For a day or two in late November, it was just like the old days on Wall Street — well, like 2008, anyway. The National Association of Realtors had reported that house sales had risen 10.1 perce]]> Have you ever thought about how much Freddie Mercury’s Queen owed to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan? You have? Okay, we’ll talk about something else.The other day State Rep. Bill Mitche]]> Springfield has become to sick people what Decatur is to soybeans, a major regional processing center in which raw materials are processed by the latest in high-tech machinery into novel products such]]> Perhaps you have read about, if not seen, Mitt Romney’s latest TV campaign ad. Mr. Romney, keep in mind, is the responsible GOP contender, the grown-up in the room, the calm voice on platforms o]]> Steve Jobs is dead, and the world talked about little else for a week. By now we have arrived at the transitional moment that was neatly described by columnist Rick Polito in the Pacific Sun – t]]> If its aldermen were running Springfield’s fire stations, the city would have burned down years ago. On Oct. 18 the Springfield City Council passed a complex new ordinance that stiffened the pen]]> I left one question unanswered when I wrote recently that the Horace Mann Educators Corp. building in downtown Springfield was one of four in the capital city designed by a world-famous architecture f]]> Poets, we are reliably told, once were creatures of the street and the court, not the study, and poetry was sung, or at least recited. That past lives again every year when Springfield area schoolkids]]> The motives people have for entering the public sphere often are murky. Their motives for leaving it prematurely are usually even more so. Tim Davlin is only the latest of several Illinois public men ]]> On Oct. 12, on what would have been the subject’s 100th birthday, a marker was unveiled at Second and Jackson streets, noting the once-presence nearby of the boyhood home of Robert S. Fitzgerald]]> After 40 years, area tourism promoters still don’t have a compelling answer to the central question of their trade, which is, How ya gonnna bed ’em down in Springfield, after they’ve]]> It’s that time of year again, when youth gangs dressed improbably in bloomers and armed with basketballs rumble at the gym to defend the honor of the Red and Black or the Green and White –]]> What, I wonder, is the overdue fine on a library lintel that was lost for 36 years? The carved stone lintel that stood atop the main entrance to the old library building had been salvaged when the bui]]> 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,” f]]> Who would have thought that Petula Clark would turn out to be an urban policy seer? Perhaps you saw the SJ-R report about the “Sustainable Design Assessment Team” brought in to advise on h]]> San Francisco, city and club, are famously tolerant of people who don’t play by the book, but Major League Baseball tolerates it only among its umpires. The game’s poobahs have ruled that ]]> You’re in your doctor’s office. You’ve just been told that you have cancer – one of the bad ones, like those that attack the pancreas or the liver or the lungs or the ovaries &]]> On Sept. 11, the District 186 board announced that it would cancel classes forever at Enos Elementary School. The board approved plans to demolish the aging building on the north side and replace it w]]> A planned new “patioscape” on the parking lot side of the former White Oaks Cinema will provide outdoor seating for customers of the shops and eateries expected to move into the converted ]]> No doubt some members of the of the Springfield Diocesan Council of Catholic Women settled into their seats at the Centennial Auditorium in March 1949 looking forward to being instructed by their invi]]>