The most accident-prone intersection in Springfield is at 1900 West Monroe Street where the corridor to the boardroom crosses the corridor to the superintendent’s office. There was yet another pileup at that spot when the District 186 board bought out the final year of Superintendent Walter Milton’s contract. Bought out? Bought off is probably a more apt […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Hat trick
Nothing – save perhaps a shredded writ of habeas corpus – says “Lincoln” like a stovepipe hat. Abe World relies on his hats as a graphical motif – I count four of them on the home page alone – and the innermost room of the Treasures Gallery is a sanctum sanctorum described by the museum […]
Posted inOpinion
History by the book
Springfield has seen two Lincoln movies recently – Saving Lincoln, which retells the White House years from the perspective of his close friend and bodyguard and which the Abraham Lincoln Association screened on Feb. 11 at Abe World, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. That left moviegoers asking the question, Which one is worth seeing? I’m more […]
Posted inOpinion
What was that again?
Wait a minuteMaybe my hears are clogged or somethin’Maybe I’m not understanding the English language”– “My Life Is Good,” by Randy Newman I have concluded, after not very much thought, that books ought to come with warning labels. They should read, “Words in print do not necessarily sound the way they appear.” I should explain. […]
Posted inOpinion
A matter of degree
Baptists have had more success against sin in Illinois than merit-hiring advocates have had against patronage. As I noted the other day, political patronage has been a factor in hiring in State of Illinois agencies since they unloaded the wagons from Vandalia. (“The arts of the patron,” Jan. 3). At hearings of the Illinois Reform […]
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Hard times on Civvy Street
Illinois legislators and governors have a soft spot for heroes. I know that because they do so much to create them. The administrators of adoption agencies that find ways to keep going when the state doesn’t pay its bills are heroes. So are schoolteachers who must buy their kids books with their own money because […]
Posted inOpinion
Positive spillovers
Illinois legislators aren’t the only people who have to borrow money to pay for services whose value they sometimes question. Tuition and fees at four-year public institutions in the U.S. rose nearly 400 percent in the 30 years after 1981 – after adjusting for inflation – and student debt is rising faster than the salaries […]
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A new Jerusalem
My Christmas shopping being done, I curled up in front of a glowing space heater to catch up on my reading. At the top of the pile was the official 2012 visitors guide to Springfield, “your not so far away getaway.” Published by the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the 56-page guide must have left many […]
Posted inOpinion
Arts of the patron
Mary Lee Leahy died Dec. 12, after a busy life working for good causes as an attorney and public servant. Perhaps unfairly, she is remembered mainly as a Holy Warrior against patronage in public employment. This alone made her passing notable in Springfield, where patronage has been a way of life since they unloaded the […]
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Pilgrim’s progress
I hear you’re mad about BrubeckI like your eyes, I like him tooHe’s an artist, a pioneerWe’ve got to have some music on the new frontier– “New Frontier” by Donald Fagen When I was in high school I had a taste for jazz that, like every else about me at that age, consisted of enthusiasm […]
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Lousy socialists
“The word ‘socialism,’” said Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld in a speech 115 years ago, “is used as a term of derision only by the ignorant or the servile.” Springfield has been the scene of an experiment in the public ownership and management of the means of production of a vital product since the days […]
Posted inOpinion
Go east, young man!
I don’t know about you, but I love to hear people talk about their interesting trips to foreign places. You learn the most interesting things. What fun it would be therefore to sit down with Mike Madigan – a man who, however far he roams, never really leaves the Southwest side of Chicago – and […]
