With the Blues Festival just two weeks away, it's crunch time for the Mississippi Valley Blues Society (MVBS). There are travel, lodging, security, and logistical concerns to address, contracts to finalize, and volunteer lists to compile.
This Tuesday Michelle Shocked accomplishes a mighty feat with her very own Mighty Sound Records label - releasing three individual new CDs on the same day. Each album is a treat on its own merits, yet they tie together nicely for Shocked, who has come a long way since her picnic-bench-and-a-Walkman sessions in 1986.
• The Family Museum's award-winning Street Heat program began a new project last month by enlisting the help of six students from Davenport's Lydia House and the surrounding neighborhood. Participants will sculpt a "QC Tree" that is scheduled for "planting" on June 13 in the Hilltop Association Park on Harrison Street in Davenport.
The Diary of Anne Frank is practically synonymous with the Holocaust. For this reason, Alan Ross, executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities, asked Ballet Quad Cities to create a dance based on the book as part of the community project "Beyond the Holocaust: Lessons for Today."
I suppose the easy thing to do would be to follow everyone else's lead and write a column about Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's potty mouth. So much has been written about the governor's self-proclaimed "testicular virility" that you've probably gotten the point, however.
The Isle of Capri's (IOC) final draft of the proposed development agreement to build a casino hotel on Davenport's downtown riverfront was submitted to the city staff and council last Wednesday, May 18, during its regular council meeting.
The debate will continue over the casino and its hotel. Hopefully, our elected officials will listen to the citizens who express their visions for our riverfronts, and the debate will result in the correct answers.
• Styx returns next week with a new CD of cover tunes and a remake of one of the band's own classics. Entitled Big Bang Theory, the New Door Records release is subtitled "The Great Rock Songbook" and takes a stab at a host of 1960s and 1970s hits, from The Who's "I Can See For Miles" to Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath.
Other than a handful of state employees, highway workers, Medicaid vendors, commercial-truck owners, and poor people, almost nobody out there in Voter Land has really paid much attention to the state's budget problems.
Citizens' anger over garbage and stormwater fees imposed by the Davenport City Council is fueling efforts to recruit candidates to oppose incumbent members of the council in the municipal election this fall, according to interviews conducted by the River Cities' Reader.

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