Cover Story
Reimagining downtown
Jim Moll may not be the smartest man in Springfield, but the Hanson Professional Services engineer sounded like it during a public meeting held last week to discuss progress on a rail line under construction along 10th Street. The new line will replace tracks along Third Street. Moll’s been in charge of the $353 million…
Illinois pleas to skip SATs
The Illinois Senate has added to the call for the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to waive spring assessments, such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), for students, as it did in 2020. State Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, D-Chicago, spearheaded a resolution, approved March 17, calling for testing waivers. She said many students have been learning…
More kids in classrooms
For some, the pandemic has meant months of monotony. For others, those months have come with an onslaught of seemingly impossible decisions to make. Jennifer Gill, superintendent of District 186, falls into the latter category. On March 24, she announced the latest controversial move. Starting Tuesday, April 6, public school students in Springfield under the…
Working for equity
“For far too long families of color have endured the hardships of an economic system designed to hold them back,” said state Sen. Doris Turner on March 23. Turner, a Democrat from Springfield, was with Gov. JB Pritzker and other lawmakers at the Union Baptist Church in the capital city for the signing of four…
Girl Scout troop combines little library and micropantry
Copper Pot Cooking Studio celebrated its fifth anniversary in March with the installation of a little cookbook library and micropantry, custom-built for them by Girl Scout Troop #6318. Denise Perry, who owns the cooking studio on the corner of MacArthur and Laurel Avenue in Springfield, said that the project had been on her mind for…
D-I-V-O-R-C-E
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has parted ways with its private foundation that owns more than $20 million worth of artifacts, including a questionable hat, that have been a mainstay of museum exhibits. In addition to controlling artifacts, the foundation has run the institution’s gift shop and concessions under a memorandum of understanding…
It’s a long way from Guyana to Springfield
June Wood Agamah moved to Springfield in 1995 with her husband, Dr. Edem Agamah, and their three young daughters. It’s a long way from her Guyana homeland – where she was called Caryl. Edem was born in Ghana. Frequently Americans assume they are from the same country. They were born nearly 4,000 miles and an…
Deviled Easter eggs
There are about as many different ways to hard-cook eggs as there are ways to serve them. Whether deviled, diced into egg salad or grated over plump spears of asparagus, hard-cooked eggs are an essential component of many spring menus. Indeed, eggs have symbolized new life and rebirth for millennia so it makes sense that…
Mindless fun to social commentary
Godzilla vs. Kong is big, dumb fun Gloriously stupid and shamelessly over the top, Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong is the sort of mindless bit of popcorn entertainment that’s been absent for far too long on the big screen. Of course, whether you actually missed this sort of large-scale urban mayhem and short-on-logic kind of…
No April fooling
Say hello to the month of April in the year of 2021. Our live music scene keeps growing oh-so-slightly every week, but please, let’s all do our best to stay vigilant as together we work our way through these strange times. Once, every so many years, April Fool’s Day falls on a Thursday, allowing me…
Happy April Fool’s Day
My hair’s getting really good in the back. –Frank Zappa Now that I’m immune – the second shot kicked in full force last weekend – I wonder what I should do. Are buffets safe? Are any left? Was I better off without all-you-can-eat fried chicken at the VFW and bottomless blue cheese dressing at the…
Rather than light it up blue…
April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day. While awareness is great, there continue to be misconceptions about what autism is and how people with autism function in our society. Springfield has a wide range of support services for children with autism, but this support is quite lacking for adults. There is no pathway to diagnosis…
Editor’s note 040121
The streamers on the Governor’s Mansion lawn, blowing in the night, are a somber memorial to the COVID dead who have flown away. In the spring sunshine those same fluttering streamers signal new life, fresh energy, reimagining, liberation and resurrection. In the season of Passover and Easter, we grieve the past and celebrate possibilities. –Fletcher…
More progressive legislation moves forward
Since 2006, federal law has capped annual interest rates on payday loans to active-duty military members at 36%. The interest rate cap was broadened in 2015 to include several more types of personal, unsecured loans. In Illinois, meanwhile, payday loan borrowers have been subjected to average annual interest rates of close to 300% Illinois lawmakers…
Letters to the editor 04-01-21
YOUR VOTE COUNTS Your March 18 issue contained an interesting juxtaposition of articles. First was the piece by Dr. Stephen Soltys decrying Republicans and their alleged attempts in many states to disqualify voters (“Democracy depends on the right to vote”). According to him, this is because there is not enough concrete evidence of fraud to…
Calls to repeal Parental Notice of Abortion Act
Illinois is one of 37 states that requires people under age 18 to notify a parent before getting an abortion. The state’s Parental Notice of Abortion Act (PNA) makes health care providers give “adult family members” at least 48 hours of notice before a minor has an abortion. Youth who seek an abortion but don’t…
