Happy poetry month
Happy Poetry Month! As part of the April celebration, the Vachel Lindsay Association and Vachel Lindsay State Historic Site are hosting an illustration contest for students kindergarten through sixth grade. You must live in Springfield or the area. Just select a poem by Lindsay that is posted on the VLA website, fill out the authorization…
Tonight! Corn Bread is back from LA with Cornfucius II
Tonight marks the record release part for Cornfucius II (QR code above), the most recent collection by one of Springfield’s favorite hip-hop sons, Corn Bread, temporarily back on home ground from his adopted Los Angeles. Despite once again donning his “enlightened” persona of Cornfucius, the habitually (and often hilariously) vulgar MC appears to be having it both…
More on the Little Giant
Whatever one thinks of him – and I made clear in Price of Demagogues that I think that his ambition consistently outran his judgment – Stephen A. Douglas was a singular character. John Mason Peck writes, “His political commitments were by no means purely selfish. Identifying his fate with that of the Union, Douglas struggled…
Option play
Good news. The Chicago district of the National Labor Relations Board recently decided that Northwestern football players qualify as employees of the university and thus can unionize if they choose. The ruling noted that the amount of a student’s time he is expected to devote to the game, and the fact that his scholarship is…
Woodley shines in familiar Divergent
Theo James as Four and Shailene Woodley as Beatrice Prior/Tris in Divergent. PHOTO COURTESY SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT Better than Twilight but not quite as good as The Hunger Games, Neil Burger’s Divergent is the latest foray into the arena of ’tween lit adaptations that’s seen far more wannabe franchises vanquished than successful launches. Film series based…
ORPHAN OUTREACH
A house renovation in Springfield will soon benefit orphans in Haiti, thanks to the efforts of volunteers in Springfield’s Enos Park neighborhood. The Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement Association bought the house at 1149 N. Seventh St. and has practically gutted the building, installing a new roof, plumbing and HVAC system. Once the house renovation is…
Bedrock 66 Live! moves
Nikki Hill and the Pirate Crew perform rock ’n’ roll for the Bedrock 66 Live! concert, Saturday, March 29, at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Some 14 years ago, at the birth of the new millennium (wow, that sounds exciting), Sean and Jamie Burns decided to start a music performance organization. After years of…
babylon #1
babylon #1 woke up worked drank coffee worked emails phone calls worked rearrangedmanuscript last minute stuff workedworked didn’t think a single thoughtabout you till I was driving late tochurch and the car was flooded withall that baroque music you loved so wellplayed so well it was then I bawled Iremember an oratorio we sang in…
Getting up to speed
Illinois may soon join the rest of the nation and allow motorists who commit minor traffic offenses to keep driver’s licenses that are now sometimes confiscated on the spot by police officers. The archaic practice, said to date back to the 1950s, can be costly both for license-less motorists forced to obtain state identification cards…
Master instrumentalists
From the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco and on a spring tour around the country, SFJAZZ Collective makes an appearance at Sangamon Auditorium, UIS on Sunday, March 30. Hailing from around the world with accolades to each of their names, the group consists of eight performers/composers: Miguel Zenón, alto sax; David Sánchez, tenor sax; Avishai…
Medieval combat
Springfield’s Armored Combat League and the International Medieval Combat Federation present the USA Knights 2014 Spring Nationals right here in Springfield at the Illinois State Fairgrounds on Saturday, March 29. These knight fights include shields, armor, swords, maces, axes and more. All weapons are “analogues of historic originals.” Battles include one-on-one duals, three vs. three…
Science schmience
Curses, foiled againA clerk at a Radio Shack in Clearwater, Fla., identified Andre T. Puskas, 20, as the suspect who tried to rob the store because Puskas worked there. The clerk told police that Puskas tried using a Taser on her but instead tasered his own hand and then fled empty-handed. Police arrested him when…
Fixing Congress
These are hard times for Congress. Its approval ratings have seen a bump from their historic lows of a few months ago, but it’s a small one. Our representative democracy’s keystone political institution is widely derided as ineffective, unproductive, irrelevant and sadly out of touch. It is no coincidence that this comes while Congress has…
Sherman scores a hit
Babe Ruth’s Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run, by Ed Sherman. Lyons Press, $25.95. The 2014 baseball season marks the 100th year of baseball at storied Wrigley Field. It has been a noteworthy century, marked by great baseball history and one excruciating failure, the failure of the Cubs to…
Prince of demagogues
Stephen A. Douglas The prospect is in store of two rabble-rousing populists trading insults for the next seven months. Each will try to tap the deep vein of grievance that runs through a middle class convinced that privileged interests (unions or the rich, it hardly matters) have robbed them blind. It’s all too depressing to…
Letters to the Editor 3/27/14
In observance of National Sunshine Week last week, which celebrates the values of open government and freedom of information, our cover story examined Springfield city government’s penchant for secrecy and closed doors. Springfield Mayor Mike Houston pictured in illustration. PHOTOSHOP ILLUSTRATION BY JOE COPLEY CONFUSED BY MAYOR I helped elect Mayor Houston. He had experience…
Billy Don Burns
Every review about the music of Billy Don Burns compares him with the greats of country music such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. Indeed, Burns has rubbed shoulders with them all, producing records for Haggard, getting songs cut by Nelson, keeping good company with Jennings and bumping Cash out of…
Mars movie for fans only
The release of Veronica Mars, the big screen continuation of the cult television show, will be remembered for being a watershed moment in the history of film distribution. Financed by fans through a Kickstarter campaign, it’s the first studio-sponsored feature to be released in theaters the same day that it was available through pay-per-view services.…
Health insurance deadline approaches
James Hayes, Harvard Park Elementary principal, and Peggy Cormeny, family and community engagement coordinator for Springfield Public Schools, appear outside the school, which recently hosted an event helping families enroll in health insurance. Photo BY PATRICK YEAGLE A national deadline to enroll in health insurance looms at the end of March, and Springfield Public Schools…
Eat real. Move more.
Dr. Kemia Sarraf, founder and director of genHkids, holding a “generation healthy” child. PHOTO COURTESY GENHKIDS As a response to what was being called an epidemic of obesity in America, Dr. Kemia Sarraf felt it was time to take action in Sangamon County. It was 2008. With Illinois near the bottom of average state rankings…
Inequality in India
Journalist and author Katherine Boo will discuss her award-winning book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, during a rescheduled talk and book signing at the University of Illinois Springfield Brookens Auditorium. Behind the Beautiful Forevers tells about the courageous lives of those living in an Annawadi, Mumbai slum in the shadows of luxury hotels near the Mumbai…
All hail, kale
Suddenly it seems as if kale is everywhere. The sturdy-leaved member of the Brassica vegetable family, which includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens and others, is showing up on restaurant menus, in cooking magazines and websites; actually in anything food-centric. Or not food-centric: It even made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s debut week hosting…
Serf’s up!
My boyfriend works at a hardware store and can fix things, and in the past six months, his sister and her husband have asked him to install their new kitchen faucet, mend their fence (with the husband’s help) and assemble a lawnmower. They are lawyers and could afford a handyman. Instead, they feed him a…
A chance after four DUIs
A bill moving through the Illinois General Assembly would give four-time driving under the influence (DUI) offenders a chance at getting behind the wheel again. State law prohibits a citizen who has been found guilty of DUI four or more times from having any driving privileges. State Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, is pushing a bill…
Smooth skating
Springfield Figure Skating Club presents Springfield’s every own ice show on Saturday, March 29, and Sunday, March 30, at Nelson Center Ice Arena in Lincoln Park. More than 50 SFSC members, all ages and skill levels, will perform to musical ice versions of “Lion King,” “Hair Spray” and “Starlight Express.” This is a professionally produced…
A developing story
The former YWCA building near the governor’s mansion may or may not be demolished. Photo BY BRUCE RUSHTON A courts complex. A condo building. A museum. A parking lot and the former YWCA building near the governor’s mansion that together consume a large city block have seen a lot of proposals come and go…
Supreme Court strikes down recording law
Watch what you say; it can now be recorded without your knowledge or consent. The Illinois Supreme Court decided this very thing last week in a pair of unanimous decisions that invalidated a state law requiring “two-party consent” to record conversations. The decisions bring Illinois in line with the majority of other states and further…
FAMILY FAST
As national lawmakers consider bills to reform the United States’ immigration laws, a group of immigration reform advocates is using its members’ bodies as a form of protest. Fast For Families, a coalition of pro-reform religious organizations, asks its members to refrain from eating until Congress passes a reform bill. The group visited Springfield last…
Finding populism today
Mass movements don’t just appear out of the fog, fully grown, structured and mobilized. They emerge in fits and starts over many years, just as the American Revolution did, and as did the Populists’ original idea of a “cooperative commonwealth.” In 2011, a serendipitous moment for the populist cause rumbled across our land. That September,…
A more perfect union for Rauner
It didn’t take long for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner to drop the word “unions” from his vocabulary. After bashing public employee union leaders for months as corrupt bosses who buy votes in order to control Springfield, Rauner and his campaign have assiduously avoided the use of the “u-word” since his victory last Tuesday. Instead,…
Rises a fitting swan song for Miyazaki
Reportedly the final film from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (he’s announced his retirement many times before), The Wind Rises proves to be a fitting film to go out on. It is the most grounded of the animator’s movies, a project that employs his distinctive visual flair in order to tell the story of Jiro Horikoshi,…
Ukraine in crisis
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., speaks in front of his Springfield home March 23 about his recent visit to Ukraine. Photo BY LAUREN P. DUNCAN It’s been more than a month since Ukrainians were killed in Independence Square of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. Six young Ukrainians who work with the country’s parliament shared their perspectives on…
