If the City of Rock Island is unwilling to devote the resources to operate and upgrade the Hauberg Civic Center, it’s hard to imagine a better owner than Bridges Catering.

Bridges – now based in Princeton, Iowa – is an established family company whose owners have deep roots in Rock Island. It plans to renovate and maintain the Hauberg mansion consistent with its historic character, expand public access, and use the site for both food preparation and events with fewer than 100 people. Shifting the mansion, its carriage house, and grounds into Bridges’ hands would add property and sales taxes to Rock Island’s coffers, and eliminate from the budget an event-rental facility (operated by the Parks & Recreation department) whose financial performance is in the red and getting worse.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September cited Volkswagen with programming 11 million cars to evade emissions standards and tests, the first thought of author Eula Biss was unusual: “This is going to be really bad for vaccination.”

Unusual for most people, but fairly typical of Biss, a lecturer at Northwestern University who will speak as part of Augustana College’s River Readings series on January 14. Her 2014 book On Immunity: An Inoculation is about vaccination, but it starts with the story of Achilles and touches on vampires, the environmental classic Silent Spring, semantics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, anti-bacterial soap, paternalism and sexism in medicine, Kierkegaard, and New Coke among many, many other things.

In August, Tennessee-based Strategic Behavioral Health unveiled plans to build a 72-bed psychiatric hospital in Scott County. The for-profit company's proposal - which will be considered by the Iowa Health Facilities Council in February - was greeted with enthusiasm by many public officials and community mental-health providers, dozens of whom wrote letters of support.

Our 2015 short-fiction contest features 15 creepy prompts, and the deadline for entries is 9 a.m. on October 20.

We'll publish winners and favorites in the October 29 issue of the River Cities' Reader - just in time for Halloween. Stories don't need to be scary, but ... 'tis the season.