PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE I took in two things during lunch the other day. One was bean soup. The other was Goethe’s observation that the nobleman “tells us everything through the person he presents, but . . . the burgher simply is, and when he tries to put on an appearance, the effect is ludicrous […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Seeing is believing – isn’t it?
Dearborn and Randolph, Chicago, May 25, 1909, from Souvenirs of Chicago, V.O. Hammon Co., 1915. History sleuths assert that the photographer asked traffic cops to knock off for five minutes, with the dramatic result you see here. Everyone likes picture books, and for mostly good reasons. Picture books about history are especially intriguing, in the […]
Posted inOpinion
Tell me, Adrian
Belew and his band, the Adrian Belew Power Trio, are currently on a 12-nation, 22-city tour of Europe. PHOTO COURTESY HTTP://ADRIANBELEW.NET On January 25, 2016, the State Journal-Register published an article in which rock guitarist and former Springfield resident Adrian Belew reminisced about his career. Ordinarily, one would expect to see the words “Springfield” and […]
Posted inOpinion
Citizenship test
ILLUSTRATION BY Julie Notarianni/TNS Who gets to be an American? I don’t mean who gets to live here. I mean, who gets to be an American citizen? This large question weighs heavily on the smaller minds on our political right. I recall that Alan Keyes argued – if that’s the accurate term for an assertion […]
Posted inOpinion
The new model museum
Illinois State Museum Bruce Rauner the other day took action that, he explained in a press release, would “develop a sustainable fiscal model for the continued operation of the Illinois State Museum.” I’m a little behind on my reading – Highway Thru Hell reruns – so I thought we had a fiscal model that had […]
Posted inOpinion
Bruce Rauner, progressive
PHOTO BY PATRICK YEAGLE Daydreaming the other day, I ran through my head some scenes from my imagined movie remake, Mr. Potter Goes to Springfield, in which Capra’s naïve do-gooder Jefferson Smith is replaced by Henry F. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. However, our own Mr. Potter, Bruce Rauner, also brings to mind real […]
Posted inOpinion
With 772 you get eggroll
As part of Illinois Times’ 40th anniversary observances, we will revisit in light of more recent events columns from James Krohe Jr.’s Prejudices series that ran from 1977 to 1994. Minor errors have been corrected and the pieces edited for length. The original, much longer essay can be read in its entirety on Krohe’s blog, […]
Posted inOpinion
Where corn is god
I grew up within a block of a corn field on the east end of Springfield. Nearly every weekend of those years we’d visit the relatives on their farm outside Beardstown; over the potholes and through the corn, to grandmother’s house we’d go, with me entranced by the corn rows, like the spokes of a […]
Posted inOpinion
Thriving on disturbed ground
Common buckthorn PHOTO BY ED SUBA JR./TNS The dread of the invader runs deep in every human. The savage acts on it unthinkingly, by reaching for a club; the civilized man and woman is no less vulnerable to it but considers it disreputable, rooted as it is in ignorance and racism, and tries to calm […]
Posted inOpinion
Imagining revolutions
PHOTO BY Anthony Souffle/TNS Drowsy after a heavy holiday meal, I settled in to finish Stefan Zweig’s classic 1934 biography of Marie Antoinette. As I drifted in and out of sleep, the Versailles in Zweig’s account of the final days of Louis XVI and his queen faded and was replaced in my imagination with the […]
Posted inOpinion
A shooting
Demolition of the President Lincoln Hotel at Fourth and Capitol. COURTESY OF THE LINCOLN LIBRARY SANGAMON VALLEY COLLECTION As part of our 40th anniversary observances, and in light of more recent events, we will revisit some of columns from James Krohe Jr.’s Prejudices series that ran from 1977 to 1994. Typos in the originals have […]
Posted inOpinion
Childproofing culture
While visiting an old friend in Evanston last weekend, I attended a Ceremony of Lessons and Carols at Northwestern University’s Millar Chapel. It was typical of such performances – hard benches and good music, and this time a polite “says who?” delivered to the scare-mongers among us in the form of lessons delivered in Spanish […]
