Letters to the Editor
Cops save lives I am writing in response to your Guestwork article: “Cops: Why we love ’em and hate ’em,” [by George A.M. Heroux, IT, Feb. 5]. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) more than 13,000 lives were lost across America in speeding-related traffic crashes in 2005. Of those lives lost, 24…
Dinner with the Mafia
The Cubs-White Sox rivalry runs deep in Illinois, and plays a significant part in Bob Bartel’s Dinner with the Mafia, an interactive and locally produced show with two performances on Saturday, Feb. 14. Actor, producer and comedian Steven Snyder, who lives in Chatham, describes the play as a “whodunit murder mystery comedy.” The plot, he…
Better facilities planned for the homeless
Springfield’s homeless and their advocates have long promoted the idea of a separate day center, but as two local nonprofits expand their space and services, that need could be eliminated. The Salvation Army began its search for a new site more than four years ago, after the needs of its homeless shelter and community center…
Food for love
Tita’s blood [which got into the sauce when she pricked herself on the roses] and Pedro’s roses proved quite an explosive combination. …when Pedro tasted his first mouthful [of the quail in rose petal sauce], he couldn’t help closing his eyes in voluptuous delight…. Tita wasn’t there, even though her body was sitting up quite…
Former guv inspires creativi-T
Hooray, it’s T-shirt weather! Oh sure, the thermometer does not entirely agree, but trust me, we’ve never had more reasons to shuck the wooly turtlenecks and show off our tees. See, all the pain and shame our state has suffered with our governor’s arrest, impeachment and subsequent talk-show circuit tour brought the irresistibly eccentric Rod…
Prelude to the Presidency
Noted historian and author of the best-selling Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin, says that Lincoln’s days in Illinois were “the root of his political education.” Kearns is one of many Lincoln scholars interviewed for WILL-TV’s new documentary, entitled Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency. The one-hour program, which features interviews and reenactments, examines how the…
Springfield’s Music Man meets Our American Cousin
Mark E. Gifford is known throughout the Midwest as a keyboard virtuoso whose concerts at Springfield High School’s restored Orpheum Theater pipe organ are always well attended. But through Feb. 15, at Hoogland Center for the Arts, he plays a piano role as composer and musician in the Springfield Theatre Centre production of Our American…
Buddy Holly tour was scheduled for Springfield “The Day the Music Died”
The musicians of the “Winter Dance Party 1959” played Kenosha, Wis., on Jan. 24 of that year, one of the few stops on an ill-fated sojourn which ended for Buddy Holly in an Iowa farmer’s field on the cold morning of Feb. 3. The tour had been scheduled to continue on to Springfield for a…
Marijuana fines to help city finances
Now that Ward 2 Ald. Gail Simpson pushed through an ordinance that classifies minor drug charges as city code violations instead of as criminal offenses, what effect will it have on Springfield? Simpson introduced the measure to help fill the city’s $12.5 million gap in the fiscal year 2010 budget. Instead of referring such charges…
IT Picks
EMPLOYMENT | Career Fair In today’s job market, a room filled with multiple employers interested in your talents and skills seems like a fantasy, but UIS is making the dream come true at the 11th annual Springfield Collegiate Career Fair. The fair is the most high-profile event to be held at UIS for students seeking…
Filling Lincoln’s shoes, size 14
This week is without precedent in our city’s history. Not only are we celebrating the 200th birthday of Illinois’ favorite son in the community he famously called home, the newly elected leader of the free world, President Barack Obama, also an Illinoisan, has chosen to speak in Springfield at a non-political dinner to commemorate the…
Taylorville coal project moves ahead
To put coal’s importance to the Illinois economy into perspective, consider that while state officials and members of the Congressional delegation tried feverishly to prevent Rod Blagojevich from naming Barack Obama’s successor to the Senate, no one lifted a finger to stop him from signing a bill that cleared the way for a new generation…
The Lincolns’ first home in Illinois
When Abraham Lincoln, his father, stepmother, and step-brother first came to Illinois from Indiana, they settled in a log cabin about three miles west of Decatur on the Sangamon River. The history of that long-gone cabin is a tangle of folklore and interesting facts. The city of Decatur, through its Lincoln Heritage Project, commissioned a…
The chickens are angry about the budget deficit
The chickens are coming home to roost. In fact, more chickens are on their way than we’ve ever seen before. And they’re mad. Gov. Rod Blagojevich spent years ignoring and exacerbating the state’s structural budget deficit. What that means is he did a lot of one-time budget fixes with one-time revenue sources to stem the…
People’s Poetry
sonnet to a furious raccoon you do not understand the ways of men who have a fondness for the furry wild and keep you not through meanness we beguiled you from your natural haunts into a pen we led you fed you fattened you and then carried you in tonight to please a childwe did…
The Pink Panther 2 takes the audience to the bank
There’s one good laugh in The Pink Panther 2 and it’s nothing but a throwaway line. The bungling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) lists all that he misses about his estranged lover, Nicole (Emily Mortimer), and happens to mention that one of her many cats is named Caligula. That’s it, right there, the biggest laugh I…
The rest of the local weeklies
In a column last month I mentioned a few of our standard weekly club shows, giving them the annual plug-in-print. Since then I’ve been accosted by more than one patron of the Springfield scene, wondering why I left out the many other weekly gigs going on around town. My reasoning went that the shows I…
The biggest Lincoln birthday present of all
Proud parent Michael Burlingame has delivered to us a fine 8 lb., 1 oz. baby just in time for the Lincoln Bicentennial. Burlingame, professor emeritus at Connecticut College, has been expectant for approximately one decade. Christened Abraham Lincoln: A Life, this book reflects a ton of hard work at the scholarly salt mines. It is…
Stopping Wall Street’s culture of excess
Bankers have never been much loved, but gollies, this Wall Street bunch seems hell-bent on being loathed. As a consequence of their avaricious grab for outrageous personal enrichment during the past decade, these arrogant titans of financial gimmickry have caused a vast economic collapse that is presently costing millions of Americans their homes, jobs, pensions…
Setting borrowers free
Untitled Document Despite the bad reputation that payday loan stores have, Kevin Slot and the Rev. Charles Jackson aren’t looking to drive payday lenders out of business. Instead, their new organization, In God We Trust referral service, simply provides an alternative for “financially desperate” people. “I’m just grieved whenever I ride by one of those…
