Curbside celebration
Springfield’s 30th Annual St. Patrick’s Day parade will “Rock the Blarney” through the streets of downtown Saturday at noon. Floats, bands and at host of local folks and organizations will once again wow and please the crowd. Look for numerous radio station personalities, Springfield Police and Fire Departments, Springfield Junior Blues hockey team, Springfield BMX club,…
Questions about hiring
The Springfield School District plans to review hiring practices in the wake of revelations that Lanphier High School basketball coach Blake L. Turner was hired in 2008 despite a long criminal history. “What I want to make sure of, going forward, is we make all of our (hiring) decisions based on as much information as…
Exclusive video: Behind the scenes at tonight’s art openings at SAA and DEMO Project
A bunny presides over “Nocturnes” This evening two very different but equally dreamlike events are happening simultaneously at the Springfield Art Association. In the spacious, newly remodeled main gallery Kathleen Scott of Brooklyn, NY, will be presenting “Nocturne” from 5:30 until 7:30 p.m. Across the yard at DEMO Project, Salt Lake City artist Brian Charles Patterson will screen…
Between The Cracks: The Complaint Line tonight at Donnie’s
Once again, Faingold at Large proudly presents Between the Cracks – the recurring feature designed to shine a light onto Springfield-area bands, and all in their own words, to boot. Join us, won’t you? There’s gold between them thar cracks! Today’s BTC flashlight shines on regional poppy punkers The Complaint Plan, who will be playing…
Votes by the barrel
In the 19th century, votes were bought not by money but by whiskey. A keg would be set up outside each polling place on election day, and the more generous a candidates was with the ladle the better he was likely to do. Not everyone approved. Paul Angle in Here I Have Lived recalled a…
When Harry met hairy
My girlfriend of six months just stopped shaving her legs and armpits. I think she is so sexy – except for this. Recently, I asked her whether she’d shave again, and she snapped that shaving is time-consuming and the idea that women should remove their body hair comes from anti-feminist propaganda. I don’t know about…
German feast
Sauerbraten with potato dumplings makes a yummy German feast. We served sauerbraten at our first dinner party as a married couple. But we didn’t know it would be so explosive, providing the evening’s entertainment, as well as its entrée. Peter had been talking about hosting the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign German club for months…
SHOPPING STATE SURPLUS
Need a box of Swiss Army knives? How about an old cop car, a cabinet to store acids, or a spectrophotometer to do whatever those things do? (We had to look it up. It involves measuring light.) The State of Illinois has all that and more – a lot more – in a warehouse at…
Don’t close our post offices
You know what America needs? More jobs, that’s what. Not Wal-Mart-style jobettes, but real jobs – stable ones with good salary and benefits, union jobs so workers have a say in what goes on, jobs that have strong protections against discrimination. A job one can make a career, do useful work in, take pride in,…
rye poem #1
I found an essay my sister wrote when shewas a college freshman her prof must haveasked for an autobiography it is of courseinteresting to me for we shared the samechildhood and some of the same memoriesI find it telling how certain things were strongenough for both of us to have later writtenthem down one such…
Folk and Celtic accords
Americana and Celtic music duo Brian FitzGerald and Martin McCormack return to the Hoogland Center for the Arts March 8 for another amazing concert. They will be joined on stage by the Central Illinois Irish Dancers. With more than a dozen albums to their credit, they have toured extensively, opening for The Moody Blues,…
Charlie King
After 50 years of performing and 40 years of songwriting, the quite well known and extremely well traveled, Charlie King celebrates by releasing another record and making a Midwest March tour. The retrospective album So Far, So Good contains 40 songs to mark the 40 years of musical storytelling and political satirizing that is King’s trademark. Charlie’s had…
Quinn’s anti-violence program mess
Some Illinois Legislative Black Caucus members are saying “I told you so” in the wake of a stunning state Auditor General’s investigation into misspending, waste and possibly even fraud in an anti-violence initiative hastily created by Gov. Pat Quinn. Quinn created the program in August of 2010, a few days after meeting with ministers from…
Local playwright brings The Rev to life
Andrew Willmore as the Rev. James Howard, with Tom Heintzelman, who plays a Catholic priest. In the theater class he teaches at Robert Morris University, George A.M. Heroux advises students to look for plot details from one’s life. “I’ve done that with the plays I’ve written,” he says. He’s definitely taken that advice in his…
Honest money
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS WARE/MCT Am I the only one? Watching the Republican gubernatorial primary reminds me of a homecoming king contest that pits the quarterback whose dad bought him a convertible against the student council vice-president, the swim team equipment manager and the Key Club treasurer. One of them will win, but none of them…
No smoking, anywhere
The dangers of secondhand smoke are making it increasingly inconvenient for smokers to get their fix. January marked six years since Illinois became smoke-free. The initial ban, which limited the use of cigarettes in indoor public places, aimed to both decrease the prevalence of smoking, and to protect non-smokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke.…
KIDZEUM TO INCLUDE PET CARE EXHIBIT
Visitors to the future Kidzeum may pick up some tips about caring for Fido. The Kidzeum of Health and Science, a former children’s museum that closed in 2001, is raising money to again opens its doors. It announced it recently received a $50,000 donation from the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association (ISVMA) to feature a…
Balancing liberty and security
Every few days, we learn yet one more way in which government’s expanded surveillance powers intrude upon our privacy and civil liberties. In January it was the revelation that spy agencies in the U.S. and Britain have been snagging personal data from the users of mobile phone apps. Before that came news that the NSA…
March in the meantime
Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers entertain for a Mardi Gras celebration on Sat,. March 8 at Donnie’s Homespun. Music starts at 5 p.m. with Brooke Thomas. Just one week into March and perhaps the big thaw is here, but whether or not, there are plenty of events to experience in the meantime as we…
Fighting poverty
An important documentary, Girl Rising, will be shown twice in Springfield, at Douglas Avenue United Methodist Church on March 9, and Brookens Auditorium, University of Illinois Springfield, on March 11. The film was conceived by a team researching how to end global poverty that found that educating girls offers the highest return on investment in…
Mental health court planned
Sangamon County may launch a specialized court to handle cases involving mentally ill defendants by year’s end. More than a dozen Illinois counties already have so-called mental health courts aimed at helping, not jailing, defendants whose crimes are rooted in mental illness. Getting treatment for mentally ill defendants and keeping them out of jail is…
Storyteller with Springfield ties
Two Sons of China, by Andrew Lam, paperback, 466 pages, Bondfire Books, published December 2013. Available through Amazon, iTunes, and via www.TwoSonsofChina.com. Andrew Lam, M.D., who graduated from Springfield High School in 1994, skillfully crafts his historical novel, Two Sons of China, taking the reader to the 1940s and a China which is suffering from…
Perfecting the portraiture
New York City photographer Sean Fader brings his acclaimed contemporary photographic series to the University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery. Fader’s exhibition SUP?, reviewed in Slate Magazine and Huffington Post, is an interesting look at first impressions. The artist used personal ads to met strangers of whom he would shoot their portraits upon first…
Letters to the Editor 3/6/14
Chicago millionaire Bruce Rauner surpasses this year’s other gubernatorial candidates in fundraising by a long shot. ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS BRITT REQUIRED READINGLauren P. Duncan’s takeout story, “Cash helps Rauner climb” (Feb. 27), ought to be required reading for everybody who votes in this month’s Republican primary, probably the November election too. It’s a balanced, objective…
Non-Stop flaws
Liam Neeson stars as Bill Marks in Non-Stop. PHOTO BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES Liam Neeson continues to save the day in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop, a claustrophobic thriller that, if nothing else, lives up to its title. Never before has a film been so stagnant in setting, yet brisk in the way it tells its tale. It…
Young renters wanted
The Kerasotes building at Washington Street and Sixth Street is one of several vacant buildings area architects would like to see be renovated into housing units. PHOTOS BY LAUREN P. DUNCAN Renovate it and they will come. That’s what architects are hoping is the case in downtown Springfield. The Springfield Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT)…
The next winter Olympics event
Curses, foiled again• Denver police arrested four burglary suspects who tried to sell stolen goods back to their victim. Lacinda Robinson, 24, said that after discovering the crime, she went to a nearby McDonald’s parking lot, where two young men offered her a PlayStation 3 video game similar to the one she lost. She declined,…
Case reveals lax oversight
The case against Jeri Wright, daughter of President Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright, is simple, prosecutors say. “This case, in two words, is about stealing and lying,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass told a jury during opening statements Tuesday in the federal courthouse in Springfield. It is also about enabling. No money could have…
IEPA pushes for rules on coal ash disposal
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is pushing for rules on coal ash ponds like the one shown here, in which Springfield City Water, Light and Power stores the coal ash from the Dallman 4 power plant. PHOTOS BY PATRICK YEAGLE Illinois coal power plants consumed more than 48 million tons of coal in 2012 –…
Editor’s Note 3/6/14
Comes news this week of the passing of Florence “Flossie” Hardin, in Santa Barbara, Calif., at age 102½. A longtime Springfield resident and spouse of prominent attorney John Hardin, Florence at retirement age came to work at the fledgling Illinois Times in 1976 as our founding bookkeeper and voice of sanity. She pioneered the slogan…
Dead dogs walking
Blind, deaf, toothless and old, Gina, a malnourished mutt found in freezing cold, has ended up a lucky dog, thanks to Pat LeComte. PHOTOS BY BRUCE RUSHTON The dog on the exam table looks like a creature from a Star Wars sequel. Even with a doggie sweater on, it weighs just four pounds, five ounces,…
