Wayback Wednesday: 40 years of Illinois Times
On Sept. 18, 1975, the first issue of Illinois Times went out to subscribers across Springfield and the surrounding communities. That first issue cost 25¢ per copy, but IT has since become a free paper. We’re celebrating our 40th anniversary later this year. Here’s the front cover of that first issue. (For a closer look,…
No guarantees
The Ball-Chatham School District has wrongly paid more than $2.2 million to a company with ties to the district’s former superintendent, according to a lawsuit recently unveiled in Sangamon County Circuit Court. The lawsuit centers on a state law designed to allow school districts to reduce energy costs at no upfront expense. Under the statute,…
Meet one of the jokers who writes your news
Hi. I’m Pat. If you read Illinois Times often, you’ve probably seen my byline as Patrick Yeagle. The only reason I go by “Patrick” instead of just “Pat” is that there’s a middle-aged woman in Wisconsin with the same name. I know this because Facebook keeps suggesting I become her friend, and I’m all like…
The Scene: SOHO Fest, A Pagan Picnic & Jazzy Hip Hop
This week on The Scene via WUIS, Rachel and Scott talk SOHO, Stax, Social Experiments and much more as they take a look at this week’s cultural offerings throughout central Illinois and beyond.
To Arbitrate or Not to Arbitrate
The Illinois General Assembly has voted to strip state workers of the right to strike, and the unions actively lobbied to make it happen. A bill passed Saturday would apply mediation and arbitration procedures to all state workers in Illinois. The procedures are already used when negotiations fail between governments and police, fire and other…
Building a better budget
At the close of a contentious regular session and a vicious budget battle in the Illinois General Assembly some lawmakers are making an effort to streamline the budget-making process. State representatives Ann Williams, D-Chicago, and Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, have introduced two House resolutions urging the General Assembly to adopt standard processes for passing a…
A good life well recalled
The dewy-eyed farm memoir is by now a discredited genre but nostalgic farm folk and wannabe urbanites apparently eat these stories with a big spoon. Countryfarm Lifestyles (“a country living website for homesteading, self sufficient living and the good life”) offers compilations of such trifles as “Aunt Ruth and the Ginger Snap Cookie Incident.” Other…
A letter carrier’s special delivery to Congress
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow – nor even the likelihood that he’d be killed en route – could stop this letter carrier from making his appointed rounds. Doug Hughes is one gutsy and creative mailman. In April, this rural letter carrier from Florida stunned the Secret Service, eluded federal aviation authorities, embarrassed Washington’s haughty…
Rauner attempts to lock agency lobbyists
Forget about the budget, forget about Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda,” forget about the almost unprecedented animosity during the spring legislative session between Democrats and Republicans. The most talked-about issue under the Illinois Statehouse dome last week was a directive from one of the governor’s top staffers to all state agency directors. The agency directors…
Letters to the editor 6/4/15
CWLP’s Round Up initiative is an easy way for City Water Light and Power customers to help house, feed and provide job skills to the homeless in our community. PHOTO BY MICHAEL S. WIRTZ /MCT HELP THE HOMELESSDespite the fledging economic recovery, the number of our sisters and brothers who are homeless in Springfield…
Editor’s note 6/4/15
Now, out of the blue, Gov. Bruce Rauner is threatening to close the Illinois State Museum in his effort to persuade Democrats to vote for workers compensation reform and other parts of his personal “turnaround” agenda. Stop it. The museum, which dates to 1877, has a miniscule budget of about $6 million, and if the…
Congress: ‘War powers? What war powers?’
A few weeks ago, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia made a small splash in the press when he took Congress to task for failing to authorize our nation’s ongoing war against Islamic militants. “The silence of Congress in the midst of this war is cowardly and shameful,” he said. “[T]his Congress, the very body that…
Noteworthy independent films
Temple B’rith Sholom and the Jewish Federation host the Second Annual Film Series every Sunday at 4 p.m., throughout the month of June. The goal of the series is to show award-winning films from around the world, none of which are religious. The series kicks off this Sunday, June 7, with a showing of Deli…
Run, disc golf, rock
The annual Springfield SOHO Music Festival is back and bigger than ever for its’ 11th year. The two-day music festival takes place between Fifth and Sixth streets on Washington Street north of the Old State Capitol. It consists of 60 local bands performing on five stages, plus an expanded family area and kids’ carnival featuring…
The Illinois governor becomes a fugitive
The Governor’s Wife, by Michael Harvey. Knopf, 2015. Many fictional detectives and private investigators are identified with the cities of their authors. It is a means for the writer to share with the reader the spirit and ambiance of the environs the author loves. For Michael Harvey, the city is Chicago and the character is…
SOHO, blues and more
Chicago Loud 9 (cLoud9) plays at SOHO 11 on the SOHO stage 10 p.m., Sat., June 6, in downtown Springfield. PHOTO COURTESY CHICAGO LOUD 9 VIA FACEBOOK Welcome to the first weekend of June in 2015. If you wish your days be filled with music and your nights too, things appear to be working in…
Summer lunches for kids
PHOTO BY Beentree/WIKI Recently I was asked if I had any suggestions for kids’ lunches during the summer. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question and probably won’t be the last. But without information on things such as childrens’ specific ages and eating habits it’s a tough question to answer; even tougher…
Piston Broke
How nice is it that a band with five members each bringing decades of music-making experience to the fold has a debut performance? Members come with nicknames included, as Jeff “Drum Junkie” Bechtel (drums), Mark “Big Guy” Bott (lead vocals), Braxton “$Money$” Clark (keyboards), “Father” Hank Stoutamyer (bass) and Alex “Chi-Town” Borisov (lead guitar) come…
Aloha: Say hello to tragedy
Bradley Cooper as Brian Gilcrest, Emma Stone as Allison Ng and Rachel McAdams as Tracy Woodside in Aloha. PHOTO COURTESY Columbia Pictures Well, it certainly looked good on paper. With a script and direction by Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) and a cast that features hot as napalm Bradley Cooper as well as Emma Stone, Rachel…
Golden oldies
Curses, foiled again• Investigators said David Menzies, 30, tried to steal bicycles and apparel from a bike shop in Wesley Chapel, Fla., that is located next to a self-defense and jiu-jitsu studio — “definitely a bad environment to come and try to break the law,” Hammerfist Krav Maga co-owner Jason Carrio said. Hammerfist instructors confronted…
SHAY ON SAX GOES TO MEMPHIS
Springfield saxophonist Shayla Logan participated in the funeral procession for blues legend B.B. King in Memphis, Tennessee, May 27. Logan was one of 15 musicians to be invited to play in B. B. King’s “Last Walk Down Beale Street.” “It was such an honor to be asked,” Logan said this week. “I was walking right…
Rise and spine
My fiance is good friends with his ex-girlfriend from college. (We’re all in our 30s.) She isn’t a romantic threat, but she’s become a source of stress. Long before I met my boyfriend, they began hanging out at a local bar together twice a week. They still do this, and I go along, but I’ve increasingly found…
Carols of the bells
This week, the 54th Annual International Carillon Festival plays host to 11 carillon concerts across five days by the world’s leading carillonneurs. All concerts are free of charge and will occur rain or shine. Individuals and families are encouraged to pack lawn chairs, blankets and picnic dinners, and enjoy the late spring evenings outside in…
GLENWOOD KIDS STAND UP FOR OWLS
Glenwood Elementary School teacher Crystal Day’s fourth-grade students recently learned about the threats to the survival of barn owls in Illinois and decided to do what they could to help. It all started when the students took part in Henson Robinson Zoo’s “Zoo to You” birds of prey presentation and learned how changes in land…
wordnerd poem # 9
she’d lost her fitbit said the sign in theY locker room my daughter and I knewnothing of fitbits but found the wordquick in the mouth not a slow wordlike drawl we tried to make one fasterfatbat fetbet fotbot feetbeet footbootnone were quicker but all used tongueteeth palate lips nimbly we thought thenof slow words like…
On the move
Illinois Department of Human Services offices that are now at the northern edge of downtown Springfield are slated to move more than two miles south and out of the core of the city. DHS offices now in the Centrum Building at the intersection of Fourth and Madison streets would move to vacant buildings at a…
Smart on crime
Each year, Illinois spends about $1.3 billion to lock up more than 48,000 prisoners. Nearly half of those who are released return to prison within three years. Parolees in Illinois face significant barriers to getting jobs, finding housing and even obtaining health care, which vastly increases their likelihood of committing new crimes. By all accounts,…
Coming home
The Goodwill building at 11th and Enos was built in 1890-91 for the Springfield Furniture Company, according to Curtis Mann of Lincoln Library’s Sangamon Valley Collection. In 1904 the Desnoyer Shoe Factory bought the building and moved its oper PHOTO BY BRUCE RUSHTON A Chicago-area developer wants to convert a vacant building owned by Land of…
GOP family values
CARTOON BY CHRIS BRITT
