Traditional campaign-finance reform involves contribution limits, but nobody thinks they've made a dent in the role of money in politics. Candidates who must comply with contribution limits don't seem any less beholden to special interests than other politicians.

But a new type of election reform is gaining popularity around the country, and it's likely to make some headway in Iowa during this year's legislative session. While "clean elections" - publicly financed political campaigns - probably won't pass the state legislature this year, there's a good chance they'll make it farther than ever.

Near Wheatland, Iowa, sits the 200-acre Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat. It's roughly a 40-minute drive from the Quad Cities, and in one approach a car will go from a four-lane highway to a two-lane road to a dirt drive.

It's nearly a journey to the past, from the zipping traffic of modern times to a more primitive period, including an old farmhouse.

"Even the approach is a bit of calming, slowing down," said Sister Catherine Real, a retired member of the Davenport-based Congregation of the Humility of Mary (CHM) who volunteers as co-director of Our Lady of the Prairie. The retreat, she said, offers "a sense of God's presence" just a short drive from the urban grind.

(This is part of a series of articles looking at the components of River Renaissance five years after Scott County voters agreed to contribute $5 million to the effort. While that amount was relatively small in the projects' financing, it secured $20 million in Vision Iowa funding from the State of Iowa.)

The most disheartening aspect of last week's announcement that River Music Experience President and CEO Lon Bozarth had quit was not the resignation itself but the hints that the organization doesn't have a clear sense of how to right itself.

In essence, the River Music Experience (RME) board of directors is trying to cut its way to prosperity - or at least the break-even point.

But if a man cheats on his wife, he might explain himself this way: "I couldn't help it. My evolved psychological mechanisms made me have an affair." And he'd be right.

Sort of.

David M. Buss, a psychologist at the University of Texas who will be giving the lecture "Sexual Conflict in Human Mating" at Augustana College on October 30, has spent more than two decades studying sexual desire and behavior. And his research has led to one overarching observation: Across cultures, people's mating strategies are universal.