The neighborhood school, redefined

The community room in the new Matheny-Withrow is a beginning

Schools, conventionally, seek to train the minds of their young charges. The problem is that it is not only their minds that show up every day in the classroom. Their bodies, their attitudes, their ex

Looking for Mr. Right

District 186 needs more than a new superintendent

Springfield voters on April 9 taught School District 186 a lesson. The district needed a better board, they believed, and they made their point by electing a slew of new members. But what, exactly, ar

Cakes on a plate

Building walls and street spaces in Springfield

In a recent column (“Keeping Springfield weird,” April 25, 2013) I tried to explain why Springfield’s built environment strikes so many visitors as off-putting. I mentioned as likely

Keeping Springfield weird

No parent ever has an ugly baby. Even if the little darling has a head that looks like a cantaloupe from the bottom of the pile, parents don’t like strangers stating the obvious. People are the

Ten years after

Iraq and America’s never-ending battle against truth

We fought, we were told, to avenge an act of terrorism against our nation that was made up, after a campaign whipped up by the U.S. media. In fact, the real powers in America wanted the war to protect

The right combination of sensibilities

Rich Shereikis taught in the classroom and on the printed page

Richard Shereikis died in Evanston on March 29. He was 75.A spot on the staff of Illinois Times in its very early years was an entry-level position – anyone who walked up the steps and through t

Empty chairs

Why so little public interest in serving the public interest?

The nation laughed when Clint Eastwood debated an empty chair at the Republicans’ national convention, but it wasn’t funny in Illinois. More and more of the seats on Illinois’ town c

Unplugged

Why is Illinois’ Internet service so backward?

We all live in a brave new world, but the future is happening sooner in some places than in others. As you might expect, the planet is home to many nations where connections to the Internet, the highw

Nurse! Nurse!

Relief for Medicaid’s financial ills?

Illinois faces two challenges in providing decent medical care for the many among us who stubbornly refuse to follow the example of our social betters by getting rich. One, endlessly “debated,&r

A penny here, a penny there…

Will a monumental Lincoln penny bring in tourist dollars?

I read with dismay – I always read with dismay, like some people always sleep with their cat – that the president would like the federal government to stop minting pennies. They can buy vi