Rendering from a 2007 project by U of I architecture students envisioned mixed-use development on the YWCA block. “Give it back to the Indians,” I thought when I read the State Journal-Register’s call for ideas about what to do with the YWCA block downtown. “Give it back to nature. Give it to anyone other than […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Unionizing moms and dads
Pamela Harris won her case, and the U.S. Supreme Court won another skirmish in its war against the liberal consensus. What Illinois’ disabled and dependent citizens won is less clear. Chicago-area resident Pamela Harris is the mother who cares at home for her 25-year-old son who’s had severe intellectual and developmental disabilities from birth, with […]
Posted inOpinion
Promised lands
James F. and Margaret (Keyes) Reed, who were members of the Donner Party. During four Junes since 1994 I’ve moved to and from Illinois and the West Coast. On that first trip, orange and yellow U-Haul and Penske rental trucks settled on the big roads by the hundreds, like migrating ducks lighting on an interstate […]
Posted inOpinion
Somebody tell the dogs
The third week of May every year is Dog Bite Prevention Week. The American Veterinary Medical Association spent that week “educating people about preventing dog bites.” Their time would have been better spent educating the dogs, as we learned from the report that State Farm Insurance released describing claims paid for damages from dog bites. […]
Posted inOpinion
Squabbling over the inheritance
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, front, and museum, rear, feature large rotundas in Springfield, Illinois PHOTO BY BILL HOGAN/MCT That nice Mr. Madigan, I’m sure, just wants to help. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency have not been getting along. Friends of both have offered their advice, but […]
Posted inOpinion
Our Cup runneth over
Honestly, I had no idea that anyone was paying attention. I had begun extolling the virtues of soccer as a spectator sport for years (beginning at this paper back in 1977) when most U.S. sports fans lumped soccer with socialism, clean, fast trains and quality universal health care systems among foreign threats to America. For […]
Posted inOpinion
Exclude me in your prayers
I have long wondered why God, who for decades has been routinely invited to watch over the General Assembly and guide its deliberations, has asked Mike Madigan to do that job for him. Now I know. The prayers recited by invited clergy to open legislative sessions in Illinois weren’t specific enough to make clear which […]
Posted inOpinion
Stuck in Illinois . . .
I’m packin’ up darlin’, down the road I go…a black top road running to a gravel road then a sand top road and I’ll be gone–“You Don’t have To Go” as performed by Jerry Lee Lewis The pollsters of the Gallup organization asked people around the country whether they would move away from their home […]
Posted inOpinion
My life of service
Foreign travel is usually regarded as a perk of high office. After I had been elected president of Springfield High School’s Interact Club, the service club for boys, sponsored by the local Rotary Club, I learned that my official itinerary would extend no farther than New Jersey. One of my duties (actually, just about the […]
Posted inOpinion
Latitude for error
The proprietors of The Upshot drove in a couple of runs for their new web-based news site when they posted a fun interactive map of baseball fandom. Aggregating Facebook “likes,” Tom Giratikanon, Josh Katz, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy charted the geography of fan allegiance to the various major league baseball teams, ZIP code area […]
Posted inOpinion
Cultural arts major
George Lucas Photo BY TISH WELLS/MCT Toymaker George Lucas is thinking about buying Chicago a museum to house his personal collection of early 20th century soft-core and magazine cover art by the likes of Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell, among exhibits devoted to cartooning and movie graphics. The Florentines had the Medici, we have the […]
Posted inOpinion
The birth of the plyscraper
Illinois corn growers have been getting fat because so many Americans drive to their convenience stores for sweet drinks in cars using ethanol-laced gasoline, both made cheap by trade barriers that keep out cheaper sugars and fuel ethanol. That kind of agriculture is not sustainable in ecological or economic terms, and one day the state […]
