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Cool hand New Berlin
On the one hand there is a superintendent praised for dressing like a cowboy to read to kids and helping students and teachers with discipline issues. At the board meeting, Tyler Robinson recalled his seven-year-old son, who plays for the Mets in a kids league, wearing his jersey to school one day.

Last rights
A state-by-state initiative is gaining momentum to allow terminally ill, mentally competent people to request and obtain medication from their physician to shorten their suffering and achieve a peaceful, dignified death. Polled nationwide, a large majority, across political, religious, ethnic and gender lines favor this initiative.

Making the numbers work for first responders’ benefits
Police and (especially) firefighter unions fought the local government lobby for decades to increase survivor benefits, and then they watched many of those hardfought wins get wiped away when the General Assembly decided it had to lower pension benefits for new hires to avoid a fiscal catastrophe.

LETTERS
COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED Now that AFSCME employees are receiving back pay for step increases, with interest to follow soon, let’s have a round of applause for Rep. Tim Butler for this overdue largesse. Some might think Mr.

Stuck
In 2017, the district announced a push to get more high school students, particularly minorities, enrolled in AP classes, which can earn kids college credit if they score threes or better on a five-point scale on tests in such subjects as calculus, history and psychology.

GET READY FOR LAYOFFS
As the big day nears for GateHouse Media, parent company of the State Journal-Register, some folks are worried. On Nov. 14, stockholders in Gannett and New Media Investment Group, which runs Gatehouse, will vote on a merger to create the nation’s largest newspaper company.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
Following the example of departments elsewhere, the Springfield Police Department has instituted a Safe Passage program wherein folks who’ve fallen prey to drugs or alcohol can get help by showing up at the police station or flagging any cop they see: Please, I need treatment.

Illinois State Museum returns artifacts to Australia
The Illinois State Museum is making national news in Australia. The Australian government recently announced that 42 culturally significant objects will soon be brought home from the United States. They include secret/sacred, ceremonial and secular objects.

School segregation’s new frontier
New Berlin, a village with 1,500 people separated from the outskirts of Springfield by 12 miles of pale blue skies and sunlit cornstalks, still has many hallmarks of a small town. It hosts the county fair, with chili cookoffs, livestock exhibitions and country music stars drawing crowds during the long days of June.

Economies of a scale
Has the experience of spending my first six months of retirement working in a restaurant kitchen made me a better home cook? It definitely has, but not in the ways I would have expected. Much of my time in the kitchen is spent picking little leaves off of thyme sprigs or cutting a basket of shallots into a quart of tiny little -inch squares.

Onward in October
Thursday evening delivers a couple of blues news extras as Johnny Burgin returns with a rockin’ blues show at Hand of Fate in Petersburg and our hometown hero, world traveling, songwriting blues guitarist James Armstrong visits the Curve Inn.

LIVE MUSIC
Night Witch, Black Box, Foam Fangers, Grinn.

BAND SPOTLIGHT | Carolyn Sills Combo
This award-winning (2018 Ameripolitan Best Western Swing Act) music group peels back layers of time to present old-fashioned Western Swing music, while adding all the contemporary class necessary to make it plausible and pleasing.

THE CALENDAR
Terror on Washington St. Haunted House.

SPORTS | Dog sports
Capitol Canine Training Club Inc., a nonprofit organization, was founded in 1965 and sanctioned by the American Kennel Club in 1975. This weekend it will host two days of American Kennel Club-licensed agility trials.

LECTURES | Railroads, revenue, revitalization
Two unique factors have come together that would allow District 186 to become a world-class school system. They are the railroad relocation project and the county sales tax for schools. Alan Woodson, Tom Kerins and Jack Pfeiffer, all former teachers and school administrators, will present their research on how that can be achieved.