Bloom Magazine 88

Celebrating Life in Bloomington

Black Women of BLOOMINGTON RECOGNIZING

Their Accomplishments & Contributions

15TH ANNUAL

Wedding GUIDE

magbloom.com

February/ March 2021

We congratulate Betsy Greene for her induction into the Indiana University Academy of Law Alumni Fellows.

As a 2020 inductee into the Academy of Law Alumni Fellows, Betsy Greene has been recognized as an Indiana University Maurer School of Law graduate who distinguishes herself through personal achievements and a dedication to the highest standards of the profession. She joins with other celebrated Law Alumni Fellows in bringing honor to the legal profession and reflecting the outstanding reputation of the IU Maurer School of Law.

Personal Injury | Workplace Injury | Medical Malpractice | Co-counsel and Referrals | GreeneSchultz.com | 812-336-4357

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Bloom 65

February/March21 Vol.16 No.1

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features 65

Bloom’s 15th Annual Wedding Guide

Many 2020 weddings long planned were either minimalized or put off for another day due to the pandemic. In our 15th annual Wedding Guide, we present four of our most popular weddings from years past. Here’s to better times and amazing weddings in 2021.

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Black Women of Bloomington

Wedding Guide

The achievements of Black women are being recognized nationally as never before.

Finally, and long overdue. Here in Bloomington, Black women have contributed mightily to every facet of our community, and in this issue we recognize the successes of 21.

By Carmen Siering & Tracy Zollinger Turner, photography by Martin Boling & Jim Krause

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Recognizing Their Accomplishments & Contributions

Celebrating Life in Bloomington

CELEBRATING BLACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON

Black Women of BLOOMINGTON RECOGNIZING

Their Accomplishments & Contributions

15TH ANNUAL

Wedding GUIDE

magbloom.com

Maqubè Reese. Photo by Martin Boling

4 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

February/ March 2021

departments 18

8

Editor’s Message

9

GoFundMe Donors

10

A Model Train Layout for the Ages

22

What I Miss

12 Contributors 13 Letters

30

14

Up Front

18

Our Town

The new executive director for Indiana Public Media, the man who helps Indiana University music students find careers, and a community journalist for the past 36 years are all Bloomingtonians worth knowing.

22 Arts/Entertainment

An Edgewood High School senior is the illustrator of Michael Koryta’s latest novel; the new executive director of the BuskirkChumley Theater; and an artist whose work it’s hard not to find around town.

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30 Food/Drink

A new owner and a new name for a locally owned international food market; and our beer columnist reviews some brown ales suitable for keeping cozy on a cold day.

36 Fashion/Shopping

Locally handmade, sustainable fashion takes center stage in this photo story; and a bookstore from years past is making a comeback on Bloomington’s east side.

40 Home/Family

Model trains aren’t just for kids—there is an active group of enthusiasts right here in Bloomington; and a rescue organization that matches senior pets with senior humans.

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44 Science/Education

How to help an important part of our ecosystem by participating in the Great Sunflower Project; and how electric vehicles are making their mark in our community.

48 Health/Fitness

A Bloomington chiropractor has served more than 10,000 patients; and how one local senior living facility has kept residents and staff safe through the pandemic.

Recharge and rejuvenate.

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editor’s message

What I Miss You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone. I’ve been thinking about that sentiment often as the pandemic rages on, even as people are being vaccinated. The end is in sight but not yet in reach.

Even in my most run-of-the-mill day in pre-COVID times, there were many nice occurrences; small experiences to which I never gave a second thought. But I do now.

I frequently started my day with a leisurely breakfast at The Uptown Cafe, sipping hot coffee and reading the newspaper.

What a luxury! Other days I would grab a quick breakfast at the Cloverleaf Restaurant on East Winslow Road. Also a treat, I realize now.

Every day at the Bloom office I got to enjoy working IN PERSON with my talented, talkative, wonderful staff. I miss that camaraderie (although twice-a-day Zoom meetings somewhat fill that void).

During the course of an ordinary day, readers or contributors would often stop by the office to pick up a magazine or a book or just to say hi. I always appreciated hearing their opinions or learning about happenings in the community.

On Wednesdays, as a staff, we would walk over for lunch to one of the excellent local restaurants downtown. At these staff lunches there was always a lot of laughing, some personal stories, tidbits of gossip maybe, and now and then between bites, a great idea for the magazine.

Other lunchtimes I might have something healthy at the Bloomingfoods Near West café or a soup-and-sandwich combo at the bar of The Crazy Horse where Kevin “Coach” Kochery, Bloomington’s most affable bartender, holds court.

Once or twice a month, I would just walk around downtown checking in with shop owners to get a feel for how the business

8 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

community was doing. Over the years, many of these people became friends and we would hug. I’m a hugger by nature, so I miss that.

Even going to the bank could be fun. There’s a lively bunch of tellers at Chase on South College. I had my own “personal” teller, Lynn, whom I pretended to believe waited only on me. She just retired after 40 years and I will miss her.

Monday nights, I bowled. I’m a terrible bowler but love competing and there’s a feisty crowd at the bowling alley. I miss bowling and my fellow bowlers more than I could ever have imagined.

Evenings and weekends, my wife, Jenny, and I loved to go to the theater, concerts, the opera, movies—or maybe just out for dinner with friends or family. Many evenings we would also attend events and fundraisers for charities and nonprofits.

There are so many in this town, we would sometimes complain about not having a free evening to ourselves. No longer. We’d love a good gala!

And on so many evenings over the past 14 years, my fatherin-law, Bill, and I faithfully watched every televised Indiana University basketball and football game.

Those were the days. They now seem long ago.

Life will never exactly be the same, but when this horror show is over, I, for one, plan to appreciate every run-of-the-mill day.

Malcolm Abrams editor@magbloom.com

Train model of Gloucestershire, England, circa 1960, created

by Bloomingtonian Trevor Jones. To see more, go to Page 40.

Photo by Martin Boling

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magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 11

contributors Tracy Zollinger Turner WRITER: BLACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON Tracy is an independent writer and editor who relocated to Bloomington from Columbus, Ohio. She is interested in just about everything, especially getting people to talk about things that matter to them, then telling their stories with careful detail and compassion.

Tracy lives with her husband, 15-year-old son, and three interrupting rescue dogs. Find out more about her at tracyzturner.com.

Carmen Siering WRITER: BLACK WOMEN OF Carmen is a freelance writer, something she has been doing since she started writing for her local newspaper at the age of 14. Meeting new people (or meeting up with old friends), hearing their stories, and sharing those stories with others has always been the best part of her job. She would like to thank everyone who offered her their time and their stories for the feature in this issue.

BLOOMINGTON

Bloom FebruaryMarch21 Vol.16 No.1

Editor & Publisher Malcolm Abrams Managing Editor Rodney Margison

Associate Publisher Cassaundra Huskey

Design Director Stephanie Reeves (Spectrum Creative Group)

Administrative Assistant Janet Arthur

Deputy Editor Sophie Bird Writers Moya Andrews Jack Baker Barb Berggoetz Megan Betz Paul Bickley Susan M. Brackney Aaron Brewington Molly Brush Craig Coley Olivia Dorfman Peter Dorfman Julie Gray Anna Groover

Janet Mandelstam Linda Margison Michelle Mastro Nicole McPheeters Rosie Piga Pizzo Scott Russell Sanders Lee Ann Sandweiss Carmen Siering Greg Siering Carol Anne Smock Tracy Z. Turner Jana Wilson Douglas Wissing Illustrators

Jim Krause PHOTOGRAPHER: BLACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON Jim is a photographer and documentary producer, and an instructor for The Media School at Indiana University. Jim teaches video production, animation, and TV studio production. When not working, he enjoys running, hiking, paddling, and sailing. He composes music and plays guitar in a duo with his wife, Anne, a cellist. In the summer months they live aboard their sailboat and sail in the Great Lakes or Pacific Northwest.

Martin Boling PHOTOGRAPHER: BLACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON For Martin, a Bloom assignment is not about taking some pictures of folks in our town and moving on to the next assignment; his goal is to capture the unguarded essence of the people we know or would like to know. When he’s not busy shooting photos for Bloom or taking pictures of clients, Martin loves doing vintage/retro portraiture. See his portfolio at martinboling.com.

Joe Lee

Mike Cagle Photographers Martin Boling Haley Brown Jenn Hamm James Kellar Jim Krause

Nicole McPheeters Kendall Reeves Jeff Richardson Stephen Sproull Mike Waddell

About Bloom Magazine

Bloom is an independent, free magazine whose target audience is Bloomington’s adult population and visitors to the area. Published bimonthly, 10,000 copies are available at more than 200 local retail businesses, hotels, and community centers.

For a complete list, visit magbloom.com/get-a-copy.

If you would like a subscription to the magazine for yourself or as a gift for someone else, a subscription order card can be found between Pages 32 and 33 in this issue, or you may subscribe online at magbloom.com/subscribe.

Bloom Magazine is published six times a year by Bloomington Magazine, Inc., P.O. Box 1204, Bloomington, IN 47402.

Street address: 414 W. 6th St., Bloomington, IN 47404 Tel: 812.323.8959 Fax: 812.323.8965.

The contents of this publication may not be reproduced either in whole or in part without the written consent of the publisher.

Bloom Magazine assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Subscription: $23.95 per year.

12 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

letters So glad to see Bloom Magazine still coming out! And the latest issue was excellent, especially the coverage of local artists and the call to support local businesses. (I’m worried, too, about the future of some of our artists; if they can hold out, hopefully within a few months we’ll all be out to support them.)

DIANE LEGOMSKY

I wanted to congratulate you and the staff on another great issue. I particularly loved the story about the dogs at work. It was great!

Of course, I love almost anything having to do with dogs. Lucy [her dog] loved it, too.

You know what you guys should do? You should do a whole issue, or at least a section of an issue about dogs. Maybe during the summer months and call it “The Dog Days of Summer.” Just a thought. Anyway, great job!

Give yourself and the dogs a cookie.

ADRIA NASSIM

Bloom has twice featured dogs on the cover!

In the April/May 2007 issue, the cover story was “Bloomington Is a Dog’s Town,” and the October/November 2018 feature story was “We Love Our Pets.”

I believe that Indiana University’s faculty should officially and formally apologize to Adam Herbert, IU’s only Black president.

During Dr. Herbert’s brief tenure [20032007], in an unprecedented move, members of the IU faculty immediately and publicly disrespected Dr. Herbert by questioning his competency. (President Barack Obama later received similar treatment from certain members of the U.S. Congress.)

Their attacks were so patently racist that some Black faculty members felt compelled to publicly defend Dr. Herbert. Until IU acknowledges the racist mistreatment of Dr. Herbert, it will be difficult for me to believe that the university is serious about diversity and equity.

JANET CHEATHAM BELL B.S. ‘64

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 13

up front

Edited by Rodney Margison

Johnsen Accepts Role In Biden Administration Justice Dept.

Dawn Johnsen.

Photo by Jim Krause

On Inauguration Day, Bloomington’s Dawn Johnsen was sworn in as a senior counselor in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Council for the Biden Administration.

Johnsen, a constitutional law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and the wife of Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton, also served in the Department of Justice under President Clinton and on the transition teams of Presidents Clinton and Obama. Due to the pandemic, she will work remotely from Bloomington.

“All of us are so pleased Dawn again has the chance to offer her great judgment and skills to this new administration,” Hamilton says. “This year’s transition was unique and even dangerous. But it worked. Democracy held and we carry on.”

Tom Allen Named National Coach of the Year

Tom Allen. Photo by Rodney Margison

For leading the Indiana University football team to a 6–2 record and an appearance in January’s Outback Bowl, head coach Tom Allen was named the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) National Coach of the Year.

The program’s 2020 achievements include being ranked nationally for 10 consecutive weeks (reaching No. 7 on December 13), including a No. 12 ranking in the final poll, and playing in consecutive January bowl games for the first time in school history.

“I am so humbled and honored to be voted by my peers and the fellow coaches of this country,” Allen says.

‘Ether Game’ Celebrates 50th Anniversary in March

Courtesy illustration

Ether Game, the weekly music game show on WFIU-FM, will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, making it one of the country’s longest-running public programs. Ether Game began as an on-air program on March 16, 1971, with the answers printed in the WFIU program guide. It became a call-in program in the early 1980s, laying the groundwork for the current format.

Each show consists of nine rounds during which the audience is asked to name the title or composer of musical selections, which are primarily classical but also include movie soundtracks, jazz, folk, and even rock. Christopher Burrus hosts the show, which is broadcast live on Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

14 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

How your announcement will appear in Bloom Bloom..

Celebrate your special occasions

in Bloom!

Let all of Bloomington and beyond know about your milestones, the accomplishments of your children, or those special occasions in your family’s life.

Graduations

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

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“In our town, we like to know the facts about everybody.” —Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Laura Lane Journalist

by Rodney Margison Laura Lane has been a Bloomington storyteller since November 1984. That’s when she began working at The Herald-Telephone (now The Herald-Times), where she has written police, government, and human-interest stories.

“I sort of see myself as this person who can reflect the reality of what’s going on,” she says, “who can delve into who people are, to find out what motivates people, what drives them, and why and where they come from.”

Laura Lane. Photo by Rodney Margison

509 E. Hillside Drive, #101 SterlingBloomington.com (812) 333-1966

18 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

An Indianapolis native, Lane developed her passion for storytelling by reading The Indianapolis Star. “We always got the newspaper in my house,” she says, “and I read everything except sports. I read the obituaries and I started finding out about people’s lives.”

Her passion for reading became a passion for writing that earned her a full-ride academic scholarship to Butler University following her graduation from Crispus Attucks High School in 1979.

“I was this close to majoring in public and corporate communications,” she explains. “It was brand new; it was going to be the first year they had that major. And thank God they gave me the advisor who was the journalism dean. He looked at me and said, ‘I’m looking at the stuff that you write. You’re not going into public relations.

You’re going into journalism.’ … I cry when I think about him.”

Despite her long tenure at The H-T, Lane ended up at the Bloomington paper by a

stroke of luck. After graduating from Butler, she planned to “set off into the world, work in a few small newspapers, and then be at the Chicago Tribune within five years.”

But by the September after her graduation, she still hadn’t found work.

She had written just two published stories during an internship at the Noblesville (Indiana) Daily Ledger and her experience was limited. “I was getting turned down by weeklies all over Indiana and across Kentucky,” Lane says.

Then, she landed a job at the Franklin (Indiana) Daily Journal, where she worked for nearly two years until a colleague at The H-T was promoted and invited Lane to apply for his old job.

Lane is also known for writing the newspaper’s weekly “My Favorite Ride” column, which she undertook begrudgingly to quiet her editor. “I thought it would go away. Six months,” she says, laughing. “It’s been 20 years. I’ve written thousands of them, and every one is a joy to write.”

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Alain Barker

IU Music School Career Development Director

Alain Barker. Photo by Martin Boling

by Peter Dorfman The Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University’s world-renowned conservatory, has traditionally prepared students for careers in performing, composing, or teaching music. But in recent years, all of those “legacy tracks” in the music field have evolved dramatically. It’s Alain Barker’s job to help Jacobs students chart entrepreneurial paths through this shifting creative landscape.

“All the major orchestras and cultural institutions in the U.S. have been reinventing themselves in the last 15 years,” says Barker, 61, founding director of the Jacobs School’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development. “We’re trying to instill an

adaptive mindset in musicians entering a creative ecosystem that’s constantly changing.”

The traditional classical music audience is “aging out,” Barker notes. The way audiences consume music is shifting from the concert hall to more diverse venues, as well as streaming and recorded media. Technology is constantly changing, and music is absorbing diverse cultural and ethnic influences.

“Ensembles that are struggling now are those that have not yet figured out how to be responsive to the culture around them,” Barker says.

His role is to keep the Jacobs School ahead of the curve, equipping graduates to be cultural entrepreneurs as well as virtuoso art musicians.

“I arrived here from South Africa with a flute and a backpack in 1986, thinking I would probably be here for two years working on my master’s,” he recalls. “But things happen in Bloomington.”

Barker stayed, working as an assistant instructor in the flute department at Jacobs, and embarked on a doctorate with a concentration in ethnomusicology.

After a year spent in Spain working in an orchestra, Barker came back to Indiana and was principal flute in the Marion Philharmonic for six years. He returned here in 1994 to take on the role of executive director of the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and in 2005 rejoined the Jacobs

School as director of marketing and publicity—skills he acquired running the festival. He spent a decade in that role.

In 2015, Barker became the founding director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development. His new “passion project” is with the Center for Rural Engagement, IU’s organization for outreach to communities in southern Indiana. He’s helped manage 25 arts development programs in four communities so far.

Barker met his wife Liz in Bloomington. They’ve raised two daughters, one an IU musical theater major and the other finishing high school.

“This is an amazing place to live,” he says.

“I’m so grateful to be here.”

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photo by Katie Bottorff Photography

Here’s to resilience!

We at the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts care deeply for our community and we are here for you during these uncertain times.

Visit thefar.org/resilience, to learn more about the steps that we are taking to help you celebrate safely.

events.thefar.org 812.336.0006

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 19

MEMORIALIZE Your Loved One in

Bloom A tribute in Bloom Magazine is a way to forever commemorate your loved one’s legacy.

FEATURES

v A full-page In Memoriam in full color on beautiful, high-quality paper. v Up to four photographs of your loved one and family. v Professionally written and edited text. v A digital file that is yours to keep. v A tribute that is ideal for framing to display or gift. v Two months on local newsstands. v The option to be featured on our website, magbloom.com. v 12 copies of the magazine to send to family and friends.

Bloom Magazine is available at over 200 retail businesses and other outlets in Bloomington, as well as select locations in Brown County, Ellettsville, Spencer, and Martinsville.

Bloom has a readership of approximately 30,000.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PRICING, CONTACT

Cassaundra Huskey 812-323-8959 ext. 2 or cassaundra@magbloom.com.

Brad Kimmel

New Head of WFIU & WTIU A lifelong Midwesterner, Kimmel was born in Michigan, graduated from Murray State University in Kentucky, and has spent the past 35 years in Indiana.

A media entrepreneur as well as an executive, he started his own company, Bradley David Productions, in the mid1990s. “I had the idea of producing a show about cars and pitched it to automotive cable stations.” The show, My Classic Car, was broadcast nationally.

By 2010, he says, “I had another ambition to create a cable television network for people who love to do things in their garage—woodworking, work on boats, motorcycles, cars.” He sold Bradley David to his partner and launched Garage Television in Evansville. “It was for hobbyists, but I couldn’t raise the money

to start a cable network and had to shut it down,” Kimmel explains.

Kimmel may have parted ways with the television show, but his interest in cars has never flagged. “I have a passion for classic cars,” he says, “especially old Mustangs and Thunderbirds.” He doesn’t own one now, but says, “I hope to remedy that situation.”

He and his wife, Mary, are just settling into Bloomington. They have five children, all of whom live in central and southern Indiana, and nine grandchildren. When not at work, Kimmel says, “I like to read a good biography, and my wife and I enjoy cooking.”

For now, there is his new job: “I’m like a kid in a candy store, meeting a lot of people, thinking about what type of media we could put together to build on the success that is already here.”

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Brad Kimmel. Photo by Martin Boling

by Janet Mandelstam Brad Kimmel says he has long been drawn to mission-oriented public media, and “everything lined up” when he was offered the job of executive director at Indiana University Radio and Television Services, which includes WFIU Public Radio and WTIU Public Television.

Kimmel, 59, who began his new job at the end of November, was most recently president and CEO of WNIN public media in Evansville, Indiana. “This is the only job I would have left Evansville for,” he says. “It kept me in southern Indiana where we have family, and it offered a new challenge to come into a situation with the resources of both the station and the university.”

WFIU-FM and WTIU-TV, he says, “offer the chance to produce regional and national programs that draw on the wonderful staff and the talent on campus here.” magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 21

arts/entertainment

Artist Adam Long Painting the Town Longtime Bloomington resident Adam Long, 43, doesn’t have an artist’s background. He studied elementary education and business at Franklin College and has run eBay businesses, but has no formal art training. In fact, he didn’t start painting until three years ago—and that was with his fingers instead of a brush. “I knew that the second I started painting with a brush, I’d never turn back,” he says.

You may have seen some of Long’s 84 murals—the local figures, landmarks, and events at Royal on the Eastside; the rural panorama thanking farmers on the retaining wall behind Culver’s; the Super Mario Brothers scene outside LaserLite; or the Monroe County Fair scene at the fairgrounds

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3

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1. Artist Adam Long and the interactive wings mural behind The Bluebird.

2. Long’s mural at the Monroe County Fairgrounds.

3. Long with the mural he painted inside Southern Stone restaurant.

4. (l-r) Craig Smith, IU head football coach Tom Allen, and Long with his mural of the IU football team taking the field.

5. The mural behind Culver’s.

Courtesy photos

Community Building. Others include stone quarry and waterfall scenes covering the inside walls at Southern Stone, a night scene behind The Bluebird Nightclub, and an interactive pair of wings on the alley wall at The Bluebird, with feathers that are given depth and detail by the names of acts that have performed at the venue.

Long also paints canvases, and a 4-foot-by-8-foot rendering of the Indiana University football team taking the field at Memorial Stadium hangs

5

in Coach Tom Allen’s office. Other works are portraits of lost loved ones, including victims of COVID-19.

Long has also undertaken several philanthropic art projects.

He’s currently partnering with Bloomington’s Children’s Organ Transplant Association to help fund surgeries and transportation to doctors’ appointments. Each kid will receive a painting combining their favorite animal, place, and color; donations will be made through the purchase of prints. Several social media campaigns, including a documentary film, will introduce the kids and the project to potential donors and capture Long painting the canvases on-site at sponsoring businesses.

“I want to show my daughter that you can do what you want and still give back if you work hard,” Long says.

Visit adamonpoint.com.

—Paul Bickley magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 23

New Director of Buskirk-Chumley Arrived Just in Time for Shutdown

by Peter Dorfman In January 2020, when Jonah Crismore was interviewing for the position of executive director of the Buskirk-Chumley Theater (BCT), the dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis were only dimly visible. “There were rumblings that things might get bad, but it wasn’t until February, when I accepted the job, that it became apparent how bad the pandemic would be,” Crismore says.

Undaunted, he brought his wife, Amanda, to Bloomington from Fort Wayne, Indiana. “We really wanted to be here,” he says, “and we knew how supportive the community was toward the theater.

We’d been going to shows at the BCT since the early 2000s. I couldn’t pass up being part of its story.”

Crismore started the position on March 16, three days after Indiana’s pandemic shutdown was enacted. The theater had just canceled an appearance by the rock band Guster. Crismore’s first month consisted of talking through postponements and cancellations with managers and agents and speculating on how long the crisis would last.

“We basically wiped the calendar clean,” Crismore relates.

“Some of our shows have been rescheduled two or three times.”

The BCT did host film screenings—a Hitchcock double feature for Halloween, for example—during the period when

Jonah Crismore. Photo by Martin Boling

it could legally have 100 people in the audience. And there have been virtual concert events to benefit the theater.

Bloomington-based singer Carrie Newcomer performed in July, and the New Albany-based band Houndmouth played in October, both in the empty theater performing for virtual audiences.

“That’s our world for now,” Crismore says. “We won’t have any live events until the latest restrictions are lifted.”

It’s been tough on the event staff, Crismore allows. But virtual events do require camera people. And it’s allowed the BCT to develop a virtual ticketing process that could allow people to attend future soldout events online.

A Fort Wayne native, Crismore, 39, held a series of arts-related positions there, including as executive director of the Cinema Center, a film arts organization comparable to the Indiana University Cinema. Before that, he served as an administrator at the Embassy Theater, a venue for touring theater companies. His wife is a web developer who designed much of the website for Fort Wayne’s public library.

“We’re hikers,” he says. “We take long walks with the dog. That helps us cope until the arts scene comes back to life.”

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24 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

arts/entertainment

Artist Ellen Starr Lyon Looking Inward Ellen Starr Lyon’s portraits are largely of family members depicted smack in the middle of their daily lives. The result is both emotional and intimate.

“I want them to do things they would naturally do,” she says, pointing out paintings of daughter Odessa with earbuds, son Finnian playing on his cell phone, and husband Art lifting a spoonful of food on one of their date nights.

She also paints herself.

“My roles are ever changing, and I use self-portraiture to reflect that,” she says. “During this time of constant change and fear of the unknown, I find myself looking more and more inward to make sense of the world.”

Lyon is a member of PoetsArtists, Hoosier Salon, Indiana Artists, and Juniper Gallery.

Visit ellenstarrlyon.com.

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(below, right) Ellen Starr Lyon. Photo by James Kellar

26 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

Raymond Fleischmann B-town’s New Novelist Fleischmann, 37, earned two B.A.s from IU in 2006—one in English and the other through the Individualized Major Program—followed by an M.F.A. in creative writing from Ohio State University in 2011. He says the book was inspired by his paternal grandparents’ move from Pennsylvania to Tanacross, Alaska, for a teaching job during the Great Depression, and by stories and photos of Alaska. It took him about six years, including rewrites, to complete the novel, working at a pace of “one to two pages at a time,” he says.

Fleischmann has 10 published stories in literary journals including The Iowa Review, The Cimarron Review, and The Pinch. “Short stories are my first fiction love,” says the Virginia native. “There’s a propulsiveness to short stories that you don’t have in novels—certain degrees of urgency. Stories

also lend themselves to experimentation in ways novels don’t.” But Fleischmann says there are major similarities between his stories and his novel: “They’re stories about good people who do bad things for mistaken reasons. Characters are faced with high stakes, and so they act recklessly and rashly at times. They overthink things and are obsessive. They’re dealing with loss and grief that bubbles up years or even decades after the fact.”

The similarities extend to Fleischmann’s second novel, now a year in the making. In it, a woman moves back to the home she grew up in to renovate and sell it. When she was nine, her father was murdered there.

Unwittingly, she meets and befriends the person who killed him.

Visit raymondfleischmann.com.

—Paul Bickley

Raymond Fleischmann. Photo by Jim Krause

Raymond Fleischmann, director of advancement communications at the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences, published his debut novel, How Quickly She Disappears (Berkley Books), in January 2020.

The novel centers on protagonist Elisabeth Pfautz, who, isolated in an Alaskan village in 1941 and far from where she grew up, suffers a failing marriage as she home-schools her gifted daughter. Her twin sister disappeared 20 years earlier, and Elisabeth frequently dreams about her, believing that she’s still alive. A new pilot begins delivering mail to the area and soon murders a man. In jail, he asks to speak with Elisabeth and tells her he knows what happened to her sister but won’t reveal anything further unless she agrees to complete three tasks.

Congratulations

Joseph Manley on obtaining your CFP® designation!

Indianapolis & Bloomington www.hurlowwealth.com 812-333-4726 I Call Today to Schedule an Initial Consultation magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 27

April Strawn Teen Book Illustrator

by Rosie Piga Pizzo Late in the process of publishing The Chill, author Michael Koryta pitched the idea of including pictures in the novel to his editor.

And he knew exactly who he wanted to draw them.

April Strawn, daughter of a friend of Koryta’s, was “blown away” by his proposal.

At the time, she was 16 and a junior at Edgewood High School. “At one point it hit me: ‘Oh, this is really happening,’” she says.

“I didn’t think I’d be illustrating a book this early in my life, and I was so happy to help him out.”

The Chill is a supernatural novel published in February 2020 under the pen name Scott Carson, and the pictures helped capture the point of view of an 8-year-old character. “The biggest challenge was for

(right) Artist April Strawn.

Photo by Martin Boling (this page and opposite page) A sampling of the artist’s work.

Courtesy photos

28 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

food/drink

World Foods Market

New Name, New Owners, New Wines Local grocery store Sahara Mart experienced several changes in 2020— including name and ownership—but new owner Sara Noori says international offerings will remain the focus at the store, now known as World Foods Market.

“We continue to be a nontraditional grocery store with a focus on unique foods from all over the world—including right here—that you’ve either been missing in your life or never knew that you loved,” says Noori, who bought the business with her husband, Mohsen Kiani. “We decided to change to World Foods Market because we wanted a better fitting name as we start this new chapter in business.”

Having managed the store prior to buying it, Noori says she is enhancing the inventory without changing the broad range of specialty foods, wine, and beer offered in the past. “Some things have been changing gradually over this last year,” she explains, noting the addition of locally fresh-baked Persian and Mediterranean flat breads, as well as more specialty Middle Eastern fare, like pantry staples, spices, herbs, and rice.

Noori says that one of the most popular sections at World Foods Market is the wine selection, so she brought in a consultant, Andreas Hauskrecht, to provide insight.

They’ve also added new cooling systems and wine racks to improve the wine storage.

(l-r) New owners Mohsen Kiani and Sara Noori.

Photo by Nicole McPheeters

“Our wine consultant hand-selects the wine, so that means every wine that’s brought in, he tastes and evaluates,” she says, noting that Hauskrecht also prepares taste notes for individual wines, which are then displayed for customers to see, enhancing their shopping experience and educating them on complementary food choices.

“Food and wine go very well together,” Noori says. “People who shop for the foods we carry are also interested in wines, and the combination of the two is a natural part of our business.”

Wines are chosen based on quality and value from small wineries and producers in France, Italy, Spain, and Latin America.

“People are not going to be choosing drinking wines that are very high priced,” she explains.

“You can find very good wines that are affordable, and that’s sort of our focus.”

For information, find World Foods Market on Facebook. —Linda Margison 30 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

AT T E N T I O N : R E S TAU R AT E U R S , CAT E R E R S , B A R I S TA S , A N D C H E FS ADVERTISE IN

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This discounted marketing opportunity showcases your best offerings to tens of thousands of our region’s readers and area visitors. Buy an ad in this section and get TWICE THE SPACE for the price! Pay a little extra and turn that extra space into an advertorial article! This special section will remain live on magbloom.com for an entire year.

81

% of Bloom readers dine out more than 100 times a year.*

73

% of readers have dined at a restaurant as a result of reading about it in Bloom.*

22

% of Bloom readers dine out more than 200 times a year.*

For more information, or to set up a personal meeting to discuss this special marketing opportunity, contact:

CASSAUNDRA HUSKEY, 812-323-8959 EXT. 2 or cassaundra@magbloom.com

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APPED Into Bloomington

by Greg Siering

Brown Ales

Just Right for Winter

Brown ales. Photo by Rodney Margison

Cooler weather always sends me looking for darker, maltier ales, especially when I am searching for a beer that pairs well with chili or a rich stew, and brown ales are a perfect fit. Brown ales are deep, malt-forward beers that are usually lightly hopped and moderate in alcohol content.

English versions can take on bready or even nutty flavors, although chocolate and caramel usually dominate, with low to moderate sweetness. They might have a hint of coffee taste from roasted malts, but deep roast bitterness is found more in porters, which sit nearby on the style spectrum. Aside from some aggressive American craft variations, brown ales are lightly hopped, usually with English hops that contribute subtle floral or earthy characteristics. Overall, brown ales are smooth, easy-to-drink beers that rely on subtle, well-blended flavors.

The beer that got me back on a brown ale kick is Cigar City Brewing’s Maduro Brown Ale, which borrows its name from the cigar style that exhibits deep, earthy flavors.

This northern English-style ale pours a dark brown, slightly cloudy, with a full tan 32 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

head that conveys aromas of roasted cocoa and espresso, with traces of caramel and cherries. The malty flavor is led by a dark chocolate taste, but without any notable bitterness from either the roasted malt or hops. The flavor has a slight sweetness, with a hint of cherry, but it finishes drier than it starts. Flaked oats in the recipe lead to a very smooth body, a perfect match for the ale’s rich, deep flavors.

Another tasty American version of this classic ale is Ellie’s Brown Ale from Avery Brewing. This one pours a mahogany brown, with a hint of translucent red around the edges of the glass. Its small tan head dissipates quickly but passes along a gentle roasted cocoa aroma with a little caramel, but without Maduro’s hint of espresso. The flavor follows the aroma’s profile, although as the beer warms in your glass, a bit more caramel flavor emerges to complement the dark chocolate roast.

This beer is more carbonated and slightly brighter in taste, body, and finish than the Maduro, which seems a bit mellower to me.

My third pick is a very traditional English beer—Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale. It pours a deep copper color, with a thick head that sticks around and laces the sides of the glass. While the other ales exhibit roasted cocoa aromas and flavors, this one is all about caramel and toasted grain, with hints of pecan and floral hops.

While the caramel taste brings some sweetness up front, the flavor dries out at the end, leaving a lingering taste of caramel malt and gentle fruitiness from an English ale strain used by Samuel Smith’s brewers for over a century.

You can try all three of these delicious, complex beers from Big Red Liquors, which offers curbside pickup. And keep an eye on our local brewers, especially Switchyard Brewing and Function Brewing, which both rotate through some tasty brown ales throughout the year.

Cheers!

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magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 33

Soups to Keep You Cozy During the chilly and often gloomy months of winter, making homemade soup can be a great way to keep cozy. Including seasonal ingredients and spices that warm the belly can help make soup a celebration of the season.

Pumpkin and Butternut Squash Soup

BY CHEF DAVID DAVENPORT INGREDIENTS: • 1 15-ounce can pumpkin • 2 butternut squashes • 2 sticks salted butter • 3 gala apples, peeled and diced • 1 medium onion, diced • 3 large carrots, peeled and grated • 3 ribs celery, diced • 2 garlic bulbs • 2 32-fluid-ounce boxes of chicken stock • 1 cup Greek Gods plain yogurt, or to taste • 2 teaspoons curry powder (Penzeys Maharajah recommended), or to taste • Olive oil

To encourage you on your soup-making journey, Bloom gathered three recipes. Two came from Chef David Davenport at the Bloomington Cooking School. These recipes originally appeared on Bloom’s website, magbloom.com, in years past as part of the Recipe of the Week series. The third recipe is from Chef Daniel Orr of FARMbloomington.

Enjoy!

Parsnip Soup with Sweet Potato Leaves

BY CHEF DANIEL ORR

INGREDIENTS: • 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped • 1/4 cup olive oil • 2 white onions, diced into 1/4-inch bites • 2 shallots, diced • 6 parsnips, peeled and diced • 3 cups water or stock • Salt and pepper, to taste • 2 cups heavy cream • Large bunch sweet potato (or spinach) leaves, torn into pieces • Lemon juice INSTRUCTIONS: 1 Brown the garlic in a pan with the olive oil.

Pumpkin and butternut squash soup.

Photo by Lynae Sowinski

INSTRUCTIONS: 1 Cut the squash longways and remove the seeds and strings.

2 Cut off the tops of the garlic bulbs. Pour a small amount of olive oil into each bulb and tightly wrap the bulbs in foil.

3 Place squash (cut side down) and garlic on a pan lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350ºF until a fork easily penetrates the thick end of the squash.

4 Melt butter in a soup pan. Then cook apples, onion, carrots, and celery until soft. Remove from heat.

5 Squeeze meat from the roasted garlic bulbs into the mixture. Add 1 box of chicken stock and purée with an immersion blender until smooth.

6 Blend pumpkin, squash (scraped out of the shells), and yogurt into the mixture.

7 Whisk curry powder into a bit of the stock and stir into mixture.

Add more stock until desired thickness is achieved.

34 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

2 Add onions and shallots to the pan and increase the heat. Cook the onions and shallots until they are translucent. Add parsnips and cook.

3 Add water or stock and pinches of salt and pepper.

Cover and bring the soup to a boil, then let it simmer for 15-20 minutes.

4 Add heavy cream and sweet potato leaves. Cook until the leaves wilt.

Parsnip soup with sweet potato leaves. Photo courtesy of Daniel Orr

Moroccan beef stew.

Photo by Lynae Sowinski

Moroccan Beef Stew

BY CHEF DAVID DAVENPORT

INGREDIENTS: • 3 ounces currants • 3 pounds beef chuck steak, cut into 1/2-inch cubes • Beef stock • Olive oil • 1 teaspoon cumin • 1 large onion, chopped • 1 1/2-inch ginger root, grated • 1 teaspoon ground ginger • 1 teaspoon garlic powder • Small package frozen peas • 14.5-ounce can chopped tomato • Zest of one lemon • 1/2 pint dark olives • Tagine or heavy oven-proof pot with a tight-fitting lid INSTRUCTIONS: The day before serving: 1 Combine oil, onion, cumin, ginger, ginger powder, and garlic powder in the pot. Then cover with the beef.

2 In a separate pan, heat beef stock

until boiling, then pour enough stock into the mixture to submerge the beef.

3 Cover with a lid and cook in a 250ºF

oven until beef is tender (about 2 hours), stir the mixture periodically.

Store in refrigerator overnight.

The following day:

1 Stir currants, lemon zest, frozen

peas, tomato, and olives into the mixture.

2 Simmer on the stove until the stew

has thickened.

3 Serve over rice or whipped potatoes.

—Edited by Sophie Bird magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 35

April to tone down her work and make it look like an 8-year-old did it,” Koryta says.

“She was taking feedback and meeting deadlines, took it like a total pro.”

When Strawn first saw the book, she admits she got emotional. “I saw his name, I saw my name, and showed all my friends—‘Look what I did,’” she says.

Koryta has known Strawn most of her life and always recalls her with her sketch book. “I’ve always been interested in art and take advantage of any class in art,” Strawn says. She enjoys drawing character designs of creatures and monsters. “I would love to do a graphic novel one day.”

The end of last year saw Strawn working on applications for the Art Institute of Chicago, Bowdoin College, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Koryta describes her as very empathetic, adding, “That helps her art. She’s a visual storyteller. She can do anything she chooses to, and I’m excited to see what that will be.”

For more images of Strawn’s work, check out instagram.com/tia_drawgon.

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magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 29

fashion/shopping

Silk + Steel

Sustainable Fashions Handmade Locally 2

3

1 Photography by Rodney Margison With no experience in the fashion design industry, Pamela Walters and longtime friend Jean Robinson retired from Indiana University in 2018 and 2017, respectively, and decided to delve into their own clothing line, Silk + Steel. “We had a shared interest and passion for a certain kind of fashion,” Walters says, describing their proclivity for simple, high-quality sustainable fabrics with natural fibers. “We hit on a couple of styles that work really well across different body types.”

1. (left) Silk + Steel owner Pam Walter models a black silk three-quarter sleeve tunic alongside Mary Clare Bauman (center) in a pink dupioni silk cap sleeve dress and Sylvia Martinez (right) in a blue dupioni silk cowl-neck dress with cut-in shoulders. 2. Sylvia shows off a roundedneck, three-quarter sleeve, above-the-knee dress in heavy purple silk. 3. Mary Clare wears a rounded-neck, three-quarter length sleeve, above-the-knee dress in red and black herringbone cotton flannel. 4. Pam models a brown cotton seersucker cowl-neck dress with cut-in sleeves. 5. & 6. This topper, modeled by Mary Clare, is made of Japanese linen with a one-ofa-kind, limited-edition print designed by a Japanese textile artist.

36 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

4

home/family

A Fascination with Model Trains Is Alive and Well in Bloomington

by Craig Coley Winding through Trevor Jones’ basement is a train model of Gloucestershire, England, circa 1960, that includes coal mines, cow pastures, castle ruins, and a hillside fox hunt.

In his basement, Keith Clark—originally from Battle Creek, Michigan— is recreating the Grand Trunk Western Railroad from Chicago to Port Huron, Michigan, circa 1979.

Bloomington has a lively model railroading community. Clark, 67, publishes The Rusty Spike, the newsletter for the Central Indiana Division of the National Model Railroad Association.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, as many as 15

1

2 people would meet in a member’s basement twice a week to run trains or work on a “layout,” as the model set-ups are known. Jones says he can easily count more than two dozen layouts in the Bloomington area, and suspects there are many more out there.

The hobby lends itself to solitary work, but many modelers appreciate the fellowship. For one thing, properly running a large layout requires several pairs of hands operating switches according to timetables. For another, each modeler has an affinity for a different dimension of the work, whether electronics, 40 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

3 1. A passenger train passes through a small town in Trevor Jones’ model layout of Gloucestershire, England.

2. Jones’ basement train layout.

3. Keith Clark.

4. Trevor Jones.

5. A scene in Clark’s Grand Trunk Western Railroad model train layout. Photos by Martin Boling

metalwork, woodwork, historical research, or scenery building. Although a lot of materials can be purchased for the layout, even those are generally customized.

Modelers call this “kitbashing.”

Many have been modeling since childhood. Others, like Jones, took up the hobby as an adult. The most common

4

5 denominator is a childhood fascination with trains.

Since railroads have a smaller place in the American landscape today, it isn’t surprising that the Bloomington group comprises older modelers, but some young people still get into the hobby.

At age 5, Clark received a Lionel train set for Christmas. “I’ve had so many layouts since then I can’t count them all,” he says.

“They never get done before I get off track— ha, ha—and go in another direction.” He says the Grand Trunk, the most ambitious layout he has undertaken, will be his last. “I’ll never see the end of this one.”

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Spices • Coffee & Tea • Baklava Chocolate • Wine & Beer International Foods • And More 106 E. 2nd St. / Bloomington, IN 47401 812-333-0502 / worldfoods-market.com

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 41

Silver Linings Rescue Old Dogs for Older Folks

(l-r) Martha Stanczyk and Rachel DiGregorio with Suki. Courtesy photo

When Suki’s owner was suddenly moved to a nursing home for rehab, the small West Highland White terrier was left alone in a house with only occasional visits from a friend. There, he developed inflamed skin and hair loss from serious allergies that needed treatment.

The dog’s temporary caretaker reached out to Silver Linings Rescue, a local organization that helps senior dogs and cats find new homes—preferably with senior humans.

In addition to rescue services, Silver Linings offers support and educational services for seniors who own dogs, including dog-walking services for homebound owners and other forms of in-house pet assistance.

Board Chair Rachel DiGregorio says the organization, which was founded in 2018, frequently hears about stranded or unhealthy dogs from home health workers, as they are among the people who regularly visit an elderly person’s home.

Once Silver Linings is contacted, the dogs are often placed with a foster family while the organization looks for a more permanent home. When DiGregorio received a text about Suki, she took him in herself.

DiGregorio has fostered several dogs through Silver Linings.

One of them, Aja, a 9-year-old Maltese-poodle mix, now permanently lives with DiGregorio along with Greta, a Boston terrier, and the newest foster, terrier mix Rex. Suki, however, found his permanent home in Kokomo, Indiana, with Martha Stanczyk, whose own West Highland White terrier had recently died. “It’s like it was meant to be,” Stanczyk says.

Silver Linings, which doesn’t currently have a physical location, is operated by five board members who facilitate rescues, arrange foster homes, and make adoption matches.

“We’re a group of five people who just want to save dogs,” DiGregorio says.

Silver Linings Rescue is in search of additional foster homes.

For more information or to donate visit silverliningsrescue.org.

—Jana Wilson 42 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

Work-From-Home Tips From Work-From-Home Veterans

Michael Korus’ well-organized home office. Courtesy photos

by Paul Bickley The pandemic has ushered the home office to the forefront of work life. Gallup, Inc., indicated last October that 33% of the U.S. workforce worked from home full time and another 25% did so some of the time. Three veteran Bloomington work-from-homers offer their tips for novices to the practice.

All three have had children at home while working, and they’ve all devoted a room to workspace, making consistent use of the door. “I know that I am in there to work,” says Wes Lasher, owner of The Production House. “That helps me focus.”

They’ve also followed routines for beginning and ending the workday. Lasher, 50, who has worked full time from home for five years, begins his day by dressing for work and talking with his daughter before entering his workspace. “The routine helps reset your mind,” he says.

Michael Korus, 45, owner of MAXIM Real Estate, INC., and the events venue Sycamore Farm has worked from home since 2006 and relies on schedules to organize his workload. “I’m trying to streamline, trying to finish projects before starting new ones. Using calendars helps.”

Lasher, however, adheres to a daily structure: emailing early and editing video and writing later.

While Lasher begins and ends each day at the same time, Jean Dayton, former owner of Dayton Bookings: Literary Tours and Promotions, took a different approach during her 20 years working from home.

“My day started when I got my first phone call,” says Dayton, 65. “It takes more discipline to stop. When I did stop, I closed the door from the other side.”

Work-life balance has challenged all three work-from-homers. “It’s easy to let work slip into all aspects of your life,”

Dayton says. “I decided to have only a desktop computer. I couldn’t carry it around.” Korus suggests scheduling family time and after-work social Zoom meetings.

Lasher’s work computer automatically shuts down at 6 p.m.

Sometimes, special, inspiring objects in home offices can help workers get through the day. Lasher prefers tchotchkes: a frog figurine with a yen in its mouth and Funko Pop! bobbleheads. “The frog is blessing the income where I do my bookkeeping, and the bobbleheads are fun to look at,” he says. “We work so we can have some fun.”

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Wes Lasher’s workspace includes several whimsical elements.

Celebrating 50 Years!

Tuesdays at 8pm wfiu.org/ethergame Jean Dayton’s desk provides a scenic view.

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 43

Walters says she has been sewing for many years, getting her start with her grandmother and mother, but she’s mostly a self-taught artisan. “The skill that I have in sewing is a tribute to my mother—it’s a way to honor her,” she explains. “Sewing has always been a therapeutic activity. I love the feel of good fabric going through my fingers.”

With about 40 pieces in stock—all handmade and ranging in price from $130 to $270—most of Walters’ designs are based on the same shape and silhouette with different finishing touches or fabrics, she says. For instance, a cap sleeve top

5

6 with a rounded neck and full A-line shape can be lengthened for a dress; sleeves may be absent, three-quarter, or another flattering length; and collars may be funnel or cowl neck.

Before the pandemic, Walters sold tops, dresses, and jackets through trunk shows and pop-up stores, but now sales are mainly through the Silk + Steel website at silkplussteel.net. —Linda Margison

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 37

Nashville Spice Company Flavors from Around the World

Nashville Spice Company. Photo by James Kellar

While you may not currently be able to travel to farflung exotic places, the Nashville Spice Company in neighboring Brown County, Indiana, can at least bring flavors from around the globe to you.

“Spices are grown in all parts of the world,” says coowner Greg Fox. “We’ve had international students from Indiana University tell us that certain spices we carry are just like the ones they get at home.”

It might be the Syrian-based Za’atar made with sesame seeds, sumac, coriander, cumin, lemon zest, coarse sea salt, and anise seed that a student found so comforting.

Or it could be the pork rub with demerara sugar, ginger, coriander, clove, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, sesame, black pepper, and lemongrass that made a Vietnamese student feel at home.

These unique tastes that identify a country’s cuisine are what first sparked a passion for spices for Fox and co-owner Mark Schmidt. The pair has traveled extensively and found themselves drawn to local spice shops.

Fox and Schmidt opened the Nashville Spice Company in 2017. Today the shop, located at 227 S. Van Buren St., offers an array of original spice blends, carefully curated kitchen items, and other types of homeware.

Recently, the partners acquired a building just outside of Nashville that serves as their test kitchen and production facility. Here, with the help of resident chef Carrie Douglas, they hand blend and bottle spices themselves, rather than through an outside company.

Also, in their test kitchen, Fox and Schmidt plan to offer cooking classes designed around the use of spices from different cuisines.

For curbside pickup or to have spices shipped to your home, visit nashvillespicecompany.com. —Jana Wilson 38 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

New Morgenstern Bookstore To Open in Spring

by Linda Margison Rick Morgenstern says he closed his independent bookstore, Morgenstern Booksellers, in 1996 after national chains Barnes & Noble and Borders squeezed him out. But he never gave up on his dream of reopening, which he plans to do in May. “I’ve kept my eye open for the right opportunity,” he says, adding that he saw his opening when both franchised bookstores closed their doors in recent years.

In 2018, he submitted a letter to the editor of The Herald-Times asking the community if they’d be interested in a new independent bookstore. “The response was overwhelmingly positive—hundreds of emails and phone calls, people stopping me in the street to share their memories of the first store, and their excitement about the possibility of its return. So, I knew I was onto something,” he explains. In all, he received more than 350 responses.

That was the encouragement Morgenstern needed to seek out and secure investors, including neurosurgeon Todd Eads, entrepreneur Jon Levitt, Indiana University psychology professor Jack Bates, and Lindsay Nettle, who was a Barnes & Noble employee for 20 years.

Morgenstern says he originally expected to open the bookstore in 2020, but the pandemic changed his plans.

Instead, he opened a pop-up bookstore inside BloomingTea and launched an online bookstore, Morgenstern Books, which will carry over to the brickand-mortar store in the former Pier 1 storefront at 849 S. Auto Mall Road.

Morgenstern says the full-service bookstore will have a café and event space, while offering a strong children’s department, handmade artisan wares, and an extensive section for calendars and paper goods in 9,000 square feet of space. It will also have a comprehensive magazine section, which has been lacking in Bloomington since Barnes & Noble left town.

“We want to grow into a large, multifaceted community center or center for community life, and we will take that wherever it leads,” he says, understanding that his store will also have to compete against online sellers like Amazon.

“What Morgenstern’s will offer that Amazon can’t is a local gathering community space in four walls, where you can bring your family or meet up with your friends and have coffee and hold books in your hands, and it’s just the whole kind of art-scene experience.

Amazon just can’t do that.”

For information and up-to-date news on the store’s opening, find Morganstern Books on Facebook or visit morgensternbooks.com.

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Rick Morgenstern. Photo by Nicole McPheeters

BLOOMINGFOODS CO-OP MARKET Bloomington's only locally-owned grocery store since 1976 magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 39

science/education

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Are Popping Up in Bloomington

by Craig Coley Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have begun to appear in parking lots around Bloomington, including four at Switchyard Park. While their availability outstrips demand at this point, planners want to create a climate that allows for EV use to grow.

“We don’t want to suppress demand and usage of electric vehicles by lacking the infrastructure,” says Alex Crowley, Bloomington’s director of economic and sustainable development. “But we also don’t want to be irresponsible with the investments and get too far ahead of the market.”

EV owners usually charge their cars at home. Travelers require other options, however, and publicly accessible units put Bloomington on the map when people plan trips. The Grant Street Inn installed a unit that charges Tesla cars in 2012. “Prior to

COVID, it did draw some business for us,” says innkeeper Paul Wagoner. “Guests would book here specifically because we had the Tesla charger and they were coming through southern Indiana.”

The City has two charging stations in the Walnut Street parking garage and another two in the Morton Street garage. An $18,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is helping the City install 10 stations in the 4th Street and Trades District parking garages, which are currently under construction. Indiana University has 12 stations in campus parking lots. Travis Leake, facilities coordinator for traffic operations at IU, says these are primarily for faculty and staff who commute, but visitors use them as well.

EVs can be charged through a standard outlet, but slowly. Most public charging

Shop Local Invest in your community by shopping local—you’ll find distinctive gifts and strengthen our economy.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MERCHANTS. 44 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

An electric vehicle station at Switchyard Park.

Photo by Rodney Margison

stations are Level Two chargers, providing about twice the electricity of a standard outlet. Level Two chargers can be installed at home, as well, and Hoosier Energy is promoting EV use by offering free Level Two chargers to customers who buy electric vehicles. Hoosier Energy is a Bloomington-based, nonprofit generation and transmission electric cooperative.

“We believe strongly in the EVs, not only because of their positive environmental impact, but the cost of ownership is about 50% less than an internal-combustion vehicle,” says Ryan Henderson, interim senior manager of emerging energy resources at Hoosier Energy.

Crowley says local demand for EVs is restrained because most of Indiana’s electricity comes from burning coal.

Through solar panels on parking garage roofs, Crowley says, “we’re trying to source as much as we can from renewable energy.”

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Celebrating LIFE’S

special occasions.

For more information and rates contact Cassaundra Huskey, 812-323-8959 ext. 2 or cassaundra@magbloom.com

CONGRATULATIONS

CONGRATULATIONS

Ella Hurlow

Rowan Blake Schilling

CLASS OF 2021

CLASS OF 2021

Proud of you, Love Dad & Nina

Celebrating this 2021 Bloomington High School South graduate.

Best wishes for your bright future.

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 45

Citizen Scientist

by Susan M. Brackney

The Great Sunflower Project From the burrowing mayfly to the rusty patched bumble bee, we’re losing a head-spinning number of invertebrates.

Thanks to shrinking natural habitats and our dependence on agricultural chemicals—particularly neonicotinoid pesticides— we’re living through what some have dubbed an “insect apocalypse.”

And, while they might not be as charismatic—or as visible—as their vertebrate counterparts, they’re every bit as important. Even more troubling? If we don’t act swiftly, we may lose some species before we’ve even had the chance to identify them and fully appreciate their ecological contributions.

As one of the oldest and largest citizen science initiatives around, the Great Sunflower Project is potentially well positioned to help us get a handle on at least some of these losses. It’s also one of the easiest projects to join.

How It Works Although you don’t need a huge garden or an especially green thumb to participate, you will need a few Lemon Queen Sunflower seeds. This pollen-rich variety is simple to start and can grow in a five-gallon bucket if need be. (However, whether you start your plants early indoors or direct sow them outside, you may want to protect them with deer netting, so that you—and visiting pollinators—will actually have some sunflowers to enjoy.)

You’ll also need to register with the Great Sunflower Project online, so that you can 46 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

report your data over the coming months.

Just what information will you submit?

You’ll start with the date, time of day, and your location. Then, for at least five minutes, you’ll watch a specific set of flowers on your Lemon Queen plant to monitor the number of pollinator visits these flowers receive. (Don’t see any visitors? This, too, is extremely important data that you’ll report online.)

Project leaders would like you to enter observations at least a few times in all—but the more often you can report in, the better.

Ideally, you also should identify the types of pollinators you’ve seen, if you’re able to do so with confidence. To help you learn who’s who, the Great Sunflower Project website offers participants free, downloadable bee genera identification cards and a bee observer booklet, among other resources.

Extra Ways to Help Even if you don’t grow Lemon Queens, there are several new ways to provide data to the Great Sunflower Project. For instance, they’ve added the ability to include other plant types on observation reports. Besides traditional stationary observations, you can also submit many new types of pollinator visit counts.

Some of these include “incidental sightings”—casual observations occurring during your day-to-day activities—and “traveling counts.” These are observations you might make during a walk along the B-Line Trail or through your favorite park.

For details, visit greatsunflower.org.

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How Hip Are You To Youth Speak?

Take This Gen Z Quiz Spend enough time around someone and you’re likely to pick up on their vernacular.

But sometimes, even exposure to a person’s lingo doesn’t help you better understand them. That may be especially true when you’re spending time with people born between 1997 and 2012, a generation known as Gen Z. The Gen Z Dictionary can help. Written

by Kelly King, founder and president of the 80/20 Agency, with help from the Gen Z-ers in her office, the book is a guide for people of older generations to better understand today’s youth. “There are new words and expressions continuously coming out of their mouths,” King explains in the book’s introduction, “and it’s impossible to keep up with the lingo. … Then it dawned on me. I needed a Gen Z dictionary.”

Buy the book ($5.99) at thegenzdictionary. com, on Amazon, or at Lola and Company on the downtown Square. —Rodney Margison

Take our Gen Z Dictionary quiz and find out.

(Answers below.)

1. clutch a. A person who always has their cell phone in hand. b. A winner. c. Exactly what is needed; perfect.

2. dime a. A phone call. b. A paycheck. c. A very attractive person.

3. FOMO a. Acronym for “fear of missing out”; used to describe the feeling of envy when seeing the activities of others on social media. b. Acronym for “first of the month obstacle”; used to describe rent and other bills. c. Acronym for “for one of my originals”; a way to denote someone as a close friend or old friend.

4. pwn a. Weak, as in “a pawn.” b. To outdo or beat someone; used by people playing video games. c. Honest.

5. a.

b.

c.

VSCO girl Acronym for “very sweet and considerate offspring”; used ironically when referring to interaction with parents or guardians.

Someone who takes a lot of photos using their cell phone.

A stereotype term for teen girls who carefully follow current aesthetic and style trends.

6. sksksk a. Used to describe a person as sly and underhanded; snakelike. b. Laugh of a VSCO girl when they find something amusing; used ironically. c. What a shame.

7. stan a. Dressed colorfully; reference to comic book creator Stan Lee. b. Die-hard fan; reference to Eminem’s song Stan. c. A person who drives cautiously; not darty.

8. darty a. Day party. b. To weave in and out of traffic while driving. c. On target; like a dart.

9. G a. When the choice isn’t obvious; not A, B, C, or D. b. Those in the middle circle of friends; not best friends, not enemies. c. Term of endearment between male friends.

10. get crunk a. Party hard. b. Watch football on television. c. A game popular in junior and senior high schools.

Answers: 1) c, 2) c, 3) a, 4) b, 5) c, 6) b, 7) b, 8) a, 9) c, 10) a.

How well do you speak Gen Z?

(right) Kelly King.

Photo by Rodney Margison

*

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 47

health/fitness

Life at Bell Trace in the Pandemic

Bell Trace. Photos by Rodney Margison

by Janet Mandelstam The sweet potato casserole, a traditional part of a holiday meal at Bell Trace, took a new path from the kitchen in the year of COVID-19. Instead of residents and their visiting family members being served in the dining room, individual casseroles were prepared for pickup by families along with a photo of the resident, who remained at Bell Trace.

It’s just one small example of the many ways that the Bloomington senior living community has had to navigate the medical and social challenges that come with managing the coronavirus and keeping residents safe. “We’ve had to be creative in how we take care of people,” says Andrew Keen, co-executive director.

Bell Trace is actually two separate entities: independent and assisted living, where residents live in their own apartments or cottages, and the Health & Living Center, a skilled nursing facility. When the new coronavirus emerged early last year, Bell Trace, like other senior living facilities, created COVID-19 preparedness and response plans with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Indiana Department of Health.

For the 176 residents in independent and assisted living, life is “back to almost normal,” says co-Executive Director Jennifer Devitt.

“The dining room is open at 50% capacity, and all regular activities are ongoing.

Residents can come and go. They wear masks everywhere except in their apartments, and they keep a 14-symptom diary and monitor for any signs of COVID.” To keep the facility as virus-free as possible, Devitt says, “We screen every employee as they enter. And an outside company comes in to sanitize on a weekly basis in addition to our regular daily cleaning.” Should any residents test positive, they would be quarantined in their apartment unless they required skilled nursing services.

Life in the Health & Living Center has been more restricted. The center is licensed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid to care for up to 80 residents.

“Everyone is screened at the front door,” Keen says, and that includes temperature checks, hand sanitizing, and issuing of masks and face shields. When the center observes two weeks without a COVID-19 case, he says, “We allow indoor visiting and communal dining, and the beauty and barber shops are open for residents.” The visits occur only in common areas, not in the residents’ rooms.

“And any personal items brought for residents are held in quarantine for 24 hours before given to the resident,” Keen says.

Should a new infection arise, communal dining is discontinued and meals are

48 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

delivered to the residents in their rooms.

Visits are then limited to outdoor settings and must be scheduled in advance.

The Health & Living Center is divided into three zones—red, yellow, and green.

“All patients receive a COVID test prior to admission so we know where they fit in,” Keen says. The red zone houses individuals who have the virus, including some who come to Bell Trace directly from a hospital. “The zone is physically separated with a dedicated staff to minimize the chance of spreading the virus,” he says. All new admissions without COVID-19 are quarantined in the yellow zone for 14 days and then, if still virus-free, they move to the green zone, where residents have tested negative for more than 14 days.

In skilled nursing, medical appointments are often a hybrid of virtual and in-person care. Keen says staff wear N95 masks and clear face shields, part of the personal protective equipment that CarDon, the parent company of Bell Trace, acquired early in the pandemic. For medical care in independent living, “we’re seeing increasing use of telemedicine by residents,” Devitt says. Many have their own computers, and others use iPads provided by CarDon. Both facilities maintain transportation for essential medical appointments.

With vaccines becoming available, nearly all of the residents in both skilled nursing and independent living have agreed to be vaccinated, although Bell Trace is not mandating vaccination. Staff began receiving the vaccine in December and residents in early January. “We are strong advocates of vaccination,” says Keen.

While keeping residents safe and meeting medical requirements is paramount during the pandemic, tending to the social and emotional needs of the residents gets nearly equal billing, especially around holidays.

“Many of our residents are 90-plus,” says Keen. “We realize how important it is to keep them in touch with their families.” Virtual visits are common now. “We’re seeing a lot of Zoom calls or FaceTime,” says Devitt.

Where possible, Bell Trace is keeping up holiday traditions. The Christmas dinner in independent living is “typically a huge event,”

says Devitt. “We had Christmas dinner, but this year it was individual snacks instead of a big buffet. And there was caroling with masks.” In skilled nursing, Keen says, “The sweet potato casseroles were symbolic of the tradition of a meal that meant a lot to residents, families, and staff.”

Not every resident at Bell Trace has family outside the facility. Keen and Devitt say they have witnessed increased generosity toward this cohort from both staff and other residents. In independent living, “Residents bought Christmas presents for others who didn’t have family,” says Devitt. In the Health & Living Center, Keen says, staff threw in their own money for the same purpose.

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(l-r) Jennifer Devitt and Andrew Keen.

That’s not the only way Keen says he is seeing a growing bond between staff and residents. “There’s a lot more oneon-one activity—reading stories, doing crafts,” he says.

Staff will stop by residents’ rooms with a cart of snacks; the recreational therapist plays a trivia game, calling out questions down the hallway while residents answer from their rooms.

Other relationships have strengthened during the pandemic as well. “One of the positive things to come out of this is the heightened relationship between residents’ families and the facilities,” says Keen.

“Families are understanding and gracious, even when I’m calling them with bad news.

We’ve even hired a few family members.

And our relationship with state government is more collaborative than in the past. It’s eye-opening, the support we have had to keep our residents safe.”

*

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Chiropractor Dr. Karin Drummond 10,000 Patients and Counting

Dr. Karin Drummond. Photo by Martin Boling

Dr. Karin Drummond knew she wanted to be a chiropractor from the time she was a little girl. “I wasn’t interested in pills, I was interested in how to get well without pills,” she says. Now, after 20 years as a chiropractic doctor in Bloomington, her passion for treating people hasn’t diminished, and that’s after having treated more than 10,000 patients.

Drummond, 46, says her success comes from what she calls the Drummond Difference: “We cater to the treatment of the specific needs of the patient—we don’t have ‘cookie cutter’ treatments.”

This means that Drummond and her partners, Drs. Scott and Mandi McCoy, prioritize listening to their patients and explaining treatments in a way that resonates with the individual, without using medical jargon that makes understanding treatment plans and diagnoses more difficult.

A big part of what they do is educate patients about what a chiropractor actually does. “The biggest misconception is that a lot of people don’t understand we are primary care physicians,” Drummond explains. “We look at the whole body.”

In addition to neck, back, knee, and foot pain, Drummond also treats asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, jaw pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and many other ailments.

The Victoria, British Columbia, native earned her four-year Doctor of Chiropractic degree at the University of Western States in Portland, Oregon. There, she met her husband, Dallas, also a chiropractic doctor.

In 2000, the couple moved to Bloomington, Dallas’s hometown, and opened their practice on the east side.

Last year, they purchased the building at 565 N. Walnut and renovated it to accommodate their expanding business. Drummond continues to see patients, while Dallas handles the business side of the practice.

With their goal of educating current and prospective patients about chiropractic care, Drummond Chiropractic has made use of social media through weekly Facebook Live sessions, books, and educational videos on YouTube.

For more information, visit drummondchiropractic.com.

—Jana Wilson 50 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

What Our Advertisers Have to Say

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Bloom is a beautiful magazine with interesting local articles. We are lucky to have a publication of this quality in Bloomington. Our Bloom ad is effective, too. Here at Greene & Schultz, we frequently hear that potential clients have seen our advertisements in Bloom. We are proud supporters of Bloom Magazine!

Betsy Greene / Partner, Greene & Schultz

“

As part of opening a new restaurant, my advertising is paramount. I have tried radio, television, and, of course, social media, but I have seen the best response with Bloom Magazine. It’s been a great pleasure to hear that people have seen our ad or read our article about 21 North.

I look forward to working with Bloom as my business grows.

Matt Harakal / Owner, 21 North Eatery & Cellar

“

Bloom is a first-class publication that captures the essence and special character of Bloomington. Andrew Davis does its best to maintain the same level of excellence in product and customer service.

I look forward to every issue and the level of my appreciation for the standards that Malcolm and his team maintain increases with each issue. Bloom reaches our target audience in its content, sophistication, and integrity of journalism.

Andy Mallor / Owner, Andrew Davis Clothiers

“

Our business IS Bloomington. We build, renovate, and restore homes, but a priority for us is sustaining the character of our community through our construction.

Bloom Magazine is a natural fit for us.

Bloom highlights the spaces, features, and people that make our town unique, and it reaches directly to our target audience.

Bloom is the ONLY advertising we do. It’s that effective.

Loren Wood / Owner, Loren Wood Builders

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Bloom is a part of our community.

When I sat down with Malcolm and his team, the passion and love for the city and the magazine overfilled the room. At that point, I knew I wanted to be involved with the magazine. Our customers love sitting in the service waiting area reading the magazine. I know my sales people love walking up to someone reading the magazine, as they instantly have something to talk about!

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Bloom Magazine and Malcolm Abrams have been a gift to our community!

Bloom is a great vehicle to promote my business. I am very proud of my association with such a community-focused and beautiful publication.

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Bloomington Massage & Bodyworks Now Offering Movement Classes

Carmela Senior-Euhl. Photo by Rodney Margison

by Rosie Piga Pizzo With the recent acquisition of a third suite in Fountain Square Mall, Bloomington Massage & Bodyworks is now providing a movement and art space to complement the therapeutic work that’s been offered since 1997.

The additional space provides opportunities for movement classes, workshops, and rehearsal space for dance groups. “When we educate our clients, we recommend stretching and yoga, and this is a good next step for us to actually be able to bring it in,” says owner Carmela Senior-Euhl.

Along with yoga, ELDOA classes are also an option. ELDOA is a system of movements developed by French osteopath Guy Voyer.

“It’s more of an exercise to create space between the vertebrae and the spine and to strengthen that space,” Senior-Euhl says. “I’m really excited to bring it to Bloomington and help people open up the body’s systems and help people get out of chronic pain.”

Relieving pain may be one reason clients seek services at Bloomington Massage & Bodyworks, and with CBD massage offered since 2019, clients have an extra option for pain relief. The lotion used during a CBD massage is infused with CBD oil.

“It has a calming, anti-anxiety effect,” Senior-Euhl says. “Massage itself is calming, but this amplifies the effects.” She says CBD massage helps with arthritis and decreases inflammation, and the effects last a few days longer. “It’s a mild substance but powerful,” she adds.

Like many businesses, Bloomington Massage & Bodyworks closed last March due to the pandemic. Before reopening in May, Senior-Euhl says they looked into what measures could be put into place to keep everyone safe. One addition was installing air purifiers with HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters and an internal Ultraviolet C light. “It recirculates all the air about four times an hour,” she says.

Clients and employees are also screened and wear masks. “We’ve decreased capacity to allow for extra cleaning and to monitor how many people cross paths,” Senior-Euhl says. “We have not encountered any need to close again since opening back up.”

For more information visit bloomingtonbodyworks.com.

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magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 53

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

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54 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

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Flooring Inspiration Find flooring inspiration designed with you in mind.

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Subscribe to Bloom Magazine Discover what makes Bloomington unique— the people, arts, culture, entertainment, homes, gardens, food, wine, health, fitness, science, education, and family life.

See what’s happening in Bloomington’s culture and lifestyle scene by subscribing today at magbloom.com/subscribe or use the subscription card between pages 32 and 33.

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Celebrating Life in Bloomington

Celebrating Life in Bloomington

Celebrating Life in Bloomington magbloom.com

June/July 2020

Celebrating the People of Bloomington

| The Future of Women in STEM

CELEBRATING THE PEOPLE OF BLOOMINGTON

25 FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE NEW HOSPITAL

October/November 2019

25

December 2019/January 2020

April/May 2020

Facts

YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

The New Hospital

Bloomington’s

Veterans October/ November 2019

Their Struggles and Triumphs magbloom.com

The Way We Were

Bloomington Through the Decades

The Future of Women in STEM magbloom.com

Bloomington Nightlife magbloom.com

The NCAA basketball championship parade, March 1953.

Wedding Guide BLOOMINGTON

2021

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15TH ANNUAL

WEDDING GUIDE

Oy! What a Year

There is an existential expression that pretty much sums up the year

2020: “Man plans, God laughs.” That sentiment was certainly true for people

expecting to marry in this year of the pandemic. Many weddings long planned were either minimalized or put off for another day.

The Bloom staff searched for in-person weddings that took place during the pandemic and faithfully followed the CDC safety guidelines for masks and social distancing. Alas, we could find none.

So, what we present here, in our 15th annual Wedding Guide, are four of our most popular weddings from years past. They are beautiful, colorful, creative, unique, and full of incredible ideas for couples hoping to gather family and friends for unforgettable romantic nuptials in the near future.

Here’s to better times and amazing weddings in 2021.

Cover: Cake at reception. Photos by Dreamstime © Gyorgy and © Konstantin Malkov

I

Above: Hulls-Wathen wedding bridal bouquet. Photo by Hudson Photography

Bloom

Mazel Tov! A TRADITIONAL WEDDING IN A RUSTIC SETTING Photography by Tall and Small Photography

Bloom

DEJOHN + MICHAL

Michal

“

Picked a Rose” read one of the hand-lettered signs posted

on rustic wood panels that dotted the grounds of Sycamore Farm, a 20-acre working horse farm in southwest Bloomington. And indeed, Michal Adut picked DeJohn Rose to marry in an outdoor ceremony at the farm, followed by dinner and dancing in a beautifully decorated barn.

DeJohn is a local boy, the son of A John and Judith Rose, the owners of Bloomington’s Textillery Weavers.

But Michal was born in Israel and grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. The couple live and work in Manhattan. At the time of their wedding, DeJohn, 28, was an account executive for Jack Victor, a menswear manufacturer, and Michal, 29, was a senior account manager for a public relations firm.

“We met at a birthday party in New York in July 2012,” recalls Michal. The party was for Michal’s

(left) Michal and DeJohn Rose under the canopy of lights at Sycamore Farm. (above) Flowers by Linda Chapman of Harvest Moon Flower Farm.

Bloom

college friend, who was dating a friend of DeJohn’s. “They didn’t last very long, but we did,” Michal says with a laugh. “We had our first date three days later,” DeJohn adds. They’re New Yorkers, so it was sushi. The proposal was also very Manhattan. It took place on the Bow Bridge in Central Park in April 2014.

You might expect the couple would choose the Big Apple for their wedding.

“We did a lot of exploring for venues in New York, but they just didn’t feel right,” says Michal. “But we were sold on Sycamore Farm as soon as we saw it.” As DeJohn explains, “Michal had grown up riding horses, and Bloomington is a big part of who I am, so it was a really nice blend.”

Bloom

(top) DeJohn’s mother, Judith, wove the cloth for the chuppah under which the couple was married. (above, left and right) Following Jewish tradition, the bride and groom were rocked aloft at the reception. So were the groom’s parents, A John and Judith Rose. (opposite page, top) DeJohn and Michal enjoy a quiet moment with a friend at Sycamore Farm. (opposite page, bottom) Dinner with rustic elegance, courtesy of IMU Catering.

By Carmen Siering & Tracy Zollinger Turner Photography by Martin Boling & Jim Krause

Black Women OF BLOOMINGTON

RECOGNIZING THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS & CONTRIBUTIONS

The achievements of Black women are being recognized nationally as never before, thanks to the ascent of Kamala Harris to the vice presidency, the impact of Black women on the presidential election, and the several Black women appointed to cabinet and other key government positions. Finally, and long overdue.

Black women are also mayors of several of the country’s largest cities, including Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., and Michelle Obama for the third straight year is the most admired woman in America, according to a 2020 Gallup poll. (Harris finished second.)

Here in Bloomington, Black women have contributed mightily to every facet of our community, and in this issue we recognize the successes of 21. There are many, many more.

Recognition, however, does not mean that prejudice is on the decline, either nationally or in Bloomington.

In fact, one could just as easily argue that bigotry is on the rise in the wake of our former president’s efforts at legitimizing racism and inciting violence.

Most of the women profiled in these pages have experienced prejudice and faced obstacles because of both the color of their skin and their gender.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

It is our hope that by sharing these stories, we might cast a little light.

—the editor

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 91

Doris Sims. Photo by Martin Boling

Doris Sims 40 YEARS IN PUBLIC SERVICE Doris Sims has seen the country “go through hills and valleys” when it comes to race. “A lot—especially within this past year—has happened within our country with dealing with racial inequality, and dealing with issues of equity and diversity,” she says. For some, she believes, this time has introduced new awareness. “What I’m hoping is that we don’t lose the momentum that we’ve gained. It’s easy to stick a sign in your yard and say, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ it’s another thing to make sure the actions that you take show that Black lives matter to you.”

After more than 40 years in public service, Sims retired from her position as director of the City of Bloomington Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) Department in January. Over the course of her career, she helped to research and develop a voluntary retirement plan for City employees and founded Citizens Academy—a program that educates residents about how city government works. She has taught homebuying classes and helped people whose homes were in foreclosure to save them. Overall, “I think that the job that I have had has been so rewarding because we help people make sure that they have decent, safe, and sanitary housing,” she says.

“I had a great mentor when I started working for the City of Bloomington,” says Sims. She was originally hired to work for Bloomington’s Redevelopment Department by Betty Cockrum, a longtime public servant who passed away in 2020. Cockrum later became the city controller and, for the last 15 years, was the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

The two women remained close as Sims served on the Planned Parenthood board for almost 10 years, including two years as chair and four more on its executive committee. “I tell everyone that I think Betty saw the potential in me at that very young age—22— that I didn’t see in myself,” she says. In 2017, Sims was named a Living Legend at Bloomington’s Black History Month Gala.

Raised in Evansville, Sims’ father was a long-distance truck driver and her mother worked in a cigar factory. Sims was born in the middle of a five-sibling lineup and her mother died when she was 16. “I knew at that point I wanted to go to college,” she says.

She came to Indiana University for the Groups Scholars Program, which was created to support first-generation college students.

That’s where she met her husband, Bloomington City Council President Jim Sims.

As Sims settles into reading, scrapbooking, and taking “some time for Doris to see what Doris wants to do in her next chapter” as a new retiree, she plans to remain involved in civic work. She has held multiple board positions beyond Planned Parenthood, including the Bloomington Housing Authority, Monroe County Sheriff’s Merit Board, and City of Bloomington Board of Public Safety, and is currently involved with the Democratic Women’s Caucus.

“I think I feel a little bit more hopeful going into the next four years than I have in the past four years,” she says. “I hope as a community that 2021 can be a year where we can look back and reflect inward as well as outward and see how we can mend any issues that we think that are important to us.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

92 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

SCHOLAR OF POLICING & HATE CRIMES Professor Jeannine Bell, a nationally recognized scholar in the area of policing and hate crimes, has written extensively on criminal justice issues. When demonstrators took to the streets this summer demanding changes to policing in America, she was a step ahead of them.

“I write about this,” she says. “I write about change police officers can get on board with, changes they can be convinced are in their interest. There are so few reforms that are going to be of use to citizens and also to police.”

The way people talk about change is also important.

“Defunding police is something the police quickly allied against because no one wants to have less money,” Bell points out. “If the conversation is about taking—and this is how I, as a police scholar, would have described the same intervention—then let’s take away from the police the services they don’t want to provide: social work–type services. That’s how you need to have the conversation.”

Born in Detroit, Bell, 51, says she had lived in every geographic area of the country before she was 20. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and multiple degrees (M.A., J.D., and Ph.D.) from the University of Michigan before moving to Jeannine Bell. Photo by Jim Krause Bloomington in 1999 to join the Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty.

She has a 9-year-old daughter, Ella, so she speaks with authority when she addresses the significance of Kamala Harris’ election: “Little Black girls now have someone who looks like them who is vice president of the United States.”

Equally important, Bell says, is the language Harris uses to address issues of inequity. “As someone who is South Asian and Black, she has chosen to engage with issues of racial justice,” Bell says. “And she uses those words. This matters. To have someone in that position naming white supremacy, racial extremism, and other issues that some may have been reluctant to name, matters.”

Two of Bell’s books directly address current conflicts: Hate Thy Neighbor (NYU Press, 2013) and Policing Hatred (NYU Press, 2002). She’s now working on a book about police reform based on interviews she’s conducted with people in Bloomington.

“But they talk about experiences from all over the country,” Bell says, “because Bloomington people are from everywhere.” —Carmen Siering

magbloom.com | February/March 2021 | Bloom 93

BL ACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON

Jeannine Bell

BLOOMINGTON CITY CLERK Nicole Bolden comes from a lineage of women with a legacy of firsts. Her grandmother was the first Black nurse to work in the University of Iowa Hospitals. Her mother, Valeri Haughton, was the first Black woman to be directly elected to the Monroe County judiciary. In 2015, Bolden became the first Black women elected to citywide office in Bloomington and is the only LGBTQ woman of color in elected office in Indiana.

Born and raised in Iowa City, Bolden followed her mother to Bloomington shortly after graduating high school. Here, she attended Indiana University, where she met her ex-partner and father of her two daughters, Taegan and Zora, who are grown. After she completed law school in 2008, Bolden was asked to take a position as a hearing officer in the office of the city clerk, which “turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened in my life,” she says. “I began to see how just working in one little space could have a really wide impact on the town.” She worked as deputy city clerk for five years before running for clerk.

“Being clerk,” she says, “is an opportunity to serve that is not taken lightly. It’s not glamorous, but it’s definitely a privilege.”

Bolden has been thinking about herself among newer trailblazers in local public offices and wondering, “If you’re operating in this space where you are the first person or the only person, or you’re different than the majority of your peers, how does that impact you? How does it impact your peers?”

It can be especially tricky in a liberal, university town like Bloomington, she says, where racism so often shows up in its less obvious form: implicit bias. “If you’re working with somebody who thinks that they are liberal or progressive, but then says things about not trusting somebody of color, or comments that somebody of color got angry really fast while at the same time not recognizing the anger that a white person displayed, talking them through that perception is close to impossible. They feel like it’s a judgment on their character, rather than recognizing that it’s a judgment on their actions or their words.

“It’s a hard space to navigate. If I say something to somebody, it’s because I really care about them a lot on a personal level or it’s something that’s really damaging to me because it’s not always a safe thing to do.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Nicole Bolden. Photo by Martin Boling

nicole bolden

SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCATE Selena Drake, who was raised in Gary, Indiana, says she never truly experienced racism prior to attending Indiana University. A racially charged incident that occurred as she started her freshman year in 2016 changed that.

“I really started noticing how people of color were treated by the predominately white students,” says Drake, now a master’s student studying law and public policy in the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

That fall, Drake participated in a memorial and march for Joseph Smedley, a 20-year-old Black IU student whose body was pulled from Griffy Lake in October 2015. While the coroner ruled Smedley’s death a suicide, many feel his death was never properly investigated. Since then, Drake has become increasingly active in advocating for racial and social justice.

Her dedication recently culminated in an event some say was the largest gathering in Dunn Meadow since the Vietnam War protests.

In June, Drake, 23, helped organize Enough is Enough, a rally to support racial justice and protest police brutality in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Drake says she and her collaborators, IU senior Salina Tesfagiorgis and junior Ky Freeman, were determined to create a true town-gown event.

“The Black people of IU and the Black people of Selena Drake. Photo by Jim Krause Bloomington are two different groups,” Drake says. “But at that march, those two groups came together. I never felt like a part of my community until this summer. Until then, I just felt like a Black college student.”

Enough is Enough is working to become a nonprofit. “We’re all students, so we had to put it on hold for a bit,” Drake explains. “There was the election, and we’re all part of other organizations. But we plan to turn it into something more.” The group has an active Facebook page that creates awareness, advocates for causes, and announces events.

Drake says her grandmother is her inspiration to advocate for what she believes in. “She taught me to fight for people who aren’t able to fight for themselves,” she says.

That’s a legacy she’s passing down to her daughter, Sage Justice, who turned 1 in July. Drake says her daughter’s initials are significant: “S.J. is for Social Justice. I want her to be a social justice warrior. I want her to know she needs to fight for something.” —Carmen Siering

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Elizabeth Mitchell. Photo by Rodney Margison

Elizabeth Mitchell HISTORIAN For more than 40 years, Elizabeth Mitchell has been documenting African American history and correcting the white version of that history. “All those stories that tell us who we are—stories of exploration, freedom, slavery, and, of course, violence,” she says. “We hold on to those one-sided stories and pass them on from one generation to the next.”

Born in Indianapolis in 1953, Mitchell has experienced that history. Her freshman year, she was one of 76 Black teenagers bused to Arlington High School. “It was the Black children who were inconvenienced, who had to travel at least an hour to the suburbs to integrate the schools,” she says.

Mitchell says the racism she experienced in high school prepared her for what was to come.

“Women my age? You had to get strong on your own,” she says. “What did it was the experiences you had.

Either you got tough or you weren’t going to survive.”

Newly wed to her husband, James Mitchell Jr., who had been recruited by the Indiana State Police, Mitchell moved to Bloomington in 1979 and found a job as a postal clerk with the U.S. Postal Service. “I was the only Black female there for 35 years,” she says.

Now retired, Mitchell has more time to spend on her passion projects—researching, preserving, and sharing African American history. She loves to travel to little-known historical sites. “I want to plant my feet where history took place,” she says. “And I want to tell the stories.” She’s managed to do that in a variety of ways, through plays, documentaries, public speaking, and historical displays.

Mitchell’s work has earned her a number of awards. Two of the most recent include the Indiana Historical Society’s Hubert Hawkins Local History Award in 2018 and the 2019 Golden Hoosier Award, which recognizes seniors for a lifetime of service to their communities.

Commenting on the protests and marches that sprang up following the murder of George Floyd, Mitchell says, “If you look at the photos from protests back in the day [during the civil rights movement], there have always been whites who have marched, but not to the degree I saw this year. People are getting it now, what we have been crying about for years. Because racism is a white problem, and it is going to take whites to fix that problem.” —Carmen Siering

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KIWANIS LEADER

Vanessa McClary. Photo by Martin Boling

Whether it’s ensuring that local elementary school children have winter coats or cheering up the Bloomington skyline with hot air balloons, Vanessa McClary cares that the work she does in the community has tangible results. A dedicated volunteer and leader in Kiwanis for two decades, “I don’t talk about me a lot,” she says.

“I’m passionate. I’m committed. I think I encourage others in a lot of different ways to be more involved in their community … but ultimately, it’s not about me, it’s about the impact of what I do.”

McClary moved to Bloomington from the Evansville area a little over 30 years ago with her husband, Michael, who grew up here. She first encountered Kiwanis 20 years ago, when her daughter Victoria—the youngest of her three children—was a third grader at University Elementary School. “I heard about Kiwanis having a program for

youth that would teach them about leadership while serving others,” she says.

As she began to witness her daughter’s growth from shyness to outspoken leadership through the elementary school arm of the organization, K-Kids, followed by middle and high school Kiwanis programs, “I started to learn about volunteerism through her,” she says.

McClary’s involvement expanded as she founded South Central Indiana Kiwanis in 2006, which created more equity in its opportunities for membership by offering lower dues and holding meetings in the evenings instead of at midday to better accommodate working people. She has since served as a lieutenant governor and governor for Kiwanis and was recently named the chair of its International Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

South Central Indiana Kiwanis has created programs such as the Kiwanis Closet at Arlington Heights Elementary School, which offers winter clothes and easily prepared foods to students, as well as a program called BUG at Templeton Elementary School that stands for “Bring Up Grades.” “It recognizes students that are normally not recognized, as long as they maintain all their grades without dropping any and bring up at least one over the semester,” she says.

McClary was also the impetus behind the annual Kiwanis Indiana Balloon Fest fundraiser.

Her commitment to community service has been recognized several times, through a United Way Spirit Award, a Black History Living Legend award from the City of Bloomington, and a Distinguished Hoosier Award from the governor in 2014, among others.

While the political landscape of the past four years has been rough, McClary sees opportunity for change in what it has revealed. “You have to know what you’re up against to move forward,” she says. “I heard something years ago that I share whenever I can, which is, ‘Commitment is doing what you said you would do long after the mood you said it in has left you.’ I think we all need to make some commitments to have as much positive impact on our city, our state, our country as we can.”

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Priscilla Barnes “PRACADEMIC” As a master’s student at Indiana University, Priscilla Barnes researched public health disparities and the connection between faith communities and public health.

Now, as an affiliate faculty member with IU’s Center for Rural Engagement, she’s doing something similar. She designed the “Healthy Rural Indiana 2025: Community Health Improvement Plans Project” to build partnerships that address public health needs in rural communities.

“I always tell folks I’m a pracademic,” Barnes says. “That role of being a bridge between different systems has always been there, first as a partitioner, now as a researcher.”

An associate professor in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington, Barnes earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from IU and a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. She returned to IU in 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow, became an assistant professor in 2012, and received tenure in 2018.

Building community health partnerships speaks to Barnes’ background as a military kid. “We were always moving around, learning to make friends quickly, learning to make friends with people who were different from us,” she says. She uses that experience in her work with the Center for Rural Engagement: “You have to be open to sitting at the table with someone who is different from you, who may have a different perspective, and building a relationship.”

Barnes says that in many counties, multiple Priscilla Barnes. Courtesy photo organizations may be addressing the same health issues— typically substance abuse and mental health. By coming together, communities can provide a collective response and work toward the same goal.

Her work has shown her that communication is the key to building strong communities. Talking about race is part of that.

“I’ve always been the person people could come to and ask questions about things they don’t understand, maybe because I provide a nonjudgmental lens,” she says. “But Black people and Latinos, we can’t do it alone. It requires white people to figure out how to be better allies. I spent most of 2020 helping people figure that out.”

Those conversations about race circle back to her community health work. “There aren’t many Black professors out in rural communities,” Barnes says. “I hope when people see me, they can ask questions and, as we build our collaborative relationships, I hope they go back and have those tough conversations with their colleagues about racism. It shouldn’t always be me.” —Carmen Siering

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Jacinda Townsend. Photo by Jim Krause

NOVELIST & MCCSC BOARD MEMBER Jacinda Townsend is a novelist, a software trainer, and a Monroe County Community School Corporation board member. She’s also a Harvard University graduate with a law degree from Duke University and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her 2014 debut novel, Saint Monkey (W.W. Norton & Company), won national awards and critical acclaim. Her second novel, Kif, which was inspired by interviews with former slaves from Mauritania that she conducted for a story for AlJazeera, will be out in 2022. Ask her what she thinks is important to know about who she is, and she’ll tell you: “I’m a single mom and I like to go to the desert.”

In non-pandemic times, Townsend takes regular trips to Morocco—including trips to the Sahara— with her daughters Rio, 16, and Fadzai, 11. “I wanted my girls to grow up seeing me be independent and empowered,” she says. “We do not go in a luxurious fashion. They are tough, tough girls, and the thing I am the most proud of is being that mom.”

Townsend grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Her mother is a high school teacher, so she’s always “been very invested in public education,” which is part of the reason she felt called to apply for a vacancy on the school board in early 2020, then run to remain in office.

“There were some things in the district that troubled me a lot,” she says. “One is the segregation.

We have schools with almost no free lunch recipients and then we have schools where almost everybody gets free lunch. We have schools with almost no Black population, and then we have a school with a 28% Black population, which, in a town of 4%, is way too high. There’s a huge racial disparity in discipline statistics. Black kids in this district are overidentified for special ed and underidentified for ALPS [Accelerated Learning Program for Students].”

Calling herself a “Bernie bro,” Townsend had hoped for more sweeping reforms on a national level than she expects to see from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But she feels that recent shifts on the school board may make meaningful change possible on the local level. “We as a board, historically, have always given a lot of lip service to what we’re going to do about inequity, but there’s never been a clear timetable,” she says. “Now I have hope that we can begin to think about matters of equity in a much more concrete way so that we can stop just talking about it.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Gladys DeVane. Courtesy photo

Gladys DeVane STORYTELLER Gladys DeVane, 81, is a storyteller, scriptwriter, and actor. She first learned stagecraft competing in oratorical contests as a child and acting in plays in high school and college.

“My aunt worked with me on dramatic readings—storytelling in the form of monologues,” DeVane says. “By 15 I was giving recitals all over [Oklahoma City]. I wanted to be an actress, but my mom was very practical. She said I needed to major in something that would put food on the table.”

DeVane grew up on a farm in Texas, raised by her maternal grandparents. “My mom sent me to live with my grandmother when I still just months old,” she says.

Racism in 1940s Texas was rampant. “Racism like you wouldn’t believe,” DeVane says. “Or maybe you would.” But, she says, her grandmother taught her never to be angry or vindictive. “She taught us to do what was right and told us God would take care of everything else. That has taken me a long way.”

While she was still a child, DeVane’s grandfather died and she moved to Oklahoma City to live with her mother. Her grandmother returned with her and continued to have a major influence on DeVane’s life. But her mother’s advice also held sway and at college, she sought out a practical major.

DeVane attended Oklahoma State University, which had recently been integrated. “The racism wasn’t overt,” she recalls. “The students just kind of ignored us.” She graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy and speech communication. That July, she married Gene DeVane, and shortly thereafter the two headed to Bloomington where she had been accepted into a master’s program at Indiana University. She later earned a Ph.D. in speech and hearing sciences from IU, where she taught for 38 years before retiring in 2003.

When DeVane graduated from college, she stopped acting. “Once I married, I never stepped on stage,” she says. “Then I retired and decided to really devote time to what I liked.”

DeVane has since appeared in many theatrical presentations, including starring in Cardinal Stage’s production of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years and in a Michigan summer stock performance of Raisin in the Sun. “But I realized there weren’t very many parts for a person my age and my color,” she says. “That got me started writing storytelling for the stage. Doing this at my age, I have so much to draw from. The knowledge I’ve gained is so valuable.”

In 2016, DeVane, historian Elizabeth Mitchell, and director Danielle Bruce founded Resilience Productions, a theater company that brings little-known Black history to the stage. Being a student of history, she knows its vicissitudes, which causes her to reflect on current political and racial tensions.

“I was saying to Gene the other day that during Reconstruction, things were looking good,” she says. “Then, it was all torn down. So, right now I’m holding my breath, hoping we won’t go through another phase of almost back to square one. I don’t think a lot of people realize how close we are to losing this democracy, as imperfect as it is.” —Carmen Siering

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ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY INITIATIVES FOR THE IU KELLEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Maqubè Reese’s first name was created by her mother—a combination of the names of her four aunts.

“I feel like I embody all of them,” she says. “I absolutely love my name. I feel like I live it every day.”

As she gets ready to enter her 30s in 2021, that wellspring of family appears to fuel a very busy life.

Reese works as the assistant director of diversity initiatives for the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and is engaged in an abundance of community work. She recently completed a term with the City of Bloomington’s Commission on the Status of Women and chaired the City’s Black History Month Committee.

She currently serves on the City’s Board of Public Safety, is the vice president of the Monroe County Branch of the NAACP, and is involved with Count Us In Indiana, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging diverse voter turnout.

Raised on the south side of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Reese is the youngest of 13 children and a “proud firstgeneration college graduate,” she says. Her parents, who Reese refers to as loving and supportive, both died of health complications earlier in her life.

“I’ve benefited from going to therapy to get some help through that trauma—not only with grief but Maqubè Reese. Photo by Martin Boling trauma as a Black woman,” she says. “Being a Black woman in America is just hard—being Black in America is hard. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult. I just want to live, right?

There is definitely deep-rooted, complex, structural, systemic racism that still affects and plagues us today.

“I think about my mom, and the fact that she had 13 beautiful Black kids and brought them into this world. She advocated for us every day, and I can only imagine what that felt like. When I’m advocating for just me sometimes, I’m exhausted.”

Reese came to Indiana University on scholarships through the Group Scholars and 21st Century Scholars programs. She studied human development and family studies, graduating in 2015. She also has a nonprofit management certificate, and an Eli Lilly Philanthropic certificate.

For five years, she worked as an advisor for the Groups Scholars Program.

Reese focuses on what she is able to observe, engage, heal, and create. She completed her master’s in social work last year, applying her understanding of mental health to the community work she does and her career, and she works part-time as a therapist for adolescents at Bloomington Meadows Hospital.

When the pandemic hit last March, she started a Facebook group called Humanity for the Win, which is a growing, international “space to highlight how humanity succeeds against all odds,” according to its published description. Group members post stories about “how humans are peacefully helping humans financially, spiritually, mentally, and physically.”

“It’s part of my passion to build interconnected community,” Reese says. —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Jenn Cristy M US I C I A N Jenn Cristy has a credo for these challenging times: “Be kind and have conversations with people.” A writer and performer of original music, as well as owner of One Pulse Entertainment, the past pandemic year has hit her hard. In addition to the obstacles that she, like many who make a living in the performing arts, faced, she lost a sister-in-law to COVID-19 in the spring of 2020.

“It definitely put a hard stop for me mentally and emotionally,” she says. When she’s emerged to play music in a safe, small place or for an online audience, “I have noticed that people are being a lot kinder—I think we’re hungry for it. We want to be around each other. We want to be experiencing some sort of normalcy.”

Cristy, 42, was adopted at 18 months and raised in a white family in Tennessee with two older brothers, a mother who is “one of those lifelong students and lifelong teachers,” (and is pursuing advanced degrees in her 80s) and a father who is a chemist. She was classically trained on piano from the age of three and also became a competitive swimmer, which won her a scholarship at Indiana University.

Toward the end of her college career, she was invited to tour with John Mellencamp—which she did for a year and a half— playing flute, piano, percussion, organ, and violin, in addition to singing in his band. Soon after, she settled into marriage with elementary school teacher Ben Strawn, motherhood with their daughter, April—now a senior at Edgewood High School [see story on Page 28]—and her own musical career.

As her husband is white, she’s used to getting “looks” when they’re out and about together. “I just ignore them. I was raised Jenn Cristy. Photo by Jenn Hamm in a very, very white family and I’ve already gotten all the looks and been called all the names.” But she remembers the hair pulling and bullying from her childhood and thinks, “If I had had someone like Kamala Harris that I could’ve looked at when I was in third grade and crying every day after school—to see someone like me in that position, I think it would have really shifted things.”

Cristy recently learned the identities of her biological parents—specifically that her father, who is deceased, was Black and also a musician and that her mother is white. The world is due to change if only because “there are a lot more people out there who look like me.”

Recently appointed by the mayor to the committee that will assess the future of the John Waldron Arts Center, Cristy has been thinking about how we could evolve locally.

“Conversations are good. Openness is good. Open-mindedness is good. And I think this town has potential for that,” she says. “Bloomington is a great town. If we listen to each other, we have the potential to be absolutely epic.”

—Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Markay Winston. Photo by Jim Krause

MCCSC SUPERINTENDENT OF CURRICULUM & INSTRUCTION Growing up, Markay Winston, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Monroe County Community School Corporation (MCCSC) since 2017, saw educational inequity firsthand. “Living in Iowa, I didn’t see many children who looked like me,” Winston says, “and certainly not many teachers who looked like me.”

That made a lasting impact. Winston, 55, thought she might become a teacher, but instead became an instructional school psychologist, ultimately earning a Ph.D. in school psychology and counseling.

She believes strongly in the value of public schools and has held positions at Cincinnati Public Schools as director of student services and at Chicago Public Schools—the third largest school system in the country—as chief officer of diverse learners.

“I believe deep in my soul that we have an obligation and opportunity to do right by every child, and that is the beauty of public education,” Winston says. “We get to help them thrive and develop in an equitable manner.”

As Winston sees it, facing inequities in society is one of the roles public education should play. In 2019, with racial tensions rising in Bloomington, the MCCSC began offering the Real Talk Critical Discussion Series for students.

“Fast forward to the pandemic, to George Floyd,” she says. “People asked, ‘How do we talk about this?’

I, personally, was grappling with it. I couldn’t deal with the knee on the neck and feeling traumatized and retraumatized. And then I was thinking about the children.”

Winston says she and her team decided the answer was to create a virtual Real Talk Summer Series for parents and students.

“It was one of the most exciting things we’ve done,” Winston says. “Kids are amazing. They just put it on the line and say what has to be said. Their questions were heartfelt. They would ask, ‘What does this mean for me? I’m a Black kid and I’m nervous when my dad leaves the house.’ I walked away thinking, ‘Our children get it. Our future is going to be better because of them.’”

The future looks brighter, too, Winston says, because of Kamala Harris taking her place as vice president: “Representation matters. This little Black girl, who grew up in Iowa, who had so few children who looked like her in school, is very proud.” —Carmen Siering

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Virginia Githiri. Couresy photo

Virginia Githiri ENTREPRENEUR, SINGER, LECTURER Virginia Githiri wears so many different professional hats in her daily life, it’s not hard to fathom that writing inspirational gospel songs is something she does in her sleep. “I’m not one of those songwriters that can just sit at my piano and just write,” she says. “Most of the new ideas that I get literally come to me when I’m in deep, deep sleep.”

Apart from writing and recording music, Githiri—“Dr. G”—is a lecturer in applied health science at the Indiana University School of Public Health, an integrative wellness life and health coach, and the owner of PopKorn! Kernals with a Twist—a gourmet popcorn shop that has survived the strain on small, local businesses presented by the pandemic.

“I’m grateful that I’ve been able to float along because it’s not been easy,” she says. In the past year, she moved PopKorn’s base of operations from College Mall to a downtown storefront on South College, and figured out how to sustain it incrementally with on-demand orders for curbside service and a return to limited shopping hours.

Githiri was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with a “deep sense of empathy,” thanks to a mother who was a third grade teacher and “just had a love—a deep love—for people who didn’t have.” She attributes her business acumen to her father, who immigrated from Kenya as a teenager “with a quarter in his pocket,” and, after a career in business and accounting, “died very, very wealthy.”

She felt that the federal aid the CARES Act promised was not set up for people who run small local businesses. “It’s been sad to drive around and see vacancies, to see places closing. A lot of places have tried all that they can. I’m hoping that with the new administration there really can be a true focus on helping small business.”

She hadn’t been optimistic that the changes in the political landscape would come after the past four years, when the leadership’s “methodology, for the most part, has been so haughty, so arrogant, so nasty. What happened to humility and kindness? Why were we missing that piece?”

She thought that Kamala Harris’ presence on the top ticket might prevent Joe Biden from being elected because of the “fever pitch of nastiness” in the country. At the same time, she’s seen more promise in her department at IU and at her church, Sherwood Oaks, where she has done workshops on diversity and frequently performs her music, that a growing number of people feel spurred to change. “I’ve heard, ‘We need to be equitable; we need to be fair. We don’t tolerate racism.

We are saddened by what’s happening in our country’—that type of talk. It seems like there could be real momentum, because it feels like there have been lots of times when talk is just talk. I hope this is not just a trend. Hopefully in 2025, we won’t have forgotten, right? We won’t be going back to what we saw that was so heinous and so nasty and so vitriolic.”

—Tracy Zollinger Turner

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OBSTETRICIAN-GYNECOLOGIST “Fun fact,” says Dr. Tashera Perry, an OB/GYN with Indiana University Health, adjunct clinical assistant professor for the IU School of Medicine, and the associate chief medical information officer for IU Health South Central Region.

“I’m a high school dropout.

I don’t actually have a high school diploma.”

When Perry, who grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, was in 10th grade, she was asked to join the Mary Baldwin College (now Mary Baldwin University) Program for the Exceptionally Gifted. She graduated cum laude in 2005 at the age of 20.

She earned her medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 2011 and completed residency Tashera Perry. Photo by Martin Boling at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2015.

Growing up, Perry says her parents were very involved with her academics, and reminded her frequently, “You are your only limitation.”

“For both of them, their number one priority was that I get a good education and go to college,” she says. “They didn’t care what I did, just that I did it to the best of my ability.”

Perry, 35, and husband, Carlos Villarreal, moved to Bloomington in 2015. Villarreal is managing director of population health economics for Blue Cross Blue Shield Institute, a research arm of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

“We were so fortunate,” Perry says. “His office is in Chicago and he has worked remotely this whole time. That was a helpful factor in deciding to move here—we didn’t have to choose between our careers.”

In 2020, Perry, who specializes in infertility, perinatal anxiety and depression, and transgender care, was recognized in as Bloomington’s Woman of the Year for her dedication to women’s health. “When you are working hard and burning the candle at both ends, I can’t think of a better way for someone to say, ‘You’ve been seen,’” she says. “But looking forward, how do I live up to the legacy of people who have this accolade?”

Holding herself and others to the highest standards seems to be ingrained. Commenting on the unprecedented election of Kamala Harris to the office of vice president of the United States, Dr. Perry says, “But it’s not the presidency. I’m holding out for her presidential run … because you’ve always got to be the best.” —Carmen Siering

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Larissa Danielle VISUAL ARTIST Artist Larissa Danielle’s multimedia work has often been inspired by political and social realities. In 2020, those realities felt particularly overwhelming. “I was really influenced by a lot of the Black trauma that was going on—I don’t want to say until recently, because it’s always going on,” she says.

But as she researched the murder of Breonna Taylor for a sculptural collage called We Are (Breonna), the process “was just heartbreaking,” she says. “I kept thinking, you know, someone I knew could have been her. I could have been her.”

Danielle says she decided to “take a step back from ‘reporting the news’” in her artwork and turn toward something healing. “Creating work like that is very emotional. I had to let my heart rest for a second,” she says.

Danielle grew up an Army brat, moving from city to city—and even to Germany— with her brother, mother, and stepfather. An introductory undergraduate art class helped her realize, “I really liked the way drawing and creating made me feel inside.” She raised two daughters in the Washington, D.C., area before she and her wife, Kelly, moved to Bloomington in 2019 so she could pursue her M.F.A. in sculpture at Indiana University.

“I was skeptical about coming to the Midwest because of the lack of diversity, but my experience has been okay so far. I like Bloomington. It’s like a little Bohemian town and reminds me of being back home just a little bit. It seems like everyone’s on the same positivity page here. And I like that.”

When COVID-19 separated her from her campus studio last spring, Danielle discovered a bag of plaster at home and began experimenting with body molds to explore the female form. “I’ve been using me as my inspiration lately,” she says. “I want to reflect the positive, strong side, and beauty of being a Black woman.”

Born with a rare neurological disorder called Charcot-MarieLarissa Danielle. Courtesy photos Tooth, Danielle has used a wheelchair throughout her life. In a recent self-portrait called Robot Legs, she incorporated broken radio parts—a nod to her love of music—into a sculptural painting of her body. “It’s a piece reflecting my perseverance and my disability and how I’ve just overcome a lot of odds,” she says. “When I was younger, I used to imagine myself with like these bionic legs, where I could jump over hills and cars and all kinds of things.”

After years of living around the “constant, 24/7 conversation” of politics in D.C., the presence of a woman in the vice presidency makes her hopeful. “I feel like it’s very inspirational just to have a female of color in power,” she says. “It means a lot to see someone that looks like you representing America and being able to speak for you and changing the We Are (Breonna). things that need to be changed.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde. Photo by Jim Krause

In 2014, Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde was the first person to earn a doctorate in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University—a distinction that was groundbreaking not only in its accomplishment, but also for the revolutionary nature of the research she continues to do. Utilizing creative and critical writing, contemplative practices, ritual, and collaborative art, Abegunde explores the legacy of slavery, its continuing effects on its descendants, and new means of healing.

“The question I always ask is, ‘How do unresolved ancestral woundings and traumas impact and shape descendants? How do these traumas get transmitted over time, over dimension, through DNA?’” she says.

Now a faculty member in African American and African Diaspora Studies at IU, as well as the founding director of the Graduate Mentoring Center, Abegunde has other titles that define her responsibilities in the world: “Memory Keeper, poet, healer, an ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition [a native religion of the Yoruba people of Nigeria], and a daughter of Osun [an Orisa deity].”

Her teaching style incorporates contemplative practices and often challenges academic conventions, as in one recent course where she invited colleagues and students to digest a difficult book together. “I wanted to give them the gift of thinking—of learning how to ask a question without penalty,” she says. She also invites students to collaborate on her public artwork.

Abegunde was born in New Jersey during a time of riots and racial unrest across the U.S. For safety and tradition, her parents sent her to the Caribbean island of Grenada to spend her early childhood with her maternal grandmother and other extended family.

There, she says, her family, the ocean, mangoes, goats, and cacao offered “a lovely, lovely childhood that was full and free.”

“I’ve always felt that I had the benefit of being born in the midst of revolution and being put away someplace safe to emerge with ancestral healing tools and knowledge,” she says. “This has given me a different perspective on what is happening now and what could be done to move us forward.”

What is emerging from the unrest of our time, says Abegunde, is the need to commit to healing. “We have all made agreements—in this life or a past life, or for a future life—about what and who is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and what is right or wrong,” she says. “How do those choices serve us now? What new agreements do we need to make with ourselves and each other to ensure that … we continue with as little strife as possible, and no further wounding for any of us, particularly for those who are most vulnerable?”

Looking at last summer’s Black Lives Matter and related protests within the arc of history, Abegunde says, “Each generation has a voice and their own methods to approach healing within their own contexts. This generation is unwilling to wait longer for change and transformation. I believe that they, or maybe their children, have the possibility of truly being free.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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BL ACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON

EXPLORING THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY

MONROE COUNTY CLERK As early voters wrapped around the block in downtown Bloomington last fall, Nicole Browne, the first Black woman elected as Monroe County’s Clerk of Courts, often walked out to greet them. She pointed out where they could grab a coffee or find a restroom as they waited, then thanked them for exercising their civic duty.

Browne gets choked up when she talks about the work of overseeing the county’s elections, particularly in a time when our democracy has been challenged. “I look at this as my contribution to the civil rights movement,” she says. “Clearly the importance of a well-run election is paramount—helping voters to have confidence that the election is aboveboard and run with integrity.”

Browne, 52, grew up in a single parent household in Gary, Indiana, at a time when it was considered the murder capital of the U.S., she says. “There were not a lot of resources, and certainly not a lot of the support networks that many parents are more fortunate to have today. I was incredibly fortunate to have people who saw things in me … and tried to nurture them as best they could without stepping on the toes of a single mom trying to raise two kids.”

She came to Indiana University to study criminal justice, intending to become a juvenile probation officer. After putting herself through school, Browne remained in Bloomington and worked for three local law enforcement agencies and the state government before “serendipity and circumstances presented an opportunity that has proven to be life-changing for me.”

While working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, Browne met Linda Robbins, the former county clerk, who invited Nicole Browne. Photo by Martin Boling Browne to become her chief deputy in 2012. When Robbins stepped down for health reasons, Browne was appointed, then elected to the role. “I do feel like this is my niche. It feels like home.”

Of the national election outcome, “two words come to mind—lovely and bittersweet,” says Browne. While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were her personal “dream ticket,” “the last few years have shown us how far we have to go in not taking the privileges and rights that we have for granted.”

Browne wrote a thank you note to Stacey Abrams for her work on voter enfranchisement in Georgia. “How incredible to use her platform to lift everyone’s ability to have a voice,” she says. “Abrams is one of many people who have shone a light on how important it is that we just try to make a difference where we are. I try to get up every day in a state of grace and a place of humility to see what I can do for my community. I’ve got an amazing team here. So that’s what I do and I hope it’s meaningful to Monroe County.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

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Mattie White. Photo by Jim Krause

DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF IU ATHLETICS Though she’s earned several degrees herself, when you visit Mattie White’s office, there’s only one credential on display—her grandmother’s 1939 high school diploma. “Being an African American woman at that time, that was a huge feat,” White says. “She and my mom instilled in me the importance of getting an education.”

White, 40, is the deputy director of Indiana University Athletics and the athletic department’s senior woman administrator, an NCAA designation created to promote meaningful representation of women in the leadership and management of college sports.

Growing up in Cambridge, Ohio, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, White says she didn’t have any context for what getting an education meant until she attended a summer leadership program.

“That was the first time I set foot on a college campus. That was the first time I thought, ‘This could happen. I could be here,’” White says.

White earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio University, worked at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and came to IU in 2005. She’s earned a second master’s and an educational specialist degree while at IU, where she now oversees academic services, sports medicine and nutrition, athletic performance, the Center for Elite Athletic Development, and the Excellence Academy. Over the summer, White was one of eight IU Hoosiers named to the Big Ten Conference Anti-Hate and Anti-Racism Coalition.

In a year with so many dark moments, White says seeing Kamala Harris come out on stage the night Joe Biden made his presidential acceptance speech was a bright light. “I liken it to when I first stepped foot on that college campus,” she says. “I don’t know that people really understand what it’s like to live in a world where you don’t see people who look like you in certain spaces, in certain roles. She has created a new course for so many individuals in our country.”

Education continues to take center stage for White. “I want to achieve education at the highest level,” she says.

“For me, that’s the Ph.D.” She is currently pursuing a doctorate in the IU School of Public Health, specializing in health behavior.

In the future, White hopes to be a leader in higher education. “College changed my life,” she says. “I want to stay in this environment and provide the same opportunities for other students.” —Carmen Siering

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BL ACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON

Mattie White

Ellyn Pruitt FINDING BLACK HISTORY WRITTEN IN STONE Ellyn Pruitt grew up with an affection and respect for cemeteries. She remembers that whenever her extended family in Gary, Indiana, was drawn together for a funeral, it also became a pilgrimage of sorts. “It was important to know where your family was buried,” she says. “We’d look for this tree and say, ‘Where are grandma and grandpa? How are their graves doing? Are they hidden? Where are our great-grandparents?’” Then the family would tend to the gravesites together.

Pruitt, 33, moved to Bloomington to attend Indiana University in 2006, where she now works as a systems administrator. When she was dating her future wife, Alexis, she joined her for a volunteer day with the Monroe County History Center’s Cemetery Committee. “I loved the grunt work … pulling bases out of the ground, leveling them, and leaving them in better shape. Then the families could come in and see that those memories—that person left behind—wasn’t forgotten,” says Pruitt.

Having recently completed a term on the history center’s board of trustees, she remains involved in the cemetery committee’s work. Inspired by the George “Rabbit” Shively project—a monument that was created in Rose Hill Cemetery in 2015 to memorialize the Negro League baseball player and 10 other African Americans who had been buried in unmarked graves—Pruitt and the committee continue to locate and record the grave sites of other Black residents of Bloomington. “We’re not done writing that story yet,” she says. “I still feel really passionate about this project, which needs more work and documentation.”

A column called Among Colored People that was regularly published in an early Bloomington newspaper called The Telephone (1855-1940), as well as the book Time to Speak: A Brief History of the Afro Americans of Bloomington, Indiana by Frances Gilliam, offered clues to other gravesite locations.

Ellyn Pruitt. Photo by Jim Krause The phrase the committee likes to use about the process is that “you find history written in stone,” says Pruitt. More information can be gleaned according to “what was used to bury a person, what section of a cemetery they were buried in, the burying technique, or the type of gravestone that could be afforded for that person.”

Graves of Black community members were not confined to one section of Rose Hill Cemetery, and while there are more that are unmarked or in disrepair, others have a stone for every family member. The work has yet to unlock a broader understanding of the history of Black residents in Bloomington. “Collaboration and learning stories directly from the Black community” will be the next step, Pruitt says.

Pruitt was raised in a conservative Christian household and didn’t come out to her family until two weeks before she got married in 2015.

She has forged a new path of faith since she arrived in Bloomington, even leaving the church altogether for a time. When she found a faith community she and her wife could attend together—First United Methodist Church—“I slowly found myself wanting to be in the life of the church the way I used to be,” she says.

Her current church’s philosophy of “doing no harm” resonates with her, a person who, as with her work in the cemetery, prefers to leave things better than they were when she found them.

“Everyone wants to be on the right side of the story,” she says. “I’m just trying to figure out how I want to show in the world and be really true to what I believe, to how I believe love should show up. I try to live into it every day—this idea of loving others the way I want to see myself loved and the way I feel others are to be loved.” —Tracy Zollinger Turner

110 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

Tamara Brown. Photo by Rodney Margison

ACTIVIST Although she is only 20 years old, Tamara Brown has been an activist for years. The 2018 Bloomington High School North graduate was instrumental in the formation of Bloomington Students Against Assault Weapons (BSAAW) in the aftermath of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. BSAAW helped organize Bloomington student participation in the April 20, 2018, National Student Walkout on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine (Colorado) High School massacre, an event where Brown was a noted speaker.

Now a junior at Indiana University, Brown says the summer of 2020 was long and difficult for people of color.

“While we were in the middle of a pandemic, struggling to make sure we didn’t get sick and struggling to pay our rent, we also had to protect ourselves from the police and the Proud Boys and the president of the United States,” Brown says. “There wasn’t a day this summer when I wasn’t exhausted.”

No matter how tired she is, Brown doesn’t feel she has the option to stop. Not only does she hostess at The Uptown Cafe, but on campus she also participates in the IU National Pan-Hellenic Council, the governing and coordinating council for the nine historically African American fraternities and sororities; Women in Government, a nonpartisan campus organization; and the Rainbow Coalition, which advocates for campus multicultural organizations.

Over the summer, Brown participated in protests calling for better policy to combat police brutality, police abolition and budget reallocation, and justice for Black lives lost.

She says she chose not to watch the video of George Floyd’s murder: “No one should need to watch a video of a Black man being unjustly murdered to be outraged.”

When asked if she is angry, Brown says, “Of course I am, but I am dedicated to making sure that anger doesn’t just sit within me, that it is directed to moving my community and my country forward.”

For Brown, who is majoring in policy analysis at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, that means working to create systemic change. “I want to collaborate with programs that promote the culture of Black people,” she says. “Specifically, I want to create content that helps educate and build grassroots social justice movements in collaboration with programs that work to protect Black and brown communities.” —Carmen Siering

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BL ACK WOMEN OF BLOOMINGTON

Tamara Brown

Beverly Calender-Anderson. Courtesy photo

D I R EC T O R , B LO O M I N G T O N C O M M U N I T Y A N D FA M I LY R E S O U R C E S D E PA R T ME N T Beverly Calender-Anderson is effusive when discussing the election of Vice President Kamala Harris. “Not only is she smart and totally qualified to be vice president and president, but she wears Chucks,” Calender-Anderson says of Harris’ penchant for wearing Converse sneakers.

More importantly, Calender-Anderson sees Harris’ election as a uniting force for the country. “All of her identities are being recognized—as a woman of color, a woman of Asian descent,” she says. “We’re all made up of many identities, so as she honors her Asian side and her HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] side, it just normalizes who we are as Americans.”

While many people have pointed out how important Harris’ election is for young people of color, Calender-Anderson sees it as greater than that. “It’s not only important for young Black and Latino and Asian children to see people who look like them in positions of power, it’s also important for young white kids to see Black and Latino and Asian people in those positions,” she points out.

Calender-Anderson, 66, moved to Bloomington in 1997 with her husband, the Rev. Michael Anderson, who died in 2002. She started working for the City in 2005 as the Safe and Civil City director in the Bloomington Community and Family Resources Department. She’s served as the department’s director for the past five years. She says her goal, in her work and her life, is to unite people.

“The thing that brings me joy is watching people come together who may have diverse missions, but they all have some commonality,” Calender-Anderson says. “Getting people to the table to talk about how they can work together—I always try to do that.”

In 1998, that goal led Calender-Anderson to become one of the founders of Bloomington United, an anti-hate, pro-unity group. She also works, formally and informally, to promote greater understanding among people of different faiths, races, and cultures.

“I don’t understand prejudice,” she says. “I don’t know how someone can look at a person and, because of the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes or their accent, dehumanize them. I’ve tried to get into that mindset and I can’t. I guess that’s why I’ve spent so much of my career doing what I do, because it doesn’t make sense to me.” —Carmen Siering

112 Bloom | February/March 2021 | magbloom.com

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All the planning had to be done long distance, but that was easier than expected.

DeJohn had worked for Indiana Memorial Union catering, so the food decision was a no-brainer. The couple worked with then-IMU Executive Chef Thomas Berinati on a menu that could be grilled outdoors.

“We added our own flair to the presentation,” says Berinati, with touches like an artichoke aioli for the New York strip steaks and baby pearl potatoes.

—Julie Gray

Following their wedding in 2015, Michal and DeJohn returned to New Yo r k C i t y. T h e r e , they welcomed t h e i r d a u g h t e r, N i l i , o n M o t h e r ’s Day 2018. Michal is now a stay-athome mother to Nili, 2, who “loves ballet, horses, and building towers.”

DeJohn works in menswear sales and eCommerce. e Bloom

A WEDDING FIT FOR A

Hoosier Hero AND HIS BRIDE

Photography by Hudson Photography

JORDAN + AUBREY

He

is one of the most popular basketball players

Bloomington has ever produced, but it took a little help for Jordan Hulls to get the girl. “Indiana Mr. Basketball” 2009 and a four-year standout with the Indiana University Hoosiers, Jordan met Evansville, Indiana, native Aubrey Wathen at IU where their paths crossed in the School of Public Health. But that was about it until Jordan’s teammate Derek Elston and best friend Caleb Konstanksi intervened.

Aubrey worked at Opie Taylor’s, one of Jordan’s favorite eateries. One day in early 2013, Jordan, Derek, Caleb, and a few other friends stopped in for a bite. When the group left, Aubrey saw a phone number and the words “call me maybe” on the back of Jordan’s receipt.

“I thought he had written it, but I found out later Jordan had no idea,” Aubrey says.

“It was Derek and Caleb.” Aubrey decided to take a chance, texting Jordan a few days later. Texting led to talking. “And we’ve been talking ever since,” Jordan says with a smile.

“We did everything together for five or six months straight,” Jordan says. “I knew it was good when I was with her all the time and we never got tired of being together.”

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(above) Aubrey and Jordan chose a traditional mass for their ceremony at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church. (opposite page) The reception at Henke Hall of Champions at Indiana Memorial Stadium.

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In July 2013, Jordan and Aubrey took a trip to Chicago with friends Todd and Shelley Bontrager. “We did the tourist thing—Navy Pier, the boat tour, the Ferris wheel—and I knew Aubrey had no idea what was coming,” Jordan says. The last stop was Skydeck Chicago at Willis Tower. The Bontragers had been taking photos all day. “I said ‘Let’s take one more picture,’ and when Aubrey turned around, I was down on one knee,” Jordan says. He knew he had surprised her when she didn’t really say yes. “She just kept asking, ‘Are you sure?’” he says, laughing.

Wedding plans started immediately because Jordan was leaving in August to play basketball in Poland. The wedding date was largely based on the availability of the only place they wanted to hold their reception—Henke Hall of Champions in Indiana Memorial Stadium—and Jordan’s schedule.

Aubrey, now a nurse, did most of the 23 1/2 months of planning. Their June 27, 2015, ceremony was at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, where Aubrey carried her grandfather’s handkerchief as the “something old” added to her bouquet. “We’d both lost our grandparents in October 2014, so we tried to find little ways to pay tribute to them,” she says.

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(top left) A happy sendoff after the ceremony. (top right) Aubrey’s bouquet from White Orchid Distinctive Floral Studio included lisianthus, spider mums, and sweet peas. (above, left) This photo of Jordan with his groomsmen and ushers in their candy-striped warmup pants was an internet sensation, going viral in the days following the wedding. (above, right) Stealing a kiss.

Jordan and Aubrey more recently with sons Jackson (standing) and Leo. They have since added daughter Margaret to their family. Courtesy photo

Zeta Tau Alpha sorority was a big part of college life for Aubrey, and her sorority sisters were a big part of her wedding day; four of her eight bridesmaids and maid of honor Morgan Momcilovich were in her pledge class. Jordan’s IU teammates were well-represented, too, with teammates Derek Elston, Cody Zeller, and Christian Watford serving as groomsmen, and Will Sheehey and Victor Oladipo ushering.

Older brother Jay had best-man duties—on his own anniversary. Jordan had been Jay’s best man six years earlier to the day.

The reception was a fun affair, with groomsmen changing into Hoosier candystriped warmup pants to complement their formal shirts and jackets. And food was abundant. “We had a buffet,” Jordan says. “We wanted to make sure the guys got enough food. They eat a lot.” The wedding cake was from Sugar Coated Cakery, which also provided cupcakes and a groom’s cake in the shape of Assembly Hall. And just in case anyone was still hungry, the Big Cheeze food truck showed up for a latenight snack.

After a sparkler sendoff, the two spent a week in St. Lucia before heading to Belgium where Jordan played basketball. They say their wedding was everything they hoped it would be. “It’s all kind of a blur, because there was a lot going on,” Aubrey says. “But in a good way. We were just so in the moment.” —Carmen Siering

Jordan and Aubrey are currently living in Ludwigsburg, G e r m a n y, w i t h t h e i r t h r e e c h i l d r e n : J a c k s o n , 4 , L e o , 2 , a n d newborn Margaret. Jordan currently plays on MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg basketball team, which has so far had a s u c c e s s f u l s e a s o n . T h i s i s J o r d a n ’s e i g h t h s e a s o n p l a y i n g in Europe. e Bloom

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JOURDAN + SARAH

One cold

, snowy day in January 2014 , Jourdan Eastling asked Sarah Hugus if

(opposite page) Jourdan Eastling (left) and Sarah Hugus share a quiet moment before their ceremony. (top) Sarah and Jourdan Hugus celebrate with friends and family as they walk up the aisle. Until same-sex marriage was legalized in October 2014, the couple had planned to have a commitment ceremony, making their wedding day especially sweet. (above) A kiss seals their union as Sarah’s uncle and officiant Ron Wohrle looks on.

she wanted to drive to Lake Monroe and have a picnic on the wintery beach. Enjoying a glass of wine, Sarah turned to find Jourdan on one knee, proposing that they spend the rest of their lives together. Sarah never saw it coming. “I thought she was kidding!” the 25-year old Indianapolis native says. As disbelief gave way to delight, Sarah said “yes.”

Jourdan, also 25 and a native of Lowell, Indiana, met Sarah in 2010 when the two Indiana University students joined the women’s rugby team. As teammates, they were slow to warm up to one another, but eventually became close friends. In 2011, friendship turned into something more.

“That first year, it took us awhile to get to know each other,” Sarah says. “But after our sophomore year, none of our other friends stayed through the summer. Just Jourdan and me, and that’s when it started to happen.”

“That’s when we started to fall in love,” Jourdan finishes.

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On that snowy day in January when Jourdan proposed, same-sex couples couldn’t marry in Indiana. So rather than planning an elaborate ceremony spilling with tradition, together they planned a party that concentrated on celebrating their commitment and love.

As winter melted into spring, the U.S. District Court declared Indiana’s same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision, and same-sex marriage became legal in Indiana on October 6, 2014.

All of a sudden, the couple was no longer planning just a party to celebrate their commitment. Now they had an actual wedding to plan, something that was equally exhilarating and exhausting. Fortunately for Jourdan and Sarah, loving friends and family helped by lending hands whenever possible.

Sarah’s mother coordinated the taco bar dinner menu details with Terry’s Catering.

The couple asked Bloomin’ Tons Floral Co. to add subtle floral accents to complement the natural look and feel of the Clubhouse at The Fields, where the wedding and reception

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(above, left) It was the perfect autumn day for a photo under the Sample Gates. (top, right) Jourdan with her parents, Grant and Tracie Eastling. (above, right) Sarah's parents, Steve Hugus and Bobi Eastman, accompanied her down the aisle.

Sarah and Jourdan share their first dance at the reception, held at The Clubhouse at The Fields.

took place. The cake was from Rainbow Bakery. And everything was captured in photos by Katy Lengacher of Icarus Photography.

Sarah was accompanied down the aisle by her mother, Bobi Eastman, and her father, Steve Hugus.

Jourdan’s parents, Grant and Tracie Eastling, walked with her. Both women chose to have a sibling by her side: Sarah’s sister, Sam Hugus, served as her maid of honor, while Jourdan’s brother, Grant Eastling Jr., served as her “best man of honor.”

The couple asked Sarah’s uncle Ron Wohrle to officiate. “He’s not a minister, but he’s also gay, and we have a very special relationship with him,” Jourdan says. “We’re not religious, so we wanted someone we love and are close to to marry us, and Ron was the perfect fit.” He was ordained through the Universal Life Church especially for the occasion.

Wedding guests were encouraged to dress in whatever pleased them. “We just wanted people to be comfortable and happy,” Sarah says.

Looking back, Sarah and Jourdan recall how much love they felt that day from their guests.

“It wasn’t a normal, traditional wedding in any sense, except for the fact that we were actually allowed and able to celebrate our love with marriage,” Jourdan says.

—Sara Sheikh

Since their wedding in 2015, Sarah and Jourdan moved to Indianapolis, where Sarah now works as a physical therapist at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital and Jourdan works as an information security analyst. The pair enjoys spending time in nature and traveling, and regularly return to Bloomington to visit. e

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M I K E + N ATA S C H A

Mike

Jacob admits that he’s not a particularly romantic guy. So it’s no surprise that his marriage proposal to Natascha Buehnerkemper was unconventional. “Getting on a knee—that’s not me,” he says. Yet their wedding was hauntingly beautiful and quixotic.

Natascha, 33, and Mike, 32, met as co-workers at Bloomingfoods. Theirs was a low-key courtship. Their first date was an evening at Kilroy’s with a few of Mike’s friends. But as they spent time together, they realized they were a good match. “It started off as just fun, but then we got along really well, continued to hang out, and got more serious,” Natascha says.

In October 2015, the two were having dinner at El Ranchero when Mike mentioned a recent dream he’d had. Natascha remembers, “Out of nowhere, he said, ‘I had a dream the other night that we were getting married, and it just made sense. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that. So will you marry me?’”

After getting over her initial shock, Natascha said “yes,” and the couple went back to eating dinner. “It was very low key and very true to us,” Natascha says.

From the beginning, Natascha and Mike had a specific vision for their wedding, and they enlisted Lucee Blue Events to help them bring that vision to life in The Clubhouse at The Fields. To evoke the moody feel they wanted, they used a color palette of deep jewel tones with black accents. Bloomin’ Tons Floral Co. created lush arrangements that featured dark red and peach roses, succulents, and eucalyptus.

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(top) Natascha and Mike had matching notebooks where they wrote their wedding vows. (above) The couple wanted to share their love with family and friends, and did so with a special unity candle ceremony that included everyone in attendance. (opposite page) Natascha’s dress was a custom-made top and skirt created by Liby Ball of Bloomington Stitchery.

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Natascha’s wedding-day attire was a custom-made top and skirt created

by Liby Ball of Bloomington Stitchery. One side of the reversible velvet skirt matched the pale gold top, while the other was deep red. The ensemble included a velvet cape in emerald green with black sequined epaulettes.

The wedding took place on November 19, 2016. That morning, photographer Laura Von took photos of the wedding party at Woolery Mill.

“I finally saw her dress and how beautiful she looked,” Mike says. “I was holding back tears, that’s for sure.” Adds Natascha, “It was total happiness.”

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(top) The wedding party—and more. (above, left) The couple wrote their own vows for the ceremony, which was officiated by their friend Ryan Boyce. Natascha’s godmother, Christy Buehnerkemper Elder, was maid of honor. Mike’s friend Stephen Maynard served as best man. (above, right) A quick kiss during the reception.

A DESTINATION WEDDING & HONEYMOON SPECIALIST

The four-tier naked red velvet cake with dark red and peach roses.

The couple’s friend Ryan Boyce officiated the ceremony, for which they wrote their own vows. Christy Buehnerkemper Elder, Natascha’s godmother, was her maid of honor, and Mike’s close friend Stephen Maynard was his best man.

The ceremony also included a twist on the traditional unity candle ritual. Before the ceremony, each person received a black taper. The couple’s parents lit the main candle, from which Natascha and Mike lit their candles. They in turn lit the bridal party’s candles, and the bridal party lit the guests’ candles. Bathed in soft candlelight, the pair exchanged rings.

At the reception, guests dined on barbecued pork and macaroni and cheese from Carson’s BBQ & Catering. The cake, from Icing on the Cake by Kristina, was a four-tier naked red velvet decorated with dark red and peach roses.

Dave Walter served as the DJ, spinning 90s R&B and hip-hop tunes. At the end of the reception, a

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school bus transported everyone to The Atlas Bar, where the celebration continued.

The couple honeymooned in Southeast Asia for three weeks. They visited Mike’s extended family in Malaysia, where they held a second wedding reception, and also traveled to Brunei.

When Natascha and Mike reflect on their wedding, they agree that the best part was being surrounded by family and friends. “The thing that sticks out to me is how incredible it was to have all those people in one place celebrating us—this total feeling of being enveloped by love,” Natascha says.

—Molly Brush

Natascha and Mike are in the process of renovating their home in Smithville, which they purchased in 2018.

Mike continues to prepare food for Bloomingfoods and Natascha, who e a r n e d h e r B . F. A . in graphic design, has launched an independent design studio called Rhizome Design Co. e

(right) Black linens and greenery, with plenty of candles, made for a cozy November evening.

Bloom

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Monroe Convention Center A Full-Service Wedding Venue

cake delivery. She provides a list of vendors when couples don’t know where to start. “When something isn’t happening on the timeline we’ve created, we step in and do our part to make sure that it gets done. We really want it to be flawless.”

LaMarca adds, “Even during the era of COVID, we have been able to have a few smaller wedding receptions here with every health measure completely in place.”

Megan Abbott, who had her pandemic-friendly wedding reception at the convention center in June 2020, said that having LaMarca’s help made all the difference for their special day. “During the entire planning process, Lisa kept us informed and was so patient with us as we asked questions and clarified what needed to happen to make sure we, our guests, and the staff were all kept safe,” she says. “If I needed anything, someone was there.”

Newlyweds Megan Abbott and Garrison DeMoss. Photo by Rebecca Tabor / Bex Photography With its proximity to downtown, Monroe Convention Center is often selected because of its When a bride first approaches Monroe Convention Center location to restaurants, shops, nightlife, and wedding weekend Sales Manager Jean Kautt, she often arrives with a guest count activities. “Many of our couples are IU alumni, so being close to and a lot of questions. Kautt takes couples on a tour of the their favorite places from college days means they can share the 24,000-square-foot event space that can accommodate 10 to experience with friends and family,” LaMarca says. “Being near the 350 guests, explains all the amenities included in the room rental, B-Line Trail and having the connected Courtyard by Marriott hotel helps them select their space, and reassures them that they are are added bonuses, and the convention center is an easy stroll to not alone in the process. seven other nearby hotels and inns.”

“Couples feel like they have to come to us with every decision Ultimately, LaMarca, Kautt and the convention center staff want already made,” says Kautt. “Our events manager, Lisa LaMarca, to ensure that every bride and groom’s special day is memorable. has experience and a checklist to guide them through their “We take the worry out of the wedding,” Jean says. options and help them set the tone for the whole event. We are For more information, visit bloomingtonconvention.com or call not going to let them forget anything. We love to see the relief on 812-336-3681. —Linda Margison their faces after they meet with Lisa.”

Kautt adds that couples are often surprised to learn all that is included with the room rental—tables, chairs, linens, dishes and flatware, setup and teardown, and a complimentary rehearsal and bridal room if the ceremony is held at the convention center, as well. Add-on features include a stage for the ceremony, dance floor, bar service, and more. Most couples opt to bring their own wedding cake.

With in-house catering, LaMarca schedules a complimentary tasting so the couple is able to bring their parents and sample the menu they’re considering. “Our catering has received great reviews, and there’s a lot to choose from,” Kautt says.

“It’s fun to see all their plans come to fruition,” LaMarca adds, explaining that she creates a timeline for all the wedding details, including decor setup, DJ arrival, photographer setup, and Jean Kautt, sales manager.

Lisa LaMarca, events manager.

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