•June 13, 2018•

By Emma Baker
Of the Hancock County Journal-Pilot

For the Mormons, Quincy appeared to be a beacon of hope and safety during tumultuous times.

Members of the Mormon faith began arriving in Hancock County about 1839 looking for security after having encountered hostility elsewhere, according to Thomas Gregg, a Hancock County settler who wrote about the Mormon faith in his 1880 book “History of Hancock County, Illinois.”

But in the Quincy area they were welcomed. They established their own town, Nauvoo, about 50 miles north of Quincy. Gregg’s book describes early Nauvoo, before the building of the Mormon Temple, as a picturesque site on the east side of the Mississippi River, about 10 miles north of Keokuk, Iowa.

“The origin, rapid development and prosperity of this religious sect are the most remarkable and instructive historical events of the present century,” Gregg wrote about the Mormons in Nauvoo.

Illinois was a new home where members settled after being driven out of New York, Ohio and Missouri. Unfortunately, the Mormon followers would eventually be driven out of Illinois, too.

The founding of a faith Read More

•June 6, 2018•

By Jeff Johnson
Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times

Since June 2017, Muddy Waters’ image has beamed down from a 10-story mural at 17 N. State St. in Chicago. But the king bee of Chicago blues looms even larger over the city with his outsized musical and cultural legacy.

The Mississippi Delta native, born McKinley Morganfield in 1913, followed the Great Migration to Chicago in 1943, where he found stardom with his groundbreaking electric guitar sound and classic bands. He died at age 70 in 1983, but new generations of artists often cite the influence of the six-time Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and Waters’ songs such as “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Rollin’ Stone” are used frequently by filmmakers and advertisers.

International tourists visit Chicago to bathe in Waters’ lore, including a visit to his longtime home at 4339 S. Lake Park. There’s not much to see, though, because the house that Tim Samuelson, Chicago’s cultural historian, has called Chicago’s most historic home has stood vacant and in a state of disrepair for many years. Plans are stalled to convert the Kenwood two-flat into a museum or other attraction. Read More

•May 30, 2018•

By Marni Pyke
Of the Daily Herald

It took just seven years for O’Hare International Airport to rise from an unassuming, former aircraft factory to the world’s busiest airport in 1962.

Since then, the Midwest aviation hub has witnessed history and sparked an economic boom in the region; but for many across Illinois, it’s the place to reunite with the ones you love best.

“Creating O’Hare was a marvelously foresighted decision by the city of Chicago,” aviation expert Joseph Schwieterman said.

Chicago leaders chose Orchard Field, where the Douglas Aircraft Co. was building fighter planes, as the site for a second airport to relieve busy Midway International Airport in 1945. Read More

•May 30, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Christian conservative voters in Illinois must be haunted by their dilemma: Hold their noses and vote for incumbent governor Bruce Rauner in November, or stay at home and let even-more-distasteful (to them) challenger J. B. Pritzker win.

Based on an informal poll of my insider political friends, these Christian conservatives will not only have to vote for Rauner, but do so “enthusiastically,” that is, in big numbers, or his bid for re-election is almost assuredly doomed.

To review: A little known challenger to Rauner in the March GOP primary captured almost half (48.5 percent) of the vote in that race.

State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) rallied Christian conservatives to her/their cause over Rauner’s signature on an abortion bill that provides taxpayer funding for abortion.

His signature came after publicly promising to them and even to the Catholic cardinal of Chicago that he would veto the bill. Read More

•May 23, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

This column is more musing than analysis: We don’t know where we are going, and we are going there faster and faster.

That is, we need to focus more effort on understanding the consequences of the dizzying cavalcade of new technologies that are disrupting our lives. The following brought the topic to mind.

“What the devil is blockchain technology?” editor Jonathan Whitney thundered in a recent email. For 50 years, Jon has edited, published and taken out the trash at the Carroll County Review in Thomson, Illinois. A former president of the Illinois Press Association, Jon is the consummate community journalist.

Jon had just received a press release about a new state report on the topic of his question. It sounded to him like a cockamamie, probably taxpayer-costly boondoggle. Always eager to please a paying editor, I said I’d look into it.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger (think spreadsheet) technology that provides identical information to every block on a chain. Seemingly infinite computer power and storage make it possible. Read More