9/11 25 Years of Lazy Lies

The tragic attacks on September 11, 2001 are 25 years old this month. This issue's cover story author Jason Bermas co-produced and edited Loose Change: The Final Cut, an exceptional, timeless documentary released in 2007. Jason and crew catalogue the overwhelming amount of evidence that defies the hopelessly uninspired official fairytales, scripted for public consumption by our government and mainlined into our emotionally susceptible brains via media devices using a relentless “rinse and repeat” strategy of high-strung propaganda designed to anchor the official fiction as the real story. If you have not watched Loose Change, you should and can at RCReader.com/y/loose-change.

Turningt the Tide for 9/11 Truth 25 Years Later

Last September in Washington D.C., the International Center For 9/11 Justice (IC911.org) hosted a multi-day conference that publicly documented new and prior 9/11 Truth research results. This year, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Turn the Tide conference is back, now in New York City from September 10 to 13. Once again, the conference's speakers are the world's foremost 9/11 Truth experts within numerous expertise areas. This year, new speakers include Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, academic Bret Weinstein, and investigative journalist and author Nick Bryant.

Our area's professional dance company Ballet Quad Cities has a lot to celebrate at the start of its 30th anniversary, beginning with the September 13 performances of Ballet on the Lawn at Davenport's Outing Club.

1049 SEP 2026 Corn & Pigs Uncommon Sense Joel Lorentzen River Cities Reader.png

Take, for example, corn. You probably didn’t expect that. But however you might measure intelligence, it is probably only valid if corn’s is higher than ours. In the fauna realm, if a Martian landed in my community and reported back to their spaceship on who is in charge down here, they would almost certainly have to say “pigs.”

Presented as the latest event in the German American Heritage Center's popular “Kaffee und Kuchen” series, The DAR, Hannah Caldwell Chapter Contributions to Davenport History will, on September 13, find Hannah Caldwell Chapter Regent Terri Putnam Toppler discussing the Daughters of the American Revolution, a nonprofit, non-political volunteer organization dedicated to education, historic preservation, and patriotism.

On September 17, a second-generation Holocaust speaker will share the remarkable story of her mother, Adela Goldberg, in the Moline Public Library program Memories of the Holocaust, Ruth Yablonsky speaking on one vital woman's life as a survivor, witness, and keeper of an important piece of history.

With the third offering in its series directed and co-written by legendary director and Italian neorealist pioneer Roberto Rossellini, the German American Heritage Center continues its “The Lost Years of German Cinema: 1948-1963" film screenings with Germany, Year Zero, which enjoys a September 16 screening at Davenport venue The Last Picture House.

Described by Time Out New York as an “insanely fun mixtape musical” and by Variety as a show that “gleefully apes the worst excesses of the era's pole-dancing, crotch-grinding, big-hair-tossing movies,” the Broadway smash Rock of Ages enjoys a September 16 through November 7 run at Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, treating audiences to a celebration of 1980s chart-toppers that NY1 called “so cleverly staged and impressively performed that it's an irresistible, offbeat trip of a show that hits all the right notes.”

Lauded by the New York Times as a "big bearhug of a musical" in which "even the most stalwart cynics may have trouble staying dry-eyed," the Tony Award-winning Come from Away enjoys a September 11 through 22 at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts. Presented by City Circle Theatre Company, this deeply moving entertainment is being staged in honor of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and was hailed by Broadway World as "inspiring, funny, and kick-ass beautiful.”

A country-music singing/songwriting legend with 14 Grammy nominations to her name, Martina McBride brings her eagerly awaited national tour to Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on September 13, the neo-traditionalist talent beloved for smash hits including "Independence Day," "Blessed," and "Concrete Angel."

Touring in support of her newly released EP Promises (Covers EP), and with her prior album Carving Canyons hailed by Forbes as “her best as well as her most mature work yet," lauded singer/songwriter and Rock Island native Lissie returns to the Quad Cities for a September 16 headlining concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel.

Lauded by Saving Country Music as "an amalgam of many great singers of country and roots interwoven into an original approach," singer/songwriter Alma Russ headlines a September 10 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, Saving Country Music adding that you're likely to find the artist's music "stirring your very soul, sending flutters through your heart and shivers down your spine."

Currently touring the country on their wildly popular "People of the World Tour" Grammy Award-winning composer Michael Bacon and his Golden Globe-winning brother and A-list actor Kevin bring their musical outfit The Bacon Brothers to Mt. Carroll's Rhythm Section Amphitheater on September 12, the siblings having spent more than three decades honing a unique blend of folk, rock, soul, and country they call “Forosoco.”

Currently traveling the country on their eagerly awaited "The Flannel & the Fury Tour," the alternative rockers of Sleater-Kinney headline a September 16 concert event at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, Carrie Browenstein's and Corin Tucker's wildly popular outfit named by Sterogum's Tom Breihan, in 2015, "the greatest rock band of the past two decades."

On September 12, a revered group of chart-topping, Grammy-winning rockers will be celebrated when Maquoketa's Ohnward Fine Arts Center presents the tribute event Heartache Tonight: The Music of the Eagles, an evening of beloved, iconic hits sure to include such chart-toppers as "Hotel California," "Peaceful Easy Feeling," "Best of My Love," "One of These Nights," and, of course, "Heartache Tonight."

A lauded German-American organist regularly invited to perform and teach at prestigious venues and festivals around the world, Jens Korndörfer will be showcased in a special recital at the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center on September 13, his performance held in institution's sixth-annual John and Alice Butler Pipe Organ Recital Series.

To download a PDF of the puzzle, click here.

I fell in love with Coyote vs. Acme roughly an hour into the picture, when a cartoon map showed a plane's trajectory headed toward the American northwest, after which it suddenly veered east, and the pilot apologized for making that wrong left turn. The plane took off in Albuquerque.

An unexpected detour can become a story of extraordinary kindness.

Hours after the social media giant Meta agreed last Wednesday to settle a case brought by 47 state attorneys general and implement reforms to protect children from social media harms, the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) issued a demand that all of Illinois’ portion of the $17.1 billion settlement – $768 million – be designated “to address the funding crisis for school districts across the state.”

Pages