Shannon Curfman is an old soul in a young person's body.

"Buddy and I were ... talking about that actually - Buddy Guy," Curfman said in a phone interview last week. "He was kind of making fun of me. ... He's like, ‘You know what? That's bullshit. ... You're 20 years old and you've already gone through this. It took me until I was almost 70 to realize half this stuff.'"

"This stuff" is the nearly inevitable souring of a major-label musician on the business of selling records. Many performers need decades of being exploited by big corporations before they realize there's a better way. Curfman, who is now 21 and will be performing this Saturday at the Redstone Room, figured it out in her teens.

Last week's election gave Illinois Senate President Emil Jones more bragging rights than anyone else at the Statehouse.

Jones' Democrats picked up five seats on Tuesday, giving them one more than the minimum needed for a veto-proof majority. Jones' 37 seats compare to just 22 for the Senate Republicans.

To say that the Senate Republicans are now irrelevant for at least the next two years would be putting it mildly. The Senate Republicans won't be able to stop anything, including bills for new state construction-bond programs, which require a minimum of 36 votes.

Rebuilding Together Quad Cities began work Monday, November 13, on phase one of "Project Neighborhood Impact," which will repair a number of homes in the Douglas Park area of Rock Island. Funded with a $43,500 grant from the Doris & Victor Day Foundation, "Project Neighborhood Impact" also involves a public/private partnership between Rebuilding Together Quad Cities and the City of Rock Island's Planning & Redevelopment Division. The two-phase project will renovate two homes this fall, and up to three more homes in spring 2007. The inaugural program targets the neighborhood bordering "Habitat Park" in the Douglas Park neighborhood of Rock Island. The project is also part of the new Old Chicago Plan. Rebuilding Together annually repairs more than 50 homes locally. Homeowners living in the targeted area who wish to be considered for the second phase of the program should contact Rebuilding Together at (563) 322-6534. Applications are also available online at (http://www.rebuildingtogetherquadcities.org).

How many times have you watched some movie or TV show depicting the villain as extreme governmental control, with severe abuse of innocents as the cause of rebellion? We sit through these horrors, reassuring ourselves that this would never happen in America. Why? Because, we tell ourselves, we would never allow things to deteriorate to such a degree that the level of control and abuse we are witnessing could occur.

Well don't be so sure. How do you think those film scenarios were conceived? Certainly from lively imaginations, but also from history; mankind has a long tradition of cruel, suppressive conduct toward his fellow human beings.