Rapture? Yes, please!
I keep hearing there’s going to be a rapture this Saturday. If that’s true, I’m pretty excited. I totally love dinosaurs! Clever girl…
Hip-hop benediction at 5th & Monroe
Okay, this actually happened, and I was there to bear witness. Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan did indeed play a set as part of Bar None’s weekly “Torch Tuesday” hip-hop showcase. To put this morning’s wee-hours performance into a sort of cross-cultural (read: white people) perspective, imagine Neil Young just magically appearing at a typical acoustic…
What’s up in El Capitol?
For most people who don’t follow state politics, May is just another month. But inside the Illinois Statehouse, this month is a whirlwind of activity in which legislators try to hammer out deals and ram legislation through so they can go on summer vacation. (There’s also the minor fact that any bills passed after May…
Founding Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon at Bar None tomorrow
In an inexplicable piece of happenstance, one of the most famous and respected rap artists in the world will be performing in downtown Springfield tomorrow night — Tuesday, May 17th — in a bar that can’t even legally admit 100 people. Yes, Raekwon the Chef himself will be, um, “cooking up some marvelous shit to…
How will new Chicago mayor work with Statehouse?
Rahm Emanuel will be sworn in as Chicago’s new mayor on May 16, just 15 days before the end of the state legislative session. So, while Emanuel has more than enough on his plate dealing with the first Chicago mayoral transition in 22 years, he and his team appear well aware that they will have…
Grads from around the globe
Over the last decade the University of Illinois Springfield has slowly but steadily increased the number of international students in attendance, reaching 5 percent of the overall student body in graduate studies and working toward the same ratio for undergraduates by the fall of 2012. Almost 63 percent of the 218 international students come from…
PETA: Is there anything they won’t say?
As Illinois does the annual legislative dance this time of year, all sorts of ideas get tossed around, ranging from the austere to the ridiculous. Sen. Shane Cultra, a Republican from Onarga, tossed out an idea in the latter category this week when he said that parents of obese children should lose their tax deductions…
Bird friendly
Renowned Peoria Storyteller Brian “Fox” Ellis portrays famous birdman John James Audubon telling stories at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. about his famous trek across Illinois 200 years ago. At 2:30 p.m. Mr. Audubon gives a tour of the new museum exhibition Changes. This Super Saturday Audubon program might be enjoyable for families with kids…
Rock on
WUIS Bedrock 66 Live Series welcomes Missouri quartet Ha Ha Tonka and New York’s Freedy Johnston to the Hoogland Center for the Arts May 14. Tonka’s new album, Death of a Decade, has been hailed with rave reviews since its release April 2011. The band’s Ozark upbringing fuses hints of Southern rock and bluegrass into…
Morels with cream
Morels are so special that I prepare them as simply as did my folks. It’s only in rare years when I’m lucky enough to have a quantity that I get a bit more elaborate. Even so, I keep things simple, letting the delicate taste of the mushrooms shine. Here’s a preparation that’s rich, but still…
More than able to succeed
They told her she shouldn’t even be in college. That’s the advice Alex Carrano, 24, received from staff to deal with her learning disability and test anxiety at a former university before she transferred to University of Illinois Springfield. But Carrano, originally from LaGrange, a Chicago suburb, will prove them wrong May 14 when she…
SUSTAINABLE CITY
A plan to improve recycling in Decatur will be discussed at an upcoming Sustainable Springfield, Inc. meeting. City representatives will lay the groundwork for dual garbage and recycling in the city of Decatur, at a panel discussion May 18 at 6:30 p.m. in the Carnegie Room North at Lincoln Library, 326 S. Seventh St. in…
MONUMENTAL
After 116 years of dormancy, the Lincoln Monument Association is back, champing at the bit with plans to support our 16th president’s tomb. Originally started immediately after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, the Lincoln Monument Association helped pick the location and design for the tomb, which stands 117 feet high in Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetary.…
Wind turbines still in the forecast for Sangamon County
The best way to describe a wind turbine is that it’s the opposite of a fan, which uses electricity to create wind, says Chris Nickell, vice president of site establishment for American Wind Energy Management. “The wind turbine uses the wind to create the electricity,” he says. Although the miniature model turbine he holds in…
How should police handle the mentally ill?
William Wilkins says he was simply walking in the street on New Year’s Eve when a Springfield police officer stopped him for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Wilkins, 55 and a resident of Springfield, claims he has been detained by city or county law enforcement in Springfield another four times since New…
GOP House chooses big oil over Granny
Now, let’s check today’s sports scores: 4, 10.7 and 21-and-a-half. Those tallies are from the oil league, and the winner, of course, is the league’s powerhouse, ExxonMobil. Four, as you might have guessed, is the $4 that Exxon is siphoning out of your wallet these days for 1 gallon of its petrol. Next comes 10.7.…
Nuclear reactor Russian roulette
Well before the catastrophe at Fukushima began unfolding, a familiar word was heard in discussions about plans to build a new generation of reactors in this country. That word: risk. With President Obama and Congress pushing ahead with efforts to offer up federal construction loan guarantees totaling $54.5 billion, what was the risk of taxpayers…
Charity porker run
Registration is closed for the professionally-timed Fat Ass 5K race through downtown Springfield that starts at 10 a.m., but you can cheer the runners on their 1/10 mile jaunt as some detour to down beer, ice cream and donuts. The party starts at 11 a.m. and includes a pig roast with all the fixings and…
Hammy parody
Direct from Broadway to Sangamon Auditorium, UIS, Monty Python’s Spamalot is the official national tour of the Tony award-winning musical. Based on the classic 1975 film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the wackiness continues as King Arthur and his knights (and a few barely-clothed girls) journey for the Holy Grail on the stage. The…
Thor visually muddled but worth seeing
Marvel Entertainment’s grand plan of bringing its superhero team, The Avengers, to the big screen moves one step closer to fruition with the release of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. A god among mortal heroes, Thor, while not a B-string character, is hardly a household name on par with Spider-Man, yet his devoted following will rejoice at…
The sponges of spring
“Hey, sleepyhead, wake up.” I turned my head away and opened one eye just enough to see the lightening grey sky giving way to dawn then shut it again. Even as a six-year-old I didn’t like getting up early. “Wake up.” It was my mom, gently shaking my shoulder. “We’re going to Aunt Bessie and…
All history is personal
The Sangamon County Historical Society turns 50 years old this year. Judged by such new initiatives as a Web-based encyclopedia of area history, the Society is – it pains me to say this – more spry than most of its members who, like me, were already well out of diapers when the Society was founded…
Medicaid cuts threaten nursing home staff, services
John Riech of Athens speaks softly as he puts his hand on the shoulder of his wife, Phyllis. She is sitting in a wheelchair, slowly petting her small white dog, Sassy. “We were doing pretty good until she got sick,” John Riech, 74, says with an audible sigh. Phyllis Riech, 70, has Alzheimer’s disease…
What did Mortenson do with Springfield’s money?
Philanthropist Greg Mortenson, author of the best-selling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, is known worldwide for building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, largely for girls. His books and school-building program have been widely praised, and his books are required reading for military commanders deployed to Afghanistan. But after CBS’ “60 Minutes”…
From Ha Ha Tonka to Freedy
I do believe this season could be the best Bedrock 66 Live! series ever. Already we’ve had so much national talent hanging out at the Hoogland, who could ask for more? The nice thing is you don’t have to ask for it, all you have to do is pay for it and go to it.…
Letters to the Editor 5/12/11
LOW-INCOME APARTMENTS I have to say I don’t follow the goings on of the Springfield City Council all that closely but I am flabbergasted at Ald. Gail Simpson’s total lack of regard for her constituents when she supported the Chicago-based Daveri Development Group in their bid to build an apartment complex on Laurel Street and…
Jason Sturgeon
Born and raised in Peterson, Ind., (pop. 3,500, salute!), Jason Sturgeon spent his youth in pastoral plenty, singing songs for his family, working rural, small-town jobs, listening to country and hard rock and riding quarter horses for competition. After completing college and finding work, Sturgeon reawakened the music dream, forming a successful hard-rocking, country cover…
flowerstore owner’s lament poem #1
flowerstore owner’s lament poem #1 mothers who live in mobile homesdeserve flowersmothers who live in mcmansionsdeserve flowersmothers who live in shelters, underbridges, in trees, deserve flowersmothers who live on the north sideeast side west side south sidedeserve flowersmothers who are raising kids aloneor with lots of help deserve flowersall mothers deserve flowersbut do they all…
