I attended the John McCain rally at the Bettendorf home of Carrie and Pete Peterman on Sunday, August 5. I parked my car at a school down the road and rode a shuttle to their home and arrived about five minutes before the 5 p.m. event was to start.

Tom Wright's life story in the new photography book Roadwork: Rock & Roll Turned Inside Out is one of those magical, right-place-at-the-right-time tales that leaves one grinning from ear to ear in envy. A schoolmate of Pete Townshend in 1962, Wright's gig as tour photographer for The Who in 1967 opened the doors for decades of intimate access and impromptu backstage portraiture with Rod Stewart, The James Gang, and the Rolling Stones. The Hal Leonard Books hardcover edition is a mix of anecdotes and excesses from the Wild West days of rock, printed on tasteful archival cream paper.

When the Quad Cities Community Vitality Scan was released this spring, it marked a welcome collaboration between five community organizations, but it was still easy to dismiss it as yet another study, one more evaluation of where we are.

What's potentially different about the Vitality Scan, though, is how those organizations plan to use it. If the five groups - the United Way of the Quad Cities Area, the Quad City Health Initiative, the Moline Foundation, the Community Foundation of the Great River Bend, and the Amy Helpenstell Foundation - can use the Vitality Scan and related efforts to guide their funding decisions, this is one study that could actually address community needs and shortcomings on a large scale.

Here's the thing: If good people, without personal agendas, don't run for local political offices (mayor, alderman, etc.), then Davenport will be stuck with the same unacceptable performance we are experiencing from our current mayor (Ed Winborn) and five aldermen (Jamie Howard, at large; Ian Frink, at large; Charlie Brooke, Ward 6; Barney Barnhill, Ward 7; and Brian Dumas, Ward 8), who consistently vote as a political bloc in favor of special interests, imposing legislation that often conflicts with the citizenry of taxpayers.