This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Last January the seed catalogs arrived as usual amid the cold winds and snows. I was lost in a spectacular imaginary garden composed from the catalog illustrations until I came to “new this year” and discovered the “grow your own morel mushroom kit” for $19.95. Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition ... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Americans have always been fond stories reminding us of “how the West was won.” A young boy from LeClaire, Iowa, just upstream from Rock Island, could tell you, instead, how the west was lost. He played a role in that story. Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition This is Roald... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. It is hard to believe that this November, after forty-nine years of teaching English literature at Augustana College in Rock Island, Dr. Dorothy Parkander will retire. She will be seventy-one. Generations of English majors have absorbed her lectures on Chaucer, Milton, Donne, and Austen, but the must-take course for business major and pre-med alike has been World Literature and its centerpiece, Homer’s Odyssey. Twice a year, Dorothy has taken forty or fifty students from farms in Iowa, small Illinois towns or Chicago suburbs, and launched them from the... Read More

Other Episodes May 10, 2024 The Cities 5/11/24 The Cities 4/11/24 Listen · 27:15 ... Read More

Other Episodes June 23, 2023 Scribble: The Finale Listen · 29:02 June... Read More

On Midwest Week, local police face a lawsuit over their encounter with a young African-American man last year. Other Episodes December 30, 2022 Ballot Counting Problems in Scott County On Midwest Week, some of the numbers from the November election in Scott County still don't add up, but the counting is over. ... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. Had the Illinois Department of Transportation been better historians, they never would have tangled with the women of Meredosia. In the past, women with a plan have stopped wars and brought down dictatorships, so the good old boys at the state capitol were easy pickings. Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition ... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. The cities around Rock Island have contributed their share of performers to the nation’s media—to Hollywood, Broadway, to newspapers, radio and television. But none was more successful or colorful than Harry R. “Tim” Moore. Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition This is Roald Tweet... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. “No prophet is without honor, save in his own country,” says the Good Book. In the past ten years, Rock Islanders have learned just how true that is. Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. ... Read More

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. You remember the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof ? “Tradition,” Tevye cries, frightened by the changes the Russian revolution is bringing to his small Jewish community, “without tradition, we are all as shaky fiddlers on the roof.” Other Episodes December 27, 2023 The Special Edition ... Read More