Quadsville

First, go to the polls and vote like a good citizen.

Then, fulfill your Quadsville civic duties by telling us all about it here. Blog. Post photos. Post videos. (OK, you can't take photos and videos inside the polling place, but if you want to interview others or videotape yourself in the parking lot, go for it).

On election night, join in our live chat from 7:30 - 10:30 p.m. The chat will be very casual and free-flowing, more like a chat room, where people will be able to pop in and out to chat about all things election-related. I have invited local candidates to join us.

If you are out at election night parties, snap some photos and videos there, too.

Even if you are tired of all the campaigning right now, this is an historic election, so be part of it. Document Election 2008 from your point of view.

Only five more days...

The Promise would fund more than just college tuition or vocational training for Davenport residents. It also includes money for homestead grants for returning veterans and money to add public safety employees. It would cap city property taxes for low-income senior or disabled homeowners.

Here are my questions for you:

Can this work in a school district that includes more than just Davenport residents? Is it fair for the Davenport West graduate who lives in Walcott (Adam?) to not get this money? And what happens when Rock Island or Moline or Bettendorf come up with their own Promises? Won't that undermine the economic development angle of Davenport's proposed program?

The draft states that the tuition amounts would be equal to Scott Community College tuition for the first two years and to University of Iowa tuition for years three and four. BUT students can go to any college in the nation. And there's no guarantee they will come back and put their skills to use in Davenport after they graduate. Should students be required to stay in the bi-state area for school or to come back and put in a few years of service? They do have to put in 400 hours of community service to get the scholarship by they time they graduate high school.

Finally, should the city be using the LOST money (that's an unfortunate acronym, isn't it?) to fund the Davenport Promise? Kalamazoo, Mich., El Dorado, Ark., Denver and Pittsburgh all have Promise programs funded by private philanthropic donations. The task force says we don't have a local individual or company to put up the dough.

Here's the part where you "talk amongst yourselves." You can comment here (as long as the bugs stay away), or write your own blog entry on the topic. I'll be back with another topic tomorrow.

On Thursday, our Health Chats series continues at 9 a.m. with Carla Morse, an RN with Trinity answering your questions about influenza and pneumonia. Health reporter Deirdre Baker will be online with us, too.

Then at 10 a.m. Thursday, former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack will join us for a chat on family planning and the Iowa Initiative, a nonprofit organization she is leading. Features reporter Kay Luna will be part of the chat, too. You can read the stories she's written on the topic here, here, here and here.

If you have a Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com/quadsville and click Follow. Quadsville will follow you, too!

I am linking out to posts by Quadsvillagers through the Quadsville Twitter account. So if you follow Quadsville on Twitter and you monitor Twitter with your phone or Twitterfox or another application, you will know when someone posts something new that you might want to read and comment on.

The Quadsville Twitter account is already following a few Quadsvillagers: SeanMcDevitt, Tonya, AdamPeters, RiverCity Rose. I'd like to follow more of you! So follow me ... and I'll follow you ... and pretty soon, we'll all be walking in circles, tweeting happily amongst ourselves. 

I did a phone interview with Patrick Thornton at beatblogging.org on Monday and the result is this lovely story on his site and a podcast that I haven't listened to yet (despite my start in radio, I still feel weird listening to my own recorded voice).

There was a HUGE screen shot of Quadsville on the beatblogging homepage today, too.  

What does this mean for all of you? Well, that your participation in this site is getting other people to look in our direction. What community wouldn't want to have a place like Quadsville to come together and talk about our lives, our community's issues and our passions?

So THANK YOU to all of you. Let's keep the discussion goin' and growin'. 

Go&Do insert is in your Thursday paper, but you won't get the full stories unless you go to the Go&Do site.  MidCoast Fine Arts' Deadstock event is tomorrow. I think I have a costume to go, but I need to find a bell jar big enough to fit over my head. This story about the Lone Wolf at the Davenport Jaycee's Haunted House might help you get past the first room. David Burke also previews this weekend's Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson concert at the i wireless Center. Also, check out our movie reviews and theater reviews as you plan your weekend activities.

Don't forget about our live health chat tomorrow morning on Alzheimer's Disease. It's bright and early at 8:30 a.m. Don't forget! ;-)

So far, Adam Peters is signed up for the Quadsville E-Day street team. Who else is in?

Have a good Thursday!

RiverCity Rose wonders why "everyday Democrats" believe Barack Obama can deliver on all his promises and why anyone would think it's a good idea to have Dems in power in two out of three branches of government.

Salia linked out to Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama on "Meet the Press." 

Adam Peters was looking forward to Sarah Palin's appearance on "Saturday Night Live." 

How are you feeling two weeks from E-Day? Nervous? Excited? Exasperated? Apathetic?

I know the Council Blog has been having comment issues, so respond with your own blog post.  

I know several of you will be watching, so why not live blog the experience on Quadsville? Call it as you see it in real time.

I know the previous debates haven't been the year's most exciting broadcasts. But you never know what will happen on live TV. I'm just excited to finally be in the right time zone to watch it live, rather than pulling up the replay on CNN.com.  

If live blogging doesn't make the debate experience engaging enough for you, here are some other ideas to spice up your Election 2008 experience:

Carve a Barack O'Lantern or a John-O-Lantern (bonus points for an accompanying Pumpkin Palin or Biden Squash). Post the photos of the results on Quadsville.

Of course, you could try out one of the ever-popular presidential debate drinking games (21 and older, please). Here are two different versions to get you started. Add your own house rules.  You can post the results of this experiment on Quadsville, too, but I can't guarantee they won't be pulled down immediately.

I would not recommend combining the carving with the drinking game. But if you do, I want video. At any rate, we will all meet here tomorrow morning to rehash the debate, who won, who lost and who fell asleep within the first 15 minutes. 

I want to give you an update on a reported bug on Quadsville. Some of you have been stressing out that your blog posts have stopped appearing on the community blogs page. We are not censoring you. It appears to be related to your privacy settings.

After the last software release from the developer, if you had your profile set to be viewed only by friends, then your blogs also stopped showing up on the community page. If you change your profile to public, this will solve that problem.

However, we know that many of you want to share your blog posts with everyone, but only let your friends have access to the personal info you put on your profile page. We completely agree and are working with the developer to get this changed.

I am trying to get an idea of how many regular bloggers this has affected. If you have had this problem, please comment below. And as always, if there are any other glitches you have noticed, drop us a line.

You can click here and here to add your two cents to the debate on the debate at QCTimes.com. Or write your own blog post in Quadsville giving your take on last night's action.

I went to a press breakfast this morning with Steve Clemons of TheWashingtonNote.com. He was a trooper and actually stayed up to live blog the debate and then managed to be awake for the breakfast at 9 a.m. this morning.  His take was that Biden performed better, although he wasn't really "on" until about halfway through, but that Palin didn't make any major missteps. You can read more on his take here.