I’ve been a Quad Citian now for 9 months now, and there are many places that my husband, C-Nor, and I like to frequent. There’s the Front Street Brewery in Davenport, lots of good Asian/fusion places, a couple killer-burger bars like Boozie’s.

But if I had to choose, I’d say my favorite place is one that I already knew of before I moved up here, (thanks to my friend Jane taking me there several years back on one of our thrifting marathons).

So, where is this place, and what’s its name? Appropriately: “The Great Indian Restaurant.” It’s on Avenue of the Cities in Moline.

No ordering by number here (...anymore)

Mix pakori, vindaloo and vegetable curry, garlic nan bread: all stuff that, I’m not gonna lie, I wouldn’t have touched with a 10-foot pole when I was a kid. Now my absolute favorite meal.

You need to eat here next time you’re in the Quad Cities. The staff members are always friendly and the Taj Mahal beer is good, too.

Don't be fooled. You cannot get a Dorito Taco here. But that's a good thing.

You’ll know you’re at the right place when you walk inside and the singing bird clock announces the hour. (Ok, maybe the place does have one small drawback…)

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was hovering between 2 and 2.5 stars throughout most of this book. Normally I love humor writing. And I (like the author) have mixed feelings after my experiences with Weight Watchers (program itself=great; meetings= suck).

But throughout the book, I kept thinking, “Really? You and your husband exchange 100-percent clever witticisms in every single sentence you speak to each other?”

And, “Really? You cussed out an innocent shampoo girl at the salon? You honestly and truly did that?”

(Also, I have to subtract major points for the fact that, as with the last book I read, another humor book [by Laurie Notaro, Autobiography of a Fat Bride True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood], THE MODEL / DRAWING OF A WOMAN’S BODY ON THE COVER ARE NOT EVEN EFFING CLOSE TO BEING “FAT.” Not the authors’ faults, but still.)

I also usually eat Notaro’s books right up without questioning their absolute veracity. So I think my experiences reading both of these books might have been slightly tainted by the whole brouhaha going on in the literary world right now, involving Mike Daisy and that guy who lied about the number of vans in Las Vegas (or whatever).

I had trouble really believing these (Lancasters’ especially) on an emotional level, whatever the facts (or lack of).

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Listed in Reverse-Chronological Order of Carbon Dating

1.  A wedding-planning guide that I never even opened, (re-discovered on this, my six-month wedding anniversary);

2.  a “reaction paper” about Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene 2), from English 362, Shakespeare Seminar, (dated Oct.  12, 1998), on which I received an A-, (a subject matter about which, however, I could now tell you almost next to nothing);

3. hundreds of photocopied reading assignments from two literature courses from my senior year in college –13 years ago–which I’m pretty sure I kept out of guilt all these years because I never actually read them when they were due (but would definitely read them “someday in the future”;

Oh, Virginia...you're in the recycling now.

4. a scrawled note from one of my best friends, which in itself is unworthy written on the back of a note-taking moment in junior year (high school) English, circa 1993. How do I know the year and the class, you ask? Because this is what was on the backside:

“Simon–religion

Piggy–intellect

Jack–chaos

Ralf–leadership

Symbolism of shell

Simon–Christ Child

IRONY

Symbolism of Piggy glasses”

(ready for your quiz now, dear readers?)

5. several notes one looseleaf notebook paper from the one and only boy I could legitimately call my “boyfriend” in high school (for all of the few months it lasted), one of which is on the back of a spelling test, upon which (though I ignored it at the time) he only got an 11 out of 20;

and finally,

6. a note from several girlfriends telling me “congrats on the I Heart You,” commemorating the first utterance of those (forced, if I remember) words from said boyfriend, (capped by a final note of “Get on him!!! After you go to Planned Parenthood.”)

I responded to this prompt from the online journal:

“Oh. My. God. What is that smell?”

I wrote about the day that Chris and I came home from our mini-moon to Starved Rock. It’s the first one on this page, with the title “A Threshold for Stench.”

It  might be a small credit, but, unless you count my newspaper column, it’s really my first piece of writing that is not self-published. (As an adult, anyway. Do kiddy talent searches from the 1980s count?? Just wondering.)

Anyway, head on over to Hippocampus to check it (and the other published stories) out!*

(I’m aloud to overuse exclamation points today, dammit!)

(screen capture)

Participants had 24 hours to respond to an emailed prompt sent by staffers of the Midwest Writing Center, phrase or a line from a poem by Hart Crane: “A bridge will be written.”

I got third place in the nonfiction category.

Here’s me trying to take a decent picture, which is always a struggle for me… People always say, “Give me a big smile,” and I say, pissily, through frozen lips and teeth, “I am giving a big smile!”

"do I look writerly?"

This is how I feel much more comfortable in front of a camera: acting like a dork.

Iron Pen placer-- hear me roar!

OH, AND: every elevator in the world should have art pieces on the floor and walls like this one, inside Bucktown

Twistin' it up while I'm goin' down

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up this book immediately after having finished another non-fiction work, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and I think the style of that book impacted the way I felt about this one. In other words, in “Immortal,” the author involved herself in the story and made her hunt for information somehow seem suspenseful, (even though I knew from the beginning that the main subject of the story was dead).

As much as I enjoyed the “character” of the young woman (Florence Wolfson) whose life is re-discovered through the diary in this book, I wished the author (Koppel) would have told us more about the trail she followed to find the diary’s writer.

Also, at times, Koppel re-printed lines from the diary that seemed to beg further explanation or discussion, and none followed; then, several times in a row, she reprints a line and repeats it or explains it in a way that seemed redundant and unnecessary.

But I enjoyed how the author brought 1930s New York to life. And the keeper of the diary whose life and times Koppel resurrects–Florence Wolfson, later Florence Howitt–is so astoundingly original and ahead of her time, it’s hard not to feel that her era was somehow grander than ours. She had lovers in Europe; rubbed elbows with famous American literary figures; rode a horse through Central Park on her way to college classes; wore exquisite clothing, etc.

Essentially, what bumped this up from a three-star to a four-star book for me was going back and re-reading the prologue from Florence, the diary’s writer: hearing from her as a “non-genarian” in her 90s and how the diary revived her spirit. (Made me think there might be some value, after all, in hanging onto the huge stash of diaries I’ve kept since grade school…)

–

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What’s a gal to do?

Thankfully, (and luckily, for my husband and for anyone who stands in line next to me at the grocery store), things like applying deodorant and brushing my teeth, at least, cause me less angst.

Please tell me how to make these chores fun. Please. (But it better be something other than “whistle while you work.” Also: “drink” is probably not a good recommendation for some of these. See “shave legs.”)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An amazing story that’s disturbing and entertaining (as this writer tells it) at the same time.

I would’ve had no interest in the subject matter if the author hadn’t presented the story in the way she did, like a family mystery unfolding.

There were times when I started to lose my grip on the understanding of exactly why the “immortal” cells in question were able to live on the way they have–has there truly never been another living human whose cells could be as valuable in research as Henrietta Lacks’ have been? But otherwise the author breaks down the scientific matters to a level that the layperson can understand.

I read this book while I was (and still am) in the process of teaching African American adults who struggle with literacy, and I have to say I had serious trouble sleeping one night because of the way the black family in this book was left in the dark (until the author steps in with her investigation) about what had occurred after their mother’s death. The author also recaps certain medical experiments done on humans (but particularly blacks) that are unfathomable.

Overall, though, I thought the book was uplifting despite some of its disturbing subject matter, and inspiring to see how one journalist helped a family find answers and closure (and, to some degree, peace).

P.S. I read this book on my Kindle, and I “checked it out” from my local library, and, despite what I might have thought previously, I survived!

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I’ve been told it was once a car dealership, and also that it was once a fallout shelter. I lose my cell signal when I’m down in the basement, which is where we ESL and ABE teachers dwell.

no takers yet this morning, as of 8:40 a.m.

At some point in the near future, the center where I’m teaching is supposed to re-open in a brand-new, multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art (that’s a lot of hyphens) building in a more suburb-y part of Davenport.

the current building is ...er... *not* state-of-the-art

The move-in date has been pushed back several times since I started late last fall. I’m telling my students that I promise I’ll give them the heads up as soon as I know the date for sure. Most of them are excited. One is concerned about how she’ll get there now that the bus route she’d have to take would double in length.

I’ll try to remember to share some “after” photos of the new, fancy-schmancy location. (I’m excited about the move, on the one hand. On the other, I’d be content just to have a locker or a cubbyhole to park all of my books and papers, wanderin’ adjuncter that I am. Or some index cards [for homemade flashcards] that I didn’t have to purchase with my own money. Or…you get the drift.)

From laughter to near-tears, in less than two hours flat

I snapped these photos with my phone in a nervous moment this morning when none of my students had yet arrived.

I have to admit, I was most worried about the absence of D____, an African immigrant, usually the most punctual student, who also happens to be the one I’ve been high-fiving and doing little excited dances around because he’s making such awesome progress. When I see that I’m actually helping him recognize and read words for the first time in his life, I feel so excited I make loud whooping noises that I’m sure prompt some of the other teachers to wonder about me.

But he didn’t show up today. He missed all of last week, too.

Three other students did show up, about five minutes after I snapped these pictures. And we ended up laughing a lot. We did an exercise that depicted two people stuck in an elevator, and one of the students noticed that, in the drawing, the man’s shirt was un-tucked when he and his lady elevator-traveler emerged, finally unstuck after 19 hours.

“They talked, and talked, and talked,” the caption had read. R____, an American who is in her 60s, said slyly, with a cocked eyebrow, “Look like they did somethin’ else up in there, too.” The whole class cracked up.

But about a half hour after class, my phone rang, and I knew it would be D____, and I knew that he’d be telling me something was wrong.

I was correct on both counts.

D____, I learned, has found himself to be in a situation that has left him homeless. He might be living out of his vehicle–or, if he can get enough money together, a hotel.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I told him I was sorry about his situation and wished there was something I could do to help. I dug up some phone numbers for shelters, though they seemed to require certain specifications, none of which apply to him. I told him I very much hoped he’d be able to come back to class.

I’d been warned, in my little online trainings before starting the job, that adult learners often experience  “outside circumstances” that effect their education.

Somehow, though, that doesn’t make it feel any less heartbreaking.

–

3) That you can stop in to Boozie’s (above) for a beer, and then head downstairs to Faith Explained, the Catholic store. (But only if you make an appointment.)