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How safe is hydraulic fracturing?
As you’ve heard, hydraulic fracturing has stimulated an oil and gas boom in those states with suitable geological formations. Income is flowing to company owners, corporate shareholders, employees, mineral rights owners, local retail economies, government treasuries – fracking benefits diverse groupings of individuals.

Land of mope and worry
To borrow a phrase, all happy cities are alike; each unhappy city is unhappy in its own way. To learn a bit about what those unhappy ways are, three economists at Harvard and the University of British Columbia sifted through the responses by some 300,000 Americans to a national survey run by the Centers for Disease Control.

Post office is a money-making operation
Antigovernment ideologues and privatization dogmatists, however, hate the very word “public,” and they’ve long sought to demonize the U.S. Postal Service, undercut its popular support and, finally, dismantle it.

LETTERS
MAMMOTH MEMORIES Mary Bohlen’s article about Mammoth Cave (“Cool off in Mammoth Cave, the world’s longest,” Aug. 7) reminded me of my trip so-o-o many years ago. I was about 35 years old (I am now 85) when my husband and I decided to take the Wild Cave tour.

Feds back off of Ford
The original 17 federal counts of bank fraud and submitting false information to a bank each carried potential sentences of 30 years in prison and a $1-million fine – meaning Ford was essentially looking at spending the rest of his natural life...

Boston plays Springfield
For those of us who were there and of a mindset, Boston was an undelible part of growing up in the 1970s. Their debut album sold 17 million. They were bigger than Nirvana. And then they weren’t. The coattail effect never lasts, and so it was with Boston, which has put out six albums now, each one less successful than the one before.

SPRINGFIELD’S NIGHT OUT
It’s a night for taking back the streets. Springfi eld joined hundreds of communities around the nation in the National Night Out on Aug. 5. Several neighborhoods in Springfi eld held block parties, inviting police and fi re fi ghters to meet with families and establish relationships that foster cooperation.

Going to pot
With the state setting up steep financial barriers to entry, it is not a business for just anyone. The application fee for a single cultivation center – there will be 21 – is $25,000, with the lucky winners having the privilege of paying a $200,000 license fee for the first year of operation and $100,000 per year after that.

PARADE LEMONADE
One who worked long hours on the float entered in the State Fair parade by the Coalition of Rainbow Alliances said she was “heartbroken” when rain canceled the parade and the group’s chance to win for the 10th year in a row. But wait.

Black and white
Just before midnight on Nov. 4, Samuel Johnson of Springfield was returning home from Bloomington when he saw a police cruiser in the median along Interstate 55. He hadn’t been drinking or using drugs, and he had nothing illegal in the car, but he still thought it best to play it safe.

Shrek
Looking for a place where you can see a wisecracking gingerbread man, an enormous singing dragon, a talking donkey and a diminutive aristocrat sharing the stage with a couple of green freaks who perform a duet of revolting bodily noises? Then the Muni’s production of Shrek the Musical.

Tropical treats
Most of my summer desserts focus on seasonal fruits at their succulently flavorful peak: berries, melons, peaches, nectarines and plums bought at farmers markets and roadside stands. But tropical desserts are also appropriate in summer. Here are four favorites including one of my very simplest recipes.

Familiar Expendables 3
In the interest of staying true to form, I should probably give a summary of the plot at this point in the review and will refrain from using the phrase “spoilers ahead.” That would be superfluous.

Fair enough
I’ve heard through the music-scene grapevine of some grumblings about how the bands are picked to play the beer tents. With the combining of Coors and Miller last year, those two tents got booked by one organization and that understandably affected the deal.

THE CALENDAR
BOOKS & AUTHORS Poets in the Parlor: Sarah Henning.

ART | Installation environments
Contemporary art gallery DEMO Project will host an opening reception Friday, Aug. 15, for the exhibit Communal Paradox.

THEATER | Not a sleeper
Theatre in the Park at Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site presents the Tony Award-winning musical comedy Pajama Game.

PRESENTATIONS | Talk of the town
Thursday, Aug. 21, is the next installment of the entertaining and informative PechaKucha at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Some of Springfield’s movers-and-shakers take the stage and talk about what they know best, accompanied by PowerPoint presentations they have made.