The bronze sculpture commemorating the 1908 race riots was finally dedicated this summer on Aug. ]]> A lot of people, I suppose, thought that George McGovern had died a long time ago when they heard in October that he had passed away. Some of them could even have put a date on his demise – elec]]> “Everyone wanted it to have an ‘urban’ type feel,” said one focus group participant to the State Journal-Register about the new supermarket that Niemann Foods Inc. plans to bui]]> All but a few members of the Springfield High School Hall of Fame are not in the least bit famous in Springfield. In the English-speaking bookish community, however, one of those anointed is celebrate]]> Remember Election Night? All those colored maps on TV, intended to make clear what a jumble of numbers could not. But the maps, unlike the numbers, did not add up. Such massive swaths of red on the ma]]> Jim Edgar is the closest thing the Illinois Republican Party has to a sage. His long career in elective office made him wise – wise enough anyway to retire from elective office – and he ge]]> Readers of the brand new Illinois Times might not have learned learn much about who controlled the Illinois House, but we reported so diligently where they could buy farm-fresh eggs that it became a s]]> If enough middle and high school students sign up for it, the Springfield and Ball-Chatham public school districts may offer instruction in Mandarin Chinese, the simplified official Chinese dialect us]]> Central Illinois farmland doesn’t usually return a fat harvest until the fall. These days it’s doing so all year long. Sales prices for prime farm acreage around Springfield rose roughly o]]> 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 &]]> The vandalism being perpetrated in Washington, D.C., it turns out, is not confined to the nation’s finances. Perhaps you read of the House subcommittee that met in March to hear arguments agains]]> Abe World opened five years ago this month, on April 19. Drawing on all the dark arts of electronic hucksterism, the new museum was to transform Springfield into a Mecca for patriots who would make th]]> 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 ]]> Back in March of 2009, Barnes & Noble signed a new five-year lease on its store in the strip mall at Wabash and Veterans where it has been doing business since it opened in 1993. The decision was ]]> Illinoisans often feel like a space traveler who, having intercepted the TV signals that escaped from Earth a generation ago, sees the past when it was still the present. On July 20, authorities annou]]> It is a rare human being who does not enjoy being read to. The soothing tones of the mother at the bedside, reading us to sleep, the soothing tones of the politician, reading from a teleprompter, read]]> Gov. Pat Quinn recently vetoed a “Smart Grid” bill that was pushed through the General Assembly this past spring by ComEd and Ameren, the two biggest electric utilities in the state.Politi]]> Springfield has seen two Lincoln movies recently – Saving Lincoln, which retells the White House years from the perspective of his close friend and bodyguard and which the Abraham Lincoln Associ]]> I suppose the question to the Springfield City Council ought to be phrased this way: If they come, will you build it? “It” is a multimodal transit center, a nice plan for which was unveile]]> Buildings are like people. Even when they get too old and decrepit to work, their examples can still teach. Something like 100 buildings from the Lincoln era are thought to still stand in Springfield.]]>