Danny the dealer
Untitled Document On Oct. 28, 2005, Danny J. Sidener Jr. went to Family Video on MacArthur Boulevard to accept a delivery from a Chicago business associate. This associate arrived 20 minutes earlier than expected, and Sidener didn’t handle the merchandise as carefully as usual when he tucked it into the carpet-covered wheel-well of his rented…
Cap City
Untitled Document READYTOROCK Thirty reflective jackets, 22 chainsaws, 10 axes, eight crowbars, four industrial-sized ladders, and enough safety glasses-rope-and-gloves-for-an-army later — Brad Schaive, business manager of Laborers Local 477, says the Emergency Response Coalition is “ready to rock.” Schaive, along with fellow business managers from the Teamsters, Operating Engineers, and Carpenters unions and Ward 10…
Trina M sings with Frank T
Untitled Document What makes a good local live-music scene? To me it’s the combination of performers and audience. You can’t have one without the other. The other thing that makes a scene is commitment. An artist must commit to being the best he or she can be. An audience must commit to showing up and…
An Easter idyll
Untitled Document Have you ever had a totally perfect experience? Whether an elaborate occasion, or spontaneous get-together with friends, a day of unexpected discoveries on vacation, or a simple walk in a beautiful snowfall, it’s a time when all of the components fall together and are absolutely right. Those kinds of experiences are rare treasures,…
Soldiers’ stories
Untitled Document Veteran Mike Mlekowski’s disillusionment with the Iraq War didn’t begin when he set foot on Iraqi sand in 2003, during the initial invasion. It started after the government called off the search for weapons of mass destruction. From that point on, he says, a question kept “eating away” at him: “If we’re not…
Sheltered from the storm?
Untitled Document Rick Hanselman knows his way around the Springfield housing market. Lately the president of The Real Estate Group, a local residential and commercial real-estate brokerage, has worked in the Panther Creek area, and he says he’s witnessed an upswing in sales of homes priced at $300,000 or more. “That’s more active than I’ve…
The next surge
Untitled Document As of this week, five years have passed since the U.S. launched the war on Iraq. Although analysts disagree on a precise figure, the total cost of the war will be between $1.4 trillion and $3 trillion. Illinois’ share, according to the National Priorities Project, an anti-war not-for-profit research group, will be around…
Squeal appeal
Untitled Document Bob and Sandy Young are happy as pigs in . . . muck. The Buckhart couple this week learned that the Appellate Court of Illinois had ruled in favor of their plan to expand their family dairy farm into factory-scale hog-fattening facility despite strenuous objections from their neighbors. The Youngs were in the…
Obammered
Untitled Document A new statewide poll confirms what most of us knew anyway: If Barack Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, he will do a whole lot better in Illinois against Republican John McCain than would Hillary Clinton. But there’s more to it than that. The SurveyUSA poll of 600 registered Illinois voters was released…
March of March
Untitled Document March 2 — A celebration of the sun. I have been walking on frozen snow for two months, the frailty of snowflakes built into awesome cliffs and drifts. Now it rots, disintegrates, dissolves, and moves to make water, to make streams, to make rivers, to the power of floods and oceans. I especially noticed…
Dangers of hand sanitizers
Untitled Document Gel hand sanitizers can help lower the risk of illness, especially during cold-and-flu season, but these products can pose a risk to children if ingested. Are there safe alternatives that work just as well? A 2005 study from Children’s Hospital in Boston compared illness rates across a study group of 292 families; half…
People’s Poetry
Untitled Document birthdaypoem #1 I stood nearby at cressid’s birth a new wee girl upon the earth I marveled as her mother bore her I had birthed that child before her I a child my mother bore me she her mother her before me I have come to realize…
Letters to the Editor
Untitled Document We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com. MEMORIES OF MACARTHUR Your article on MacArthur Boulevard brought back some good memories because my husband and I each spent a…
A reason to despise Big Oil
Untitled Document How time flies. For example, think back to 1989. Hillary Clinton was the obscure first lady of Arkansas. Roger Clemens was pitching for the Boston Red Sox and had never even heard of steroids. And the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Nineteen…
Echoes of injustice
Untitled Document In April 1961, John F. Kennedy came to Chicago to pay tribute to Mayor Richard Daley, who just a few months earlier had delivered Illinois to the Democrat in the presidential race. Abraham Bolden, then a rookie agent assigned to the Chicago field office of the Secret Service, remembers his chance encounter with…
What an activist learned in jail
Untitled Document They say that time behind bars makes criminals better at what they went in for. A gangbanger makes more gang connections, and a small-time bank robber learns from the best. The same holds true for Springfield peace activist Diane Lopez Hughes, who just got home after 45 days in the Muscogee County Jail,…
Drillbits and pieces
Untitled Document If only those of us who were unpopular in grade school could’ve known Drillbit Taylor. If we did, he would’ve taught us how to fight, embarrassed the bullies, and given us the confidence to talk to girls. Yeah, that would’ve shown ’em. Of course, that’s not realistic. And neither is Drillbit Taylor, a…
Come fry with me
Untitled Document As a kid from up North, I have long held a romantic notion that if you grew up in the South, you spent your summers sitting under a willowy tree with a glass of lemonade in one hand and a piece of fried chicken in the other. I was fascinated by fried chicken,…
