years ago, automobile racing came to the Illinois State Fair dirt track for the first time when the Springfield Automobile Club sponsored a meet at which the featured driver was the famous Barney Oldfield. By the end of 1905, Oldfield held every dirt-track speed record from one to 50 miles. Although Oldfield’s name…
letters 2-10-05
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 DON’T PIN DNR CUTS ON BLAGOJEVICH I am a Republican election judge…
Train wreck
The Bush administration has threatened to derail the nation’s largest passenger train corporation by eliminating all federal subsidies to Amtrak. The proposal has created a firestorm in Illinois as the state’s political leaders say such a move would cause mass layoffs and isolate many rural communities that depend on train travel. Bush proposed the Amtrak…
Sic semper tyrannis!
Remember writing your first college term paper? Depending on when you were in school, you browsed the library shelves or Googled the Internet. Your title was something profound, like “Avian Images in Poe’s The Raven,” and, to your surprise, you were not the first to think of such a theme. In fact, after dutifully scribbling…
The president’s voice
What if Abraham Lincoln had set to verse his thoughts on the events and people who shaped his extraordinary life? Writer and professor Dan Guillory asked that question and, a couple of years ago, began a series of poems about Lincoln’s life. Written from Lincoln’s perspective, the poems range from mundane subjects to significant events…
common sense 2-10-05
President George W. Bush, inhaling the fumes of his own hubris, has been claiming that he not only won the election but also won a mandate for his policies, including his war in Iraq and his plan to undo our Social Security program. “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” Bush…
Treat your sweetheart to a romantic dinner
There are many culinary ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day, but for Abbas Zolghadr, it’s all about chocolate sauce, a little liquor, and a match. “Anytime you can introduce chocolate sauce and flambé, you have a recipe for romance,” says Zolghadr, the owner of Z Bistro. “It is a perfect finish to a meal.” Z Bistro,…
Two for the show
Visiting the art gallery on the second floor of the Illinois State Museum is comparable to discovering a cookie factory in your neighbor’s garage, two doors away. It may be the best-kept secret in central Illinois, thanks in part to the much greater fame of the museum’s outstanding natural-history collection. ISM’s gallery currently features two…
Shaping a leader
David Herbert Donald has added a valuable supplement to his recent biography of Abraham Lincoln. “We Are Lincoln Men”:Abraham Lincoln and His Friends explores Lincoln’s friendships for which sufficient evidence has survived to permit meaningful analysis. Expressing in his introduction genuine surprise that Lincoln had so few such friendships, Donald then defines friendship in ways both…
sound patrol 2-10-05
John LegendGet Lifted Getting Out Our Dreams/Sony As a producer, rapper, and talent scout, Kanye West effected a kind of hip-hop hegemony in 2004, gobbling up all the industry awards and A-list collaborators, cranking out radio hits like the next Neptunes, and generally imposing his will on a public that was all too ready to…
music notes 2-10-05
Hop on over to the Forty-Niner Bye-Bye (518 Bruns Lane, 217-787-4937) on Saturday, Feb. 12, from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., as the lovely and talented Juanita celebrates her birthday with the Repeat Offenders. Oh yeah, it’s also Abe Somebody’s birthday, but being the teetotaler he was and knowing how Juanita is, you are practically…
Bring back Mom & Pop
Ralph Laughery’s eyes light up when he remembers his neighborhood the way it used to be. “Everybody knew everybody,” he says. “It was an extremely friendly place.” After he was born, in 1932, his parents brought him home from the hospital to the house at 800 N. Seventh St., at the corner of Seventh and…
