Notes on dancing w/divas and other Bone Soiree tidbits

Add comment July 20th, 2009

A few musings about the Bone Soiree fundraiser at and for the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford Saturday night:

1. Ouch. Rockford alderman Joe Sosnowski can bend backwards pretty-back-achingly far. Congrats to him and Laura Gibbs, WREX anchor, who won the Dancing with the TV Divas contest via audience applause, as well as the online vote on my blog. (Yeah, that’s me in the middle in the background, pointing with amused delight. I was a judge with Judge Rosemary Collins and Rep. Dave Winters.)

(Katy Mull/Register Star photo)

2. Ouch 2: The crowd of 185 or so was maybe half the size as last year’s. Blame the economy, publicity, overcast skies.

3. Darn. Wish I would have won the two-night stay in a condo overlooking Millennium Park in Chicago that was donated by the Kalchbrenners for an auction item. It went for way more than double my paltry $325 bid.

4. What a nice kid.  Near the end of the night, the pre-teen son of Joe Bruscato, Winnebago County State’s Attorney who competed with Alice Barr of WIFR in the contest, said he wanted to have his photo taken in a photo booth with me. He’d inquired about what the booth was for. I told him and asked if he wanted to have his picture taken with me. Then I thought better of it. “Why don’t you go get your sister or ask one of those pretty diva dancers if they want to have their picture taken with you?” I asked him. “No, I want to take a picture with you,” he said. He probably didn’t want to have to go find someone else. We were standing five feet from the photo booth. But it made my night. If he ever runs for political office, he’s got my vote.

How are you going to change GO?

3 comments July 20th, 2009

How are you going to change GO?

That was  one of the most-asked questions my editor, Lisa Glowinski, and I got Saturday when we talked with Register Star readers while we were at Barnes & Noble bookstore. We were there requesting those who were interested to fill out surveys to help us make decisions on how to spiff up the GO section.

Here’s what I told the people who asked how we might change GO, based on what some of us staffers and editors talked about in a meeting last week:

Our My Last Bite dining out reviews: Maybe sometimes we could tell you all in advance where we’re going and when. You could meet us there. And we’d interview of few of you, maybe get you/us on videotape. We could invite you via social networking to tell us if you’ve eaten there before and if you liked the dessert at such and such an eatery as much as so-and-so, and get your takes on them. Maybe we’d review deli items at grocers.

Boosting the entire personality of the section: Maybe we’ll focus more on local people having fun. We’d make the section look better with bolder colors, better design, give more personality to the section partly by telling you in tidbit style with better insight about stuff to do around town.

These are just a few things we tossed around in a meeting last week. And none of it is for-sure.

Know this: GO daily won’t be going away. It’ll just be getting better and hopefully, bigger.

But we need your help. Tell us what you want and how you use GO so we can make better-informed decisions. Take the GO survey online at

http://tinyurl.com/qlflbb