Feature

Each year the cover of Capital City Visitor, published by Illinois Times, features a portrait of Abraham Lincoln by a central Illinois artist.  In 2017, for the second year in a row, we decided to hold a contest as a way of finding the best, freshest Abe possible, while offering exposure to local talent. This […]

The Illinois State Museum, founded in 1877, reopened its doors on July 2, 2016, after being closed for nine months due to budget cuts at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The closing – which extended to the entire Illinois State Museum system, including Dickson Mounds in Lewiston and the Lockport Gallery, along with the […]

Last Saturday, March 11, thousands of green-clad parade watchers of all ages gathered in downtown Springfield at the “Craic O’ Noon” to experience the St. Patrick’s Day Marching Band Parade. With “Irish Hearts O’ Gold” as the 2017 theme and Contact Ministries the designated Grand Marshal, the blast from a Civil War replica cannon signaled […]

Daniel Rogers wasn’t dealt an easy hand. He was a roofer cursed by bipolar disorder. His father is an alcoholic with acknowledged mental problems. Rogers’ mother reportedly has Alzheimer’s disease and lives in a nursing home across Carpenter Street from where her son lived with his father in a ramshackle house. Rogers, 27, was alternately […]

In the 1980s and 90s, when state government coffers appeared to be overflowing and the political parties worked together, the Statehouse press corps numbered in the 40s. Its size made “Illinois State Government one of the most comprehensively reported in the nation,” according to the 1991/1992 Illinois Blue Book. Today, the coffers are broke, the […]

The Annual Illinois Performance Tested Bull Sale on Feb. 23 during the 29th Illinois Beef Expo was pretty predictable. And the genetic testing that made that predictability possible was good news for those buying or selling animals during the event. The Illinois Beef Expo took place Feb. 24-28 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. “This absolutely […]

On Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 6 and 7, at Erin’s Pavilion, Springfield Public School District 186 held a series of unprecedented sessions addressing the subject of “cultural relevance,” popularized by educator Gloria J. Ladson-Billings. Focusing on cultural relevance is thought to enable student success by acknowledging that learning does not happen in a vacuum but […]

Anyone who doubts the intellectual powers of public high school students need only watch Ruby Latif teach advanced placement literature to seniors at Southeast High School. The year’s reading list includes nine books, plus short stories and poetry. The Awakening. Oedipus Rex. Hamlet. The Kite Runner. Students have just finished Heart of Darkness by Joseph […]

In a long brick building within a rented suite on Yale Boulevard in Springfield’s Harvard Park neighborhood, a quiet, yet profound revolution is underway. Here is the headquarters of HISO (pronounced high-so) Music Entertainment, a consulting company conceived by Springfield resident Ayo Abitogun to provide music business services to groups and individuals. The 26-year-old musician, […]

Poetry is at once the most marginalized and the most accessible of art forms. Pretty much anyone with both a thought and the desire to express it can jot down a few words and head to the local coffee shop to declaim in front of whoever will listen. But the practice remains relatively rare. A […]

Downtown Springfield lacks many things. A hardware store. A movie theater. A college. A dry cleaning shop. Modern parking meters. What it does have are things that no city wants in its urban heart. Vacant buildings. Homeless people. Empty parking lots. Railroad tracks. Take a drive or stroll through downtown and the conclusion hammered home […]

There were two dominating factors in American film this year – Disney Studios and animated features – and it should come as no surprise that the success of one went hand-in-hand with the other. Never before has one studio controlled the overall global box office as the Mouse House did in 2016. Once the dust […]