The Army gets personal
Hey, youngsters — not only does Uncle Sam wants you, but he’s also got your number! Not yet sure what you want to do in life? Why not get paid and see an exotic part of the world while you’re getting it all together? Yes, you could summer in sunny Iraq — and be a…
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 AGAINST TAX BREAKS TO WEALTHY Nice job on the Wal-Mart piece explaining…
Target Springfield
They hated America and wanted to make a point by killing Americans. Too bad they got hungry, because, had police reacted in time, one of the hostages might still be alive. Illinois State Police Capt. Rob Haley struggled to explain the tragedy: “On the delivery of some of their demands, which turned out to be…
What’s new?
You can’t tell Mike Pittman not to sweat the small stuff. It’s just one letter — an S — that mysteriously disappeared between the board he sent to the printer and the product that returned, but it matters to Pittman because it messes up the tagline of his new venture, Capital City Courier. A 24-page…
American Life in Poetry
There are thousands upon thousands of poems about love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh and new way, in terms of table salt. Love Like Salt It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher It…
Master of illusion
When a guy from Stratford-upon-Avon, England, began writing plays in London, stages were little more than raised platforms with no “sets” of decorative art conveying a sense of time and place to stories performed by the actors. “Early theater engaged audiences in the willing suspension of disbelief,” explains Ed Smith, a 59-year-old multifaceted thespian. “Clues…
The beast of the bluffs
After a frustrating early morning of turkey hunting in late April, John and his father-in-law gave up and decided to return to their Jacksonville homes. They wouldn’t go home without a good story, though. As the two men stepped out of the woods, John spotted something, crouched low in the still-untilled field. “Whoa, stop!” he…
Smoke and mirrors
Michael Newman has worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections, Wells Fargo Bank, and the Springfield Urban League. All three of those jobs required background checks, which, Newman says, he passed with no problem. So when he applied to the Springfield Fire Department, Newman — a U.S. Navy veteran — felt confident. “I wasn’t the…
A bit of a pill
According to the press release for The World Is Saved, Stina Nordenstam’s sixth CD, “This is some of the most hopeful music Stina Nordenstam has ever recorded.” In a breathtaking feat of pretentiousness, the flackery is formatted as free verse, concluding with these cringe-inducing, grammar-flouting lines: “Listening to her music, reading her lyrics/Stina Nordenstam dares to…
Taking it to the edge
And now for something completely different: Springfield Theatre Centre’s Active and Creative Teen Theatre troupe is giving us a play to think about this weekend: Boiling People in My Coffee, by Jonathan Yukich, a theater professor at New York University. It runs Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30, at the Hoogland Center for the…
Of Dragons and Indians
Officials with the Pawnee and Divernon school districts say that a soon-to-be-released study is expected to answer the question of whether the two rural districts should merge. The idea of combining the two Sangamon County districts was broached last year by Divernon Schools Superintendent Mark Spaid. Informal talks between the two district boards led to…
It’s simply complex blues
If you’re looking for a feel-good time with no-cares dancing and familiar-song audience participation, don’t bother showing up for Chris Whitley’s show on Monday. See, he’s an intense artist, demanding and difficult and worth every ounce of understanding and perseverance you can muster. With a little help from producer Daniel Lanois, Whitley broke onto the…
Featured at SummerFun
Little Feat may be best remembered, if it’s remembered much at all, as a kind of proto-jam band, a bunch of competent West Coast session players combining smooth, laid-back New Orleans-style R&B and light funk with Southern rock. There’s a good case for this version of history: The band has spent more time as a…
Quicktakes
WILKINS, DANIELS QUIT BOARD With a name like “Economic Development Council,” you know this board wants members who are good for business. So it was no surprise to find that retired University of Springfield professor Joe Wilkins and erstwhile Lincoln Land Community College president Jack Daniels had both resigned their posts on the EDC in…
Sweet and sour notes
Chili Palmer (John Travolta), the mobster who infiltrated the movie business in Get Shorty (1995), has moved on to the music industry in the sequel, Be Cool (2005), Palmer is the epitome of cool, and he seems right at home with the various thugs and lunatics he encounters as he works to further the career…
Not-so-hot Dogs
I wanted to like Must Love Dogs, I really did. It stars an actress I adore (the luminous Diane Lane), an actor I’ve come to accept (regular Joe John Cusack), and sports a premise (two damaged people give love one more try) that I enjoy whenever it’s done right. And yet, somehow, I just couldn’t…
Jacqueline Jackson
featherspoem #2 whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL won’t you SHUT your little BILL your midnight SONG has ceased to THRILL won’t you FIND another HILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor WILL won’t you TAKE a sleeping PILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL I have SUREly had my FILL little FRIEND o please be STILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL if I could FIND you I…
America, God is still watching
It was yet another report of the U.S. government’s participation in human-rights abuses. On Sunday, 60 Minutes reported on the CIA’s practice of kidnapping terror suspects and flying them to places of torture. According to CBS, more than 100 people have disappeared under a CIA practice called “rendition.” Masked men in an unmarked jet seize their…
