When I was in seventh grade, my chorus class took a charter bus up to Chicago to see Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. From a row near the back of the theatre, I watched the vibrant speck that was Donnie Osmond belt out the tunes "Close Every Door" and "Joseph's Coat." On the return trip home, while the chaperone mothers murmured in fascination over the dark-haired leading man, we chorus students amused ourselves with a Joseph sing-along. The music was just that unforgettable and appealing, even to our usually unimpressionable teenage minds.

"What I cannot create, I do not understand." - Richard Feynman

New Ground Theatre's upcoming show, QED, traces the many accomplishments of physicist Dr. Richard Feynman, including his formula for quantum electrodynamics (which gives this play its title) and his participation in the development of the atomic bomb.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is widely believed to be the teachers' unions' best friend. Madigan passed the "temporary" income-tax surcharge years ago, which earmarked half of the new money for schools.

• Iowa's public school enrollment is down by 1,639 students, or .34 percent, from a year ago, according to the Department of Education. Currently, 483,372 K-12 students are enrolled statewide. State education leaders expected the decline based on census data and enrollments that show outgoing high-school seniors outnumber incoming kindergarten students.