It’s back-to-school time again – the hopeful buzz of the first few weeks when the backward and the indifferent say to themselves, “This year I’m going to get it right,” followed by the chastening failures, and the gradual realization that there are some disciplines that are just too difficult to master. I am talking of […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Living in three dimensions
Dave Bakke, who usually observes the world from the upper slopes of the State Journal-Register, the other day looked at it from an even higher vantage point – the cenotaph that stands on the edge of the bluff above Chandlerville. The view down the Sangamon valley from that spot, he wrote, is the most beautiful […]
Posted inOpinion
Fury like Armageddon
The foundations of Springfield institutions will crack and sway. Structures long thought impregnable will topple; a long-familiar landscape with be altered beyond recognition. No, it is not the conviction of Bill Cellini that might cause this calamity, but the major earthquake that is almost certain to strike Springfield and the rest of this part of […]
Posted inOpinion
Reinventing the past
Building new businesses based on new ideas is the central axiom of the near-science of economic development. Sangamon County’s would-be Edisons in the medical field recently were invited to submit ideas for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce’s Project Innovation, intended to encourage local entrepreneurs in health care. The finalist ideas, announced in May, included […]
Posted inOpinion
Something about a man in uniform
You wouldn’t think it was possible for a soldier to shoot himself in the back while marching toward the front line, but Congressman Mark “Don’t Get Fooled Again” Kirk has managed to do it several times. By all accounts a capable intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, Mr. Kirk felt compelled to make himself out […]
Posted inOpinion
Cheeseparing in the Capitol complex
The William G. Stratton Building – eyesore, health risk, money trap – has gotten a reprieve. It has been sitting on Death Row since 2007, when the State of Illinois launched an inquiry and found the 56-year-old office building to be guilty, and began the process that would lead to its execution by bulldozer. Turns […]
Posted inOpinion
Making room for the Huangs
In 2002, the government of the People’s Republic of China banned a book of oral history interviews with the sorts of people that the West does not hear about, and that the Chinese authorities do not wish it to. The compiler was one Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer who had been marginalized himself by the […]
Posted inOpinion
The Presidential museum turns five
Abe World opened five years ago this month, on April 19. Drawing on all the dark arts of electronic hucksterism, the new museum was to transform Springfield into a Mecca for patriots who would make their hajj by the millions in their Caravans and Odysseys. Has it? Has it returned a decent profit on the […]
Posted inOpinion
Reuniting learning and labor
Facing nearly half a billion dollars of unpaid bills from the State of Illinois, the University of Illinois says it will probably have to raise tuition nearly 20 percent over the next four years. Taking a page from the General Assembly accounting textbook, the university will pay its immediate bills by borrowing against tuition and […]
Posted inOpinion
Remember to not forget
The bronze sculpture commemorating the 1908 race riots was finally dedicated this summer on Aug. 6, a century late. As all mayors must, Mayor Davlin said a few words at the ceremony in Union Square Park. “I think we also put up a monument over here,” he said, “to remind . . . current and […]
Posted inOpinion
UIS, the educational city
I complained here recently that the University of Illinois at Springfield’s recently adopted master plan will make the future UIS campus the kind of sprawly, inchoate, inefficient place that alert urban planners everywhere are abandoning. (“Stuck in the ’70s.” Sept. 3). How backward-looking, I wrote. In fact, this vision of the future UIS is not […]
