Knox in the News

From the Register-Mail:

A who’s who of Galesburg area politics and national railroad experts attended the National Railroad Hall of Fame’s first local induction ceremony Saturday at Knox College’s Seymour Library.

The hall, conceived in 1992, has yet to be built. The college offered the library’s Hermann R. Muelder Reading Room as a location so the Hall of Fame could become more involved in Railroad Days.

“The college, the town, and the railroad are just so intertwined — it really was a win for everyone,” said Knox College Public Relations Director Karrie Heartlein of the hall’s use of college facilities.

State Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, Sen. Dale Risinger, R-Peoria, and Mayor Sal Garza were among those in attendance.

Stephen Douglas, George Pullman, and the citizens of Nashville and West Nashville were inducted for their contributions to railroad history. Each person or group was represented by a descendant or a representative, many of them visiting Galesburg for the first time.

Listen to the entire ceremony via WGIL radio podcast.

From Destin.com (Destin, Florida):

Both taking the summer off from life, sisters Katie and Elizabeth McPhail found themselves in the same boat - headed on a 6,000 mile voyage on a watery path known as The Great Loop.

“The day after graduation, we got on the boat,” Elizabeth, 22, said.

The new grad walked off the platform at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., with a diploma in hand, and no real plans in mind. But Katie had an idea that led the girls and friend Sammy Almohandis, 22, to Destin for a couple of days.

“I first heard about the Great Loop earlier this year,” said Katie, a 26-year-old Issaquah, Wash., native.

The Great Loop is the circumnavigation of the Eastern United States by the waterways that divide it from the rest of the continent. ‘Loopers’ typically chart a course through the nation’s river systems, lakes and coastlines through the Intracoastal Waterway.

From the Register-Mail:

College 4 Kids drew 250 students this year and allows students from elementary and middle schools in the area to participate in a two-week educational setting.

The instructors range from elementary school teachers and Knox College professors to Knox College students who strive to one day be teachers themselves.

Most of the students are benefactors of a range of scholarships available.

“We don’t want to preclude children from coming just because of their family income level, especially with the economic problems facing the nation at the moment,” Schroth said.

The programs include instruction in the fine arts and foreign language, among many other options for the students.

The students range in age from 6 to 13.

One of the main benefits of the program, Schroth said, is to strengthen the interaction between the school and the Galesburg and regional community.

“Galesburg parents are very concerned with their children,” he said. “They see a program that is relatively inexpensive. That’s a real strong emphasis on our part, that it is affordable.”

Although the co-directors emphasized that the students’ safety is of the utmost concern, another major aspect of the program is the teaching opportunity it provides for 15 Knox College students, who serve fellowships exposing them to life as an educator.

“They get some real hands-on experience that allows them to see themselves as teachers in the classroom,” Helfer said.

From the Register-Mail:

Just in time for Railroad Days, Knox College’s Seymour Library has launched “Railroads in the Midwest,” an on-line digital collection of early documents and images.

The collection contains everything from high quality scans of 19th century photographs to PDFs of annual reports for long-defunct railroads, and is comprised of documents previously available in the library’s archives.

As this marks the first time they will be in a centralized location, putting the collection online saves railroad fans a trip to the archives and the archivists a lot of legwork, said archivist Carley Robison, who along with Information Technologies Librarian Laurie Sauer put together the collection.

“Railroads” is the library’s first digital project and uses technology available from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois.

The railroad was chosen as the subject for a variety of reasons, some obvious, others not so.

“It was a group decision. (Library Director) Jeff Douglas originally suggested the railroad because of the number of documents the college has on the railroad owing to our location,” Sauer said.

From USA Today:

At age 26, Angela Trilli doesn’t think she’s one of those so-called materialistic Millennials she has heard about — young people who are absorbed with themselves and their consumption.

She says she’s a saver, not a spender, but unlike many of her peers who didn’t have much to lose in this struggling economy, she says she lost $15,000 — about half of the savings she built up since childhood.

“It’s a very insecure world out there,” says Trilli, of Kendall Park, N.J., who works in marketing for a non-profit. “It was a little shocking to the system. You think things are going in a certain way, but you can’t expect that things are always going to be the same.”

The Millennial generation, or Gen Y, ranges from people in their 20s to those still in grade school. But what they all have in common is the knowledge that the recession has in some way shattered the world they thought they knew. And, depending upon how long the downturn lasts, historians, economists and psychologists say it could shape Millennials’ values and attitudes in much the same way the Depression shaped the attitudes of those growing up in the 1930s. ….

Economic uncertainty can create greater materialism, according to research co-written by psychologist Tim Kasser of Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and published last year in the journal Motivation and Emotion.

“Most people, when they go through economic recession, may become more frugal,” he says, but they “respond to moments of psychological insecurity by becoming more materialistic.”

A smaller strand of research, he adds, “suggests that during times of insecurity and trauma, there is an opportunity for changing one’s values. If they use that trauma as a way to re-evaluate their lives, to think about what’s really important, there is evidence that people will care less about money and possessions than they did before.”

Historians note that the economy became more dependent on consumption after the Depression and World War II and fueled the dictum that each succeeding generation would be financially better off than the previous one — something most experts say isn’t likely for the Millennials.

From the Register-Mail:

“Intimate Apparel” is the story of African-American seamstresses in New York City of the early 1900s, inspired by archival research and the author’s family history. The play tells the story of Esther, who has migrated from South Carolina to New York after her slave parents died. In creating exquisite lingerie for wealthy socialites and ladies of the brothel, she challenges the taboos of the age. The theme of the play is Esther’s journey to self-actualization…..

The play is directed by visiting instructor in theater Kelly Lynn Hogan, a Knox alum and accomplished Chicago actress. Hogan also has a master’s degree in performance studies from New York University.