Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013 01:14 pm

Fall curtain call

A season of robust theater in central Illinois

Although summer is drawing to a close, the theater season is still going strong. Springfield and the surrounding region boast some truly impressive talent and mesmerizing productions that can hold the...

Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013 03:19 pm

Reviving a tradition at Clayville

The Clayville Folk Music Festival comes to life Aug. 24

By Tom Irwin

Close your eyes and drift back in time. There are no cars, no cellphones, no computers, no electric grid. Not a film in a theater or a movie on TV and not one single musical recording via iTunes, albu...

Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013 02:58 pm

More than vegetables

Community gardens bring people together

By Jeanne Townsend Handy

An idea that is a good one never quite goes away. Instead it rides the waves of interest, research and possibilities – it grows and melds with the times. Such is the idea of community gardens an...

Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013 03:37 pm

Extreme school makeover

A church organizes an outpouring of generosity called Sharefest

By Patrick Yeagle

What would cause parents to be excited about sending their children to a 102-year-old school building where 82 percent of the students come from low-income homes? The answer is an outpouring of genero...

Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013 03:37 pm

Get out of jail clean

By Bruce Rushton

It is Friday, and drug court is back in session on the seventh floor of the Sangamon County courthouse.As on every Friday at 11 a.m., two dozen or so participants in the county’s fledgling drug ...

Thursday, July 25, 2013 02:29 pm

Citizen rockers

The Seething Coast storms Springfield’s shores with a pair of new releases

By Scott Faingold

“I was born here but I can’t die here / And all my dreams, they all dried up a long time ago” – lyric from “Dignity” by The Seething Coast Playing in a rock...

Thursday, July 18, 2013 03:37 pm

Building bigger, better hospitals

Three separate expansion projects bring improved health care to Springfield

By Patrick Yeagle

What’s the official bird of St. John’s Hospital? The crane.That silly joke popped up shortly after the towering construction crane began hoisting materials around the hospital in June 2012...

Thursday, July 11, 2013 04:39 pm

Smackdown

Law enforcement gets tough on heroin

By Bruce Rushton

Outlawed since 1924, heroin bumped along from the Jazz Age through the Vietnam War, mostly as someone else’s problem, at least so far as most folks outside large metropolitan areas were concerne...

Wednesday, July 3, 2013 04:22 pm

Visit Santa Claus in July

Illinois Performers shake up Holiday World

By Cindy Ladage

Holiday World is located in Santa Claus, Ind., in the southern part of the state east of Evansville, about four hours from Springfield. In Santa Claus it’s all about Christmas. Oh and about Hall...

Wednesday, July 3, 2013 12:45 pm

Living the American Dream in Springfield

One man’s journey from Kuwait, to Jordan, to owner of Mariah’s Steakhouse

By Zach Baliva

Although he came into the world in 1964, Bassam “Sam” Al-Khayyat (pronounced Alkite) refers to July 3, 1989, as the day he was born. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he s...

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