Joneses Never Catches Fire
There’s no shortage of talent where Greg Mottola’s Keeping Up with the Joneses is concerned, a would-be comedy romp that never really generates enough laughs, or rompiness for that matter. This is one of those films that looks great on paper, surely went into production with the highest of expectations and inexplicably lays before the…
Looking backward
Next summer, if things go well, I will become an historian, to the extent that the published author of a book-length history of mid-Illinois can be called an historian. In truth, I am untrained in the arts of the rigors of scholarship and don’t write history so much as I write about history. But I…
The ethical rot of Wells Fargo
Just when you thought that Big Banker greed surely bottomed out with 2008’s Wall Street crash and bailout, along comes Wells Fargo, burrowing even deeper into the ethical slime to reach a previously unimaginable level of corporate depravity. It’s one thing for these giants of finance to cook the books or defraud investors, but top…
Some Dems have a Trump problem
Presidential candidates set the turnout. That’s the race voters care about the most by far, so everybody else who’s running down-ballot essentially has to work within the structure of that year’s presidential turnout numbers. Some organizations can fiddle around with the margins here and there and get some voters out who might not have bothered…
Letters to the Editor 10/20/16
REQUIRED READING God bless Jim Hightower. His article “What 47 cents buys these days,” (Sept. 22, Illinois Times) is right on. It should be required reading for all past and current Post Office employees. Tom SchuhSpringfield DECIDE FOR YOURSELFIf you have been following the back and forth between the Republican and Democratic candidates for president…
Editor’s note 10/20/16
As a 15-year-old I read Conscience of a Conservative and became a proud supporter of Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate. I couldn’t understand why he got beaten up so badly in the media for his, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” because he meant to promote liberty, not extremism. Goldwater was…
A nose grows in Springfield
The story was cause for alarm in anyone’s neighborhood. Burglars hit a North End gun store on Oct. 9 with what sounded like remarkable ease, kicking in a door and making off with more than 50 firearms from a dealer who did business from a home that looked like any other house in the quiet…
Passionate Pickers
Kirk Hanser was gifted his first guitar in 1978. This gift immediately launched Hanser on a journey into the world of classical guitar, and by the mid-1980s, he had already launched a career, performing all over the United States, Europe and Japan in various solo and ensemble combinations. In 1996, Hanser relocated to St. Louis…
Stories of elections past
On Saturday, bring your political memorabilia to the Old State Capitol for a History Harvest hosted by the University of Illinois-Springfield’s Department of History. Students from Devin Hunter’s undergraduate public history class and Kenneth Owen’s graduate history and digital media class will be digitizing political memorabilia to be included in an online digital media exhibition…
See the
Although Teresa Caputo reports that she has been seeing spirits since she was four years old, it wasn’t until she was well into her 20s that she began to understand her role as a medium and learned to utilize her talents to communicate with souls in heaven by tuning into what is called “spirit energy.”…
Talk dirt-cheap to me�
My husband of a year is very tight with cash. It’s always save, save, save. I recently traded in my car and I needed $1,000 more for the new one, but he never offered to give it to me. My parents ended up paying it. I make my own money, but not a lot, and…
Top Ten Censored Stories 2016
Throughout its 40-year history, Project Censored has covered a lot of ground that the corporate mainstream media has missed. Begun by Carl Jensen, a sociology professor at California’s Sonoma State University shortly after Watergate in 1976, it’s become an institution involving dozens of faculty members and institutions working together to come up with an annual…
Judge calls case “a mess”
A federal bankruptcy judge says that a case involving a candidate for Sangamon County Circuit Court judge is riddled with questions. “I don’t know what’s true or not true here, but I look at this and I think this is just fundamental mistake after mistake,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Gorman said during a Tuesday hearing…
Trading places
More than 165,000 people died between 1999 and 2014 from an opiate overdose in the United States. Tim McGraw likes to point out that the number of people who died from marijuana overdose during that span was zero. “Everything under my kitchen sink is more dangerous than cannabis,” McGraw jokes. McGraw, who lives in Homer…
Madigan sticks to the facts, but lacks some context
Anyone who watches Illinois politics knows that the most powerful man in the state isn’t the governor. Not everyone can agree on whether that’s good or bad. The Illinois Policy Institute certainly sees it as a negative. That’s why the conservative group wrote and commissioned the controversial new film Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics. Styled as…
Beating the rap
Oscar Brown, the trigger man in a 2013 east side slaying, beat first-degree murder charges last week, escaping what could have been a life sentence. After deliberating a little more than three hours, the Springfield jury rejected murder charges and instead found Brown guilty of involuntary manslaughter, which typically carries a sentence of between two…
YWCA Doomed?
Two important but contradictory votes took place on Tuesday, leaving the fate of the historic YWCA building unclear. First, the Springfield Historic Sites Commission voted 7-1 to deny a request by the city to allow demolition of the YWCA. The city, which owns the building, knew it couldn’t satisfy strict preservation criteria in the city…
DRUG DISPOSAL
Got pills? If you’re not using them, you might want to consider bundling them up this Saturday and taking them to a proper disposal site to help celebrate National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, sponsored by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. During the last such gather-up day in April, the DEA says that nearly 900,000…
Ouija II proves fun, frightening
I remember my grandmother had an Ouija board and it was something we kids pulled out at every family and holiday gathering, handling the tattered brown cardboard box with a sense of awe and respect that it ultimately didn’t deserve. Hoping to get in touch with the spirit world, my cousins and I would gently…
October surprises
After a weekend of surprisingly warm temperatures, all the beer garden-gatherers and festival folks are a happy bunch, but never fear, old man winter is around the corner, sure to soon deliver the goods. In the meantime, our music marches on. Last week I mentioned the flourishing of downtown open mics, and Doug Mayol, owner-operator…
OddsLane
This St. Louis-based contemporary duo started out as a musical vehicle for songwriters Doug Byrkit (guitar, vocals) and Brian Zielie (drums) to express songs that had no outlet in their other music endeavors. Friends since studying music together in college, the intrepid musicians toured nationally and internationally with various other entities before settling in on…
