Letters to the Editor

HERO OF HOPE Anything could have happened – none of it good – when Rosa Parks said “no” and refused to give up her seat on that bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, the first capital of the Confederacy. She could have been thrown down the stairs by the driver or slapped around and humiliated […]

U.S. SLAVE CONSTITUTION The United States of America has three forms of slavery: the original slaves of Africa, the black prisoners, and the sharecroppers, of which I am one. The U.S. Constitution is crafted to keep the black race as servants to the whites. To preserve their Confederate slave owners, whites have erected monuments and […]

DARKNESS IN THE DAYTIME I enjoyed the article “Darkness in the daytime,” by Scott Faingold, on Aug. 17, but wondered why some facts closer to home weren’t there: history. No one alive today has ever seen a total eclipse in the state of Illinois before, as one hasn’t occurred since 1869. That eclipse was the […]

BRAGGING ON BRANDON I thoroughly enjoyed your article on my grandson, Brandon Sheppard. (“Cleaning up,” Bruce Rushton, Aug 10). You got it right, and our family would like to thank you for capturing his accomplishments and his personality so spot on. I talked to Brandon on Thursday morning and he was very happy with the […]

MADIGAN’S TO BLAMEI believe it is rather clear that there will not be any meaningful reforms passed by the House as long as Michael Madigan is speaker. He made sure the budget got to such a crisis state that even some Republicans felt compelled to vote for the budget, even though Speaker Madigan reneged on […]

SOLAR PARKING METERS Thank you Bruce Rushton, for your excellent article on parking, including the Decatur idea, worth considering, of yanking all the parking meters. [See “Time expired?” July 20.] One of the biggest problems with parking meters is they make you guess how long you’ll be gone and then insert the money for that […]

  RACE DISCRIMINATIONPublications aimed at senior citizens are constantly reminding us about the importance of getting in and staying in shape through programs of regular exercise. And there is no better way to stay fit than to always be looking forward to one’s next competition. I’m talking about racing, whether it be a local 5K, […]

ABOUT THE AMARANTH APPLE Now that Springfield’s Amaranth Apple Festival has come and gone, we ought to learn something about the origin of the name. The fictional apple, sadly unavailable from orchards or grocers, grows only in Vachel Lindsay’s The Golden Book of Springfield, his 1920 narrative work envisioning a utopian Springfield developed between 1918 […]

  THE BUDGET BURDENThe Illinois legislature has overturned the governor’s veto, thereby implementing a budget unseen by the state in more than two years. In order to pay its spiraling liabilities and avoid junk bond status, the legislature has seen fit to raise the income tax rate and the corporate tax rate, each more than […]

LESSONS ON LIFE SKILLS I agree with the June 29 article titled “Real innovation,” written by James Krohe Jr. Even though I have a college degree that served me well, I think too much emphasis is put on sending everyone to college and not enough on life skills and thriving in the real world. I think more […]

  RESPONSE TO ‘KILLING FIELDS’The recent article by Bruce Rushton titled “Killing Fields” (Jun 22) highlights a growing concern across this country: the soaring number of gun store burglaries. These guns are ending up in the illegal market and are causing the increase in gun violence in Springfield, Chicago and across Illinois. SB 1657, sponsored […]

STATE STORAGEI enjoyed James Krohe Jr.’s piece on the Department of Human Services record storage problems (“More floppies in a shoebox,” June 15), but was rather amazed that you could write so much without getting to the point. In every story written about this DHS records “scandal,” no one has bothered to define exactly what […]