In Chicagoland, Memorial Day weekend is usually the start of the beach season that runs through the Labor Day weekend. But COVID-19 has, obviously, scrambled those plans ( Read more... )

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In the midst of a global pandemic, news breaks fast, and things can change quickly. Case and point - back on Thursday, I filed an article for the Chronicle Media newspapers about how libraries throughout the six-county Chicagoland region responded to COVID-19. At the time, most of the libraries already closed, with some doing a few extra things to ( Read more... )

Here in Chicago, it feels like the hits just keep on coming ( Read more... )

The Hiawatha Amtrak route occupies an interesting niche in Midwestern public transit. It's the only Amtrak route that runs several times a day. It connects Chicago and Milwaukee, providing a reasonably quick, convenient connection between the two downtowns. But even with two tracks for its entire length, the route can only handle so many trains at ( Read more... )

While reading this morning's Politico Illinois newsletter... There were a lot of interesting parts in there, but I wanted to focus on this one.

Riding Amtrak to Springfield last night: Anne Caprara, chief of staff to J.B. Pritzker; Joe Duffy, president of JMD Public Strategies; Jasmine Hooks, who’s directing operations for the governor; Democratic ( Read more... )

On Tuesday, March 21, the State of Illinois had its 2018 primary. The two major parties' nominations for U.S. House of Representatives, as well as a whole slew of state-wide, regional and local offices were on the line. Heck, in many cases, a Democrat nomination (or, in rarer cases, a Republican nomination) was as good as a victory in general ( Read more... )

In October 28, 2017, Illinois State Representative Jeanne Ives decided to challenge incumbent Republican governor Bruce Rauner in the March 20, 2018 Republican primary. Her issue wasn’t Rauner’s position on economic and labor issues - it was the fact that he signed House Bill 40, which undid the Illinois law that would make abortion illegal in ( Read more... )

Hat tip to Capitol Fax

Bald Eagle majestically floats down the crystal-clear Mississippi River in Elsah, Illinois on a piece of ice. https://t.co/lemwT34XSF pic.twitter.com/EGMVpSPo48
- ABC News (@ABC) February 1, 2018

On Monday, August 21, much of the United States will see at least a partial eclipse. In Illinois, the only place where you'll be able to see a total eclipse is in the southern Illinois city of Carbondale and some of the surrounding area.

Amtrak has two state-sponsored trains - Saluki and Illini running between Chicago and Carbondale during the day ( Read more... )