City wins pension case
A Sangamon County judge has sided with the city of Springfield in ruling that retiring city employees can’t cash out accrued vacation time to increase final paychecks and thus boost pension benefits. In almost all cases, pensions are based on the size of salaries earned during final years of employment. Several unions sued the city…
Head of Lincoln papers out
Daniel Stowell Daniel Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, has been placed on administrative leave. Meanwhile, grant writing duties for the project that aims to digitize every document ever read or authored by the Great Emancipator have been transferred to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential…
Guelzo on Blumenthal on Lincoln
I am grateful to the Washington Monthly — not for the first time — for alerting me to the release of a new biography of Lincoln that focuses on his Springfield years. Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, reviewed Sidney BLumenthal’s A Self-Made Man: The Political Life…
Picking up the check
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON BENAVIDES/TNS The memory of it lingers after 50 years. Lunchtimes when I was a student in District 186 schools meant mock pizza pie. While that dish was an awful eating experience, it was a valuable learning experience, because pondering what was in it made me realize that not everything I was being…
Why Bernie must stay in the race
Jim Hightower PHOTO BY LARRY D. MOORE Surprisingly, this week’s prize for “Stupidest Political Comment in the Presidential Race” doesn’t go to Donnie Trump or Ted Cruz. Rather, the honor goes to the clueless cognoscenti of conventional political wisdom. These pundits and professional campaign operatives have made a unilateral decision that Bernie Sanders must now…
History made on Chicago’s South Side
PHOTO BY ALAN SOLOMON/TNS Theresa Mah (D-Chicago) was never given much of a chance at winning the 2nd House District Democratic primary race on March 15 against a well-known political name who had a huge demographic advantage. Mah was vying to be the first Asian-American legislator in state history. But the 2nd District was purposely…
Letters to the Editor 5/5/16
RAIL RELOCATION PROBLEMSHere are some of the problems with the agreement between the city and the Illinois Department of Transportation regarding relocating rail traffic off the Third Street tracks. Mayor Langfelder and the city council should have held out for a better agreement instead of voting passage on April 26. The administration rushed the…
Editor’s note 5/5/16
One after one they came to the Springfield stage as their names were called, 20 who had spent long years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Altogether this group of exonerees from around the country had served more than 400 years in prison before courts determined they had been wrongfully convicted. The group photo,…
Eating real
Before McDonalds came to town after the Second World War, in the late ’40s and the ’50s, we ate differently than today. In fact we got our food in different ways. At my grandparents’ farm in Menard County there was a large vegetable garden outside the back door. As you left the house you walked…
Downtown’s hidden gems
On Thursday, May 5, join Downtown Springfield, Inc. and Illinois REALTORS for a self-guided tour of downtown residential and commercial spaces that are otherwise inaccessible to the general public. This year’s tour stops include a brewery, high-rise apartments, a historic hotel, newly-renovated office spaces and more. See the St. Nicholas Hotel, The Alamo/Downtown Golf, the…
You say fitness, I say fatness
The Fat Ass 5K is not your grandfather’s 5K. The 3.1-mile race route includes beer, ice cream, coffee, donut and corn dog stations plus live entertainment and surprises throughout. This year’s music lineup features Captain Geech and The Shrimp Shack Shooters, The Shenanigans, After Sunset and Ragged Company. The ninth annual street party begins immediately…
A Mass 30 years in the making
A “Bach B-Minor Mass” concert will be performed at Central Baptist Church on Saturday, May 7, at 7 p.m., by the 60-person Springfield Choral Society along with a 27-piece orchestra, which includes members from Chicago and St. Louis, all under the direction of Springfield Choral Society conductor Marion van der Loo. Though “Mass in B-Minor”…
All in a day’s jerk
PHOTO COURTESY AMY ALKON Amy Alkon I’m a happily married 30-year-old woman. A co-worker pointed out a senior trainer at work constantly sneaking lustful glances at me. I was later assigned to his section. We quickly became close friends, and he began mentoring me. He’s married, too, with two children, so though we were extremely…
Special friends
In 1834, Joshua Speed, an ambitious young man from a well-to-do Kentucky family, set up a dry goods store in a two-story brick house on the corner of Fifth and Washington Streets in Springfield. Located on the town square in the commercial and governmental heart of what would become the state capital five years later,…
Springfield, the staycation destination
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum offers fresh exhibits to try to lure locals back for another visit. PHOTO BY DAVID CARSON/TNS May 1-7 is National Travel and Tourism Week, and Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Gina Gemberling wants Springfield-area residents to join in the fun right here at home. “We are…
The Lincoln funeral film
The recreation of the Lincoln funeral procession on May 2-3, 2015, a triumph of research, manpower, coordination and attention to detail, is thoughtfully documented in a newly released video produced by the City of Springfield in conjunction with the Cent PHOTO COURTESY STUDIO G PRODUCTIONS On Sunday, May 3, 2015 – a year ago –…
Fearless, fast and free to be female
On your mark, get set, go! Girls on the Run program participants plus community runners at the start of a GOTR 5K race. PHOTO BY PATRiCK KELLEY Girls on the Run is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that strives to create a world where girls are aware of and capable of activating their potential, giving them…
Downtown Y adding tech-driven kids’ room
Kevin Mac trains on the punching bag at the Springfield Boxing Club. Springfield’s Downtown YMCA is preparing a new exercise room that incorporates technology instead of competing with it for kids’ attention. The new space blurs the line between mere exercise and actual fun. On April 27, the Downtown YMCA began converting one of its…
We earn it
As scrutiny of pensions has grown, some part-time elected officials in Illinois have opted out of pension plans. But not in Sangamon County or the city of Springfield. Springfield aldermen and Sangamon County board members who accrue pension benefits based on part-time work have passed muster in recent years with the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund,…
City aims to demolish historic Ridgely village hall
Jeremy Mann stands in front of the 1885 building he’s trying to save on Peoria Road in August 2015. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE A historic building on Springfield’s north end faces demolition, but the owner is fighting to keep the structure standing and turn it into a hydroponic community garden. The situation pits preservation efforts…
Legislators try to stay in control of redistricting
In an effort to restore credibility to the redistricting process, two lawmakers from Chicago are proposing a constitutional amendment to change how legislative maps are drawn. The proposal could be the Illinois General Assembly’s last chance to maintain control over the redistricting process as two other competing proposals seek to wrest that power away from…
Pension board asks judge to solve retirement riddle
PHOTO BY METRO CREATIVE CONNECTION The Springfield Firefighters’ Pension Board has gone to court in an attempt to settle a question over pension benefits for firefighters. At issue is holiday pay for firefighters, which has historically been included in calculating pension benefits. Firefighters get paid for eight hours on holidays, regardless of whether they work.…
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS, POLITICAL POWERHOUSE
In his new book, The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois, political historian Robert E. Hartley describes the fascinating period of about 30 years when southern Illinois lawmakers dominated the Illinois political arena. Hartley details the lives and contributions of the three most influential of the group, Paul Powell, Clyde Choate and John Stelle, during the period…
POETRY CHAMP
Mariah Brooks, a junior at Springfield Southeast High School, competed in the national Poetry Out Loud contest May 3 in Washington, D.C. The contest is a national poetry recitation competition that creates a platform for high school students across the U.S. to use poetry as a form of artistic expression. Brooks earned her way to…
Plodding pace nearly derails War
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America From the very start, the Marvel movies have had a certain swagger. That’s not to say that Jon Favreau’s Iron Man had an arrogant air about it, but rather a sense of confidence in its storytelling abilities that was prevalent in all of the company’s subsequent entries. This was…
May music is here
Mr. Opporknockity returns to action at The Curve Inn on Friday evening. The lovely month of May, often praised in song and poetry with good reason, brings us all the promise of a fruitful season of lovely live music to come in the summer months ahead. The Alamo in Chatham (popularly known as the “Chalamo”)…
Eilen Jewell
Sporting a lyrically and physically captivating voice and backed by a band producing rockabilly, Americana and folk-influenced sounds, Eilen Jewell is a treasure of song, patiently waiting to be discovered by you. Criss-crossing the stages of the world, she puts out album after album (seven at this point) of well-crafted, good sounding songs based in…
Radishes. Easy to grow. Delightful to serve.
Maddie Meyer pulls up a surprise. PHOTO BY ASHLEY MEYER Radishes are one of my favorite vegetables to grow in the garden. Usually radishes are the very first crop that comes to the table in early spring. They grow incredibly fast – some varieties are ready to harvest in as little as three weeks after…
Rauner saves a seat for the Demcrats
CARTOON BY CHRIS BRITT
friendly conversation
this writer emails her old buddy akacomputer guru after he’s rescued heronce again from her electronic cesspit:“I know I am a trial to you . . . ”“Trial???” he responds. “Trial???Test, ordeal, burden, worry, hardship,tribulation, anxiety, difficulty, misery,adversity, exasperation, aggravation,abomination, even liability perhaps –but trial? Whatever would make youthink such a thing?”
