Feature

On paper, Michael Johnson fits the profile of dangerous inmate. Reputedly a high-ranking El Rukn gang leader, he was a few months into a 35-year sentence for kidnapping and murder when he was indicted in 1987 for ordering a hit on Pontiac Correctional Center superintendent Robert Taylor. Johnson was eventually convicted and moved to Menard […]

Green doesn’t always mean good. That’s the message that Tom Clay, the executive director of the Illinois Audubon Society, and Vern LaGesse, an ecological restorationist and president of the Friends of the Sangamon Valley, want to send with their new plan to revamp Adams Wildlife Sanctuary. The 40-acre preserve, nestled between Clear Lake and Forrest […]

Darren Feller recalls that while he was attending the 2002 winter baseball meetings in Nashville, a prospective employer asked a question right out of the job interview playbook. “So where do you see yourself in five years?” the recruiter asked. Feller’s response, a most ambitious one, seemed to come from the same text. “To be […]

For Indira Somani, growing up in Springfield wasn’t always easy. Her parents moved to the capital city from Pittsburgh in 1974, and the next year, Somani became both a kindergartner and the first Indian student at Owen Marsh Elementary School. In the ’70s and ’80s, Springfield wasn’t as diverse as it is now, she recalls, […]

Billie Aschmeller has no doubt in her mind about what happened to Tim Hawker. “He died from being homeless,” she says, adding: “You shouldn’t have to wait until you’re in a casket to have a permanent home.” Hawker, who was one of about two dozen homeless people who slept at Lincoln Library before the city […]

Back in the early 1970s, the owner of a downtown Springfield gallery hired metalsmith Joe Spoon to work as the “artist in residence.” The gallery owner provided a small, open studio in the center of the shop, and tended to usher any customer who asked about jewelry straight over to Spoon’s workbench. “We’d sit down […]

Everybody in this story loves the Illinois Symphony Orchestra. The musicians who drive hundreds of miles from every corner of this state to play for $63 per performance love the orchestra; the board members who pony up $1,000 a year for the privilege of attending meetings and working at fundraisers love the orchestra; the bare-bones […]

Elizabeth Hare, 54, joined the Illinois Symphony Orchestra last month as interim executive director. Although she grew up playing piano, majored in music theory and music history at Rice University, and sang in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for more than three years, Hare says she never thought of herself as a professional musician. “I […]

It’s the only national forest in our predominantly agricultural/urban state, and it offers a great escape from our daily routines. Located down in the southern tip of the state, the Shawnee National Forest (SNF) offers unlimited recreational possibilities, ranging from day hikes, camping, nature photography, horseback riding, backpacking, fishing, boating, bike riding, exploring, or just […]

Angie Griffin never considered herself obese, but when her Body Mass Index revealed she fell into that category, she knew something had to change. Together with her husband, Derek, Angie signed up from the YMCA’s first ever Lose Big contest, an event designed to mimic NBC’s popular weight-loss reality show, “The Biggest Loser.” Patty Knepler, […]

Jim Kontio knows what it’s like to lose. After he and his wife Meganne married, the couple quickly decided that they wanted a baby. They were both older, Kontio says, and realized that they were running out of time. What seemed tough in the beginning became tougher as Kontio’s wife suffered from several complications, was […]

After about an hour of drinking, making small talk about local political races, and prognosticating on the outcome of the following day’s election, the crowd in the banquet room of the Centralia House Restaurant abruptly bursts into applause when tonight’s guest of honor, Roland Burris, arrives just past 6 o’clock. Burris, sporting a dark blue […]