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Give college grads a future of freedom from debt
The U.S. Senate held a vote recently to bring up legislation allowing student debt holders to refinance old loans at lower current interest rates. The motion to debate the “Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act” garnered a 56-38 majority but fell short of the 60 votes needed to open debate.

About history, so what?
Your favorite dyspeptic is away this week, so instead of your regularly scheduled dose of Dyspepsiana you have me, leaving the comfort of my niche as an occasional writer of history and parenting articles to dip my toe into opinion.

What job creation numbers don’t tell us
They’re currently telling us that, “The job market is improving.” What do they mean? Simply that the economy is generating an increase in the number of jobs available for workers. But when they say, “The stock market is improving,” they don’t mean that the number of stocks available to investors is on the rise.

LETTERS
When I started work in 1960, my dream was to make $2.50 per hour. The minimum wage then was $1 per hour. However, in 1960 you could buy a decent house for less than $15,000, a new car for less than $2,000 or mail letters for four cents and postcards for one cent.

Remap petition problems
Almost 90 percent of the “Yes for Independent Maps” petition entries tossed as invalid by the Illinois State Board of Elections this month were for people who were either not registered to vote or weren’t registered to vote at the address shown on the petitions, official documents show.

EPA to step up water pollution enforcement
It has been on the books since 1972, but the federal Clean Water Act has always been a bit unclear about exactly which waterways it protected. That’s set to change with a rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but business groups are pushing Congress to block the change.

LEGISLATIVE FICTION
How can a reporter tell it’s election season? The flood of bloviating emails from candidates is a dead giveaway. One of our favorite offenders is Rep. Sue Scherer, a Democrat from Decatur who represents part of Springfield. Last week, Scherer sent an email taking credit for the passage of a law to improve early childhood education.

SIU makes up with AFSCME
Last week, however, SIU backtracked completely when it reached an agreement with AFSCME Local 370, the union that covers SIU workers. Although the medical school denies having done anything wrong, it ceded every point of contention to the union, marking the end of a strange spat in which the university gained nothing but bad publicity.

FORE!
Springfield Park District officials have met with representatives of a private golf management firm. But it’s too soon to say that the district will put management of the district’s four courses into private hands.

Bullish on GateHouse?
The price, according to stories published by New England media outlets, is between $50 million and $60 million.

Give peace a chance
In the world of cops, orange is the color of jail. When you get a call that someone dressed in orange is walking solo along the road, you jump in your cruiser to check the guy out. Which is exactly what has happened more than once to Swami Sankarananda, who passed through Springfield last weekend on his way to the East Coast.

Giving them something to strive for
It’s already warm outside at 85 degrees on a breezeless summer evening in Springfield, but inside the gym at the Boys and Girls Club, it seems even hotter. The gym, sans air conditioning, is full of high school boys in colorful shoes, sprinting back and forth in an energetic game of full court basketball.

Prairie Dreams
Just imagine living in central Illinois during the 1820s, arriving fresh from the East as an American settler moving into this wilderness area. What would you eat? How did you dress? Why in the world did you decide to leave your home and move to an unknown land? What dreams lay before you and what dreams were left behind?.

Good news for better parenting
Many people in central Illinois will remember Harriet Arkley. She helped start Springfield School District 186’s Early Start and Parents as Teachers programs. She then was the principal at Withrow, when it was an early childhood center. She was the first principal of Ball Charter School before retiring.

Two guys make a movie
Springfield resident Ozland Banks has been independently shooting videos and doing graphic design work for years but his dream had always been to make a movie, with a single camera, a small crew and a gritty, underground feel. This dream is coming to fruition with the premier of the comedy Seriously Trippin’.

The hearth eternal
A former English teacher, Battles has been the perfect site administrator for the Vachel Lindsay State Historic Site, where Lindsay was born in 1879 and died in 1931, and which is located directly south of the governor’s mansion.

Too not everyone’s cup of tea
Film critic Gene Siskel once put forth the notion that reviewing comedies was a useless exercise. He felt that comedy was a subjective genre and that while he might think something was funny, others might not be amused at all and vice versa. I think there’s something to this.

Cheap food I: illegal immigrants
“It kills me that the folks who freak out over ‘illegal immigrants streaming over the border to steal American jobs’ are often the same folks who love $0.99 boxes of strawberries …. Don’t want illegals coming over here to work? Get ready to pay fair, American wages to the workers who produce your food.

BAND SPOTLIGHT | Young Luck
How lucky it is to be young and in a band! Young Luck began in mid-November of 2012 when Fedor and the Power Trio morphed into a kicking band blowing down the road like a rock ’n’ roll freight train.

PUB CRAWL
Mike Burnett and Cowboy Bob Berning & Suns of Circumstance.

Music galore
Back in the early ’90s, the Suns of Circumstance ruled the bar-waves as one of the best grooving bands around. They jammed some Dead, knocked the Allman Brothers out of the park and riffed on all kinds of cool covers no one else touched.

THE CALENDAR
Congregational Church, United Church of Christ , 520 West College Ave, Jacksonville. Book Signing.

SCIENCE | Field day
Activities planned include a sweet corn farm-to-table relay, fruit and vegetable stamp painting, building a hamburger flannel board and seed planting. There will also be a bee demo with Beekeeper Arvin Pierce and exhibitors from genHkids, St. Louis Dairy Council and Sangamon and Menard County Master Gardeners.

HOLIDAY | Bang for your buck
Central Illinois’ largest Independence Day fireworks display takes place Friday, June 27. Rock the Dock is famous for its fireworks launched from barges on Lake Springfield in front of Lake Springfield Marina. Country singer Austin Webb, whose new single “Raise ’Em Up” is currently being played on the radio, will perform.

FESTIVAL | Going the extra mile
Assumption Fest opens Thursday, June 26, in the small town of Assumption but the lineup is anything but small. Recently added to the parade on Saturday, June 28, is the vehicle and color guard, courtesy of the Il linois Army National Guard’s Company A and Company D, 1st Battalion, 106th Aviation Regiment in Decatur.