Feature

Before he was president, state senator Barack Obama used to kid Mary Hardy Hall of Springfield about the outdated manual elevator at the YWCA.  “ ‘If it isn’t the woman with the oldest elevator in Springfield,’ ” Hardy Hall says with a laugh, imitating Obama. She was the last director of the Young Women’s Christian […]

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 […]

This is not – repeat, not – a scientific exercise. Professional beer judges will, and do, say that discretion and restraint are necessary to properly judge ales, lagers, porters and so forth. They eschew mixing and matching: Today, we will sample only pale ales, tomorrow it will be stout. Nothing more substantive than unsalted water […]

Grubs. Just when Craig Hall figured he’d heard it all, fans at a recent Glenwood High School football game recognized him as a South Sangamon Water Commission trustee and complained about a gridiron grub infestation. “Grubs on the field because – of course – of the water,” Hall recalls. “I had four people say that. […]

The men’s chorus sings “New York, New York.” PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE It’s one of those things that may seem like it’s always been here, but Senior Services of Central Illinois, Inc., is only 50 years old. And it hasn’t always gone by that name. Its roots go back to a study begun by United […]

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS BRITT Not long after an epic drought, good news arrived. “After what Springfield went through in 1954, it is heartening to know that the city’s water supply will be wholly adequate for the next 20 years,” the Illinois State Journal proclaimed in a 1958 editorial that trumpeted the results of a just-published […]

Marijuana seedlings grow beneath lights at Revolution Cannabis, a cultivation center in Illinois’ medical cannabis pilot program. PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE See more photos in the slideshow at bottom. Aside from the barbed wire perimeter, you’d never know from its appearance that this low, gray warehouse on a rural road lined with soybeans is anything […]

A planned new Hindu temple on the western outskirts of Chathm will be twice as large as the existing structure that was once home to a Baptist church. DRAWING COURTESY THE HINDU TEMPLE OF GREATER SPRINGFIELD At sunset one recent Thursday, Dr. Dharmendra Nimavat pauses outside the Hindu Temple of Greater Springfield, where he is […]

After months of waiting for the state to take the lead, Lisa Higgs created an ad hoc bicentennial planning commission in Springfield. Higgs, president of the Vachel Lindsay Association, stands in front of the Abraham Lincoln statue by Andrew O’Connor, placed at the Illinois State Capitol during the state’s centennial celebration in 1918. PHOTO BY […]

Wendy Hayward, Susan Collier, Nick Williams, Judy Denton and Scott Richardson on the steps of the Legacy Theatre. PHOTO BY TOM IRWIN Five years after local theater mainstay Scott Richardson quipped to friends, “I bought a theater. Won’t this be fun!” the Legacy Theatre is alive and well. Thriving under the watchful care of Richardson, […]

Image courtesy of Vinci Hamp Architects. The Illinois Executive Mansion has fallen into disrepair before. At least this time, no one is trying to demolish it. The mansion has been the Springfield residence of Illinois governors stretching back to 1853, but it has been 44 years since the mansion was last renovated. A plan unveiled […]