Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! If it wasn’t for a man who later became WQPT-TV general manager, National Public Radio (NPR) likely would never have started. This past week, NPR celebrated its 50th anniversary. Jerrold Sandler — who died in Moline Feb. 24, 1995 at age 64, from a heart attack after cancer surgery – got public radio added to the mission of the then-new Corporation for Public Broadcasting... Read More

And now… the time is here… and so we face… the last story of this series… Since Sunday, we’ve been running massive, gigantic, action-packed features for you running down the top stories of 2020! We hope you’ve enjoyed the ride! On Sunday we gave you a look at January and February; on Monday we hit March; Tuesday rolled out April; Wednesday morning we showed you May and June; and Wednesday night it was July and August’s turn. This morning we unveiled September and October. And now, here we are with the last story of the series, giving you the biggest stories... Read More

Roald Tweet had a way with words, with listeners, with his comforting voice, and his patient, relentless curiosity and compassion will be felt in the Quad-Cities for years to come. The 87-year-old Augustana College professor emeritus of English died on Wednesday after a brief illness (congestive heart failure and Covid-19), and the tremendous loss reverberates throughout the community. “He was my teacher from the time I was seventeen till now,” said Ann Boaden (Augie Class of ’67), a longtime English professor who retired in 2016. “His brilliance, his puckish wit and playfulness, his persistence... Read More

Kai Swanson of Augustana College, Rock Island, related Wednesday: “It is with a heart made heavy by a thousand light memories that I inform the Augustana community of the passing of Roald Tweet, professor emeritus of English.” Tweet, 87, died today after a brief illness. He became a member of the Augustana English Department in 1960, and remained there until his retirement in 1999; he chaired the department from 1967 until 1984. In 1998, he was appointed to the Conrad Bergendoff Chair in the Humanities, the second person (after Dorothy Parkander) to hold the College’s first endowed position. Tweet... Read More

Rock Islanders were busy founding a new City in 1841, but that wasn’t the only notable event of that year. The 2016 Frieze Lecture Series discussion theme celebrates “1841, the Year That Rock Island Began” and the current events that surrounded its founding. The series of four lectures by Augustana College professors are from 2:00 to 3:00 pm Tuesday, October 18 through November 8, in the Rock Island Main Library, 401 19th Street, in the Community Room. Free coffee,  cookies and conversation are offered after each lecture. 2016 marks the 19th year for annual partnership between... Read More