Following an unanticipated year off, the eagerly awaited six-day festival boasting games, competitions, vendors, and concert sets by more than two dozen national and local acts returns with the 2021 Mississippi Valley Fair, its August 3 through 8 engagement at Davenport's Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds boasting grandstand performances by chart-toppers, multi-platinum sellers, and multiple-award winners.
This feature lists all headlines with links to the articles by date/time published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
On August 3, in a live meeting of the Moline Public Library's Pageturners Book Club, acclaimed novelist Madeline Henry will appear in a special virtual author's visit to discuss her 2021 novel The Love Proof, a work that inspired noted The Lies That Bind author Emily Griffin to call the book a “captivating, heartfelt, and utterly unique tale.”
Delivering a blend of local history, environmental issues, education, entertainment, and fresh air, Davenport's River Action concludes its series of 2021 outdoor presentations in the final month of the annual Channel Cat Talks and Riverine Walks, weekly programs that, from August 3 through September 4, will address such topics as early Civil War history, Mississippi River flood levels, the history of Campbell's Island, and iconic musicians Bix Beiderbecke and Louie Bellson.
Hosting an original exhibition displayed in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum's For America: 200 Years of Painting from the National Academy of Design, Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center will, through Auguist 31, offer a fascinating exploration into historic portraiture with the homegrown exhibit Faces of the Past.
On Saturday, August 14, 2021 the River Cities' Reader is hosting a US Constitution training class taught by my good friend Michael Badnarik. Michael Badnarik's Constitution classes are entertaining and enlightening while one learns the Liberty philosophy and how property rights are to be protected via the Constitution. In these current times, more and more people are paying attention to local, state and federal government behavior. And, more and more people are realizing that it is the we the people's responsibility to hold government accountable. Our elected government officials and sworn peace officers have all taken an oath to uphold the US Constitution. How can the people hold its government accountable if they don't know and understand the Constitution? The class is limited to 25 students, is $225 and includes a catered lunch, and the hard back copy of Michael's course text book Good to be King.
This past May, Illinois House Deputy Majority Leader Jehan Gordon Booth (D-Peoria) and Governor JB Pritzker worked out a deal with some key state business groups to mandate seven days of paid-leave per year for every employee in Illinois. Workers wouldn’t have to give any reasons for the guaranteed paid leave.
Illinois Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope announced her resignation last week and will leave office by December 15. She cited several reasons, including her thwarted attempt to issue subpoenas without any checks or balances. “True ethics reform,” she said of the legislature, “is not a priority.”
Publisher's Note: The Reader is pleased to present our second Q&A with the Scott and Rock Island County Health Departments on controversies, contradictions, and conflicts that continue to plague the COVID-19 pandemic narrative. Questions were sent to both county health departments and simultaneously published in our June 2021 edition. And once again, to their huge credit, Scott and Rock Island health officials have fully engaged in this process, providing comprehensive responses for Quad Citians to consider.
As I write this, two of the three national credit-rating agencies have upgraded the State of Illinois’ rating in a week’s time. And the only remaining hold-out owes us one. Big time.
Described by Variety as “Disney's happiest outing since The Lion King” and by USA Today as boasting “easy infectiousness” and “youthful exuberance,” the Tony-winning Newsies: The Musical concludes the 2021 summer season for Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre, the show's July 30 through August 8 run treating crowds to an energetic work that, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “adheres to a time-honored Disney tradition of inspirational storytelling in the best possible sense.”
Winner of Great Britain's Oliver Award for Best Play and described by London's Independent as “wondrous, hilarious, and heartbreaking,” the fascinating two-character drama The Mountaintop, from July 29 through August 7, serves as the inaugural production at Davenport's new venue The Mockingbird on Main, the play's imagined tale involving Martin Luther King Jr. lauded by the Los Angeles Times as “a powerful, poetic take on (King's) legacy.”
Including its music direction by Michael McBride and Stancato's and associate Felicia Finley’s choreography, this outstanding production brought a brand-new, never-before-seen concept to this powerful musical. It really made me think about the story I was witnessing in a very contemporary, creative way.
This 2005 show set in Minnesota in the mid-'60s, has inspired such a ravenous fandom that there are now seven related musicals in this series. The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse has produced some of them – one just this spring. Yet somehow, I'd so far escaped these ladies' clutches. I'm here to tell you I was clutched, but good, at Thursday's opening-night performance at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre.
Lauded by the Wall Street Journal as “charming and dramatically persuasive,” and by the New York Daily News as “a valentine to the wonder and weirdness of love,” the 2014 Tony Award nominee for Best Play Outside Mullingar opens the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's long-awaited 2021 season, the show's August 5 through 15 run – the Geneseo company's first new show since 2019 – sure to demonstrate why the New York Times called it a work of “lyrical writing” and “consistent pleasure.”
After a 2020 program held virtually, Iowa City's beloved Soul & Blues Festival is back to enthrall live audiences on July 30 and July 31, with this year's assemblage of amazing local and regional performers including blues sensation and headliner Nora Jean Wallace, the Chicago-based artist who inspired Blues Blast magazine to rave, “Wallace is the real deal and her songs are worth repeated listens.”
A pair of noted rap and hip-hop stars take the stage at the TaxSlayer Center on August 1 when the Moline amphitheater presents an evening with chart-topping talent Lil Durk and streaming sensation Icewear Vizzo, artists making their Quad Cities debuts on the latest leg of the “Smurkchella Reloaded” national tour.
A multi-platinum-selling singer/songwriter with the distinction of having earned six American Country Awards in one year, chart-topping superstar Jason Aldean serves as the first Grandstand performer in the 2021 Mississippi Valley Fair, his August 3 appearance treating country fans to a thrilling repertoire that boasts nine studio albums and a remarkable 22 number-one singles to date.
With their most recent album, 2019's Brothers, described by SoundsLikeNashville.com as a recording that showcases the duo's “talent for delivering exuberance in their music” and “positive spirits and honest chemistry,” Nashville's Locash serves as the Mississippi Valley Fair's August 4 grandstand headliners, performing from a repertoire that has found chart-topping hits in “I Know Somebody” and “One Big Country Song.”
Returning to a weekend of live performances following last year's virtual version of the event, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival will, from August 5 through 7, again enjoy residency at the Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, with the Davenport venue hosting no fewer than 25 individual sets by nine assemblages of thrilling jazz talents.
M. Night Shymalan's new cinematic freakout, inauspiciously yet evocatively titled Old, could easily be mistaken for a masterpiece if you don't understand a word of English.
Director Malcolm D. Lee's LeBron-James-meets-the-Looney-Tunes adventure, beyond feeling cynical and desperate, may be the most flabbergasting, relentlessly self-promoting entertainment I've ever endured. Lee's movie is constantly selling, yet the only thing it actually gave me was a headache.
With more praise (and some damnation) to come, I suppose the highest compliment I can pay director Cate Shortland's new Black Widow is that, in the grand scheme of things, this Marvel entry could hardly matter less.
Directed by Everardo Gout and written, as all of them have been, by James DeMonaco, The Forever Purge is the fifth and purportedly final (sure, whatever) installment in the popular series of horror thrillers, and offhand, it's hard to think of another long-running film franchise that has gotten more mileage out of being not bad.
The longer summer days and the color of light in the evening has not gone unnoticed by the artists at the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy, and from July 30 through August 26, works by some of the Bettendorf venue's 45 artisans will be on display in the exhibition Golden Light: Summer of New Beginnings, personal expressions of hope and light inspired by the summer rays and the hope of better days for our community and world.
Members of the Figge Art Museum who have admired the many works in the venue's current Tom Uttech: Origin are invited to enjoy a live audience with the artist himself, as the virtual August 4 presentation A Conversation with Tom Uttech finds the gifted Wisconsin painter and photographer discussing his process and inspirations while also answering participants' questions.
Human figures, evocative colors, and a new yet familiar Quad Cities landmark are among the visuals showcased in the latest exhibitions at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center, with the venue, through August 13, highlighting new paintings by Port Byron's Laura Vincent-Arnold in Internal Landscapes and Bettendorf's John Born in Bridging the Divide.
The celebration of a talent known for combining real and imagined elements inspired by nature in his captivating works, the Figge Art Museum's new exhibition Tom Uttech: Origin, on display through August 15, will feature Kisibakwad, the beloved painting from the Figge collection, alongside a selection of the artist's large-scale photographs from the collection of the Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Works by one of the most gifted and prolific artists of the 21st century will be on display in the newest exhibition at the Figge Art Museum, with the Davenport venue, through August 22, housing Lesley Dill – Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, a showcase for the talent whose wide variety of media including sculpture, print, performance art, and music explores the power of language and the mystical nature of the psyche.
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