Nikki DeFauw has three children in Adams Elementary School. If the Davenport Community School District votes next week to close Grant and Johnson elementary schools, the ensuing realignment of school boundaries will result in her kids being sent to Harrison next fall.
If the members of the Davenport Community School District board take their jobs seriously, they have a lot of information to sort through between now and April 22, when they're scheduled to vote whether to close Johnson and Grant schools.
It’s something that happens to bands of all types, from fictional (Spinal Tap) to big (the unnamed band combining former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell with the instrumental power of Rage Against the Machine): A major player (Nigel or Cornell) quits at an inopportune time (in the middle of a big tour or before the debut album is even released), leaving everybody in a lurch.
Journey into Amazing Caves is a perfectly enjoyable IMAX movie, which is another way of saying that the medium triumphs over the work itself. If you've never seen an IMAX movie, it's a novel experience that showcases the multimedia power of large-format cinema.

Thinking Big

The biggest change atop Museum Hill in west-central Davenport has been the opening of the Putnam Museum's new 270-seat IMAX theatre, with its contemporary glass-dominated architecture dwarfing the adjacent history-and-natural-science museum and the Davenport Museum of Art.
It's shorter than a one-night stand - well, it should be, anyway - but it's not like that at all. "You're committed to them for seven minutes, and that's it," said Susan Esser. What Esser is describing is Seven-Minute Dating, a service she started a year ago to help singles meet each other with little commitment.
An Iowa program that was the first of its type in the country is putting the finishing touches on a study of lending practices and predatory loans in the state, but the harder work still remains. Now, the Community Lender Partnership Initiative must use its research as a springboard to educate the public and encourage lenders to adopt more fair-lending practices.
Steve Banks has a jovial intensity, and while he takes his art seriously, it's not too seriously. When I tried to maneuver around one painting to avoid damaging it, Banks said, "You're not going to hurt anything but yourself.
Brian W. Vaszily of Schaumburg, Illinois, will be reading from and signing his novel Beyond Stone & Steel: A Memorial to the September 11, 2001 Victims on Saturday, April 6, at Borders Books & Music in Davenport.
Click here for the full-color .pdf document of paintings and poems as part of the Poem/Art Odyssey. The concept behind the Poem/Art Odyssey is something like the game of Telephone, with a big twist.

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