2009 marks Midwest Writing Center's 36th-annual Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest. This year Max Molleston, longtime contest administrator, passed the reins to local poet Kristin Abraham, author of Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus. Kristin reconfigured the contest to contain just two categories: regional and national.

A total of 349 poems were entered - 165 for the national category and 184 for the regional. Out of these entries, 25 finalists were selected to be judged by our regional judge, former Quad Cities Poet Laureate Rebecca Wee, and 25 were sent to our national judge, May Swenson Award-winning poet F. Daniel Rzicznek. From these entries our judges each selected first-, second-, and third-place winners as well as honorable mentions. First-place winners received $200, second-place winners received $150, and third-place winners received $75. The first-place regional winner also receives the Max Molleston Award, created by local artist Dee Schricker. All of the poems that were selected as finalists will be printed in Off Channel, Midwest Writing Center's Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest anthology, due out before the end of summer 2009.

The Midwest Writing Center accepts entries for the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest from January 1 through March 31 each year. More information is available online at MidwestWritingCenter.org.

A reception and reading will be held on Saturday, July 18, from 7 to 9 p.m. in our conference room at 225 East Second Street in Davenport -- the Bucktown Center for the Arts. All individuals who submitted poems to the contest are invited to read their work.

In March, the Quad Cities Homebuilders & Remodelers Association began construction of a demonstration "green" home. Scheduled to be completed by September, the house is intended to illustrate that environmentally friendly homebuilding does not have to be costly or showy.

Homes represent 22 percent of our country's energy use -- only 6 percentage points fewer than the transportation industry, according to the Energy Information Administration. In recent years, green builders have emerged to reduce residential energy usage.

Green building isn't necessarily about solar panels, green roofs, wind turbines, and other expensive features. Double-paned windows, recycled cabinet materials, better insulation, erosion control, and efficient appliances might not be as glamorous, but they constitute green building, too.

"Green is a wave of the future," said Dave Burrows, executive vice president of the Quad Cities Homebuilders. "Our industry has to adapt."

A 2006 study by McGraw-Hill Construction predicted that green homes will make up about 10 percent of new-home construction by 2010, up from 2 percent in 2005.

"It's coming," said Burrows.

The two men came to the cross-country bike ride in different ways.

For Danny Leonard, a cancer survivor in his late 60s, the idea for a second cross-country ride arose from a conversation he had two years ago while running on a treadmill next to a young man preparing for a marathon. As the men ran next to each other for almost two hours, the young man explained to Leonard that running the marathon would be his way to raise awareness for leukemia and lymphoma research. The conversation left Leonard wondering what he could do to advocate screening for and raise awareness about the disease he had battled -- non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He decided to place an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a Christian who was interested in riding across the United States to raise awareness of the importance of early detection.

For Drew Wessels, an Augustana College graduate and Bettendorf native in his early 20s who stumbled across the listing while looking for a job, it was an opportunity to honor the grandfather he lost to leukemia three years ago.

But for both men it was the right time for the ride. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Leonard being cancer-free, and of his first ride across the country. Wessels, whose summers were usually consumed by basketball or school, found himself with a rare free summer. "The one time I actually had the opportunity, that something like this came by is pretty neat," Wessels said. 2009 also marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

On June 20, the Marijuana Policy Project hosted a medical-marijuana forum at the Bettendorf Public Library. The event featured a screening of the documentary Waiting to Inhale as well as a discussion with patients who use medical marijuana and proponents of legalizing the drug for medical use. Video of the discussion follows.

Medical Marijuana Forum June 20, 2009; Bettendorf, Iowa from James Getman on Vimeo.