Hemant Mehta What in the name of Joe McCarthy is going on up north? In case you didn’t read about it, here’s what’s happened so far. In October, American Legion Post 134 in the Cook County town of Morton Grove withdrew its annual $2,600 donation to the local park district because one of its commissioners […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inArts & Culture
Remembering just a little more
There’s so much we can’t tell you about the folks we write about in our Illinois Times “Remembering” issue. The past two years have been particularly difficult for me writing about folks I actually knew and containing all my love for them in 800 words. One of my best friends died in 2012 and my lover […]
Posted inOpinion
Comic timing
What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. I don’t know why I have always enjoyed drummer jokes. My father is a professional drummer, and a fine one, so one should not read anything Oedipal into this odd taste. I have yet to recognize any aspect of his playing or his […]
Posted inOpinion
Promises, promises
Michael Carrigan, president of the Illinois AFL-CIO The headlines all say that the General Assembly has reformed Illinois’ public employee pension system. The headlines lie. Legislators didn’t reform what has become an unworkable system, although they did change it – or try to. Their ingenious fix is likely to prove futile; the courts will have […]
Posted inOpinion
Foreground music
Christopher Golub PHOTO COURTESY HTTP://CHIPOTLE.COM Thinking of oneself as a fogey is so poignant for a boomer, so vested are we in being the nation’s new generation. When we find more and more Xers taking our favorite seats on the bus, we react with ill grace. I thought of that as I stood in line […]
Posted inOpinion
What they had to do
Illinois in the War of 1812 by Gillum Ferguson. University of Illinois Press, 2012. 333 pages, $34.95. Thanksgiving is the time of year when some white people serve up a heapin’ dish of guilt. The season reminds us all of the circumstances of the founding of the nation, when it was the white people who […]
Posted inOpinion
Telling good from bad
“Everything’s on the Web.” It’s laughably untrue, but there is still too much stuff for most of us to make sense of. Thus the debate now raging on the Internet – by which I mean a lot of people are talking out loud to themselves – about the rise of the online curator. Curators are […]
Posted inOpinion
Clio in the cornfields
Historians think nothing interesting happened here after the Civil War. PHOTO BY KERRI WESTENBERG/MCT Most towns of any size have history that is worth reading about, but surprisingly few have a good history in which they might read it. By “a good history” I mean a single-volume history for the intelligent and curious reader that […]
Posted inOpinion
Pennies and nickels
For a lot of people in Springfield, Decatur is just a place to stop when you get hungry on the way back from a U of I game. But people live there too – at least some still do; the city has lost nearly 20 percent of its population since 1980. And it’s going to […]
Posted inOpinion
Rodney Davis warns of disaster
13th District congressman Rodney Davis. PHOTO COURTESY US GOVERNMENT Usually, when I read Mad-Hatteresque pronouncements from members of the Republican caucus of the U.S. House, I am reminded of the works of Lewis Carroll. Reading the remarks by 13th District congressman Rodney Davis during his recent campaign announcement tour, I thought instead of James Fenimore […]
Posted inOpinion
Fixing the wrong problem
“Throw the bums out!” I say. Ah, if only we knew who the bums are. Bruce Rauner thinks he knows – they are public sector unions, public school systems and the politicians who enable them. To bring about the Millennium in Illinois, Rauner is circulating petitions to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment authorizing […]
Posted inOpinion
Fast company
In “Unplugged,” I reported that the city of Chattanooga was planning to piggy-back a municipally owned fiber optic cable network on its public electrical utility. As the Washington Post reported the other day, it’s going very well, thank you. The city now operates some 8,000 miles of fiber for 56,000 commercial and residential internet customers. […]
