• Almost 9,000 students didn't graduate from Iowa's high schools in 2004, costing the state more than $2 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes, reports the Alliance for Excellent Education.

For a current Virginian, Beverly van Hook knows her Quad Cities. The author was selected by the Midwest Writing Center to be the guest speaker at the organization's Silver Anniversary Awards Banquet - at the Outing Club on Saturday, March 11 - and the decision makes sense.

• The Unitarian Church, located on Eastern Avenue at East Kimberly Road in Davenport, is in the process of converting its building's heat and air-conditioning systems to run on geothermal energy. Geothermal uses heat from the earth to replace natural gas for heating during the winter.

To download an edited version of the Reader interview with RME President and CEO Lon Bozarth (26 minutes, 7.7 megabytes, mp3), click here. Last week, on the day that the River Music Experience announced plans for a second-floor club that would cement its place as a venue for live music rather than a traditional museum, leaders of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society met with members of the media to discuss several new initiatives, including a planned downtown-Davenport museum dedicated to the jazz giant.