The Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce is talking industrial parks as the way to make Greater Springfield – which I prefer to think of as Bigger Springfield – a Great Place to Do Business. Springfield’s economic development plans aim to import companies or expand one already in the city. Alas, attracting a successful firm is […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Wise guys
Life is full of mysteries. Why would a beneficent god allow humans to invent ceramic cooktops? Why didn’t the Pyschedelic Furs sell more records? The public’s confusion is rich soil for the opinion-monger, which is why I have been able to make a living for 35 years telling other people what they ought to think. […]
Posted inOpinion
The college game
I know only two lawyer jokes. One is Rod Blagojevich. The other one is this: In a nation that already has more lawyers per capita than any other nation on earth, U.S. law schools are churning out many more lawyers than the economy needs. A consulting company that specializes in such things recently compared the […]
Posted inOpinion
Get smarter about a Smart Grid for utilities
Gov. Pat Quinn recently vetoed a “Smart Grid” bill that was pushed through the General Assembly this past spring by ComEd and Ameren, the two biggest electric utilities in the state. Politically, this veto was a no-brainer for the populist Quinn. The governor never tires of recounting how he helped start the Citizens Utility Board, […]
Posted inOpinion
Two schools for the price of one
On Sept. 11, the District 186 board announced that it would cancel classes forever at Enos Elementary School. The board approved plans to demolish the aging building on the north side and replace it with a new building on the site. As was reported by our Rachel Wells (“Plan to preserve Enos Elementary,” Jan. 6, […]
Posted inOpinion
Temples in ruins
I left one question unanswered when I wrote recently that the Horace Mann Educators Corp. building in downtown Springfield was one of four in the capital city designed by a world-famous architecture firm. (“Architectural dreams,” Aug. 4, 2011.) Why did a growing but still small insurance company in a not-growing and small Midwestern city hire […]
Posted inOpinion
Looking back
Satchel Paige wisely advised us, “Don’t look back: Something may be gaining on you.” He’s right. I addressed the time and energy costs of daily commuting to jobs in Springfield in “Stuck in Carlinville with the Springfield blues again” (Aug. 25). Hillsboro reader Jean Mehochko reminds me that alternatives exist. She is a regular on […]
Posted inOpinion
Unscientific methods
As news goes, it wasn’t very new. The company that administers the ACT college prep tests announced recently that fewer than a quarter of Illinois’ 2011 graduating high school class met the firm’s college readiness standards in English, reading, math and science. That’s even worse than a very poor U.S. national average. U.S. Education Secretary […]
Posted inOpinion
Stuck in Carlinville with the Springfield blues again
“Commuter.” A lot of Downstaters hear that word and think of a driver trapped during an afternoon rush in August on Chicago’s westbound Ike, which – and I know what I’m talking about here – is enough like hell that even an old sinner will repent by the time he gets to Austin Avenue. Yet […]
Posted inOpinion
Modern minstrels
Poets, we are reliably told, once were creatures of the street and the court, not the study, and poetry was sung, or at least recited. That past lives again every year when Springfield area schoolkids take the stage during the Poetry Out Loud recitation competition, whose winners have a chance to go on, if not […]
Posted inOpinion
Going against the flow
My advice is, don’t ever invite the executive director of the Springfield Metro Sanitary District and a carp to the same party. Springfield, you see, is one of dozens of Illinois cities and towns that have a combined sewage system in which the same pipes that carry untreated sewage to the treatment plant also are […]
Posted inOpinion
Architectural dreams
Springfield’s Trivial Pursuit is not a party game that is much played these days, except by candidates for state representative seats. Several different versions were released over the years in an attempt to broaden the market by narrowing the appeal to, variously, science buffs, movie obsessives or nostalgists. High time, perhaps, for a Springfield version. […]
