After a rambunctious, sacred, fun-loving, somber Holiday Pops concert filled with elements that make the holidays special, the Christmas season has finally officially begun. The Quad Symphony Orchestra Association and the Quad City Arts Festival of Trees presented an enchanting kickoff at The Mark of the Quad Cities on Saturday night, complete with instrumentalists, vocalists of all ages, and vivacious figure skaters.
Now that the enrollment period for the new private Part D drug plans is upon us, Medicare recipients have clear evidence that "D" stands for "disaster." Reliance on private drug plans and other measures contained in the 2003 Medicare amendments is a disaster for Medicare recipients.
The Black Hawk College/Ebony Expressions production on October 28 of Healing Waters: I Will Carry My Sister's Pain observed October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month by prying open the eyes of the audience to the daily reality of pain, fear, abuse, and humiliation experienced by abused women as they struggle to raise children and carve out a life.
Bill Wiseman leans back in his battered desk chair, contemplating the killing scheduled for tomorrow. His cluttered home office is dim and quiet on this late spring afternoon, the venetian blinds pulled shut against the dense Oklahoma heat.
• Everything is sunny, warm, and bright when Mister Rogers comes strolling down your shady side of the street. This coming Tuesday, a star-studded tribute shows the love in song to the late PBS-TV icon with Songs from the Neighborhood.
Federal investigators didn't make it easy for Governor Rod Blagojevich last week. On his big day, when he tried to turn around his political fortunes with "All Kids," a major new public-health-policy initiative formally unveiled in front of a joint session of the General Assembly with most of the state's media in attendance, the feds dropped yet another subpoena.
In a large room of a warehouse, countless cardboard boxes sit on the floor and along the walls, overflowing with televisions, computer monitors, wire, and various computer components. An adjoining room has bales of compressed pieces of plastic stacked three and four bundles high that look as if they're ready for the junkyard.
• Call it librarian rock or simply smarter than the rest of the class, but two new releases this week get heady in the language-arts department. Goblin Market continues the side project of the Green Pajamas' Jeff Kelly and Laura Weller with the release of Haunted, on the Camera Obscura Records label, featuring songs based on the works of American author Joyce Carol Oates.
Two weeks ago, an elderly woman walked up to where Dan Carmody was sitting in the 3rd & 22 sports bar in Rock Island. "Hi, honey," he said to the woman. "You traitor," she responded. She was kidding, of course, but the greeting isn't surprising.
Our fourth photo contest represented a significant departure - both in the framing of the competition and the results. Instead of setting subject-matter limitations - such as previous categories "people" and "Quad Cities places" - we asked readers to submit photographs based on broad but evocative themes: "danger," "metamorphosis," and "liberation.

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