In today's update from Iowa, the Quad-City Times delivered good news and bad news.

The good news: The Donald Schaeffer Planetarium at Bettendorf High School has been updated for the new millennium. The $100,000 project, funded by county and local district grants, updated the 30-year-old original Kodak slide technology to a digital system that students and teachers are using to create cutting edge presentations in the arts, humanities and sciences.

The only thing I find hard to believe as an alumna of one of the first classes to use the facility is that it's been 30 years since the "new" high school with its remarkable planetarium opened!

The bad news:

The sculptural designs of Davenport artist Isabel Bloom will soon be in the hands of Chinese workers, according to another article in today's Quad City Times.

What was once an authentic artist's studio in the Village of East Davenport where Isabel and John Bloom created original sculpture will now be a mere "studio store," an example of the corporate citizenship that the company says it will maintain in the Quad Cities as Isabel Bloom moves its production to China.

When the passion for squeezing a few pennies reaches the fine art arena, it's out of control. Owners classify the business as serving the "global gift market."

Fifty Quad-Citians, a third of the staff, will lose their jobs as the company transitions production to China while maintaining "creative control." Will they be shipping the river rocks to China along with the jobs?

Blooms were distinctive because they represented an authentic and beautiful gift (art) item with a real and recognizable QC connection. Personally,I treasure the distinctive sculpture that I have that was actually signed by Isabel Bloom, as well as those from more recent years signed in the QC studios QC sculptors , many of whom were Bloom-trained. I will not be in the market for Blooms now that they will be mass-produced off-shore, though.

What's next? Will Violet be next seen haunting the aisles of Wal-Mart?

How much more profit can one squeeze from a lump of concrete?