Word: springfield
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...best thing and the worst thing about Springfield is the same: the location. Middle of Illinois, which is not far from the middle of nowhere. The Illinois capital is about 100 miles from St. Louis, 200 miles from Chicago or Indianapolis. You can fly there, but probably not on a plane with much overhead bin space. More likely you will arrive at the end of a long car ride, having enjoyed wide vistas of flat prairies...
...waves of change and tempests of progress that storm through more cosmopolitan places register in Springfield as the merest ripples and breezes. If this isn't a place that time forgot, it is certainly a place that occasionally slips time's mind. The dominant feature of the skyline is the Hilton tower, 30 stories high. It was built during the Nixon administration, and still feels like a hotel where Howard Hughes might be padding around with Kleenex boxes on his feet up on the top floor. (See video of what it is like to be Mr. Lincoln...
...What's great about this isolation is that Springfield still feels a bit like the city where Abraham Lincoln once strode the streets. There was more horse dung and dust then, to be sure. But nowhere else can you get such an intimate glimpse of the man in this bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth...
...Nearby is the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a modern, multi-media complex that houses one of the best collections of Lincoln materials in the world. As Illinois State Historian Thomas Schwartz explained to me recently, Springfield had the good fortune to have a Lincoln buff serving as governor during the Great Depression. He budgeted for acquisitions at a time when prices were low. "We were able to collect material at a time when there was not much interest and not much money...
...style, tone and attitude of cooperation that the Obama Administration brings. I only wish that Klein had adopted this new attitude. Instead, the snarky remarks aimed at George W. Bush and conservatives make him come across as a sore winner, very unlike our new President. Brian Hendricks, Springfield...