I suppose the question to the Springfield City Council ought to be phrased this way: If they come, will you build it? “It” is a multimodal transit center, a nice plan for which was unveiled in February by Downtown Springfield, Inc. and the Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission [See the Feb. 23 IT cover story, […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Going on… and on
A while back – a long while back – I undertook to write a smallish book about a large topic, the history and culture of Illinois. I was certain that after more than 30 years spent reading, thinking and writing about Illinois in most of its aspects, it was a job I could do in […]
Posted inOpinion
True unbelievers
In February, the New York Times’ Timothy Egan nominated Roger Williams as the true founding father of America’s religious freedom. It was Williams who, in 1636, established a new colony at Providence to which he invited Jews, Quakers and unbelievers. These were the sort of people whose presence had offended the Massachusetts Puritans, who had […]
Posted inOpinion
The Cadillac Queen drives again
Readers who were around back when Ronald Reagan was just another lying politician and not yet a saint will remember the Cadillac Queen. She was a Chicago welfare recipient who starred in Reagan’s stump speeches for having used 80 names, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards to collect benefits for four husbands who were […]
Posted inOpinion
Tag-teaming history
Another Lincoln birthday month has come and gone, and this one was busier than most. We learned that the Mary Todd Lincoln that had looked down from an oil portrait in the Executive Mansion for more than 30 years isn’t the president’s wife after all. The painting was removed as fraudulent, but I think it […]
Posted inOpinion
‘Things’ll be great when you’re downtown’
Who would have thought that Petula Clark would turn out to be an urban policy seer? Perhaps you saw the SJ-R report about the “Sustainable Design Assessment Team” brought in to advise on how to keep the downtown Springfield of the 2010s from sliding back into the downtown of the 1980s. One of the architect-members […]
Posted inOpinion
There goes the neighborhood
Buildings are like people. Even when they get too old and decrepit to work, their examples can still teach. Something like 100 buildings from the Lincoln era are thought to still stand in Springfield. Most of them, unfortunately, are houses that, being quite small and much amended by their many owners and in the wrong […]
Posted inOpinion
Wanderings and doings
Yes, kids, I really did used to walk two miles to school. For the whole of my ninth grade year in 1962-63, I often walked from Washington Junior High at 21st and Jackson to our house near the Statehouse. I was not moved by any of the current faddish arguments for walking. Nor was I […]
Posted inOpinion
College credit
In January, the University of Illinois announced it was raising its tuition on new undergraduates at its three campuses yet again. Lamentation was general throughout the land. Tuition for residents at Illinois public colleges and universities used to be somewhere below laundry among the various costs of going to college, but it’s been outpacing inflation […]
Posted inOpinion
Such a deal
By the late 1980s, Sears & Roebuck had lost the knack of selling America its school clothes and car tires like it used to. However, it was still able to sell the governor of Illinois, the General Assembly and the mayor of Hoffman Estates a suit with no pants and make each think he got […]
Posted inOpinion
A new old street
The National Park Service has released its final general management plan that sets the parameters for development and preservation at the Lincoln Home National Historical Site for at least the next 15 to 20 years. It matters, even to the many Springfieldians who visit the place only to show visiting new in-laws around, since the […]
Posted inOpinion
Just what you want to do
Springfield’s School District 186 has set up a web page titled “Where Are They Now?” On it, graduates of Springfield public schools are invited to “share their success stories with the SPS community.” In fact the purpose of the website is to share District 186’s success stories with the larger Springfield community; the spinning at […]
