Editor's note: This is the debut of a new feature in the River Cities' Reader highlighting news, events, and other information about local libraries. • In celebration of William Shakespeare's birthday, the Rock Island Public Library will present "A Whole Lotta Shakespeare Going On," hosting many Shakespeare-related activities for the culture hound.
• Two "masters of darkness" have picked this coming Tuesday to go head-to-head with new CD box sets. The Ozzman cometh with Ozzy Osbourne's long-awaited four-CD box set, Prince of Darkness, packed with rarities and newly recorded cover selections.
• Bridgepoint Education, a higher-education company based in Poway, California, has announced that it is acquiring The Franciscan University of the Prairies of Clinton, Iowa. The agreement, which is expected to close by mid-March, has been approved by the university's board of trustees and Bridgepoint's board of directors.
Under Iowa law, a city's comprehensive plan - meant to be a community's primary planning document, particularly as it relates to land use - has virtually no teeth. Because of that, members of the City of Davenport's "design center" are working to make the city's overarching planning document as user-friendly as possible.
• Officials from the Davenport Community Schools will hold a series of "State of Our Schools" sessions in the upcoming weeks to provide information on the district's new Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (or CSIP) and the district's current advocacy positions for this year's legislative session.
• This Tuesday R.E.M.'s catalogue gets the sweet reissue treatment as eight albums - Out of Time, Green, Automatic for the People, Monster, Up, Reveal, Around the Sun, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi - are upgraded and expanded with bonus tracks.
You could physically feel the political ground shifting last week as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced he would no longer accept campaign contributions from city contractors and members of their immediate families.
With the disappointing news that the River Music Experience will not be bringing any nationally known musical acts to the Quad Cities as previously advertised, jazz fans will seldom have a chance to catch creative jazz musicians and bands from out of this area.
A quick note to the everyone at the River Cities' Reader. I was shocked to read the articles on the RME issues. (See "River Music Experience's New Direction Dashes Dreams" and "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes," Issue 513, January 26-February 1, 2005.
Politics is a numbers game. And votes, dollars, and favors are the only numbers that matter. The boys who play politics at the street level never forget their numbers. They can tell you how many votes they pulled out of Precinct 22 three elections ago, or how much money they raised for some nobody judge in '96, or the name of their neighbor's mother's cousin that they helped out of that jam that one time.

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