The proprietors of The Upshot drove in a couple of runs for their new web-based news site when they posted a fun interactive map of baseball fandom. Aggregating Facebook “likes,” Tom Giratikanon, Josh Katz, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy charted the geography of fan allegiance to the various major league baseball teams, ZIP code area […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Cultural arts major
George Lucas Photo BY TISH WELLS/MCT Toymaker George Lucas is thinking about buying Chicago a museum to house his personal collection of early 20th century soft-core and magazine cover art by the likes of Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell, among exhibits devoted to cartooning and movie graphics. The Florentines had the Medici, we have the […]
Posted inOpinion
The birth of the plyscraper
Illinois corn growers have been getting fat because so many Americans drive to their convenience stores for sweet drinks in cars using ethanol-laced gasoline, both made cheap by trade barriers that keep out cheaper sugars and fuel ethanol. That kind of agriculture is not sustainable in ecological or economic terms, and one day the state […]
Posted inOpinion
Rearranging the desks
The citizens panel gathered to find what it called opportunities for economy in the provision of public services in Springfield and Sangamon County. Upon investigation, they found that the cemetery management was antiquated, that budgeting and accounting needed improving, that information about public agencies ought to be collected and disseminated to the public that pays […]
Posted inOpinion
Legislative little me’s
In a country where people of like social class (and thus political views) tend to huddle together like bison in a blizzard, defining the geographical reach of a given legislative district goes a long way toward deciding which party represents it. The unhappy results include uncompetitive races, political stagnation and columns like this one. The […]
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Please Mr. Postman
Vachel Lindsay and Sara Teasdale Just when I thought I could learn to forget herRight through the door come a tear-stained letter.– “Tear-stained Letter,” Richard Thompson “We will go out and write poetry in red chalk on the State House walk, where he who runs may read. That will be a conjunction of planets, and […]
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Prince of demagogues
Stephen A. Douglas The prospect is in store of two rabble-rousing populists trading insults for the next seven months. Each will try to tap the deep vein of grievance that runs through a middle class convinced that privileged interests (unions or the rich, it hardly matters) have robbed them blind. It’s all too depressing to […]
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Home and away
“When I was a boy, I thought Washington Park was a magical place.” PHOTO BY DAVID HINE “He went to places of lost happiness, and increased his misery by beholding the old faces no more, and the old days vanished.” That was Edgar Lee Masters, writing in Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America about the […]
Posted inOpinion
Shaking up Springfield
Illinois Governor Daniel Walker shakes hands at the Bud Billiken Parade, Chicago, 1973. PHOTO BY JOHN H. WHITE “To those who have grown rich on the public dollar, to those who have won secret grants and contracts, to those in government who put themselves first and the taxpayers second – to you I bring my […]
Posted inOpinion
Honest money
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS WARE/MCT Am I the only one? Watching the Republican gubernatorial primary reminds me of a homecoming king contest that pits the quarterback whose dad bought him a convertible against the student council vice-president, the swim team equipment manager and the Key Club treasurer. One of them will win, but none of them […]
Posted inOpinion
Demanding answers
Springfield’s power plant is the biggest user of water. This month, City Water, Light and Power announced it would ask the city council to approve updating the water demand analysis done for the department in 1991, the better to assess how best to meet the city’s future water needs. The proposed study will try to […]
Posted inOpinion
Betting with other players’ chips
The downtown block on which stands the old YWCA and little else could become another TIF district. Would that rob Springfield schools, or support them in the long run? Photo BY DAVID HINE This caught my attention while reading the paper the other day – caught my attention in the same way that swallowing something […]
