Kyle Ferguson Most everybody knows that Blur song as "Woo Hoo," even though its proper title is "Song 2." Neither is particularly meaningful.

But Kyle Ferguson, a senior philosophy major at Augustana College, called one of his songs "Notes from a Solipsist," and that title frames the song's lyrics. Solipsism is a belief that one can only know what one directly experiences - that there might not be a world outside of your own mind.

"You identify your experience with the world," Ferguson explained. "So there's no reality external to your experience."

For several weeks now, the Illinois General Assembly's spring session has been a slow-motion train wreck. Those of us who work at the Statehouse are moving around in real time watching it happen all around us, saying to ourselves, "Oh, this is gonna hurt."

The Reverend George McDaniel, author of A Great & Lasting Beginning, will be awarded a State Historical Society of Iowa "Shambaugh Award of Merit" for his history of St. Ambrose University. The award, one of two given this year, will be presented at a luncheon in Des Moines on May 21. Benjamin F. Shambaugh Awards of Merit are given to one or more significant books on Iowa history published during the preceding year, based on their contributions to Iowa history, scholarship, readability, and appropriateness for the intended audience, according to the State Historical Society's Web site. A Great & Lasting Beginning is available at the St. Ambrose University bookstore and the Davenport Borders store, and it can be ordered online at (http://www.sau.edu/125).

 

smile.jpg A country-music performer's decision to move to Nashville is typically the product of a dream. For Suzy Bogguss, it was eminently practical.

In the early 1980s, the Aledo native and Illinois State University graduate was knocking around the country, doing gigs at coffeehouses and ski resorts. She lived in the Quad Cities, Kewanee, Peoria.

She didn't envision a future as a respected and popular country singer. She didn't aspire to the gold and platinum records she would eventually earn.

"It just never really occurred to me that that's what my goal was going to be," she said in a phone interview last week, in advance of her May 12 performance with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra at the Adler Theatre. "It was just fun."

Bike Lanes The week of May 12 through 18 is "Bike to Work Week," but if you're a casual cyclist, good luck.

The Quad Cities have a great trail system along both sides of the Mississippi River - which one day is expected to form a loop on each side of the river. Yet that system is geared more toward recreation than transportation - getting you from home to work. And very few drivers are good at sharing the road with bicyclists in a way that makes both feel safe.

Enter "complete streets."

Be forewarned the following commentary is a shameless effort to provide publicity for the River Cities Rumble Disc Golf Tournament, a sporting event the Reader co-founded last year with the Quad City Disc Golf Club (QCDGC).BarretWhite.gif

Just over a year later the QCDGC (started in 1999), led by tournament director Chad Eng, has succeeded in securing a couple significant milestones for the second-annual River Cities Rumble.

music_news_the_coolest_songs_in_the_world_vol_1.jpg Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and The Sopranos) has laid hands on two swaggering CD collections due this coming Tuesday from his new Wicked Cool Record Co. imprint - near-religious extravaganzas that dust the weak and electrify the willing. Fueled by the playlists of his syndicated radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage, the 15 personally selected tracks on The Coolest Songs in the World: Vol. 1 are each monsters in their own right. Blasting off with cosmic power-poppers The Shazam, Cincinnati's favorite sons The Greenhornes, and the wigged-out frenzy of The Forty Fives, the CD also features the snarling Ellie Vie fronting The Charms from Boston, a Mooney Suzuki rouser from 2002, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's prophetic "Whatever Happened to My Rock & Roll." The sweaty, dangerous fun continues in CBGB OMFUG FOREVER, a tribute to the iconic, now-shuttered club with liner notes by Lenny Kaye. Sixteen tracks made the cut, with hits such as Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone" from 1978 and The Damned's "New Rose" from 1977, along with a few rare songs including Japanese bonus tracks from Green Day and U2 (which covers The Ramones' "Beat on the Brat").

Xstream Cleanup, scheduled for August 18, is seeking suggestions for potential cleanup sites in Scott and Rock Island counties. Sites may include a stream, a creek, an illegal-dumping site, or an area in need of a litter cleanup. The main focus of Xstream Cleanup 2007 will be to clean up illegal-dumping sites such as one in Bettendorf where Crow Creek drains into the Mississippi River. Last year, volunteers removed more than 4,800 tires scattered along the creek, which was the primary work site for Chad Pregracke and his Living Lands & Waters crew that day. To submit a suggestion for a cleanup site, e-mail Roy DeWitt at (rdewitt@kscb.org) or call Keep Scott County Beautiful at (563) 468-4218. For more information about Xstream Cleanup, visit (http://www.xstreamcleanup.org).

 

Margret O'Reilly There is always some experience that acts as starting point inspiring an artist to begin a work. It could be the light on a surface, a gathering of forms, or the mood of a face. It might be the work of another artist, or a memory. There are thousands of sources. The best beginnings are those that, when filtered through the artist, turn the eye inward, causing discovery in and communication with the viewer.

 

 

Issue 631 Cover Most everybody agrees that spending money on education is a good thing.

But the "good" that education produces remains abstract enough to citizens and politicians that school spending often takes a back seat to more concrete projects, whether they're roads or sports stadiums or tax incentives designed to directly bring new jobs to a community.

Rob Grunewald, an associate economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, used to be one of those people who thought that education was important in a vague, general sense. "Invest in your schools. Invest in your colleges and universities, your workforce-training programs, and there you go," he told an audience at the Bettendorf Public Library last week. "You can all go home."

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