Congratulations to the winners of Saturday's Quad-City Times Bix 7 - as well as all of those who finished the race. Nice going.

While we're passing out the kudos, congrats also to ...

-- Local actor/playwright Steve Quartell, whose modern-day adaptation of "Oedipus Rex," staged at Davenport's Harrison Hilltop Theatre in May and June, is scheduled to be workshopped and get a staged reading in Los Angeles later this year. Quartell will consult through online video.

-- The Eastern Iowa Community College District for the speakers scheduled in the second season of its "Viewpoint" series: Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis (Oct. 6), legal author Scott Turow (Jan. 26) and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland (April 13).

-- Moline author Jason Tanamor, whose Zoiks! Online Web site featuring interviews with comedians has become a part of www.TheLaughButton.com, which receives 1 million hits a day.

-- Quad-City area theater companies for pulling off half-a-dozen opening nights over the second weekend of July. And all received critical praise.

-- Lora Adams, whose "The Boys Next Door" was self-produced and directed, showing the DIY spirit still lives in the arts.

-- Fred Harris Jr., director of Playcrafters' "A Raisin in the Sun," whose opening-curtain speech welcomed audience members to the minority initiative project. "One day I won't have to say that," Harris said. "It'll just be, 'Welcome to Playcrafters.' "

-- The River Music Experience's Redstone Room for broadening its musical offerings, including a Sept. 22 appearance by D-12, a Detroit rap group known best for one of its founding members - a guy who goes by the name of Eminem. (Eminem will not, the RME was quick to point out, be performing here.)

n The Quad-City Symphony Orchestra for continuing its spring pops series next year by bringing back the people who did a Led Zeppelin show this year. But they'll be doing the music of The Eagles in 2010.