People interested in writing in the Quad Cities might look at the list of organizations that offer classes in dance, music, art, and theatre and wonder: What about me?

For better or worse, there's only one organization in the Quad Cities that offers writing instruction to the community at-large: the Midwest Writing Center.

Most visibly, the organization hosts the David R. Collins Writers' Conference each summer.

Don Vappie knows about boring music.

In the late 1970s, boring music prompted him to sell most of his instruments and give up playing. And while some people consider traditional jazz dull, Vappie begs to differ.

"I got really bored when disco came out," the New Orleans native said last week, talking about his time in a Top 40 group. "I always remember when I quit the band - I was playing bass - I said, 'You could teach a chimpanzee to do this,' because it was so repetitious.

So what the heck was House Speaker Michael Madigan up to last week when he finally came out in support of an income-tax increase and urged the governor to drop his opposition to the idea?

You won't be alone if you doubt that David Wise can turn his plans for a long-neglected part of downtown Moline into reality. Plenty of other people have questioned whether he can do it.

"I had a lot of skepticism that I could pull this off," Wise said last week. "I've been hearing that I've made a believer out of some skeptics."

One of those skeptics phrased it even more forcefully.

"He made a liar out of me," said Jim Bowman, executive director of Renew Moline. "I didn't think at first that he could pull it off. ... The odds were overwhelmingly against him to succeed."