Last week we sat around the newsroom answering the question, "What does Springfield Mean to Us?" as a way to brainstorm story ideas from our community. For everyone the answer was different. Some of us had moved to Springfield only a year ago, and others had grown up here our whole lives. We found it easy to criticize Springfield, and more challenging to determine what we like about the city. Seeing how differently each of us saw the city, and how ...
Nastasha Medson throws away her notebooks. She doesn't need to keep them. She has her poems memorized. "I write about what goes around, love in general," said Mendson, a freshman at Springfield's High School of Commerce. Her poems are idealistic, she said. "Writing is everything to me. I've always been a writer since middle school. I started off with a diary then traded it for a notebook," she said. Mendson writes more than just poems though, journals too - whatever the occasion calls for. ...
By Staff Writer Nigel LaFlamme James O’Keefe is a 26 year-old journalist and self-proclaimed “modern day muckraker” dedicated to exposing what he believes is true. Well known for exposing the improper conduct of ACORN employees with his incriminating video tapes that showed ACORN members giving James, {at the time dressed as a pimp} and his “employee” {a friend dressed as a prostitute} advice on how to run a prostitution ring back in 2009. The tapes led to the U.S. census bureau ending its support of ACORN and the eventual bankruptcy of ACORN. Although he is known for being the one who bankrupted ACORN, James O’Keefe has done much to simply prove his point about how politically correct America has become. His exploits include convincing Rutgers University to take Lucky Charms off the breakfast menu because he saw them as offensive toward Irish people. ...
By Staff Writer Tiffany Harris Sarah Margaret Fuller was born on May 23rd 1810 in Cambridgeport, which is now known as Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the age of nine she dropped the name Sarah and insisted on being called Margaret. Timothy Fuller, who was a lawyer and later became a Congressman, educated his daughter Margaret. By the age of three and a half, Margaret learned how to read and write. He incorporated Latin into his teachings and soon enough Margaret was translating simple passages from Virgil. By the age of 10, Sarah wrote a cryptic note, which her father saved. In the daytime, Sarah would spend time with her mother who would teach her how to do household chores and how to sew. Sarah’s mother and father had a second daughter named Julie Adelaide who died at the age of 14 months. In ...
By Staff Writer Jasmine Davis [caption id="attachment_472" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Lovejoy"][/caption] Elijah Parish Lovejoy became a symbol to reformers against slavery after his death in 1937. He was an American abolitionist, journalist, newspaper editor, and he also owned his own printing press. Although Lovejoy wasn’t appreciated in his time, he was awarded for his achievements after his death. Lovejoy was born November 9, 1802 on his grandfather’s frontier farm near Albion, Maine. He has six brother and two sisters. His brother, Owen Lovejoy, was known to have taken over the printing press after his death. His parents, Congress minister Daniel Lovejoy and his mother Elizabeth Patee Lovejoy, had all of their kids on a very religious upbringing. From the age of four years old, Elijah was reading scriptures from the bible. He was a very good student and Lovejoy graduated from Waterville College in 1827. Shortly ...
