Culture

Untitled Document Illinois Humane hosts the Hogs for Dogs dice run for the second year in a row on Saturday, June 16. Money raised at the run “goes directly to animal care costs,” says Jane McBride, president of Illinois Humane. Aside from helping animals, this year’s dice run features a drawing for a 2007 Harley-Davidson […]

Untitled Document Larry Harnly, a retired State Journal-Register sports editor, was part of a group of 32, about half from Springfield, who spent one week in Jamaica on a dental mission trip in January. Here are his observations. The flight from St. Louis to Jamaica took about three-and-a-half hours nonstop.  The drive by van from Montego […]

Untitled Document Don’t get caught stuck to a barstool in lieu of ringing in the new year. The last day of 2006 is a time for changes. Make this year the year you actually remember singing the chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” First Night Springfield, a family-friendly, alcohol-free holiday celebration, boasts a wealth of entertainment […]

’Tis the season to be toasting, and, according to experts, it’s the perfect time to raise a glass with some sparkle. “The wine is alive,” says Charles Stanfield, sparkling-wine director at Sam’s, an upscale liquor store in Chicago. “You might as well have something more festive in your glass for the holidays than a regular […]

You may only be “haa’dly’kin” (barely able) to understand Anita Singleton-Prather and the Gullah Kinfolk, but you won’t want to “tek’e foot een ‘e han” (to run, or to leave quickly) once you hear them. We won’t leave you “dry ‘long so” (without a reason or explanation), so here is the scoop on all this […]

The following was adapted from a Clemens Lecture presented in April for the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. It originally appeared in the Chicago-based political magazine In These Times. What other American landmark is as sacred to me as the Mark Twain House? The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln […]

In the mid-1990s, French filmmaker Claude Berri warned that without protection from the products of the American media, “European culture is finished.” He had plenty of pessimistic company. French Culture Minister Jack Lang spoke of America’s irrepressible “cultural imperialism.” The popularity of a work like Jurassic Park was identified as a “threat” to others’ “national […]