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Places To Go

[MARCH 28, 2002]  This Saturday night, March 30, from 7 to 10, Tom Quinn will be doing a live performance at Coffee With Einstein. A note to anyone who hasn’t been there before:  It’s located at 604 Broadway, on the square in Lincoln.

A heartbreaking tragedy of musical proportions a few weeks ago left Tom Quinn with a guitar in more than one piece. But, as Tom would say, no worries...

A divine appointment left Tom with a replacement while his was being fixed (for an unbelievable deal).

Please come out and support Tom — and remember, Thursday night is Open Mic Night. Be looking for openmicnight.com, coming soon!

[Announcement from Franz Express]

[MARCH 27, 2002]  ^"In Spite of Killer Bees," by Julie Johnston. Tundra Books, 2001, 253 pages.

This is a coming-of-age novel about the three Quade sisters, 14-year-old Aggie, rebellious 17-year-old Jeannie and 22-year-old Helen. Their father, a small-time gambler and thief who eventually went to prison for a while, raised the girls after their mother deserted them. When their father dies, Mrs. Muntz takes the girls in. She owns a deli and all of the girls work in it.

Aggie is obsessed with movies, and to help cope with reality she pretends that her life is a movie script. The script changes as her situation changes.

One day they receive a letter from a lawyer telling them that their paternal grandfather has died and named them as beneficiaries in his will. The girls pack up everything they can fit into their beat-up old car and drive to the coastal town of Port Desire, somewhere in Canada.

Their grandfather was a very wealthy and influential man, and Port Desire is a small town, so everyone knows about their mother and father and the trouble their father got into. The sisters soon meet some of their relatives who think the girls may even be imposters just hoping to get rich. In fact, they are expecting to inherit lots of money, but those hopes are dashed after their visit to the lawyer’s office.

The will states that they will inherit the huge mausoleum of a house that their grandfather lived in, but with a certain condition. They must convince their great-aunt Lilly, their grandfather’s sister, to leave her island and come and live with them before the lake freezes up. This gives them four or five months to convince a woman they hardly know, and who is suspicious of them, to live with them and be a family. The three sisters don’t even know how to be a family, and Aggie struggles with that fact most of the time.

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Helen and Jeannie don’t believe that they can accomplish the conditions of the will, so they decide to just bide their time until they can get out of there. They both get part-time jobs to at least keep food on the table.

Aggie is the most optimistic about the situation, so she enrolls in school. She finds her school wardrobe in the attic, and at first the other students are a little wary of her. She eventually connects with the students in Miss Greenwald’s English class. Aggie suggests that the class should make a movie, and they elect her as director.

The girls’ mother, Candy, shows up a couple of weeks before Christmas. Aggie is thrilled, but Helen and Jeannie have a hard time with it.

The class movie is a success, but something happens during the community viewing of the film that brings the story to an exciting climax.

The story ends happily, even though Aggie must accept the fact that her mother is not the person she had created her to be in her mind, and her dreams of a stable family are realized in a nontraditional way.

This story will appeal to teens because of the honesty and openness of Aggie and her sisters in their situation. Julie Johnston’s descriptions of the way teens and young adults react in certain situations are very contemporary and realistic. This book is recommended for junior high and high school readers because of language and content.

For more information about this book, please visit the library at 725 Pekin St. or call (217) 732-5732.

[Linda Harmon, Lincoln Public Library District]

• Lincoln Community Theatre

• Logan County Arts Association

[MARCH 14, 2002]  Boston Brass is, as they sound, a quintet of brass instrument players. The brass instruments themselves were numerous. They include a French horn, a trombone, a tuba and various trumpets (such as the tiny piccolo trumpet). The players’ costumes — bright purple suit jackets — seem to be their signature.

The members of the group include Richard Kelly, trumpet player from Juilliard School of Music; Jeff Conner, trumpet player from Boston University and Boston Conservatory; J.D. Shaw, French horn player from the Eastman School of Music; Ed Clough, trombone player from Boston University; and Andrew Hitz, tuba player from Northwestern University and Arizona State University.

Many of their musical numbers were originally written for other instruments but were arranged by J.D. Shaw, their talented French horn player. This includes their opening piece, "Tournament Gallop," by the first American piano virtuoso, Louis Moreau Gottschalk. When asked why it took five instruments to play the one-instrument piece, Shaw explained that Gottschalk had 10 fingers, and between the five of them, they have 10 lips.

Other Shaw arrangements included Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110 (also in the first half) and Duke Ellington’s "Caravan."

The rest of the first half consisted of "Danza Finale" from Alberto Ginastera’s nationalistic ballet "Estancia," Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (made famous by Bugs Bunny) and Henry Fillmore’s "Circus Bee."

The mood was light and classical. The pieces were fun but inspired reverence, as most classical pieces will.

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Lincoln Community Theatre’s website is at www.geocities.com/lincolncommunitytheatre/index.html. Pictures from past productions are included.  The LCT mailing address is Lincoln Community Theatre, P.O. Box 374, Lincoln, IL  62656.  E-mail: lincolncommunitytheatre@yahoo.com.

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