Poets, we are reliably told, once were creatures of the street and the court, not the study, and poetry was sung, or at least recited. That past lives again every year when Springfield area schoolkids take the stage during the Poetry Out Loud recitation competition, whose winners have a chance to go on, if not to glory, at least to Washington, D.C., for a national recite-off.

Regarding your Aug. 11 cover story, “When adoption goes wrong: Giving up custody to get kids the mental health care they need,” by Patrick Yeagle: A better title for this article would be “Trading custody rights for mental health care.”

As Lily Tomlin noted, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”

We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to editor@illinoistimes.com.

The article fails to present appropriate solutions, such as the state complying with federal Medicaid law and offering Voluntary Placement agreements.

Congress and the president took the nation to the brink of default. Standard & Poor’s lowered the federal government’s credit rating by a notch. The markets devolved into a swooning bipolar frenzy. And the political rancor emanating from Washington, D.C., showed no signs of abating.

There’s a new online school-supply company for parents of children in Springfield elementary schools that’s giving back to the community with every purchase.

Dr. H. Brent DeLand of Springfield recalls doing minor surgery while on a humanitarian trip to Haiti in 2002, as his friend and later charity co-founder Greg Richmond of Chicago held a single light bulb aloft for light inside a one-room clinic in the Cité Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Illiopolis residents might soon have a new area to relax and visit geese, quail, pheasants and other native wildlife within their natural environment.

Springfield’s long-awaited railroad consolidation study calls 10th Street the best option, but the project’s fate remains murky as the federal government examines a new alternative and the availability of funding.

Without access to a car, 49-year-old Lloyd McCullough walks more than four miles, six days a week, to get from Helping Hands shelter on the corner of 11th and Adams streets to his stocking job at Menard’s, on the northeast edge of town. Homeless since a breakup in May, McCullough hopes each night that his name is drawn in the shelter’s lottery so he can get a bed in a room where lights go out at 9 p.m. Up again at 3:30 a.m., McCullough is at work by 5 a.m. for a five-hour shift before heading back downtown, where by his return around 11:30 a.m., all he really needs is a little respite.

Students aren’t the only ones who need to worry about getting to class on time this year. Traveling teachers, known as “teachers on a cart,” will also be shuffling through the crowded hallways when school begins.

He’s lived in Springfield for nearly 70 years – most of it with his wife, Midge, and their 13 children in a rambling white clapboard house at the corner of Whittier and Laurel Ave.

Langfelder was born in 1926 to a Lutheran mother and a Jewish father in predominately Catholic Austria. His father managed a manufacturing company and his mother had been a private secretary in a law firm until the birth of his only sibling, his sister Edith.

“There was a store near Times Square that had a four-foot-by-four-foot cube of butter in a huge glass case. My eyes must have bulged out because I had only had bread spread with goose fat once a week. We were so used to everything being rationed, we hardly had any opportunity to even see butter.

By 1944, Langfelder was eager to join the Army and fight for the U.S., even though he knew he had at least one cousin who was fighting for Germany. After two years in the Pacific theater of the war, he came back to Springfield. He was 20 years old. Within a week he was working at a downtown men’s clothing shop and buying chocolate bars at a nearby movie theater. The pretty teenage girl running the candy counter was Mary Agnes “Midge” Dunham. They were married five years later.

Both Ossie and Midge say his mayoral years had advantages for their family. Home from New York City to take his mother on an Alaskan cruise to mark her 80th birthday, youngest son Jacob, 36, says going to the National Mayor’s Conference in New York City when his father was mayor was the turning point of his life.

Certain foods have become intrinsically linked with state fairs throughout most of the nation. Salt water taffy. Snow cones. Cotton candy. Lemonade shakeups. Recently there’s been an influx of increasingly bizarre items that are deep-fried or on a stick – or both. Many are outrageously over-the-top, the heights of their caloric content only equaled by the depths of their nutritional value

Certain foods have become intrinsically linked with state fairs throughout most of the nation. Salt water taffy. Snow cones. Cotton candy. Lemonade shakeups. Recently there’s been an influx of increasingly bizarre items that are deep-fried or on a stick – or both. Many are outrageously over-the-top, the heights of their caloric content only equaled by the depths of their nutritional value

The really cool thing is this: the 71-yearold, Lincoln native has played the fair for more than half his 57-year career as a trumpet player and bandleader. Yes, young Don played his first gig in 1954 at the tender age of 14 with the Nu-Notes at a Bloomington Eagles Club.

After six years as an up and coming band on the national music scene, The Graduate is done. The 20-something band, featuring Corey Warning (vocals), Matt Kennedy (guitar, keyboard, vocals), Max Sauer (guitar, vocals), Jared Wuestenberg (bass) and Tim...

Dead Ringer, Melissa & Paul, Mildred, The Least of Alls.

Obi-Wan Kanblo Mi, Atlas the Atom Smasher, Childbride.

Find more details and gigs in our online calendar at www.illinoistimes.com.

Lincoln Art and Balloon Festival.

Here’s something you’ve never seen or heard in Springfield. For one night on Aug. 19 the Springfield Art Association welcomes the group Jazz Canvas.

Theatre in the Park Executive Director Kari Catton won a national award in the Jackie White Children’s Playwriting Contest for her original play, Healin’ Home..

Artist on the Plaza Aug 18, 23, 25, 30, 12-1pm, Every Tuesday and Thursday, free outdoor performance. 753- 3519. Old State Capitol, 1 Old State Capitol Plaza.

Through August, watercolor exhibit. troutlilycafe.com. Trout Lily Cafe, 218 S. Sixth St..

The Sangamon Brass Quintet has two upcoming performances on Aug. 24 and Aug. 25 in Springfield. Aug. 24 from 7:30-8:30 p.m. the group plays baroque, classical and contemporary music at the Washington Park gazebo. Bring your chairs. Aug. 25 catch the quintet at St.

Cool Cruisers Car Club Cruise-in Aug 20, 6-9pm, In the parking lot at Prairie Crossing. $5. 528- 1590. Meijer Store, 4200 Conestoga Drive.

Saturday, Aug. 20, the American Cancer Society wants to honor service and family dogs that provide love and companionship for cancer patients and their families, while raising money for local efforts.

Aug 24, 6:30pm, Potluck to precede business meeting and white elephant bingo. New members welcome. 522-2908. St. Joseph Parish, Sullivan House, 1306 N. Fifth St..

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SEV- ENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT SANGAMON COUNTY, ILLINOIS ESTATE OF Albina Gurski, Deceased. Case No. 2011 P 383 NOTICE OF PUBLICATION OF WILL AND CLAIMS Notice is hereby given of the death of Albina Gurski, Letters of Office were issued.

Case No. 2011-MR-394 PUBLIC NOTICE Public Notice is hereby given that on September 11, 2011 I will petition in said Court praying for the change of my name from AMELIA GRACE GENTRY COX to AMELIA GRACE COX pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided.

Public sale at 9:00 a.m., on September 13, 2011, inside the Sangamon County Courthouse, 200 South Ninth Street, Springfield, IL 62701. The property will NOT be open for inspection. (E) The terms of the sale are: Cash or certified check or the equivalent thereof.

Police were able to identify two people who snatched a purse from an 82-year-old woman in New Castle, Pa., because the victim’s 89-year-old friend banged the getaway car with her cane as it pulled away. Police Chief Thomas Sansone said officers found the car by matching the dent to the cane and arrested Jerry Brown Jr.

Recently, you published a letter from a married man complaining about his wife’s letting their two young children sleep in their marital bed with them. They’d gone from being a couple who didn’t have much sex to a nearly sexless one.