Reagan’s ‘Quintessential’ Story Began at Eureka College

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•July 11, 2018•

By Lenore Sobota
Of the Pantagraph

Illinois may be known as the Land of Lincoln, but it’s another president with Illinois roots who offers lessons to which people today can more easily relate, say officials of Ronald Reagan’s alma mater.
Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932. He went on to become a sports broadcaster, movie and television actor, governor of California and the 40th president of the United States.
“The Reagan story is the quintessential Illinois story,” said Michael Murtagh, the college’s vice president for institutional advancement. “He is a person who came from small-town Illinois and made a difference in the world.”
As noted by Mike Thurwanger, head of the Reagan Leadership Program at the college: “One of the things he offers is the understanding that an individual from humble beginnings can rise to a position where he has an impact on the world.”
While not downgrading the importance of Abraham Lincoln, Murtagh notes: “Lincoln grew up in a log cabin. … People can’t relate to that.” Read More

Understanding Illinois: The Neighborhood Violence That Mars Chicago Can Be Stopped

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•July 11, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Regular readers of this space might recall that I have a love affair with Chicago. I take Amtrak in, revel in the incomparable offerings of symphony and jazz, art and museums, all within walking distance, and follow up with dinner from an endless selection of clever restaurants.
Yet I continue to be haunted by the paradox of mindless street violence playing out daily, almost in the shadow of this oasis of high culture. How can the two worlds exist side by side, I wonder, in a civilized society?
I have written about this before, based on visits I have made to the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Yet I feel compelled to weigh in again, for the violence, now chronicled in leading national and international publications, threatens to mar this great American city.
In recent weeks, there have been incidents of apparently lawless groups of youth brazenly walking off their gang turf and into the vibrant city center, generating high anxiety among the culture seekers.
Violence in Chicago is actually down significantly from what it was in the 1990s. But it wasn’t much reported then, as it is now, and most present mayhem occurs within a few poor, largely minority neighborhoods to the west and south of the city center.
According to the Heartland Alliance, a poverty research group, in 2016 African-American men aged 15-34 represented just 4 percent of Chicago’s population, yet made up over half the city’s murder victims. Read More

For Humanity’s Sake Let’s Open the Conversations We Need to Have

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•July 11, 2018•

Editor’s Note: Kathy Best, Sullivan native and Missoulian editor, wrote this insight into the Annapolis newsroom shooting. She touches on issues that affect Moultrie County as well as the rest of the country.
Ten days ago a man was arrested for walking into a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland – a newsroom much the same size as the Missoulian – and systematically gunning down five journalists.
As a newspaper editor, I’ve worked on coverage of mass shootings at a college campus, in a high school and even in a suburban coffee shop. The horror — and the fear — inflicted on the community by those deaths had always been unimaginable. Until June 28.
I didn’t know the reporters, editors and sales associate killed in Annapolis. But I was intimately familiar with their world. The smells: cheap coffee, a hint of pizza spice, the musty bouquet of old paper. The sounds: the quiet clack of computer keyboards, the quirky ringtones of cell phones, the laughter over the latest goofy online headline. And, most of all, the mission, the thing that brought each of them together in that place.
My own path to journalism wasn’t direct, in part because I knew exactly what I would be getting into. My parents owned a weekly newspaper that my Dad published, my Mom edited and they both wrote for. Read More

Grant’s First March To War Was From Springfield To Quincy

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•July 4, 2018•

By Greg Olson
Of the Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Col. Ulysses S. Grant passed up a chance to have his soldiers ride in train cars. Instead, he thought it best that they march to war.
So, on July 3, 1861, Grant mounted a horse and led his first Civil War command out of Camp Yates in Springfield, en route to Quincy. The 39-year-old Grant had molded his somewhat unruly troops — members of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment — into a disciplined fighting force.
“There was direct railroad communication between Springfield and Quincy, but I thought it would be good preparation for the troops to march,” Grant wrote in his “Memoirs.”
The approximately 1,000 men of the 21st Illinois marched about 8 miles the first day before setting up camp just west of present-day Riddle Hill near what is known today as the Old Jacksonville Road in Sangamon County.
On the Fourth of July, Grant led his men to Island Grove in western Sangamon County, where they stopped for a while at the home of Capt. James N. Brown, a wealthy farmer and Shorthorn cattle raiser. Read More

Understanding Illinois: Spending Father’s Day at Denny’s Restaurant

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•July 4, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I was motoring down Illinois one recent Sunday and decided to stop at a Denny’s for an early lunch. You know Denny’s, the chain that “slings lots of hash,” good hash[, big plates heaping with eggs, French toast, pancakes, bacon, and tall milkshakes in cream, pink and lime green hues, all topped with curly-cue mounds of whipped cream].
The joint was jumpin’, it being Father’s Day. All the tables were jammed with Dads, Moms and loud little kids. The cashier tried to comfort the impatient, yet polite families waiting for a table. “Won’t be long now.”
Alone, I motioned to the empty, eight-stool counter. “Sure,” the harried cashier nodded. I plopped down right in front of the open kitchen, separated from the four waitresses by a high warming ledge. Heavy plates came sliding precariously from the grill toward the young ladies, waiting with their four-foot wide, I swear, brown trays, each holding enough to feed the Royal Air Force.
A trio operated behind the warming ledge: On the left wing of the kitchen was an older black lady of weathered, inscrutable age. She didn’t move slowly, but rather deliberately—every motion expended had a purpose! Read More

Getting Your Kicks on Route 66

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The Mother Road offers amazing sights as it winds through Illinois

•June 27, 2018•

By The State
Journal-Register staff

Perhaps it is the yearning for yesteryear that endears so many to Route 66.
Who wouldn’t want to jump into a classic car and explore the United States, stopping at shiny new service stations to pump gas into your vehicle, or sip a cold drink from the soda shops that dot the roadway? Such sepia-toned wishes of driving the Mother Road in its heyday could prompt many of us to start packing for a trip.
Ford had been mass-producing vehicles for a little more than a decade when Route 66 was commissioned on Nov. 11, 1926. It was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System, its 2,448 miles starting in Chicago before arriving on the West Coast in Los Angeles (and later the Santa Monica Pier).
By 1985, Route 66 had been removed from the federal highway system, as the entire road had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System.
But it’s still possible to get an idea of what the roadway looked like: Just stop in Lexington to take a trip down “Memory Lane,” a 1-mile stretch of the original 1926 alignment of Route 66 pavement. It was turned into an interpretive trail and is open year-round to pedestrians and bicycles. There, people can delight in the restored vintage billboards and signage. Read More

Understanding Illinois: Illinois School Finance and the Struggle to Educate Equally

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•June 27, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

When I was Gov. Jim Thompson’s aide for education in the late 1970s, there was an adage that only six people in Illinois understood the state school aid formula—and they weren’t allowed to fly on the same plane.
There is a new formula today, just as complicated. And state senators Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill, Macoupin County) and Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) would be among those six experts today.
Andy and Jason are highly capable, earnest Eagle Scout types. Over five years of hard work, they have taken the lead, along with scores of other participants, in crafting a new formula that will use evidence of best schoolroom practices to drive the allocation of increased amounts of state school dollars.
If the state can fund it, which is far from certain, the formula would put much more money into property-poor districts to provide them the teachers, staff and programs needed to give students a good chance at being successful.
Some background: At a statewide average of $13,000 per student times two million enrolled in our public schools, Illinois spends from all sources about $26 billion a year on pre-K through high school education. That’s real money. Read More

For More Than 75 Years, Peoria’s Ag Lab Has Made An Impact On Lives With ‘Wonderful Discoveries’

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•June 20, 2018•

By Scott Hilyard
Of the Peoria Journal Star

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, formerly named the Northern Regional Research Laboratory, has been headquartered in Peoria for 78 years.
Wait, the what?
Well, it’s best known as The Ag Lab, the federal scientific research operation that is the work home of 80 Ph.D. scientists and 120 support staff. Wrapped in post-9/11 wrought iron security, the building has been a solid, if vaguely mysterious, presence at the corner of Nebraska Avenue and University Street since 1940.
Created under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, The Ag Lab was one of four regional research centers built. The centers cost about $1 million each to build, equip and staff.
Then, the United States was emerging from the Depression and World War II was on the horizon. “All across this country there were large stockpiles of excess agricultural commodities,” former Ag Lab director Paul Sebesta said in 2015. “The chore was to take those excess commodities and create value-added products out of them to support the rural economy. The four centers were located in Peoria, close to the Great Lakes, in Philadelphia, one was located in New Orleans and one was located out on the West Coast, in the Bay Area. Each still exists and all four were constructed exactly the same. Read More

Understanding Illinois: If We Really Love Our Grandkids Prepare for Their Future

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•June 20, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I saw a bumper sticker the other day: Ask me how much I love my grandkids.
But do we really love them so much?
In our selfishness, speaking generally, we of the Baby Boom and earlier generations seem to be somewhat complicit in the following problems:
· U.S. debt is greater now than at the height of World War II, which had to be financed primarily with debt. The recent tax “reform” bill has some good points, yet it is to be paid for with $1.5 trillion in additional debt, which the retiree generation won’t pay for—their grandkids will.
· Most of us retirees still receive more from Social Security than we paid into it. That is changing, and for our grandkids it will be the opposite.
· We old farts receive much, much more in health care via Medicare than we pay into it, and the program will place financial heavy burdens on our grandkids.
· Dysfunction in Illinois state government over the decades will burden our grandkids with solving the wreckage. Read More

Nauvoo Established Home for Growth of Mormon Religion

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•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