Illinois – James Krohe Jr

Note: The text departs slightly from the original published version, having been slightly improved for readability. Yes, I know – who feels like celebrating the state of Illinois? The commonwealth will be 200 years old in 2018, and no one in state government seems prepared to party. As our Erika Holst recently reminded us [see […]

Back in June, news got about that there was waiting on the governor’s desk a bill to set up a Muslim Advisory Council. Kumbaya gestures of this sort have long been popular among politicians pandering to groups whose good opinion they hope to win. This particular bill, as would quickly become apparent, was so ill-drafted […]

Today’s trampoline parks are safer than those of yesteryear. PHOTO BY IRFAN KHAN/TNS The wonderful thing about getting older is watching people falling for the same cons their grandparents did. The Philippines invasion became Vietnam became Iraq. Trump is Buchanan again, who was Perot again, who was Wallace, and so it goes, all the way […]

The updated Prairie Capital Convention Center, soon to be renamed for the Bank of Springfield. We learned July 18 that the directors of the Prairie Capital Convention Center approved the sale of naming rights to the building to the Bank of Springfield. Mike Coffey Jr., chairman of the board that oversees the center, told the […]

The Illinois Executive Mansion as depicted on a postcard from the 1920s. IMAGE COURTESY OF ILLINOIS DIGITAL ARCHIVES You know how it is. You repaint the living room, and suddenly the furniture looks shabby. So you replace that, which makes the carpet look worn. Over on Jackson Street, they finally fixed the leaky roof on […]

I know that my life makes you nervousBut I tell you that I can’t live in serviceLike the doctor born for a purpose— The Clash/”Rudie Can’t Fail” Critical though I feel obliged to be of their decisions, at one level I feel a deep empathy with Misters Madigan, Emanuel and Rauner. I too have known […]

Gov. Bruce Rauner PHOTO BY BRIAN CASSELLA/TNS An old rule of thumb among business owners holds that half of all the money they spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is no one knows which half. The question of waste in government spending is much easier for most taxpayers to answer: government “waste” is any […]

You know how some songs seem just right for the moment? Charles H. Chamberlain and Archibald Johnston’s isn’t. The state of Illinois made their “Illinois” the official state song in 1925, but it wasn’t right for that moment, harking as it did not to the Jazz Age but to the immediate post-Civil War era. As […]

Breaking the norm, Indian Hills subdivision street names recall the original residents of the place that is now Illinois. PHOTO BY DAVID HINE Attentive readers might have noticed my recent preoccupation with the problem of place – how people come to define a place as a “place” and what it means to the people who […]

Paul Scott Mowrer Paul Scott Mowrer was born in Bloomington in 1887 and lived there until he was in the sixth grade. In short, everything important that can happen to a boy in the normal course of growing up happened to him in mid-Illinois. While he never came back to live, pursuing instead a career […]