It needs to be stated upfront: The Isle of Capri's (IOC) proposed casino hotel on downtown Davenport's riverfront is not a done deal. Regardless of IOC's ambitious presentation at two public meetings last month now being shown on the city's cable channel, or the splashy direct mailer households received in recent weeks, this casino hotel has not been decided by any stretch.

• First Lady Laura Bush has designated Rock Island as one of 20 new "Preserve America" communities. The official designation was announced March 18 and was delivered last week by U.S. Representative Lane Evans (D-Rock Island) to Rock Island Mayor Mark Schweibert during a ceremony at city hall.

While reading the less-than-enthusiastic "pedestrian survey" of the recent Pigstock/Jaegermeister festival [see "They Did It Better in Clinton," River Cities' Reader Issue 449, October 29-November 4, 2003], I couldn't help but wonder if the writer knew what sort of event she was at, or if she'd ever been to a rock concert before.

Last Tuesday was a public-relations nightmare for Governor Rod Blagojevich, but he did manage to avert a complete PR meltdown with a last-minute deal. A few months after freezing wages of nonunion state workers and deducting 4 percent from their checks to pay for their pension contributions, a month after vetoing pay raises for legislators and judges, two weeks after he unilaterally slashed the operations budgets of two statewide constitutional officers, and the same day that Latino legislators slammed him for breaking his promise about not cutting funds for social programs, the Chicago Tribune reported that the governor had given pay raises to some of his employees.