13 Nov 2013

Hope Creek's Conundrum: Will Taxpayers Agree to Save Rock Island County's Nursing Home?

By Jeff Ignatius

The grim math for Hope Creek Care Center is pretty simple. Changing it is not.

Right now, the 245-bed Rock Island County-run nursing home in East Moline is paid $127.48 by the State of Illinois for each Medicaid recipient it houses. The cost to care for each person, said Administrator Trudy Whittington, is $200 a day.

And because by law government-run homes can't turn away Medicaid recipients, typically more than 60 percent of Hope Creek residents are on the state/federal public-aid program.

So Hope Creek is nearly $4 million in the red each year from that disparity alone, and the current property-tax subsidy for the nursing home doesn't cover it. And that doesn't even consider other factors related to state government - such as late reimbursements and delays in approving Medicaid applications.

In that context, Rock Island County officials on October 10 bluntly announced that "after providing an option for the long-term-care needs for residents of our county since 1839 in one capacity or another, the county is looking to divest itself from the nursing-home business due to forces beyond our control that have made that commitment impossible to continue. ... The Rock Island County Board will take official action at their November 19 meeting to explore the potential of leasing or selling Hope Creek Care nursing home."

That statement brought immediate backlash - by the union representing Hope Creek workers, and by people concerned about the fate of Medicaid recipients who live at Hope Creek or might need to in the future. The county quickly retreated, and County Board Chair Phil Banaszek appointed an ad-hoc committee to look at other options.

Whittington said selling or leasing Hope Creek is Plan D and Plan E at this point - but the county would be remiss if it didn't do its homework on those alternatives. "We have to start looking at what Hope Creek's options are," she said last week. "If we don't do something, those may become our only options. ... That is ... our last resort."

The Rock Island County Board could as soon as its November 19 meeting take some sort of action on Hope Creek. The most likely course is approving a referendum question for the November 2014 ballot to raise property taxes in 2015 to further subsidize Hope Creek.

01 Nov 2013

Back to Ground Zero: Local H, November 8 at RIBCO

By Jeff Ignatius

Local H's Scott Lucas. Photo by Wade Hawk.

It would have been the perfect time for Scott Lucas to close the door on Local H.

In February, he was mugged in Russia, an attack that left him with damage to his vocal chords - and they still aren't fully healed. In August, Local H announced that drummer Brian St. Clair was amicably leaving the guitar/drum duo after 14 years.

On the plus side, the band was coming off Hallelujah! I'm a Bum, which one PopMatters.com author dubbed the "best rock album of 2012," and which TinyMixTapes.com called a "watershed album ... . Not only is it the most intricately arranged and carefully structured of the band's 20-plus-year history, but it is also their first to delve so deeply into the polluted waters of partisan politics. ... Musically, Hallelujah! is on par with the best entries in the H catalogue. Lucas has a knack for crafting heavy rock with strong, distinctive hooks." As epitaphs go, a band could do much worse.

But when I asked guitarist/vocalist Lucas last week about shelving his Chicago-area band given the events of 2013, he said he never seriously considered it. "This would be the second time in my life where I would sort of think that," he said. But "at this point it's kind of hard to separate myself from the band. When I'm dead, you won't have to wonder what I thought and what was going through my mind. All you have to do is put on these records, and you'd know. ... This has never been a job for me. I honestly don't know what else I would do. It is part of me, and it always has been."

31 Oct 2013

Hail to the Thieves: String Quintet Sybarite5 Tackles Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, and More; November 10 at Augustana College

By Jeff Ignatius

Sybarite5

It likely seems a minor thing, but most of the tracks on Sybarite5's 2012 album Everything in Its Right Place clock in within a few seconds of the corresponding Radiohead versions.

The string quintet - which will have three public performances as part of its Quad City Arts Visiting Artist residency from November 4 though 10 - is by no means the first classically trained ensemble to tackle the songs of Thom Yorke and company. But it's certainly the most faithful, and the song lengths are actually telling.

The eight arrangements by Paul Sanho Kim (on the 10-track album) are striking in matching each song nearly moment-for-moment and part-by-part. This includes lush, thick, slow pieces such as "Everything in Its Right Place" and "Pyramid Song" but also explosive rockers such as "Paranoid Android" and "2+2=5." Crucially, neither the arrangements nor the performances castrate the songs, retaining their dynamic range and energy without drums, electric guitars, or amplification.

22 Oct 2013

No Joke: Har-di-Har, October 26 at Rozz-Tox

By Jeff Ignatius

Har-di-Har. Photo by Taylor Creery Photograpy.

There are many unusual things about the married-couple musical duo Har-di-Har, including the way songs swerve, shift, collapse, explode, die, and rise again with little warning. But it's unlikely that you'll get to hear their strangest songs when they perform at Rozz-Tox on Saturday.

Some odd bits first:

• The name Har-di-Har is drawn obliquely from the theme music of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and that information is as helpful as any of the other explanations given by the band.

• The pair shares a drum kit, with Julie Thoreen playing the "hands" and Andrew Thoreen the "feet."

• People who purchase a USB drive with the band's two EPs will get all future Har-di-Har releases uploaded to it for free at a live show.

• The Thoreens decided to pursue music before they'd played a single show as a band.

• Har-di-Har's Facebook page calls its music "psychedelic dream pop intricately composed and played the way three-legged contests are won."

"We cannot do anything the way other people do it," Julie Thoreen said in a phone interview last week.

16 Oct 2013

Personal Science: Sandra Steingraber, October 22 at St. Ambrose University

By Jeff Ignatius

Sandra Steingraber. Photo by Dede Hatch.

Sandra Steingraber has bachelor and doctorate degrees in biology and a master's in creative writing. "I had long been a biologist by day and poet by night," she said in a phone interview earlier this month. "I kind of kept my writing world and my science world separate."

And that was her intention when she set out to write the book that would become Living Downstream. "It was going to represent my best attempt as a biologist to summarize the links between cancer and the environment," she said.

But the poet in her ended up transforming the project into something unusual: a deeply personal story intertwined with a scientific one, as Steingraber discusses her own cancer in the context of the troubling relationship between chemical pollution and the disease. The hook of the book, she said, is "the life behind one of the data points in the cancer registry, namely my own."

Steingraber will be speaking at St. Ambrose University on October 22 as part of the school's Sustainability Project, which includes events throughout the academic year. Her lecture, she said, will apply the "conceptual theme" of Living Downstream (originally published in 1997, with a second edition and film adaptation released in 2010) to fracking - induced hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas and petroleum.

11 Oct 2013

HEARTLAND HOSTS RED CARPET WORLD PREMIERE OF "GIMME SHELTER"

By Jeff Ignatius

Heartland Film Festival Opening Night Event on October 17 to feature film talent and real-life inspiration behind Roadside Attractions film at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Vanessa Hudgens to receive the Pioneering Spirit: Rising Star Award on October 19

(Indianapolis) - The 22nd Annual Heartland Film Festival (Oct. 17-26) kicks off on opening night with the world premiere of "Gimme Shelter." Centering on homeless, pregnant teenager Agnes "Apple" Bailey (Vanessa Hudgens), the film explores her struggle for survival and the hope of redemption through the harsh realities of life on the streets.

Vanessa Hudgens will receive the Pioneering Spirit: Rising Star Award at the Heartland Film Festival Awards Ceremony on Saturday, October 19 at 8 p.m. at the Indiana Repertory Theatre.

WHAT:

Heartland Film Festival presents the world premiere of "Gimme Shelter" (Roadside Attractions) at its Opening Night Event.

 

 

WHO:
  • Vanessa Hudgens, actor
  • Ronald Krauss, director, writer, producer
  • Kathleen DiFiore, inspiration behind the film
  • Joshua Amir, co-producer
  • Rachel M. Amberson, actor
  • Darlisha F. Dozier, actor and inspiration
  • Wanda Santos, actor and inspiration

 

 

WHEN:

Thursday, Oct. 17

  • 4 p.m. - First screening of the film with talent Q&A to follow
  • 6:15 p.m. - Red carpet with talent (press call time 5:30 p.m.)
  • 7:30 p.m. - Second screening with talent Q&A and reception to follow

 

 

WHERE:

Indianapolis Museum of Art
4000 Michigan Rd.
Indianapolis, IN 46208

Media outlets can reserve a spot on the red carpet by contacting Heartland's director of marketing & communications, Greg Sorvig, at gsorvig@trulymovingpictures.org.

# # #

About Heartland Truly Moving Pictures
Heartland Truly Moving Pictures, a nonprofit arts organization, seeks to inspire filmmakers and audiences through the transformative power of film. Its flagship event, the Heartland Film Festival®, launched in 1991 and runs each October in Indianapolis, screening independent films from around the world. Each year, the Festival awards more than $125,000 in cash prizes and presents its Festival Awards to the top-judged submissions. Heartland has awarded more than $2.5 million to support filmmakers during the last 20 years. The organization's Truly Moving Picture Award was created to honor films released theatrically that align with Heartland's mission. By bestowing this award seal to honored films, the award allows studios and distributors to inform audiences of a film's transformative power and appeal. Heartland is also dedicated to cultivating youth, and thus created the Heartland Institute to provide innovative educational and outreach programs that enrich the minds and lives of youth and aspiring filmmakers. Heartland shares inspiring films year-round in the community through the Heartland Roadshow, bringing meaningful films across Indiana. For more information, visit TrulyMovingPictures.org.

04 Oct 2013

Surrounding an Idea: Willy Mason, October 17 at Codfish Hollow Barn

By Jeff Ignatius

Willy Mason

An online comment on the American Songwriter review of Willy Mason's Carry on disputed the gushing praise heaped on the album, complaining that "the percussion sounds to me like it's straight from a drum-machine loop."

There's a simple reason for that: It was.

The singer/songwriter will be performing October 17 at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn as part of the Communion Tour with Rubblebucket, Roadkill Ghost Choir, and others. In a phone interview last week, Mason explained that the drum-machine idea came from producer Dan Carey. "He had that, and I had the songs, and we went in and we started working with that rhythm, and things just unfolded from there pretty quickly," he said. "I was actually skeptical at first, but I thought it would be worth a try. ...

01 Oct 2013

Different Ways of Digesting: Laura Stevenson, October 4 at Bier Stube

By Jeff Ignatius

Laura Stevenson. Photo by Dave Garwacke.

Laura Stevenson's song "Sink, Swim" could be called an apocalyptic ditty, a cheery, up-tempo rock song with soaring vocals that sketches out the destruction of the West Coast: "Oh California, I tried to warn ya. / The earth is gonna quake before ya. / You'll be real sorry but it won't be sorry. / The dirt is gonna crack and split you in two." The casual address certainly suggests the musical approach, but it's easy to miss the lyrics in such a joyous ruckus.

The song appears on her 2013 album Wheel, and she explained in a phone interview last week that "I like that juxtaposition of mood and ... undercurrent - the actual meaning of the song. ... Two different ways of feeling the same word[s]. You can read them on the page and take them at face value, or you could hear them put to music with a completely different mood. It's just a different way of digesting it. Kind of what life is like."

She and her band will be playing the Moline Bier Stube on October 4, and in that setting it will be easy to gloss over grim words. But Stevenson's songs are rewarding both musically and lyrically, whether you consider their sometimes disparate components together or separately.

19 Sep 2013

Emerging from His Fantasy World: Augustana Professor Kelly Daniels' Lean, Thoughtful Memoir

By Jeff Ignatius

Kelly Daniels. Photo by Joshua Ford (JoshuaFord.com).

In ninth grade, Kelly Daniels was called to the principal's office, where his father was waiting. Dad took Kelly and his younger brother Ole for a drive, and after a while, he said, "I figured you should hear it from me first."

He said he woke up in jail. And: "To be honest, it was kind of a relief when the guard finally told me I killed Barclay." And then: "You can cry if you want."

But Daniels didn't cry. What he felt instead was "something that still kind of amazes me," he said in an interview earlier this month. "It was a strange reaction. It just seemed like all of a sudden my life brushed against the news. 'This is a big deal.'"

He felt something similar when he emerged from a week-long fever that nearly killed him in Honduras: "There was this same sense ... of my life being like a book."

And now it is - and a good one, too. Daniels, an associate professor of English at Augustana College, earlier this year published his memoir Cloudbreak, California. (He'll celebrate its release with a party from 6 to 10 p.m. on Friday, September 27, at the Bucktown Center for the Arts, and he'll also read from it as part of the River Readings at Augustana series on January 16.)

17 Sep 2013

Why Rodney Blackwell Thinks He Has a Play in the Davenport Casino Game

By Jeff Ignatius

Local developer Rodney Blackwell clearly got the Davenport City Council's attention with a $250-million casino-development proposal on September 7. But from the outset it didn't appear there was any path forward for it.

The Isle of Capri (IOC) has, through October 15, an exclusive negotiating agreement with Dan Kehl's Scott County Casino company to sell its Rhythm City property. And, as Blackwell readily admits, even if it didn't, the Isle wouldn't want to negotiate with him and his partner, the Canadian company Clairvest Group.

So the city council's 9-1 vote on September 11 to table a development agreement with Kehl appeared to be little more than a delay. Kehl has said he'll complete the sale by the October 15 deadline. And the Riverboat Development Authority (RDA) - which holds the Rhythm City gaming license - on September 16 approved an operating agreement with Kehl's company. (All these agreements are steps toward actually building the casino, and beyond them is approval from the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission.)

The message of Kehl's comments and the RDA's action is that the train has left the station, and Blackwell isn't on it. As RDA Chair Gary Mohr told the Quad-City Times: "The RDA will keep its commitments. I don't know if people don't understand it or they just don't like it."

But Blackwell thinks he has a play. He said in an interview last week that he believes the city council can kill the Kehl deal, and that it further has the leverage to force the Isle of Capri to negotiate with him and Clairvest. Alternatively, the city could use its power to push Kehl to make a larger investment than the $110 million he has pledged to spend on a new casino and hotel complex. (Kehl said the three-phase development will total $200 million.)

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