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We welcome letters. Please include your full name,
address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256,
Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com.
KEEPING SHS WHERE IT IS Kudos to Fletcher Farrar and his editorial
“Building the new Springfield High School” [May 29]. The school
is an urban centerpiece, much like the Horace Mann Building, which served
to anchor the downtown area. [Keeping the school at its current location] makes
economic sense. The district already owns the main campus, which would
limit what they have to pay for any required additional land. With all the
vacant land in the immediate vicinity listed by Farrar, the price would be
considerably less than the land out west. Moreover, the infrastructure at
its present location is much better than out west. It seems to me that the school board and the
administration and teachers — parents, as well — ought to jump
on Farrar’s proposal and run with it. They will save money, and the
economic benefit to those of us weary taxpayers would be significant. I
would join in this effort in whatever way I can to support such a
reasonable, money-saving endeavor; I would otherwise be an opponent to the
west-side idea, for all the reason in Farrar’s commentary.
James M. Henneberry Springfield
WHAT A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY After Fletcher Farrar’s wondrous reenvisioning
of downtown Springfield there should be no question of building a new high
school out in the western suburbs. We have before us the opportunity to
create a beautiful and invigorating space of learning, working, and living
stretching from the museum complex and downtown, through the Capitol
complex to the new Springfield High complex. We couldn’t ask for a
better center of our city than this, especially in these times where the
“center does not hold.”
Vachel Lindsay would be proud if we celebrated the
100th year after the Springfield race riot with a dedication to diversity,
learning, our youth, tradition, and history, as well as our future, all
right in the center of our town. Roy Wehrle Springfield
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE While it is inspiring to see anyone move along a path
of challenge and commitment [see Dusty Rhodes, “Least likely to
succeed,” May 29], unlike the editor’s statement to the
contrary, many people begin that kind of journey with hope. Thanks to a
wisdom beyond our own, diversity includes qualities that differ from one
person to another. Some of us require more hope than others, and I suppose
some folks just don’t need any hope at all to make changes in their
lives and consequently the lives of their communities. For one, I am
thankful that hope is so prevalent in our world, often in unnoticed or
unexpected places. We could tell people in countries of conflict that
they don’t need hope to believe in a different future, or people with
serious or terminal illness that hope has lost its meaning, or leaders of
nonviolent struggles to disregard any need for hope, but I wouldn’t
want to be the one to bear that news. However, I’m willing to concede that Emily
Dickinson’s inspiring poem could be modified:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in some souls
—
That sings the tune —
Without the words —
And
never stops
at all —
As one of those hopeful, I am thankful.
Diane Lopez Hughes Springfield
BACKSCRATCHERS AND BACKSTABBERS It is not surprising that the legislators are not
pushing hard enough to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich. After all, what would
happen to their own careers after they got out of office and other
politicians witnessed that they helped to oust one of their own. I compare
it to not being able to find a doctor locally to testify against another
doctor for the health and welfare of an innocent patient. It is sad and disappointing that we have to put up
with the backscratching of politicians and the backstabbing of citizens for
a bigger paycheck. I think when the majority of them get elected they
lose their sensitivity to Joe Average and begin to only worry about their
retirement and pensions. There isn’t one of them in office today who
has impressed me. Politics is a game, and if you don’t play by the
way of the big boys you lose. Illinois’ own Barack Obama will be no better.
Just wait and see how much of your money gets wasted because of this smooth
talker from Chicago’s lack of experience. In order to get to the
White House, everyone has to play the game on one side of the aisle or the
other.
Julie Becker
Springfield
THE MARCH OF
PROGRESS I doubt I’ve ever seen more ignorance than was
expressed in Bill Wellington’s letter to the editor [May 29]. Perhaps
Mr. Wellington hasn’t been to a doctor in the last half-century, or
maybe he’s too young to have a clue how much medicine has advanced in
my own lifetime. Half-a-century ago, when I was 6, I had a
tonsillectomy. The procedure was routine for tonsillitis. I was gassed with
ether, which produced severe nausea after I came out of it. That
subsequently infected the surgery area, and I had serious complications as
a consequence. I wouldn’t wish being gassed by ether on anyone. They
no longer use ether, and tonsillectomies are now rarely done at all. Six years ago, when I was half-a-century old, I
underwent hemorrhoid surgery. The operating room would have made Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy
jealous. There was all manner of electronic readouts letting the surgeon
and anesthesiologist know every facet of my vital signs; the vacuum tube
hadn’t even been invented in Lincoln’s time. The anesthetist
said, “OK, you’re going to go to sleep now,” and I was
under, faster than you can snap your fingers. When I woke up I felt fine,
not even woozy (although I was warned that I was indeed intoxicated and
should not drive). Two months ago, I underwent a vitrectomy as a result
of a detached retina. In Lincoln’s time I would simply have gone
blind in that eye, as there was nothing at all that could be done for a
detached retina.
In Star Trek IV: The
Voyage Home, McCoy gives Capt. Kirk a pair of
antique reading glasses because his only cure for age-related presbyopia
(farsightedness) is eyedrops that Kirk is allergic to. In Lincoln’s
time there were no such things as cyborgs. By dictionary definition I now
am one, as a result of cataract surgery. As a result of that surgery, which
involved replacing my eye’s natural focusing lens with a Crystalens
implant, that eye is no longer badly nearsighted as it was all my life
(20/400), I have no presbyopia or need of reading glasses, and of course
the cataract is gone. My vision in that eye is now better than 20/20 at all
distances! The first cataract implant, according to Wikipedia,
was done in 1949, almost a century after Civil War. Until this surgery
became common, 20 years later, most cataract sufferers were blind. In 2003
the FDA approved the new type of implant I have inside my eyeball. Previous
implants required the patient to use reading glasses afterward, but the new
implant can focus, and most patients have very little need of any
corrective lens afterwards. For the first time in my life there is no
“corrective lens” restriction on my driver’s license! Vice President Dick Cheney is a cyborg, too, as he
has a heart pacemaker. A man with Cheney’s condition during the Civil
War would not have survived. My cousin suffered an infection of her heart.
She had an artificial heart for months before a human heart was
transplanted into her chest. She, too, would have not survived Lincoln-era
medicine. There were no antibiotics during the Civil War. We
now have effective drugs for male impotence, schizophrenia, and other
mental disorders. We have antiviral drugs. Polio has been vanquished.
Tuberculosis isn’t the death sentence it was in the Civil War.
Indeed, a modern operating room looks nothing like a 19th-century operating
theater. In fact, to someone my age it looks like science fiction.
Comparing a modern surgical unit to a 19th century one is too absurd to
even be laughable. Steve McGrew Springfield
CORRECTION The Elijah Iles House is open from noon until 4 p.m.
Wednesdays and Saturdays. The opening time was incorrect in story last week
about the Springfield as Urban Frontier exhibit.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2008.
