Penguins Comedy Club would like to extend an invitation to all veterans - be they active or retired - a complimentary admission to our comedy shows. They are welcome to bring a guest.  We just ask that they make a reservation and show military ID at the ticket window when they attend the show.

Questions?  Please call Penguins Comedy Club 563-324-5233.

The window is closing.

The mass graves aren't going anywhere, and neither is the forensic evidence - cartridges and bullets and bones. The archives are safe. But Father Patrick Desbois has but a few years to talk to people who saw the murders, and only they can identify the exact locations of the bodies and illuminate the problematic accounts in German and Soviet documents.

"We are in the small window I would say, because it's the end of the life of the witnesses, but it's also perhaps the only period in which ... they begin to feel free from the Soviet Union," Desbois said last week in a phone interview. "It's a short-term project. We think six, seven years maximum ... ."

Desbois, a Roman Catholic priest from France, has since 2004 conducted investigations into the "Holocaust by bullets" - the murder of eastern-European Jews by German soldiers during World War II. He will speak at St. Ambrose University on August 27.

The Figge Art Museum exhibit Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions from the Walker Art Center (running through January 3) is "a very significant show" from "one of the premier contemporary-art museums in the United States," said Figge Executive Director Sean O'Harrow.

But it's clear that O'Harrow's interest in bringing the show here is not limited to its importance. After accessible exhibits featuring duck decoys and the work of John Bloom, O'Harrow is not shy about provoking people with Paper Trail: "This show is really meant to push people further to the other extreme. ... This show is really meant to push our audience. ... We as an institution have to do this."

Some content is politically aggressive, while other works will baffle audiences. One piece, for example, instructs its audience to put a provided sweater on in a certain way. And Laylah Ali's two untitled drawings will certainly prompt plenty to claim that their children could do that. Many people will love the show, O'Harrow said, and many will hate it.

A retrospective featuring the work of roughly 20 artists, Paper Trail was not meant as a traveling exhibition, but O'Harrow convinced the Minneapolis museum to let a scaled-down version come to the Quad Cities - at this point, its only destination.

Students, he said, "can see every big name [in the art world] in the last 20 years." For a lay audience, the biggest name is Raymond Pettibon, who provided the cover art for Sonic Youth's 1990 album Goo.

For more information about the Figge exhibit, click here.

Click on any image for a larger version.

On Thursday, July 23, business leaders announced the realignment of Quad Cities economic-development organizations. This will mean the end of DavenportOne and the Quad City Development Group, and the beginning of the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce and Quad Cities First.

mp3 mp3 file of the announcement event (33 minutes)

Effectively, this shifts control of external marketing and business-attraction efforts from the Quad City Development Group and its board to two chambers of commerce: the Illinois Quad City Chamber of Commerce and the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce (the successor to DavenportOne, whose staff and resources will be merged into the new entity).

The two chambers' chief executives will run Quad Cities First -- a new organization, taking over the role of the Quad City Development Group -- and the chambers will together nominate 10 of its 17 board members. (Seven city and county governments will each appoint one member.)

Dissatisfaction with the effectiveness and fragmentation of regional economic-development efforts has been brewing for a long time. Three years ago, the Reader published "Note to Self: Why Is the Business Community Threatening Itself About Regional Economic Development?" about a letter that clearly set the stage for this shift.

The Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce has "endorsed" the new economic-development model but will not merge into the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce.

Other resources:

DavenportOne releases about the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce (1, 2) and the economic-development model.

Argus/Dispatch coverage.

Quad-City Times coverage.