From February 12 through 14, Grammy-nominated songwriter and piano sensation Jim Brickman will be showcased in a quintet of live virtual performances, with Share the Love, LIVE! designed as an uplifting, family-friendly showcase of Brickman's gifts and hit songs such as “Love of My Life,” “Destiny,” “Angel Eyes,” and “Valentine,” the latter an appropriate tune for an at-home Valentine's Weekend celebration.

To download a PDF of the puzzle, click here.

Just a couple of weeks into a job that most people couldn’t imagine being held by anyone other than the guy who had it for decades, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch is putting together a House that looks both familiar and different at the same time. Speaker Welch’s first week included a rollout of his new leadership team, with a Black woman as Speaker Pro Tempore and fresh faces throughout. By the third week, we’ll see committee membership rosters and vice chairs. The following week will be the new rules.

When Ryuichi Sakamoto, the electronic music pioneer and esteemed elder statesman of the Japanese and international music scenes, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, it felt like a crippling blow to the canon of living legends that walk, perform, and dine among us.

In a special cinematic offering presented as part of Fathom Events' Black History Month celebration, one of the most adored figures in science-fiction history shares her true-life tale of reaching for the stars in Woman in Motion: Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek, & the Remaking of NASA, an exhilarating new documentary tribute – screening at Rave Cinemas Davenport 53rd + IMAX on February 2 – featuring Star Trek's iconic Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.

Presented by Kevin Braafladt, the Army Sustainment Command Deputy Historian at the Rock Island Arsenal and the Army Sustainment Command History Office, the February 10 program Unrestricted Submarine Warfare & the Zimmermann Note serves as the latest virtual offering in the Davenport and Rock Island Public Libraries' series exploring the Quad Cities' and Rock Island Arsenal's historical ties to the first World War.

One of the most famous names in Quad Cities history will recount his singular tale of success in a virtual program hosted by the Moline Public Library, with noted author, historian, and storyteller Brian “Fox” Ellis, on February 5, performing a one-man show under the guise of inventor John Deere.

This past weekend, our area's two debuting cineplex options were Our Friend, which is primarily about a young woman dying of cancer, and Heaven, which is peripherally about a young woman dying of cancer. It probably goes without asking, but no matter how much some of us may relish trekking to the movies these days, what kind of masochist would voluntarily make a double-feature out of such an ostensibly depressing two-fer?

This kind! So let's dive in, shall we?

House Speaker Michael Madigan avoided calling the General Assembly back into session during the pandemic for several reasons, many of them having to do with himself. But Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch told me earlier this month that “The legislature is back in business. We're going to work in 2021.”