Peoria Made Personal: Charity Neal, Dawn Silverthorn

CHARITY NEAL
Works at Pettet Jewelry Deigns Ltd.; Lives in Peoria Heights

Charity has been living life in a series of full circles. Born and raised in the Peoria area, her whole family still resides here. "The family business started in what was a chicken coup on Farmington Road. Neal's Auto Parts was founded by my grandfather and uncle, perfected by my father, and then the boys took off and ran with it. Neal's...

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The Freak Power Politics of Hunter S. Thompson

Since the next issue of The Peorian will be hitting magazine racks and trash cans in a couple of weeks, I thought I'd give you a preview of the Literarea section where I take a rather in-depth look at the weird and wonderful life of Hunter S. Thompson.

While he's known primarily as a counter-culture writer, Thompson was also a political junky as evinced by his book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which the...

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Artist in Residence: Jeanna Fearon

For Jeanna Fearon, art is therapy

A few years ago, a good friend of Jeanna Fearon was struggling with personal issues.

"She needed time to get away, even for an afternoon. And she needed to laugh. So we took a day off and... well, we laughed. A lot. That was the inspiration for this," Fearon said of what has become one of her favorite works of art.

It is simple, really. It's a painting Fearon did after that day...

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Summertime Blues

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Time flies when you want it to stand still?" That's all I hear when I think about walking across the graduation stage in about nine months.

Being a senior comes with responsibilities that most of us never wanted to face in the first place. It takes so much of our heart to accept that we're growing up. Our childhood is the part of our lives that shapes us into who we are as adults. Where do I stand, then?...

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A Literarea Preview: 'Joseph Anton: A Memoir'

Joseph Anton: A Memoir
By Salman Rushdie

Joseph Anton is Salman Rushdie’s long-awaited autobiography that begins with the life-changing day of February 14, 1989. That was the day when many of us in the Western World first learned the meaning of the word fatwa. On that day the Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Rushdie to death for his novel The Satanic Verses, which...

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Artist in Residence: Marcia Henry Liebenow

For Marcia Henry Liebenow the violin is just nature

If there is one thing Marcia Henry Liebenow has learned in the 40-plus year she has played the violin, it's that you can't fight nature.

For her, it started when she was growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, a town of about 55,000 in central Ohio. The middle of five children, her father, Percy Hall, taught music and orchestra in the schools there. Her mother was...

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A Literarea Preview: 'The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac'

The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
By Joyce Johnson

In the category of most biographed¹ author, Jack Kerouac seems to still reign supreme as evidenced by this the 12,653th biography² to be published since his death in 1969. One would think that the territory would be well worn. However, this biography is written...

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The Old Hearse

With nineteenth-century style and grace
it made its grand debut,
pulled by a proud team that escorted
even the most elite through city streets.

With grace and style still intact
it rolled right into the next century,
only to be outdone and outrun
by more sophisticated horsepower
and set aside for roped-off streets
where even the most elite looked on.

But when its time had come and gone, Read more...