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© 2004 T.J. Salsman, The State Journal-Register Introduction Essay for Illinois 24/7 The Illinois Way By Bernard Shoenburg Corn and soybeans. The Sears Tower. Maple "sirup" at a place called Funks Grove. Cities named Marseilles and Cairo-pronounced the Illinois way: mar-sails and kay-ro. The Magnificent Mile of stores on Michigan Avenue. And Lake Michigan itself, which might as well be a sea, as it draws its own eastern horizon. Illinois is many places, many images, urban and rural. It is the vague, all-purpose notion of "downstate" and the sprawling, imprecise universe called Chicagoland. There are 12.5 million faces of Illinois. They twang in the south, where Kentucky is just across the Ohio River and the Ozarks are just across the Mississippi. They invite you to Metropolis to see the statue of Superman. They speak of great books and nanotechnology in a university town called Champaign-pronounced just like the bubbly stuff, but spelled differently, of course. They gamble on riverboats, boats that never leave their docks. High school students in western Illinois go absent on the first day of deer hunting season. In Chicago, on the other hand, you can't legally own a handgun. Ah, Chicago. Where they play the blues and trade pork belly futures. Where Al Capone thrived and defined the city to the world-until Michael Jordan soared like a god for the once-great Bulls and rewrote the mythology. Where Mayor Richard J. Daley, the man Mike Royko called "the Boss," fine-tuned the Chicago Machine and got Picasso to make that thing that now adds character to downtown. Is it a bird? Is it a lady? Who cares? We got culture. "I am somebody!" While Jesse Jackson affirmed life itself for Chicagoans at his weekly meetings of Operation PUSH in a one-time synagogue on the South Side, Richard M. Daley, son of the Boss, carried on the family tradition, with a gentler touch. And where did young Daley stop on his way to City Hall? Two hundred miles south, in Springfield, of course, where he served in the ornate Senate chamber under the silver-gray dome with its century-old stained-glass replica of the state seal 230 feet above the rotunda floor hawking "state sovereignty." Outside, there's a statue of that tousled-haired orator from Pekin, Everett M. Dirksen, who led U.S. Senate Republicans but did it the Illinois way: He worked both sides of the aisle. A little donkey and a little elephant share his pedestal on the Statehouse lawn. Yes, we are not Wisconsin. Let them have their cheese and earnest policy debates. We get the job done. Just like the coal miners who, though harshly reduced in numbers, still emerge, faces blackened, from the tunnels under our central and southern regions. Like the Hispanic immigrants who man the meatpacking plant in Beardstown. Like the soy processors in Decatur. And the carmakers who incorporate Japanese methods in a place called Normal. Ours is the state where Abraham Lincoln lost an election to a senator named Stephen Douglas. But hey, we gave Lincoln the flint and the forum that would help him move to the White House and hold together the nation. And we are now, proudly, the Land of Lincoln. Our license plates tell you so. Look over parts of the Illinois River, or the Mississippi, or near Starved Rock State Park. Eagles fly there-majestic, dominant, beautiful. They too help define us. Evanston native BERNARD SCHOENBURG is a longtime political writer and columnist at The State Journal-Register, a Copley newspaper in Springfield, Illinois. Browse    View All    The Illinois Way    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Illinois at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 169 Photographers: 43 Towns: 54

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