Building a better Park
The small makeshift rock club overflows with fans. Kids line the walls, standing on ledges and leaning in to cop a view. The lead singer strikes the first chord on his guitar. The crowd moves and breathes as a single organism. Heads nod in time with the beat; earnest faces mouth the emotional lyrics. Springfield…
The essence of beauty
He is dressed as a cowboy and looks to be about 6, which, according to my (admittedly yet unpublished) Rules of Diner Etiquette, is about two years too old to be leaning over the back of his booth, interrupting my reading, and talking to me unannounced. His mother has something bolted through her nose. The…
Wronged Again
After paying former Springfield Police officer Renatta Frazier some $650,000 to settle her race-discrimination suit, city officials undoubtedly hoped to put the whole unpleasant scandal in the rearview mirror. Frazier had the same hope, according to a letter she sent this week to Springfield Office of Budget and Management director Ken Crutcher. However, her letter…
This old house
Some ideas look great on the Hollywood drawing board — and that’s exactly where Gil Kenan’s Monster House should have stayed. I’m sure it all looked great on paper: a film about a malevolent house that eats young kids and pets, with the motion-capture technique used in The Polar Express to bring it to life.…
How to swing a Sierra club
Nobody likes deals done in secret, or under the threat of a lawsuit, but the substance of the Sierra Club deal with City Water, Light & Power is excellent. It gets Springfield involved in wind energy, as well as promotion of energy efficiency and conservation, while reducing emissions of harmful gases and cutting down on…
People’s Poetry
It became clear shortly after my daughter turned 13 that there was not enough breathable air in Springfield for both of us. We suffered through until finally, at 17, she found a way to trim a semester off the four-year sentence she’d been serving at Springfield High School. She bought a 25-year-old Buick and drove…
In a jam with a door
Dear Gene: Our front door won’t stay open. It keeps swinging shut on its own. What’s wrong, and how can we fix it? The door or its frame is slightly out of plumb (not perfectly vertical), which causes it to swing shut. You could restore the door to plumb using a level and shifting the…
Cork screwed
Dear “Earth Talk”: What is better for the environment, cork wine stoppers or plastic or screw tops? — Susan Wolniakowski, Duluth, Minn. Though you might be surprised, natural cork wine stoppers are the best choice, mainly because harvesting the real stuff is an age-old practice that keeps the world’s relatively small population of cork oak…
Taming the tricky eggplant
Of the seemingly infinite possibilities at summer produce stands, the eggplant is among the trickiest. She’s a real looker, all right, showing off her shiny, buxom bosom that comes in shades of majestic purple, light green, or ecru. “It’s so gorgeous, I just have to get one,” is a line I’ve heard at the farmers’…
Ready, set, the tomatoes are here!
At the beginning of the month there was just the tiniest trickle of tomatoes. One of the earliest varieties is the aptly named “Fourth of July.” The tomatoes from this plant are small — about the size of a golf ball — but provide a true taste of summer flavor. The trickle has now widened…
Pumping out more ads
Corporate advertisers are concerned — concerned that there still are a few moments in our lives when we hear no ads at all. Take, for example, when we’re pumping gas. There we are, with our hand on the hose, watching the numbers roll by, and what are we doing? Probably thinking about our plans for…
Does anyone feel a draft?
In a story that barely made a ripple in the press, save for a handful of military publications, the U.S. Army upped its maximum age for recruitment last month from 40 to 42, according to Army Times, to avoid “a repeat of last fiscal year’s recruiting shortfall.” In January 2005, Rolling Stone magazine reported on…
Purslane – nuisance or nosh?
This weekend, my 4-year-old daughter enjoyed pulling weeds in our herb garden. Because purslane was the only weed in the garden, it was easy for her to differentiate it from the other plants. Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea), also called little hogweed, is a summer annual with succulent thick leaves and stems. The smooth-edged leaves, rounded…
Letters to the Editor
We welcome letters, but please include your full name, address, and daytime telephone number. We edit all letters for libel, length, and clarity. Send letters to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com. NOW LISTEN TO ME . . . I am a veteran of the first Gulf War,…
Did you know Tom?
My boss died unexpectedly. I knew something was amiss when I pulled into the parking lot and there stood our building supervisor, Richie D, holding the door open. He’s done that only once before, the morning after twin tornadoes struck Springfield and we lost electricity. The building, an old brick church, looked dark again, but…
Self-loathing as art
Lisa Germano’s publishing company is called Emotional Wench, a name that is, to quote Homer Simpson, funny because it’s true. In the annals of indie dysfunction, few singer/songwriters have plumbed the poetics of self-loathing as rigorously as Germano has. Since 1991, when the former John Mellencamp violinist released her solo debut, she’s been singing about…
A little help from their friends
There will be no more singing around the piano at the Phoenix Center, for a couple of reasons: First, because — well, there never was any warbling around the ivories at this AIDS-prevention and service facility, which is why board members were so angered to discover that the instrument had cost the organization thousands of…
Walk this way
Recently I was going through a pile of bar-napkin notes and crumpled business cards, looking for any important lost messages, and I found a note from Jim Wavering, owner/operator of Marly’s Pub. It was from sometime in spring of 2004, I think (yes, I know that’s a long time to keep a bar-napkin note) and…
Nuts for these Brazilians
In the music industry, second chances are like flying saucers, so rarely seen that they beg the question “Do they really exist?” And yet, on very rare occasions, a once-promising musician or group, seemingly vanished, will resurface, bigger than ever. Before British folk singer Vashti Bunyan became matriarch to the “New Weird America” musicians, she…
No escape
Last spring, I asked a high-level official in the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich about allegations that political insiders were getting state contracts and jobs. Over late-night cocktails, he assured me that he’d researched the subject “pretty carefully” and didn’t think that anybody was in any serious legal danger. “For any of this to be…
Repainting aluminum siding
Dear Gene: My house has aluminum siding. The finish is faded and deteriorated. Can I successfully repaint the siding? — M.K. Aluminum siding can be successfully repainted, but there is some controversy about how to do it. I have seen instructions that call for using an acrylic paint and no primer except on bare spots,…
