Bloom Magazine 89

Celebrating Life in Bloomington

April/May 2021

The

KidThe Who Loved Boy Who Loved

BOOKS Is Now BOOKS A Literary Star Is Now A Bestselling Author

Author Michael Koryta in his Bloomington writing studio.

Photo by Jim Krause

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Bloom

April/May21 Vol.16 No.2

features

58

58

The Boy Who Loved Books Is Now a Bestselling Author

Bloomington’s Michael Koryta published his first novel at age 20. In the 18 years since, he has published 15 more, and the first motion picture based on one of his books— starring Angelina Jolie—will be released in May. Here is his story.

By Tracy Zollinger Turner, photography by Jim Krause

The Photographers of ‘Bloom Magazine’

Bloom Photographers

Editor’s Message

7

GoFundMe Donors

8

Contributors

9

Letters

10

Up Front

12

Our Town

BOOKS Is Now A Literary Star

Thousands of photos have been taken for Bloom over the past 15 years by a multitude of talented photographers. While versatile, each has preferences for the kind of work that they love to do. Meet nine who are currently photographing for the magazine and see some of their personal favorite images.

Survival

A renowned jazz instrumentalist, an educator and advocate of confronting racism, and a dedicated sportswriter are Bloomingtonians worth knowing.

16 Arts/Entertainment

Visit with an artist whose canvas is quilts, and a B-town company is producing a documentary about football legend and activist George Taliaferro.

24 Food/Drink

Fine dining is coming to the Elm Heights neighborhood, and third-generation owners have revived a historic Brown County eatery.

4 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

magbloom.com

Michael Koryta. Photo by Jim Krause

departments 6

Kid Who Loved

|

66

April/May 2021

The

NOVELIST MICHAEL KORYTA

66

Celebrating Life in Bloomington

30 Fashion/Shopping

Spring fashions at ALIBI, and the pandemic has prompted a renewed interest in board games.

34 Science/Education

Bloomington’s famous brain scientist has a new book coming out, and learn how to prepare yourself for this spring’s cicada invasion!

40 Health/Fitness

The new hospital remains on-track to open later this year, and an Indiana University initiative is battling child sexual exploitation.

46 Business/Finance

Three local startups get investment funding for their businesses, and a legendary local inn struggles to survive the pandemic.

50 Community

The Monroe County Public Library releases its plan for the immediate future, and the City has decided what to do with the West 2nd Street hospital site.

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editor’s message

Survival This is the 89th edition of Bloom Magazine and the thinnest issue ever—even smaller than the first issue published in August 2006. But we are still here, and we hope to be for years to come.

For Bloom, for other local small businesses, and for people generally, the past year has been about survival.

And if you happen to be over 70 with a preexisting condition, it has really been about survival.

Being one of those septuagenarians, I briefly considered retirement, or, at the very least, shutting down the magazine temporarily and staying home until the threat passed and the economy recovered. But I didn’t want to.

I love making the magazine, working with my colleagues, and interacting with writers, photographers, advertisers, suppliers, and readers. I have a terrific staff that I did not want to let go because they are nice, hardworking people, and because, selfishly, if I were to restart the magazine, I might not be able to get them back.

We all know the hardships this business community has endured. No Indiana University in-person graduation, football, or basketball games left hotels and restaurants empty at what would normally be their busiest and most lucrative times. Retail establishments were closed, then reopened partially but with far fewer customers. Some very fine businesses shut their doors forever.

For Bloom, it has meant blow after blow as advertisers fell away.

6 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

Survival. Bloom applied for and received two government Paycheck Protection Program grants that helped enormously, and a couple of small grants as well.

We cut costs by repurposing editorial content from the past 14-plus years and finding other ways to save. We made the magazines smaller.

And we launched a GoFundMe campaign. Although we were reluctant to ask for help in this way, it was apparent the economic pain was going to last for quite a while and that we needed to be prepared for a long haul. Several readers made us feel better about the ask, noting we had been serving the community with a free bimonthly magazine for more than 14 years.

We are so grateful to all who have contributed. The response has been phenomenal. People have donated online, many have mailed us checks, and some have come by the office, cash in hand. In all, more than 300 readers have contributed. Thank you.

We are also grateful to all the advertisers who have stuck by us through thick and thin over the years. We could never have published one issue without you, nevermind 89.

Stay safe everyone. The vaccines are here, but the crisis is not over.

Malcolm Abrams editor@magbloom.com

Thank You All

For Contributing to Our GoFundMe, “Keep Bloom Magazine Alive.”

If you would like to contribute, please visit magbloom.com/donate. $1,000+ >> Christine Barbour >> Anonymous

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contributors

Bloom AprilMay21 Vol.16 No.2

Editor & Publisher Malcolm Abrams

Tracy Zollinger Turner WRITER: MICHAEL KORYTA— THE BOY WHO LOVED BOOKS IS NOW A BESTSELLING AUTHOR

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.

Jim Krause PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL KORYTA— THE BOY WHO LOVED BOOKS IS NOW A BESTSELLING

Jim is a photographer, 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.

AUTHOR

Susan M. Brackney WRITER: NEW IU HOSPITAL PLAN STILL ON TRACK DESPITE PANDEMIC A professional writer since 1995, Susan has written for Boy Scouts, stoners, interventional radiologists, would-be beekeepers, depressives, the 1%, and many others. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Discover, Organic Gardening, Hobby Farms, and Indianapolis Monthly. She is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Planet (Perigree Books).

Janet Mandelstam WRITER: WHAT’S TO BECOME OF THE Janet has been a Bloom contributor since the very first issue. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor, she worked at The Detroit News and The Philadelphia Inquirer before becoming the communications director at two nonprofit organizations.

OLD HOSPITAL SITE?

Managing Editor Rodney Margison

Associate Publisher Cassaundra Huskey

Deputy Editor Sophie Bird

Design Director Stephanie Reeves (Spectrum Creative Group)

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 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 48 and 49 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.

8 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

letters I just sent a $100 contribution for your GoFundMe initiative to support the magazine, which I consider a treasure of the town we’ve called home (almost exclusively) since 1973 when I came for grad school and my wife for law school.

After a few years of working in Greenwich, Connecticut, my wife convinced me to move back here and we’ve never regretted the decision.

Please consider my contribution a nod to the respect I have for what you and your staff have done over the years to contribute to this community we both love.

RON AND FRONA POWELL

Just wanted to let you know how incredibly well done I found the article on Black women in the latest issue of Bloom. I was so

impressed by the writing, the photos, and the big-city feel, that I forwarded the article to a Black woman in New York we are trying to recruit to Bloomington.

If its sheer beauty were not enough, in Bloomington there are few public pictures of Black women that little Black girls like [daughter] Ella need.

Thank you so much for you having set such high standards.

So dope to see Bloom Magazine feature the stories of Black Women of Bloomington: Recognizing Their Accomplishments & Contributions! What a great way to celebrate Black History Month—I hope we continue to honor these amazing women all year long!

Also, on the cover (say her name!): Maqubè Reese, whose passion and energy for community is unmatched. Congrats on the recognition, sis—your work and service speak for themself!

LATOSHA WILLIAMS (via Facebook)

Was delighted to see the Black History Month piece celebrating some remarkable local Black women. Why, though, was it at the back of the bus, so to speak: at the very end of the magazine?

REBECCA MANRING

Seriously?!

—the editor

JEANNINE BELL

I am South Asian American and a huge supporter of the magazine and your bold stance to call out Trump. When I read the current issue, I got teary eyed reading about the amazing African American women you chose to highlight. I have never seen something like that in any media ever before. For a small magazine in a small city, you sure lead the way. Thank you. And yes, I will continue to subscribe even after my son graduates from IU next year.

AMER YAQUB

Come on in!

Jeannine Bell’s father, John, and daughter, Ella, reading the February/March 2021 issue of Bloom. Courtesy photo

The team at Bloom Magazine would like to recognize the Bloomington Arts Commission (BAC) and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association (BUEA) and its Zone Arts Grant Program for funds provided by the 2021 Recover Forward Program Grants for the Black Women of Bloomington feature in the February/March issue and online at magbloom.com.

Did you know we are open and that our exhibits are FREE? We have been working hard to create a safe and fun art viewing experience for the community.

We hope to see you soon.

Visit thefar.org/events to learn about current exhibits and viewing hours. thefar.org 812.336.0000

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 9

up front

Edited by Rodney Margison

IU’s Serve IT Clinic to Be Named for Laurie McRobbie In 2011, Indiana University first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie helped found the Serve IT service-learning clinic.

Now, 10 years later, that program will bear her name. Thanks to an endowment from Deb Allmayer, who is a charter and current member of the Serve IT advisory board, and James Williams, the clinic will be known as the Laurie Burns McRobbie Serve IT Clinic.

For more information, visit serveit.sitehost.iu.edu.

Laurie Burns McRobbie.

Photo by Shannon Zahnle

Ross Gay is PEN America Literary Award Finalist, Releases Album

Ross Gay. Photo by Jeff Richardson

Be Holding: A Poem (University of Pittsburgh Press), written by Bloomington poet Ross Gay, is a finalist for the 2021 PEN America PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. The book-length poem is described as “a love song” to legendary basketball player Julius Erving.

In March, Bloomington independent music label JagJaguwar digitally released Dilate Your Heart, a five-track, spokenword album by Gay in collaboration with musical artists Bon Iver, Mary Lattimore, Angel Bat Dawid, Gia Margaret, and Sam Gendel. The album releases physically on April 9.

City Honors Artist Joel Washington as Living Legend Artist Joel Washington was presented the City of Bloomington Living Legend Award at the City’s 17th annual Black History Month Gala in February. The self-taught artist’s boldly colorful paintings—many of them portraits of famous jazz and rock musicians—can be found throughout the community in galleries, restaurants, and departments across Indiana University, as well as at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis. Eight of his paintings were featured at the Parallax Art Fair in London, England, in 2018.

Joel Washington.

Photo by Jeff Richardson

10 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

IN MEMORIAM

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

Janet Arthur 1948–2021

Janet Arthur, 73, passed away on January 31, 2021, after a battle with COVID-19.

“For those fortunate enough to have known her, you will lovingly agree that Mom never met a stranger,” says her daughter, Jolene. “You could be standing in line anywhere, waiting, and by the time you were done you would know her life story and she would know yours as well. If you were lucky enough to run into her later, she would ask how you were and how your family members were, calling them by name.”

Janet was born in Union City, Indiana, on January 22, 1948, to the late Richard and Mary (Riley) Addington.

For nearly 40 years, she worked at Bloomington Hospital, where she filled a variety of positions, including as a certified nursing assistant, as materials coordinator, and in the medical records department. Beginning in 1977, Janet also worked part time as a tax preparer.

“She charged next to nothing,” says Jolene. “Mostly, that was her way of catching up with her yearly friends.”

At the time of her death, Janet served as administrative assistant at Bloom Magazine, where her generous demeanor and easy way with people made her an essential part of the Bloom team.

“She was so proud to be part of the Bloom staff,” says Jolene. “She so loved working with everyone there.”

And the feeling was mutual. “We all loved Janet,” says Malcolm Abrams, Bloom editor and publisher. “She was smart, energetic, hard-working, and fun to be around.”

Janet’s love of people kept her busy. An avid Indiana University sports fan, she worked as an usher for both football and men’s basketball games, which afforded her an excellent view of the game and the opportunity to meet new people. And for 35 years, she organized a local bowling league, which met every Monday night for most of the year.

A long-time member of Clear Creek Christian Church, Janet sang in the choir and was an active participant in the Walk to Emmaus—an annual three-day experience of Christian spiritual renewal.

An involved and loving grandmother, Janet was a regular attendee at her grandchildren’s sporting and school events. She frequently joined her family for game nights and loved Sudoku puzzles.

“Mom was quick and easy to forgive and had a bigger heart than most,” says Jolene. “She always saw the best in people. She was energetic and lived a life full of love and laughter.”

Janet is survived by her sons, Jeffrey (Nanci) Carpenter and Jeremy (Kari Fidler) Carpenter; her daughter, Jolene (Marty) Dixon; her grandchildren, Tyler and Jake Dixon, Jeremy Daab, Shawna Zack, and Jade Dawes; one sister, Joyce (Jeff) Tharp; and two brothers, Dick (Deb) Addington and Clint (Jalean) Addington.

“It would be impossible to summarize her beautiful life,” says Jolene.

“There are so many stories to share: the friends she made, the experiences she had, the full life she lived. She truly loved people and all life had to offer.”

FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS

Janet Arthur (front row, right) and her family after completing an escape room in Indianapolis. Courtesy photo

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

Michelle Moyd Historian

by Carmen Siering Before she moved to Bloomington in 2008, Michelle Moyd, the Ruth N. Halls associate professor in the Indiana University Department of History and the associate director of the IU Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society, moved around. A lot.

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

12 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

Michelle Moyd. Photo by Martin Boling

Moyd’s father was in the Air Force and his family followed him wherever he was stationed. “Japan, North Dakota, Idaho,” Moyd says. “We lived in Germany two separate times in two separate places.

That’s where I graduated from high school, and then I came to the States to go to college.”

She attended Princeton University through the Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, which led directly to a career in the Air Force.

“That was my reality at age 18,” Moyd says. “I got an ROTC scholarship and that’s what I did. It wasn’t until quite a bit later that I came to understand what else I might be able to do.”

Moyd, 53, served in the Air Force from 1991 to 2000, initially as an intelligence officer. In the mid-90s, she was recruited to teach African history and sent to the University of Florida to earn her master’s degree. “I enjoyed it so much that as soon as I got out of the Air Force, I went to graduate school to get my doctorate,” Moyd says.

She went on to earn a second master’s and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2008.

Upon graduating, she came to IU, where she teaches courses on African history and

other, more specialized courses on topics such as the history of humanitarianism and soldiering and warfare.

She lives here with her husband, Scot Wright, an academic advisor for the Groups Scholars Program at IU and owner of The Bike Shop. They have two daughters, ages 25 and 7.

Following the death of George Floyd and the surge in Black Lives Matter protests, Moyd helped organize a summer series of virtual panels at IU called “Confronting Racism: Conversations on Systemic Racism and Protest.”

“It was very public facing and meant to help people think about what was going on last summer in the ways that researchers do,” Moyd says.

For that and other work, Moyd was recognized with the 2021 Building Bridges Award for the IU Bloomington campus. The award is given to those who embody the spirit, vision, and leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Moyd is currently teaching, researching, and writing. Her next book, Africa, Africans, and the First World War, is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

*

Monika Herzig Jazz Musician & Educator

by Craig Coley Jazz has always welcomed female vocalists, but instrumentalists like Monika Herzig struggle for recognition. “Advocacy was built in from the beginning of my career,” says Herzig, a pianist who grew up in Germany. “I’m far away from anything you traditionally imagine a real jazz player is.”

Now that she is an award-winning recording artist, author, scholar, and lecturer, Herzig, 56, is in a position to advocate for women. Her all-female ensemble, Sheroes, has recorded three albums, and she is currently co-editing a book titled Jazz and Gender (Routledge), which will be published in 2022.

Herzig started on piano at age 10 and discovered jazz when guitarist Peter Kienle—now her husband—invited her to join his jazz fusion band, Bubblegun, in their hometown of Albstadt, Germany. “What fascinated me about jazz was every time you play you get to experiment and come up with something new,” Herzig says.

Raised in a family of teachers, Herzig was studying to become one herself when she won a scholarship for a one-year exchange program at the University of Alabama. Kienle joined her. “We thought we were coming to the land of jazz, where everybody loves jazz and plays it from morning till night,” Herzig says.

“Then we realized it’s a very small percentage that actually even likes it.” They stayed nonetheless, and Herzig earned a master’s degree in music education from the University of Alabama.

In 1991, the couple moved to Bloomington, where Herzig began work on the Ph.D. in music education she would earn from Indiana University in 1997. Their band, BeebleBrox, recorded eight albums and opened for artists such as Santana, Yes, and Sting. Then parenthood pushed the couple to pursue separate music projects.

Since 2005, Herzig has been a lecturer in IU’s Arts Administration department while maintaining a steady output of recordings and research. IU Press published David Baker: A Legacy in Music in 2011, and Rowman & Littlefield released Chick Corea: A Listener’s Companion in 2017. Herzig founded the Jazz Education Network’s research committee and edits the committee’s journal. Last summer, she began an interview program on YouTube called Talking Jazz.

Since 1996, Sundays have found her playing organ for the First United Methodist Church in Ellettsville, Indiana.

Kienle is a makerspace technician at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. Their son Zackary, 21, is finishing circus school in Philadelphia. Daughter Jasmin, 19, is a freshman at IU.

Monika Herzig. Photo by Jim Krause

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 13

Jeremy Price Sportswriter

by Peter Dorfman During the 19 years that The Herald-Times reporter Jeremy Price has covered Bloomington sports, he’s chronicled the ups and downs of high school and college athletics and seen his share of upheavals at the paper—changes in staff, ownership, and the profession of journalism. “I’ve seen the changes of just about everything by now,” he says.

Price, 46, grew up in High Point, North Carolina, and studied journalism at Asbury College near Lexington, Kentucky. He joined The Herald-Times in May 2000, originally as a paginator—a junior editor. “We would pull in wire service content, write headlines, put in pictures, Jeremy Price. Photo by Martin Boling and proof the pages,” he recalls. “I was on the desk that Sunday night in the fall of 2000 when [Indiana University men’s basketball coach] Bobby Knight got fired. Usually Sunday nights were quiet, but that night was anything but.”

Price got his first writing break about a year later. “We needed help with high school soccer sectionals,” Price says. “I’d coached high school soccer for a couple of years, so I volunteered.”

Gradually, he branched out, contributing to special tabloid sections on IU basketball. In 2008, he began writing full time, with a focus on IU soccer, high school girls’ basketball, and, eventually, IU women’s basketball.

In 2012, he got his shot at a column providing original perspectives. Price now writes columns on IU football and men’s basketball, while continuing to report on IU and high school sports.

When sports shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff treaded water. Price wrote about IU’s new athletic director, about social unrest, and even about online virtual sports. “We had to be inventive,” he says. “We had pressure to stay relevant.”

During the summer, the staff was furloughed one week per month for three months. “We caught up on the back stories, how people were dealing with canceled seasons,” Price says. “We did stories on all the seniors, to give them some of the spotlight they weren’t going to get on the field or the court.”

Price lives in Bloomington with his wife and daughter, a sophomore—and softball player—at Bloomington High School South.

He credits local high school coaches and athletic directors as unsung heroes for improvising ways to salvage the sports experience during the pandemic. “They deserve a lot of credit for figuring out how it could work.”

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 15

arts/entertainment

Artist Carol Bridges Maker of Life-Affirming Quilts Carol Bridges invites fellow travelers on “a spiritual journey along the artist’s path.” Through her quilts—which look like tapestries and are often embellished with embroidery and beads—and the classes and workshops she teaches, Bridges says, “I want my work to uplift people’s spirits.”

The Brown County artist’s Enchanted Landscape and Healing quilts are often inspired by the practice of living in harmony with nature. She speaks of the healing quilts as “making a prayer rather than saying a prayer.”

“Quilts can wrap your soul in comfort every time you gaze upon them,” Bridges says.

The artist, 78, teaches classes and workshops that blend creativity and

(opposite page, bottom) Artist Carol Bridges; (this page and opposite page) A sampling of the artist’s work.

Photos by Nicole McPheeters

16 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

spirituality. These sessions regularly begin with meditation, a daily practice for Bridges.

Then, she often has participants create collages, an exercise that she says, “brings out hidden aspects of your soul.”

“I ask them to imagine their future and make a collage of that,” Bridges says. “It just takes magazines and scissors. Everyone can do some kind of art.”

Bridges’ facility with needle and thread began early. “My mother and grandmother did a lot of sewing,” she says. Bridges produced a clothing line in the 1970s and, for a while, painted in oil. “Then I went back to cloth.”

Her quilts are available on her website, artquiltswithsoul.com, and on commission.

Bridges says that gratitude is essential to all of her work. “I say ‘thank you’ all day long—for life.” —Janet Mandelstam

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 17

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The Elder Music Recording Project To Improve Well-Being of Oldsters

by Paul Bickley Jon Kay remembers reading a 2015 Gallup report that ranked Indiana 46th in the overall well-being of its elders.

“That’s horrible,” says the Indiana University professor of folklore and ethnomusicology. “I thought if we could just nudge people toward creative practices, we might be able to do something about that terrible statistic.”

Since 2015, Kay, 54, has written a book and edited another about elders and the folk arts they produce. The Stone Head, Indiana, native recently won a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, which will be matched by IU, for his Elder Music Recording Project.

For the project, Traditional Arts Indiana, a program directed by Kay that resides within IU’s Arts and Humanities Council, will record musicians and singers performing several genres of traditional music, including African American gospel, old-time country, German waltzes, German American polka, and Mennonite shape-note singing.

Each genre will be recorded in a part of the state where it enjoys historical and social significance, and 1,000 CDs will be pressed for each recording.

Traditional Arts Indiana will host CD release parties in the communities where the recordings take place. The first CD will be available in April; all of them by next year.

Though Kay has not identified most of the performers yet, he says that one or two will represent each genre and that he hopes to include Bloomington musicians and producers.

“The musicians play in church or community jams, so they’re known in their communities but not outside them.

I want to give them a boost,” he says.

Kay also wants the project to do something special for the elderly listeners of the CDs. Some of the funding has been used to pay music therapists to write individual and group therapy practices for elders and their caregivers,

which include visualization, memory, and reflection exercises and conversation topics to be included in a listening guide. Two hundred guides will be produced for each CD. The CDs and listening guides will be given to those attending the CD release parties, to public libraries around the state, and to those requesting them at traditionalarts.indiana.edu.

“The guide suggests how music can give elders something to do to fight isolation, boredom, and helplessness,” Kay says. “It’s a call to action.”

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Folklorist Jon Kay. Photo by Martin Boling

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 19

‘The Vice President’s Black Wife’ New Book by IU History Professor

by Peter Dorfman Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers regards her work as an academic focused on slavery and Black women’s history as a “labor of recovery.” Her subjects, many illiterate, left little behind.

Myers’ second book, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, due out in 2022, focuses on the life of Julia Chinn, an enslaved woman in the early 1800s, on the Kentucky estate of Richard Mentor Johnson. Chinn had two children

by Johnson, to whom she was married for 23 years. Because Chinn was Black, the marriage was not legal, but Johnson publicly treated her as his spouse. Chinn was literate, and Johnson put her in charge of the plantation (including oversight of the enslaved laborers) when he was away from home. “She was his wife in every sense,” Myers asserts.

Chinn’s story might have been lost to history had Johnson not been a hero of the War of 1812, a congressman and senator, and later, after Chinn’s death, U.S. vice president under Martin Van Buren.

Johnson later was notorious for his numerous enslaved mistresses; abolitionists held him up as an abuser of enslaved women. “His white family was horrified and ashamed,” Myers says. “After he died, his brothers took all the property and burned all the records. They tried to erase Julia from history.”

Myers is Ruth N. Halls associate professor of history and gender studies at the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences. She is faculty fellow for diversity and

Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers. Photo by Gift of Today Photography

Blue Spring Farm, where Julia lived. This is the last standing slave building on the property, likely used as a kitchen.

Courtesy photo

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20 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

inclusion, and an associate editor of the Journal of American History.

She discovered Chinn while researching her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, 1790-1860 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Over 10 years, she reconstructed Chinn’s life from public records and Johnson’s letters to people outside the family. She also spoke to descendants who were comfortable discussing their controversial ancestors.

Myers has brought Chinn’s story into courses she teaches at IU, including one she created called “Sex, Lies and Diaries,” an advanced level class focused on interracial sex.

“You can’t understand American history without Black history,” Myers says. “People’s stories were taken from them. Giving those stories back to people is really important work.”

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George Taliaferro Documentary To Air on Big 10 Network in May

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by Paul Bickley A documentary film about George Taliaferro, the Indiana University football legend, activist, professor, administrator, and philanthropist, is currently being co-produced by Bloomington creative agency Blueline and the Big Ten Network (BTN).

The B1G Story: George Taliaferro will follow Taliaferro from his 1927 birth in Gary, Indiana, through his death in 2018, George Taliaferro. Photo by Tom Stio focusing on his IU and NFL careers and his life in Bloomington. It will air on the Big Ten Network multiple times beginning in June.

The three-time All-American led the 1945 Hoosiers to the school’s only undefeated Big Ten football championship. The first African American drafted by the NFL, Taliaferro is the only player in league history to have played seven positions.

“George was a hell of an athlete,” says Kevin Weaver, 34, Blueline’s coowner and co-executive creative director. “But I want people to see who he was beyond the athlete.”

As an African American in Bloomington in the 1940s, Taliaferro couldn’t live in a dormitory, sit in the front of classrooms, or eat in most restaurants. With the assistance of then-IU President Herman B Wells, Taliaferro helped change all that, in part by integrating local businesses under the veiled threat of university boycotts. Later, as an IU administrator, Taliaferro helped develop the university’s first Affirmative Action plan.

“And George gave to everyone around him,” Weaver adds. He chaired the board of the Children’s Organ Transplant Association for several years and helped found the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington. “His daughters say he was always mentoring someone.”

The film’s on-camera interviewees include all four of Taliaferro’s daughters, as well as Taliaferro mentees, and former IU athletes Quinn Buckner and Anthony Thompson.

“The documentary has been slowly percolating for a long time,” says Weaver, who started thinking about a Taliaferro film after Blueline produced a commercial featuring Taliaferro for IU Athletics in 2015.

When Weaver asked BTN if they had created anything about Taliaferro, they asked him to pitch an idea and hired Blueline to produce the film.

“We love telling stories and have a big passion for documentaries,” Weaver says. “And this is a story that should be told.”

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22 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

food/drink

The Elm: New Upscale Eatery Scheduled to Open in Spring

by Craig Coley Most of the American Elm trees in the Elm Heights neighborhood are lost to disease, but one remains at the corner of East 2nd and South Fess streets, where its branches shade the patio of a new restaurant bearing its name. The Elm, scheduled to open in May, will offer a variety of options, from walk-up service to private dining rooms. “We want to be a gathering space that has a very high bar but very low barrier,” says General Manager Eric DanielsHowell, a former manager at The Uptown Cafe.

Daniels-Howell says the menu of the new restaurant will strive to be highly seasonal, featuring American classics through

(this page and opposite page) Artist renderings of The Elm. Courtesy photos

24 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

the lens of a Mediterranean and North African spice profile.

The restaurant’s location has a history as a community food resource. K&S Country Market occupied the corner until 2007, and Bloomingfoods rebuilt on the site for a store that operated from 2013 to 2016. David and Martha Moore, owners of Pictura Gallery and the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts, bought the building in 2017.

The Moores are remodeling the building with an eye for creating a variety of settings—from intimate two-person booths to bench seating near the full bar— as well as versatility.

David says the couple intends the new restaurant to combine Hoosier hospitality with visual and performing arts.

“There’s not a lot of live music in restaurants [in Bloomington],” he says.

“I wanted to make the space flexible, maybe push the tables aside and have an evening of swing dance.”

The design is by Lauren Bordes of Malane Benedetto in Providence, Rhode Island—the same architect who designed the FAR Center, also a former grocery store.

The restaurant plans to open for dinner and walk-up café service initially, over time extending to breakfast and lunch and expanded grab-and-go offerings. At full capacity, including the patio, it will seat 230.

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 25

bloomington &

by Jack Baker

Expand Your Wine Vocabulary

Zenato Superiore, 2017. Photo by Rodney Margison

Word is, we are seeing the “light at the end of the tunnel.” Perhaps later this year, perhaps next, we will be able to mix with friends and relatives again. And to travel.

Travel is exploration, a way to leave the everyday humdrum behind and embrace new experiences. It’s the same with wine.

At times we need to leave the comfortable and convenient behind and strike out for new challenges.

My wife, Jan, and I have been to Italy many times in the last 25 years, and aren’t done yet.

The whole country is like a fine wine. One taste isn’t enough; many are required to find its essence. Here are three wines from Italy’s Veneto region to challenge your palate. They are affordable and enjoyable, and definitely not run of the mill. Each will bring its terroir—the environment in which a wine is produced— and distinct flavors to the glass and add to your wine vocabulary.

26 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

Lake Garda and Verona are must-sees during any trip to Italy’s northeast. Garda, at the eastern edge of the Veneto, is the largest lake in Italy. With sulfur springs and views of the Dolomite Mountains, it’s a popular getaway for Italians, other Europeans and, of course, us Americans.

At its southern end are wineries that produce lugana, a light-bodied, dry white wine from turbiana grapes. Ottella Lugana ($15.99, Big Red Liquors) is fresh and crisp with flavors of wildflowers, almond, and citrus fruit, with mineral and saline overtones. I suggest a day trip on the lake with a picnic and a bottle or two.

A few miles east of Garda is Verona, a UNESCO World Heritage site with history stretching back to B.C.E. 550 and ruins dating from its days as a Roman colony. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is set here, and Juliet’s balcony continues to collect love notes from all over the world.

On the rocky volcanic slopes just east of the city, wineries produce soave, a medium bodied white wine, from the garganega grape. Pieropan Soave Classico ($22.99, Big Red Liquors) provides a rich mouthfeel, melon and peach fruit, and herbal and saline overtones. I suggest fighting your way through the crowds to Juliet’s balcony, leaving your love note, and retiring to an enoteca—wine repository—for a cool glass.

In the Monti Lessini foothills north of Verona, valpolicella is made from corvina Veronese, rondinella, and molinara grapes.

Zenato Superiore ($15.99, Big Red Liquors) is ruby red, light, and simple, with flavors of sour cherry currant, spice, and chocolate. Amarone, its cousin, is at the opposite end of the spectrum: deep and complex. Zenato Amarone ($63.99, Big Red Liquors) is perfect with a bistecca [a traditional Florentine steak].

These wines add to your wine vocabulary. I hope you will try them.

And I’ll drink to that.

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Butcher’s Block Now Has Affordable Meals-to-Go

“Our cooks are thrilled to make new items,” says Schell. “It’s great for inspiration.”

Meals range in price from $12– $20 per quart and come in freezable containers. Each quart contains up to four servings. “All the components are ready to go and may include a side such as rice or mashed potatoes,” Schell says. “And there’s assurance that it’s quality-made.”

The meals-to-go, along with other Butcher’s Block fare, can also be brought to your door, with same-day delivery if your order is placed by 11 a.m. “There are so many things to choose, from those who want to stock their freezer to those who want a lobster roll kit,” Schell says. Delivery recently expanded to include Ellettsville, Bedford, and some parts of Columbus.

To see all items available at The Butcher’s Block and to place orders, check out bloomingtonmeat.com.

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(l-r) The Butcher’s Block offers rotating meals-to-go options that include (l-r) jambalaya, pozole rojo, and beef stew.

Photo by Rodney Margison

by Rosie Piga Pizzo For the first time in the 17 years that The Butcher’s Block has been a culinary presence on the east side, it is offering a full array of meals-to-go.

“The highlight is these are fully cooked and ready to reheat,” owner David Schell says. “They represent seasonality and are reflective of ingredients in our store.”

Schell cites customers wanting an expansion of cooked, ready-to-eat meals as a driving force behind this offering. “We also wanted to cater to the east side of town for those looking for a scratch-made meal, and for anyone who couldn’t get out because of COVID.” These hearty meals are available in the store and can be ordered by phone, through the website, or on the store’s app. “What’s nice about the app is that you can enter another address and send it to friends or a business,” Schell says.

Bestsellers include jambalaya—featuring sausage, shrimp, and chicken—brisket chili, beef stew, and Mexican pozole. Sesame chicken, chicken curry, and chicken and dumplings also sell well. Warmer months may see choices such as gazpacho or smoked chicken sausage with vegetables.

BLOOMINGFOODS CO-OP MARKET Bloomington's only locally-owned grocery store since 1976 magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 27

Nashville House Re-Opens, And Still a Family Business For decades, The Nashville House drew daily crowds for its fried chicken, biscuits, and apple butter.

Then, in 2018, the iconic Nashville, Indiana, restaurant closed following the death of owner Andy Rogers.

Now— burnished, polished, and returned to its former glory—The Nashville House is back, and its new owner isn’t really such a new owner.

Andy’s youngest Andi Rogers-Bartels. Photo by Nicole McPheeters daughter, Andi Rogers-Bartels, and her husband, Lance Bartels, have stepped in as the third generation to run the family business.

“For me, personally, it was what started my family being in Brown County,” Rogers-Bartels says of the restaurant. “My grandfather started it; my dad kept it.”

After inheriting The Nashville House, Rogers-Bartels considered renting the space to another restaurateur, but in the end she and Bartels decided they wanted to restore it.

The building’s wood was polished, the electrical wiring was updated, and new kitchen equipment was installed. The restaurant reopened in July 2020.

The Nashville House still has its popular Country Store—a section at the front of the restaurant that sells items like baked goods, maple syrup, and soap made by local artisans—but a portion of the original store has been converted into a small wine bar.

The space in front of the restaurant has also been converted to feature outdoor seating, which Rogers-Bartels says has been very popular during the pandemic.

The Bartels run the restaurant with the help of manager John Peters, who has 30 years of experience in the restaurant business.

“I kept telling him that we would need to make lots of apple butter,” Rogers-Bartels says with a laugh. “He didn’t understand at first how much customers love the apple butter.”

The menu still features the traditional foods that made The Nashville House popular, but Rogers-Bartels has also added some newer items like soups, salads, and other lighter dishes.

“I’m trying to create a place that I would want to travel to and offer things for sale that I would want to buy,” she says. “If I were going to a little town, I would definitely want to go to this restaurant.” —Jana Wilson 28 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

fashion/shopping

New Owner at ALIBI

Fashions Favor Local Living

3 4

1 2 Photography by Michelle Richardson, Richardson Studio When Katie Whitson, owner of ALIBI, formerly Blond Genius Denim Bar, moved to Oklahoma in 2019, Bloomington business owner Stephanie Topolgus decided to purchase the boutique.

Blond Genius had moved to Renwick Village Center from Fountain Square Mall in 2016, and rebranded as ALIBI in 2019, offering a curated collection of clothing from national and international designers, with an emphasis on luxurious, timeless fashion. New owner Topolgus has continued the mission but with an eye on appealing specifically to the lifestyles of Bloomington women.

“When looking at market for the shop, I think, ‘This line would translate perfectly to tailgating this fall,’ or, ‘I know someone is planning a summer wedding at Oliver Winery,’ and I can shop specifically for them,” says Topolgus, who previously owned the restaurant Topo’s 403 on North Walnut.

Visit wearalibi.com. —Sophie Bird

30 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

Thank You

5

6 1. (l-r) Jennie Moser, Stephanie Topolgus, Shannon Spires, and Shaena Litwin model fashions from ALIBI. Jennie sports an Equipment Essential silk shirtdress in the color beige snakeskin ($348) paired with a Generation Love Clothing vegan leather jacket in black ($385). ABILI owner Stephanie wears a Sundays Ayla puff sleeve dress ($142) and accessorizes with Luv AJ Rock Candy wire earrings ($85). Beneath a Veronica Beard Makua cover-up dress in blue ($275), Shannon wears a Veronica Beard Bridge one-piece swimsuit in leopard ($348). Shaena’s Monrow double-layer hoodie dress ($169) is paired with Luv AJ Pave Amalfi hoop earrings in gold ($150). 2. Shannon shows off the Brodie Cashmere Carlie Camo cropped sweater in Cygnet ($306) with Rag & Bone high-rise skinny jeans in white ($225) and Zadig & Voltaire Lena suede ankle boots ($498). 3. Shaena pairs a Current/Elliot Cassandra denim mini dress ($298) with a Rag & Bone Lenny fedora in light pink ($225) and Ink + Alloy Arrow Fringe earrings ($35). 4. Shannon wears a PAIGE Alicia sweater made of ivory cotton, linen, and silk ($209) with PAIGE Hoxton ankle-length double-button jeans in Vintage Pink Blush ($199) and Veja sustainable leather Esplar sneakers ($120).

Beside her sits a Rag & Bone Revival Tote in olive green, made from recycled water bottles ($295). 5. Jennie pairs a white Sundays-brand Turner tank ($66) with a gray Veronica Beard hoodie dickey ($150) and Veronica Beard Schoolboy blazer ($600) and accessorizes with Mignonne Gavigan Madeleine earrings ($225). 6. Jennie poses on ALIBI’s vintage luggage rack in front of the week’s new arrivals, modeling a Sundays Plum puff-sleeve seater in washed black and white tie dye ($208), Commando faux leather leggings ($98), and Zadig & Voltaire High Flash sneaker in Blanc ($348).

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 31

Board Games Are Popular Again

(above and opposite page) A selection of games, both newer and traditional, at The Common Room. Photos by Mike Waddell

101 W. KIRKWOOD AVE. SUITE 107 BLOOMINGTON, IN 812.822.1624. MIRTHMARKET.COM 32 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

by Craig Coley As the pandemic has shut down activities and narrowed the daily experiences of many people, tabletop games old and new have seen a resurgence. Local retailers are selling more strategy board games, role-playing games, card games, and puzzles.

“I’ve seen a lot of new faces in the store, and it’s been people looking for options of what to do during a pandemic,” says Phil Eskew, who owns The Common Room, 223 S. Pete Ellis Drive.

“People are looking for things that they can do at home together.”

Brad McMullen, who works at The Game Preserve, which recently moved from Fountain Square Mall to College Mall, says the growing sophistication of video games has not diminished the appeal of tabletop games. “It’s that human contact,” McMullen says.

“People still crave sitting across the table from a group of people.”

Laura Alford, a licensed mental health counselor, says games invite creative interaction, which is healthy for families who might otherwise watch videos or isolate in separate activities. When played through the internet, they can also keep distant relationships fresh. “People don’t have as much going on in their lives, so it’s really hard to have things to talk about,” Alford says. “It can feel like something’s wrong relationally when it’s just the circumstances.

Rather than feel pressure to have a conversation, you can create that shared experience through games.”

People who grew up when there were only a few board games may have missed the explosion in game design that has resulted in “a game for every flavor,” as McMullen says. Cooperative games are especially popular. The antithesis of classic cutthroat games like

Monopoly or Sorry, these challenge players to work together to “beat the board.” One in particular seems to have been made for this moment: Pandemic, originally released in 2008, has players containing disease outbreaks and discovering cures.

For many serious game players, though, the real pandemic has been a major disruption. Bloomington’s game stores used to host casual play, tournaments, and product release events. “Every night we had gaming in here,” says Eskew of The Common Room. “The store’s going to be packed once we reopen.”

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 33

science/education

Backyard Farming Popular in a Pandemic

(left) Fresh vegetables from Jerry Wright’s backyard garden; (middle) Jerry Wright; (right) Wright’s “farm.” Courtesy photos

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34 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

by Susan M. Brackney Adam Hamel always imagined gardening someday, but with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, someday arrived sooner than expected. “Everyone was stockpiling food and toilet paper,” Hamel recalls. “Not knowing how things were going to turn out in the next six months to a year, we thought this would be the perfect time to become more self-sufficient.”

The Stone Belt development manager and his fiancée fenced a 15-by-15-foot veggie patch and packed in some of everything. “Our biggest problem was we put some plants in places that weren’t great for them,” Hamel admits. “We were just kind of winging it.”

Despite some water-logged tomato plants, “leggy broccoli,” one scorched blueberry bush, and an errant groundhog, the rookies are already plotting this season’s much larger garden—complete with “more lettuce and fewer tomatoes.”

For his part, quarantining gardener Jerry Wright had let a bedraggled vegetable patch go fallow. “But when the pandemic hit and we were stuck at home, we decided, ‘Why don’t we get the garden going again?’ So, I reignited my old passion.”

The Indiana University political science professor relocated—and completely

reconfigured—his garden. The fenced, 20-by30-foot area sports raised beds with new soil, an irrigation system, and trellised, vertical growing space.

To stay safe at home, Wright ordered eggplant and tomato starts by mail and sowed squash, cilantro, carrots, and chard, among others, by seed. “We had a really prolific pole bean that’s purple,” he says. “But, when you cook it, it turns green. They’re delicious!”

While Hamel’s garden helped to stretch his food budget, the jury’s still out on Wright’s. “I spent a lot of money on the garden last year,” he laughs. “By the time we bought all that stuff, we could’ve bought a lot of food at the farmer’s market. But, over the years, it may pay off.”

In some ways it already has. “Some of this stuff, you can’t get as fresh, and it’s very satisfying to do,” Wright says. “Every morning we go out to see what the garden needs. It’s especially fun in spring when you find out, ‘Are those seeds going to come up? Oh, there they are!’”

Wish you had a greener thumb? Visit Purdue Extension online at edustore.purdue. edu for a free seed-starting guide, Indiana vegetable planting calendar, and more.

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Citizen Scientist

by Susan M. Brackney

biodiversity where they are, but they’re not sustainable by reaching out to the geography around them,” Alfandari continues.

For their part, Bloomington’s forested areas are critical reservoirs of native plants, fungi, insects, birds, and more. Turns out such biodiversity helps to sequester mountains of carbon, and the more contiguous natural land we can preserve—or restore—the better off we’ll all be. Fortunately, creating bridges between biodiversity-rich spots and the surrounding geography is easier than we think.

Make Your Backyard a Park To Help Restore Biodiversity Imagine having a piece of Bloomington’s many parks and preserves in your own backyard. In a sense, you can. By working to conserve nature where you live, you help close the gaps in biodiversity which occur between forests and other naturalized areas.

And if we each take part? We’ll create larger, more unified natural corridors which support a wealth of wildlife. That’s the notion behind the new Homegrown National Park initiative. “If we all create a biodiverse

property where we live, where we work, then we’ll be connecting to national parks—and we’ll have a national park in our backyard,” explains Michelle Alfandari.

She co-founded Homegrown National Park with Doug Tallamy, a University of Delaware entomology and wildlife ecology professor and author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. “There are these isolated national parks that are great in terms of

Courtesy graphic

Getting Started Just how does it work? To begin, remove invasive plants like Asian bush honeysuckle from your yard. Next, plant trees, shrubs, and perennials that are native. Then, enter your data via www.homegrownnationalpark.org, where it will be added to a map.

“In my case, it’s how much land I have and how much of it I have [planted with] natives,” says Gillian Field, a community organizer and member of Monroe County—Identify and Reduce Invasive Species (MC-IRIS). “[The map] also includes my county.”

Additionally, Homegrown National Park provides extensive resources—even linking to MC-IRIS. (Want a crash course on local invasives? MC-IRIS targets a different one annually with its Reduce One Invasive Species Challenge. Purple wintercreeper is this year’s. They give public talks and hold periodic Weed Wrangles, too.)

Building New Corridors To date, Homegrown National Park’s map includes 3,341 native planting entries.

Researchers eventually may be able to use the map to track new ecological corridors.

For now, though, the project is primarily a call to action. “We’re focused on loss of habitat, what loss of habitat means to biodiversity, and how we can restore that,” Alfandari says. “It’s a way for people to see how they’re part of a bigger whole.”

“We can make a difference on our own and in our own yards,” Field concludes. “And your yard is next to my yard, and each yard makes up the whole of America.”

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36 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

Jill Bolte Taylor’s New Book Explores Brain’s ‘Characters’

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by Susan M. Brackney Bloomington’s Jill Bolte Taylor is a veritable brain whisperer. The Harvard-trained neuroanatomist survived a stroke, painstakingly recovered her brain function, and shared the experience via her 2008 New York Times bestseller, My Stroke of Insight. A popular TED Talk soon followed.

“I end that talk by saying, ‘We have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. And we have more power over what’s going on inside of our brains than anybody has ever given us credit for,’” Taylor recalls.

More than 300,000 viewers subsequently emailed Taylor. “They asked, ‘What does that mean and how do I do that?’” she says. In response, Taylor wrote the forthcoming Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life (Hay House Inc.), which will be released this May. “It’s kind of a roadmap to what’s going on inside of your head,” Taylor explains.

Many people know that the brain’s left hemisphere is languageand logic-dominant while the right is dominant regarding creativity, emotion, and intuition. In fact, the brain’s left and right hemispheres each have sets of these modules which Taylor dubs Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking. Post-stroke, she developed a more intimate understanding of her own four characters. “I shifted completely into the right brain [modules] and slowly had to rebuild,” she says. “I lost the emotional character of my left brain—that character had all of my emotional past. I also lost my thinking, rational brain and the character that goes with that.”

“We all have these characters,” she says. “They all come out to our own unique recipe of who are we.” In other words? Some people may rely more on, say, left thinking or left emotion. Others might more frequently settle into right-side characters. But striking a healthy balance between all four—and leveraging their strengths when appropriate—is ideal. “You can understand not just your own four characters, but now imagine recognizing those different characters in others,” she says. “That’s powerful!”

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 37

Look Out, Here They Come!

Billions of Cicadas to Emerge in May

by Susan M. Brackney After 16 years and 11 months of solitary confinement, billions of “Brood X” periodical cicadas will emerge from beneath Bloomington’s parks and neighborhoods, the Indiana University campus, and beyond.

“We’re guessing between May 10 and May 15, but it’ll depend on the weather,” says Keith Clay, IU Department of Biology distinguished professor emeritus.

Clay experienced Bloomington’s 17-year cicadas in 1987 and 2004. “[During 2004,] we were counting up to 200 per square meter,” he recalls. “Extrapolate to Monroe County, and it’s in the hundreds of billions [of cicadas.]”

Clay now chairs Tulane University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “Bloomington is in the center of the highest density of cicada emergence pretty much anywhere in the country,” he says.

When soil temperatures reach 64 degrees, it’s go time. “It’s pretty dramatic,” Clay continues. “The trees, bushes, sides of houses, fences are covered with the shells where they’ve molted.”

Then, males head for the trees to call to potential mates. “It’s an almost deafening raspy buzz,” says Steve Cotter, natural resources manager for the City of Bloomington Department of Parks and Recreation.

“ The 17-year “Brood X” cicadas will emerge in May. Photo by iStock.com/WerksMedia

However, Cotter says many cicadas never get that far. “They make a loud, screechy alarm call when birds catch them,” he says.

“In 2004, every animal pretty much stopped what they were doing and pigged out on cicadas,” Clay adds. “Dogs, cats, squirrels, turkeys—the following year was a bumper year for turkeys, because they’d gotten so fat from eating cicadas.”

Griffy Lake’s yellow-billed cuckoo population also boomed. “They seemed more common in 2005,” Cotter notes. As for 2021? So much free food may make fish less likely to bite.

Still, humans with adventurous palates are set. “People would have potlucks where every dish was made with cicadas—brownies, pizza, stir-fried in butter,” Clay says.

Female cicadas escaping the plate lay their eggs on twigs. “They can damage the ends of some tree branches,” Cotter says, noting that this year might not be the best time to plant young trees.

Larvae that hatch will tunnel underground, setting their alarms for 2038. Meanwhile, by June’s end, little evidence of the spectacle will remain—other than the name of Cotter’s recreational soccer team. “In 2004, we became ‘Brood X,’” he says. “And we have cicadas on our jerseys!”

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38 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

health/fitness

New IU Hospital Plan Still On Track Despite Pandemic disruption!” So far, the “self-inflicted disruption” seems to be working, and the hospital’s opening timeframe remains unchanged, with hospital officials already discussing the logistics of different move-in routes with public safety officials.

Occupying 110,000 square feet, the educational facility building of the RAHC is now open. It’s designed to provide IU and Ivy Tech Community College–Bloomington students with hands-on training in medicine, nursing, social work, and related fields. Other areas of the hospital are ready now—or are nearly so.

Construction continues on the IU Health Bloomington Regional Academic Health Center near the 45/46 Bypass.

Photo by Haley Brown

by Susan M. Brackney Brian Shockney already had his work cut out for him—and then COVID-19 came along. As president of Indiana University Health South Central Region, Shockney has been managing teams working to build and transition to the new $557 million IU Health Bloomington Regional Academic Health Center (RAHC). Expected to begin admitting patients in November 2021, the 720,000-square-foot facility located near the 45/46 Bypass will serve 470,000 residents across 11 counties.

“We were doing really well until the [COVID-19] spike hit,” Shockney recalls.

“We were seeing, especially in the skilled trades, loss of numbers of people at the [RAHC] worksite.”

He continues, “If I’m an electrician or a drywaller, and I’ve been exposed to COVID-19, now I’m off of the project to isolate for 14 days. That work does not get done unless we find another contractor to put in that place, and that’s just not easy to do.”

40 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

To manage the disruption—and manage to stay on track—Shockney and his colleagues leaned into the chaos. “We’ve taken several people off of their full-time jobs and put them full time on this project,” Shockney says.

(Meanwhile, each subsequently vacated role also had to be backfilled by other staffers.)

The chief operating officer, chief nursing officer, regional director of case management, and many others were placed on an oversight team tasked with creatively shuffling resources and personnel to ensure the RAHC opens on time, stays within budget, and fulfills the original vision for the hospital.

That vision still includes fully private, “acuity adaptable” patient rooms—staffed and equipped to handle the most critical cases. The new facility will also feature a more robust behavioral health component, short-term stay areas, touchless app-based registration, and more.

“We talk about COVID being disruptive, but this [reshuffling] is disruption as well,” Shockney says. “And this is self-inflicted

Brian Shockney. Photo by Martin Boling

Despite COVID-19 constraints, hospital board and oversight team members are monitoring the progress via drone-guided tours. “We have a drone and a videographer that we contract with,” Shockney says. “They go through the entire space and do an update for all of us.”

As important as the physical space are employee training and transitioning. To get a jump on necessary preparations, staffers have relied on e-learning resources and virtual and augmented reality.

“We have had to take our playbook and we’ve had to modify the playbook to make sure that we move forward and that the vision is realized,” Shockney says.

“All of those things that we designed and envisioned [before COVID-19], we are not going to compromise on.”

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 41

Courage to Change Sober Living Providing Housing for Recovery In 2016, housing for those recovering from substance use disorder was limited in Bloomington. Landlords mainly catered to students, resulting in rental prices that were too high for many people in recovery. Criminal history or bad credit made the housing search more difficult.

To fill the gap in Bloomington’s transitional housing, Marilyn Grimes-Burrus used her personal experience with addiction and her degree in social work to found Courage to Change Sober Living (CTC), a 12-step, nonprofit, sober living environment.

“We started with a one-bedroom, which held two women,” says Grimes-Burrus. “We’re now going on five years, have four houses located on the bus line, and hold 14 men and 10 women.”

CTC’s goal is structured sobriety. Residents commit to a minimum of 90 days, attend three 12-step meetings per week, take frequent drug tests, seek employment, and pay monthly fees.

Curfews help uphold a lifestyle that enforces routine.

“It’s about learning how to live a structured life,” Grimes-Burrus says. “Keeping a schedule, doing chores, and learning to manage finances where others are working on the same goals.”

CTC’s case managers, who are also in recovery, set them apart from other communities. Stacy Flynn, who had lived with CTC after being incarcerated, was hired as a case manager in 2019.

“I’m grateful to give back to the program that gave me a new way of life,” says Flynn. “The correct balance of freedom and structure

Marilyn Grimes-Burrus, co-founder and president of Courage to Change Sober Living.

Photos by Nicole McPheeters

allowed me to work without complete confinement and build my own program of recovery.”

Flynn was also motivated by the support and Stacy Flynn, case manager accountability of and former client. her housemates, and says they helped her learn to enjoy sobriety.

“We would have pizza and movie nights, attend meditation at the Buddhist Cultural Center, hike, and attend meetings,” she says.

Grimes-Burrus adds that clients are urged to spend time together to discourage isolation, which can cause relapse.

In the short term, Grimes-Burrus hopes to include a recovery home specific to those who are prescribed methadone or suboxone, which are used to treat opioid addiction.

She has found that clients who are abstinent cannot live with those who are medically assisted due to temptation.

She says an apartment complex has “always been the long-term goal.”

Visit couragetochangehouse.org for more information. —Nicole McPheeters 42 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

IU to Study Childhood Sexual Exploitation in Rural Counties

Eli Konwest. Courtesy photos

Deb Getz.

by Carmen Siering The number of Indiana youth who are sexually exploited has increased significantly in recent years, according to the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement. In response, the center has funded the Community Engagement to End Child Sexual Exploitation project.

Eli Konwest and Teresa Nichols at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies (SGIS) and Deb Getz, associate clinical professor in applied health science in the School of Public Health, are partnering with Brown, Greene, and Putnam counties on the project.

“The same drivers—things like substance abuse and poverty— are at play in human trafficking and child exploitation,” says Konwest, director of the SGIS Center for the Study of Global Change. Her center’s involvement is based on its extensive work studying human trafficking.

While child exploitation occurs everywhere, the project’s focus on rural communities is deliberate. “We find a lot of it occurring within families or among friends of children, and it’s a lot more hidden in rural communities,” Getz says. “The isolation almost facilitates it.”

The project will create connections among organizations that have contact with survivors of child exploitation.

“One thing we identified was there are people out there doing this kind of work, but they don’t know each other exist,” Konwest says.

“There are other people who want to help, but they don’t know how.

Once we have identified these organizations and the gaps in treatment, we can use the survey tool to see what is actually out there.”

IU will collaborate with the nonprofit Alliance for Freedom, Restoration, and Justice, using its Engage Together Community Engagement Toolkit and database. The project will create a replicable model that other rural communities can use.

Helping the public understand child exploitation is also part of the project.

“Exploitation doesn’t require physical touching,” Getz says. “It can be the sharing of imagery online. We like to help people understand the issue of child exploitation imagery, and we like to help kids understand what’s out there and help them protect themselves.”

If you suspect a child is being exploited, call the Department of Child Services Indiana Child Abuse Hotline at 800-800-5556.

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44 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 45

business/finance

Three B-town Tech Startups Win Funding From The Mill Initiative

by Craig Coley An app that helps nonprofits track volunteers, a social networking platform for people in show business, and an app that reminds college students to do their assignments. These Bloomington startups have all received funding from the Flywheel Fund, a new venture capital initiative of The Mill.

The Mill, founded in 2017, is a nonprofit organization that operates 19,000 square feet of space for coworking and entrepreneurship at 642 N. Madison St. Executive Director Pat East says the Flywheel Fund, launched in 2020, has a dual purpose. One is to provide funding for promising startups. The other is to

create more local “angel investors,” a name for people who finance startup companies.

Most of the fund’s members are new to this kind of investing, and the fund’s mission includes teaching them its fundamentals.

The Mill identified the investment candidates, which had to be technologybased Indiana companies, and put together a packet of information about each.

Investors then voted on which companies to fund. Flywheel’s first tranche raised $120,000 from 11 investors and funded five startups—three based in Bloomington and headquartered at The Mill.

Flywheel’s deep goal, says East, is shaping Bloomington’s future. A lot of investment capital in Bloomington flows Pat East. Photo by Martin Boling to real estate, and East hopes that the Flywheel Fund can redirect capital to companies that create goodpaying jobs with low carbon footprints. “We don’t want to look up in a couple decades and only see student housing here,” East says.

“We want to be able to inform the future in a way that we think is going to be really responsible for the city.”

These are the three Bloomington companies funded by Flywheel.

Stagetime

“LinkedIn for the performing arts,” is how CEO Jennie Moser describes Stagetime.

Performers looking for work network with people looking for talent. The idea came to Moser, 27, when she was a student at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, earning money building websites where Jennie Moser. Courtesy photo performers could post photos and videos. Rather than having separate websites, Stagetime “takes all those disparate portfolio pieces and allows people to showcase their work just as well, but then actually connect them to their intended audience,” Moser says. Learn more at stagetimearts.com.

46 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

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Geng Wang. Courtesy photo

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When CEO Geng Wang started Civic Champs in 2019, the idea was an app to streamline the process of tracking volunteer hours. It began with a feature that uses geofencing technology to prompt users to register on their mobile devices when they arrive at the nonprofit. “One tap, super simple, no more data entry,” Wang says. The app has expanded to assist other aspects of volunteer management, including mentoring, feedback, and donations.

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Boost

Boost is an app that notifies students about unsubmitted assignments, and sends encouragement and to-do lists.

It blends with Canvas, the online course platform used by Indiana University, other universities, and many K–12 schools. CEO Josh Owens, 35, says Boost has improved student performance at IU and is looking to expand to other schools. “I think we’ve got a solution that is lightweight but really smart and direct,” Owens says.

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Indianapolis & Bloomington www.hurlowwealth.com 812-333-4726 I Call Today to Schedule an Initial Consultation magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 47

Grant Street Inn Fate of Iconic B&B Is Still Uncertain

The staff at the Grant Street Inn, Bloomington’s historical 40-room bed and breakfast, still remembers when the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg stayed there. Each morning, she requested coffee and a bran muffin for breakfast.

The Grant Street Inn, which occupies an entire block of Grant Street, was once the historic Ziegler House, built in 1883 behind the First Presbyterian Church. It was purchased by Bill and Gayle Cook in 1991 and moved a block and a half to its current location at 310 N. Grant St. to prevent it from being torn down. Today, the inn is owned

by CFC Properties, the real estate arm of Cook Group.

In addition to Justice Ginsberg, the inn has hosted several Nobel Prize winners, authors, and a smattering of well-known celebrities, like Elizabeth Rodriguez (Orange is the New Black).

The bulk of the guests, however, are connected to Indiana University, says Manager Paul Wagoner. Whether it’s visiting scholars, alumni, or parents, the university has played a key part in keeping the Grant Street Inn lively and flourishing.

48 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

(above) Grant Street Inn. Photo by Cassaundra Huskey (below) The inn’s front desk and screening area. Courtesy photo

But with the COVID-19 pandemic dampening the businesses of small tourist-based companies and preventing large university gatherings like graduation and sporting events, the future of the Grant Street Inn is uncertain. In early 2020, the inn shut down to accommodate the statewide lockdown orders. After reopening in July 2020, the inn closed a second time in January due to a lack of reservations.

While plans call for the inn to reopen in May of this year, Wagoner says they will have to wait to see how many reservations are on the books before deciding to delay their re-opening or close permanently.

“A lot has to do with what the university does,” he explains. “Is spring and summer at the university going to be as quiet as last year? We’ll have to see.”

Over the years, the inn has grown as adjacent buildings were converted into more guest rooms. In 2012, CFC added on an environmentally friendly LEED-certified building complete with a Tesla charging station, solar panels, a water irrigation system, and LED lighting.

The inn has made a number of adjustments due to the pandemic, including requiring temperature checks for all guests before entering and checking in, and plexiglass shields at the front desk. The dining area, which features a hydroxyl generator to purify the air, has fewer tables, and instead of a buffet, employees now serve guests cafeteria style.

For more information or to make a reservation, visit grantstinn.com.

—Jana Wilson

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 49

community

Big Changes for the Public Library Outlined in 3-Year Strategic Plan Joshua Wolf, community and customer engagement manager.

The team focused on answers to a single open-ended question: “One way Monroe County Public Library can better serve me and my family is …” Not surprisingly, the answer was “more”— more bestsellers, e-books, bookmobile stops, evening and weekend programs, and computer skills classes.

But, Wolf said, “There was one surprise.”

The survey produced many requests for a Library of Things, like tools and instruments.

The survey team also reached out to 74 local agencies such as United Way of Monroe County, The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, and the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe Marilyn Wood. Photo by Rodney Margison County. The feedback from these organizations urged the library to promote digital literacy and build its capacity to offer social services.

“We’ve always been a place for information on sources of social services,” says Wood. “The hope now is that we will be more involved in direct service.”

The library incorporated much of the survey response into the strategic plan along with ongoing planning for the new Southwest Branch Library at South Rogers Street and West Gordon Pike. While the plan updates existing goals like providing free and equitable access to information and supporting reading and lifelong learning, there is one brand new goal: to adapt and respond to community and partner needs.

The plan lists more than 30 first-year action steps for 2021.

Among the most significant, according to Wood, are to increase community engagement for underserved audiences, to continue to revise hiring and training practices, and to lead new branch planning, design, and construction efforts.

Plans for the Southwest Branch have been in the works since 2018. “We again went to the community for input,” says Wood.

While the site “met all of our standards,” she says, “we learned that elementary students had planted a forest on the property.

Monthly topics & tickets at monroeunitedway.org/WakeUp Our first site for the building was in the trees. We redid the plan, moved the building, and put parking underground.” The target Dig deeper into underlying issues contributing to poverty and economic insecurity. Explore innovative solutions and date to open the new branch is late 2022. how we all can best support building a better normal.

Throughout the process of developing the strategic plan, Wolf says, “We were humbled by the community response at a Presenting Partners time when nobody had left their house— humbled by the sense Old National Bank of ownership they have in the library.”

Duke Energy Download the strategic plan at mcpl.info/stratplan to (812) 334-8370 learn more.

by Janet Mandelstam Input from the community and service to the community are the forces driving the Monroe County Public Library’s new three-year strategic plan.

“Our library is designing a roadmap to meet community needs in ways we never imagined before 2020,” says Director Marilyn Wood.

Words like “equity,” “diversity,” “accessibility,” and “inclusiveness” are peppered throughout the document.

The goals and action steps in the plan were developed following a survey of county residents and local organizations. The survey was mailed to residents, posted on the library website, and promoted on social media.

The library received 2,669 responses.

“And we went through every one,” says

WAKE UP!

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50 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 51

What’s to Become of The Old Hospital Site?

IU Health Bloomington Hospital. Photo by Haley Brown

by Janet Mandelstam Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton calls the City’s plan to redevelop the current site of Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital “a oncein-a-century opportunity for our community to re-imagine our future.”

The City recently revealed the master plan for redevelopment of the site when the hospital relocates from West 2nd Street to its new facility on Bloomington’s east side later this year.

Deputy Mayor Mick Renneisen, who led the master planning team, says the plan was “consensus driven,” with public input and community engagement at the forefront.

The plan envisions the 24-acre site as “a unique new hub in the daily life of Bloomingtonians” with an emphasis on “diversity, sustainability, and people-first design.” Here are five key elements of the plan:

1 2 3 52 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

A variety of housing options, including affordable housing, “workforce” housing for middle-income residents who live and work downtown, and market rate housing.

Connection with the adjacent neighborhoods of McDoel Gardens and Prospect Hill.

The plan calls for breaking up the hospital site, restoring the north-south street grid, and limiting the scale of development on the perimeter.

An east-west greenway, a tree-lined “linear park” that offers an outdoor gathering space and connections to the B-Line Trail.

4 5

Turning 2nd Street into a mixed-use “community corridor.”

Given the emphasis on peoplefirst design, Renneisen says, plans will accommodate pedestrians and bicycles.

Linking to key city assets such as nearby parks, the B-Line, and downtown theaters, restaurants, and the convention center.

The City agreed to purchase the property from IU Health in 2018 for $6.2 million with funds from the Bloomington Redevelopment Commission. IU Health will vacate the site in late 2021 and then prepare the land for development. “The site must be cleared before the City takes ownership,” Renneisen says. Existing buildings will be demolished except for the parking garage.

Once the City owns the property, Renneisen says, “We will get bids to design the infrastructure— reconnecting the street grid, stormwater management, hardscape, etc. The rest of the money for development will come from the private sector”—an investment he estimates will be $180–$200 million. “Because the City owns the property, the City will be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to developers’ plans. That’s a great asset.”

Community engagement was an essential part of the planning process even during a pandemic.

“We held public forums on Zoom,” Renneisen says. “Two hundred people participated, more than would turn out at a meeting.”

Renneisen, who is retiring in April after 40 years in City government, says the hospital site plan is the most important work he has done. “This project offers the opportunity to do so many great things for our community for the next century.”

Residents may view the master plan on the project website, bloomingtonhospitalsite.com.

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CELEBRATORY ANNOUNCEMENT

CONGRATULATIONS

Patrick Siney & Rachael Savoldi After six years of dating, Patrick Siney finally proposed to Rachael Savoldi at the Grand Hotel on Michigan’s Mackinac Island. Local metalsmith Autumn Siney crafted the ring using family silver that is more than 80 years old, and is now cherished with new life.

“Our wedding is June 12, and we are living a life of love and togetherness,” Patrick says.

“Remember us in spirit on our special date!” magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 53

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magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 57

Michael Koryta checking out the books at Bloomington’s Caveat Emptor bookshop.

M i c hae l Ko ryta

The Boy Who LOVED BOOKS

Is Now A Bestselling Author

by Tracy Zollinger Turner photography by Jim Krause Growing up, Michael Koryta had a soulful relationship with loaded bookshelves.

Enthralled by suspenseful stories in the books that surrounded him at home, there was one place in town he could count on to find new realms of adventure.

“The best day in the world was a trip to the Monroe County Public Library,” he says.

“I’m not exaggerating that it was truly that exciting. I’m still so emotionally attached to that library that I have never really made my peace with the remodel that they did probably 25 years ago. Browsing the library, there was just that wonderful feeling of going by the cover, and then finding someone you really like. It’s still exciting for me to find a new writer who has a bunch of books out there.”

At 38, Koryta is now one of those authors who—if you happen to be someone who just discovered his work—has a considerable store of material to mine. He has published 16 novels, including New York Times bestselling mystery, suspense, and supernatural thrillers that have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He has collected multiple awards, among them the 2008 Los Angeles Book Prize for

mystery/thriller (Envy the Night) and a 2015 Barry Award for best thriller (Those Who Wish Me Dead), and has been nominated for several others, including The Edgar (after Edgar Allen Poe), the Shamus, and The Golden Dagger.

“I think as soon as I understood that you could write books as a job, I really did want to do that.”

The jackets of his books are covered with rave reviews from veteran luminaries of popular fiction, including Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz, and James Patterson. And this year, Koryta moves into their storytelling ranks as an author who

some may discover for the first time at the movies. Those Who Wish Me Dead is set for release in theaters and on HBO Max on May 14, starring Angelina Jolie.

A Townie for Sure Born in Bloomington, Koryta attended Arlington Heights Elementary School, Tri-North Middle School, Bloomington High School North, and Indiana University. “You can’t get much more townie than that,” he says. His parents moved here from Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-1970s, when his

Koryta holding a Cleveland Browns football shirt. “The futile optimism of young Cleveland fans everywhere,” adult Koryta says. Courtesy photo

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 59

M i c hae l Ko ryta

father, Jim, took a position as a senior electrical engineer at IU. His mother, Cheryl, taught first grade at Elm Heights and Grandview Elementary schools, and he has an older sister, Jennifer—an occupational therapist in Indianapolis.

“I think as soon as I understood that you could write books as a job, I really did want to do that,” says Koryta. “I drove the reference librarians at the Monroe County library completely nuts. I would ask them to find me mailing addresses so I could get in contact with writers I Koryta at age 6. really liked, and bless them, they were Courtesy photo always patient with me.”

Several of the writers he sought had been favorites of his father—young adult suspense novelists from the 1940s and ’50s—“which really upped the stakes for those poor reference librarians,” he says. But they did locate the mailing addresses or confirmed that there wasn’t one because the author was dead.

“I have come to believe that a reference librarian is more likely to actually get the information you want than any private investigator on the planet,” he says. “They are just more diligent. They understand more tools.”

Sometimes Koryta would hear back from the authors, sometimes not. But in between writing those letters, reading, and playing baseball, he kept on attempting to write his own books throughout elementary and middle school.

doing yard work for them since I was little,” he says. Koryta started working for The H-T as a telemarketer when he was 14. Then he helped on a column called “Hoosier History,” which highlighted news events from the past. “I was gathering that stuff down in the newspaper morgue, which is still one of my all-time favorite places,” says Koryta.

At North, students were able to participate in an independent study program that allowed them to work with a qualified mentor in the community. “When you’re 15, you feel like you’re an adult—you take yourself seriously in that way,” says Koryta. “The independent study program was perfect for that because it shot you out into the world and you were dealing with adults who were not teachers or parents. I responded to that better than the traditional classroom.”

Koryta managed to connect with Herald-Times Sports Editor Bob Hammel. That friendship has remained important to him ever since. “He was so great to me,” Koryta says. “He treated me like a serious writer instead of a high school kid.”

“He was 15 when I met him, but he looked about 12,” Hammel says of the first time Koryta showed up in his office, offering up an essay he had written. While Koryta was clear that he didn’t have major sports writing ambitions, he was anxious for professional feedback on his writing overall. “I just savaged it with a red pen, made a lot of corrections and extreme cuts,” says Hammel. “Later on, he would say that when he got it back, he thought I had nicked an artery because it was so red.”

High School Years

“I’ve never seen a kid put things to work so quickly and adapt. He was always trying to get better and better.”

In high school, Koryta encountered several opportunities that began to steer him in the direction of his career. Michael Hefron, the general manager of The HeraldTimes, happened to be Koryta’s next-door neighbor. “I had been 60 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

(l-r) Bob Hammel and a younger Michael Koryta. Courtesy photo

M i c hae l Ko ryta

But Koryta took the criticism in stride. “I knew I was in trouble because I had written him a note thanking him for taking the time to do this. And then I saw that he corrected the thank you note. He can deny it all he wants,” says Koryta,” but I still have a copy.”

Koryta made quick work of the writing suggestions that Hammel had offered. “When I read a second piece, every point I’d made, he’d already absorbed and put into play,” Hammel says. “I’ve never seen a kid put things to work so quickly and adapt. He was always trying to get better and better. He was just startlingly good, and it was a such a treat to work with someone that responsive, and also that creative.”

The Secret Writer

Koryta throws out the first pitch at a New York Yankees baseball game on June 28, 2016. Courtesy photo by the New York Yankees

Michael working in his writing studio.

As Koryta has been doing “I remember interviews to promote telling my his newest book, Never roommate ... , Far Away, he has been ’So, they’re going reflecting on “how quiet I to publish my was about what I wanted to do” as a teenager. He book.’ And he just worked on his novel writing looked at me in outside of the purview confusion: ‘You of school. “I didn’t even wrote a book?’” talk about my books with anyone. None of my friends would have known,” says Koryta. And although Hammel warned that he personally knew “nothing about fiction,” he was the only person with whom Koryta shared his fiction manuscripts.

If it seems incredible that Koryta would be working on entire novels outside of his high school courses, he says, “If you had seen my approach to schoolwork, it wouldn’t seem as amazing.” Koryta describes his high school self as “an indifferent student.” But English teachers Bill Hayes and Steve Bailey were two “excellent teachers” who challenged him. And it was Bailey who nudged him toward outside-the-classroom experiences, even sponsoring him for another independent study into the art of standup comedy.

“I suspect that he was hoping I might channel my disruptive comedic efforts into a venue that was not his classroom,” says Koryta. “That tactic didn’t work for him, but he ultimately won the long game, as he required me to perform my material in front of a W-131 [writing composition] class that was composed of all seniors, and all girls. When you are a high school sophomore and a guy, there is no more intimidating room on the planet. I threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium a few years ago and thought, ‘This is almost as daunting an environment as that W-131 class. Almost.’”

By the spring of his senior year of high school, Koryta was a regular, part-time contributor to The H-T, writing sports stories, general features, and eventually the weekend police beat. “I love being around the newsroom,” he says. “There’s an energy to a newsroom that is not like anything else you ever find. You’re forced to deliver, you’re educated very quickly, and you cannot be precious with your writing.”

When Koryta was in college at IU, Hammel was co-writing former IU basketball coach Bob Knight’s memoir, Knight, for St. Martin’s Press. He lobbed Koryta’s first manuscript directly to one of their editors. “No one gets those kinds of opportunities in general, let alone when you are 18 or 19,” says Koryta. Tonight I Said Goodbye, the first of his mystery series featuring protagonist Lincoln Perry, was accepted when Koryta was 19 and published when he was 20. It was a surprise to some who knew him, and not only because of his youth.

“I remember telling my roommate, Kaleb Ryan, who was my best friend all though high school and my only roommate throughout my IU experience, ‘So, they’re going to publish my book.’ And he just looked at me in confusion: ‘You wrote a book?’”

His second novel was published before he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. “I kept my writing to myself

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 61

M i c hae l Ko ryta

As an adult, Michael still enjoys trips to the Monroe County Public Library, where he loved to explore books as a child.

to such an extent that I was actually unable to graduate on time,” he says. “I had enough credit hours, but I was one required course short for the College of Arts and Sciences, called the ‘intensive writing requirement.’

Don Johnson of Trace Investigations. Photo by Adam Kent-Isaac

62 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

“At that point, I had published two books in—I think—10 languages? And maybe 1,000 newspaper articles for The H-T as well as some freelance magazine pieces. So, I petitioned IU with all this evidence that I had written intensively during my time there, and they said, ‘Nope, you’ve got to do this,’” he recalls. “IU was not about to breach its standards.”

Another independent study that Koryta took up in high school had an influence on him that endures materially and creatively— this one with Don Johnson of Trace Investigations. After his initial independent study was completed, he “I plucked her continued to do private out of academia investigation (PI) work and into the bold through college and after— world of private a day job that spooned well investigation. One with his career as an author of my greatest of suspense novels.

“I worked on everything bait-and-switch from insurance fraud routines.” cases to wrongful death, missing persons, even a death penalty defense case,” he says. “The work ranged from interviewing to surveillance to public records research. We had casework that ran the gamut—I can’t think of any specific area that we didn’t touch on, over time. I feel like I got at least a glimpse of a lot of that world.”

M i c hae l Ko ryta

“When PI work stopped being my day job, I would still come back sometimes if Don needed me, and I was in town,” he continues. “If Don called me tomorrow and said, ‘I’ve got a really interesting case, would you help?’ I would say yes.”

Private investigators have been the protagonists in several of Koryta’s novels. “I haven’t taken a plot from a case that we worked, but components of cases that I worked show up in, I’ll bet, 75% of my books,” he says. “And the people that I encountered in PI work show up in every book.”

Love, Marriage, Menagerie Koryta met his wife, Christine, when he was 22, at a writers’ conference that she was directing in Florida. They married in 2012 in Kennebunkport, Maine. She is now a licensed PI who manages the background screening division of Trace Investigations. “I plucked her out of academia and into the bold world of private investigation,” he says. “One of my greatest baitand-switch routines.”

gave him the name—John Pryor— that was on the gravestone to keep the peace.”

Last year, Koryta developed an alter-ego to handle his first supernatural thriller in over a decade. “Scott Carson” released The Chill, a “terrific horror/suspense/ disaster novel” that “grips from the first page,” according to Stephen King. Named in homage to the talent scout who signed baseball player Roy Hobbs in the Bernard Malamud novel and movie The Natural, Carson “will handle the dark side of things. Or, I guess, the weird, creepy side,” says Koryta.

Michael fishing in Maine.

“There was some resistance Courtesy photo to my going back to another supernatural story and concerns of essentially, ‘Is it on brand? What is the brand? Is he a thriller writer? Does he do ghost stories? We need to figure this out. We’ve got to put them in a box.’ And I was so resistant to all of that, it made sense to say, ‘Okay, let me build another box, and then, you know, everyone’s happy, we’re always going to be on brand.”

The first release by Carson fared well against Koryta’s work “in terms of the way the books sold head-to-head,” he says. “I think it would be the most fun thing in the world if my pseudonym ends up outperforming my actual identity. It would be great to have this envious relationship with myself.”

Hollywood Beckons—sort of

Koryta and his wife, Christine, at their 2012 wedding in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Courtesy photo

The couple used to split time between St. Petersburg, Florida, and Bloomington. For the past six years, they’ve lived both in Bloomington and Camden, Maine. They share a small menagerie, including two cats and a dog, Lola, who, Koryta says, “the shelter called a shepherd mix, I think possibly because you have to pay a permit fee for a coyote. I’m not sure she’s a domestic dog at all.”

They also have an 18-year-old cat, Marlowe, who was rescued by a newspaper colleague from the side of the road, and another cat that Koryta encountered seven years ago at a Civil War-era cemetery at Green’s Bluff in Owen County.

“There was an all-black kitten sitting on a gravestone,” he says.

“Given the type of books that I write, I should be smart enough not to take that cat home, but somehow he ended up here. We

His nom de plume may also develop its own fresh Hollywood allure, as Koryta (as Carson) is working with director Scott Peters—creator of science fiction TV series The 4400—on developing The Chill as a series.

Getting his first screenplay credit with the release of Those Who Wish Me Dead has actually been a long time coming. Many of his books have been optioned “When this movie and “are in some stage of development hell,” he says. comes out, I’m “Hopefully a few more already prepared make it out of that process, for people who but we finally got one. liked the book to “It seemed like say, ‘I can’t believe everything was optioned— what they did to some things had scripts, some things had directors, your story.’” other things had actors, other things had studios,” he says. “There was always this sense of being right on the goal line with a bunch of different projects. I had a lot of New Year’s Eves where I thought, ‘Okay, next year, the movie will be filmed.’”

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 63

M i c hae l Ko ryta

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own project unless he’s prepared to do that.

If you want a really faithful adaptation of my book, you shouldn’t hire me.”

Ultimately the movie came back to life because screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who had worked on a rewrite of the screenplay, offered to direct. It was when Angelina Jolie signed on to the project in the beginning of 2019 that “things began to move really quickly.”

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Those Who Wish Me Dead book cover. Courtesy image

Koryta_ThoseWhoWishMeDead_PB_MTI.indd 1

Ironically, Koryta says he was the least optimistic about Those Who Wish Me Dead getting made after earlier pitfalls with the project. There had been table reads, Susanne Bier (director of Bird Box) was hired to direct, and “it all seemed like it was going in the right direction.” Then 20th Century Fox, the studio, was purchased

by Disney, and “you had this huge corporate landscape shift” as Bier, along with executives who had initially championed the film, moved on.

He also worked on the script himself, which he is sometimes reluctant to do. “I had just wanted to follow what I consider to be the Dennis Lehane, Stephen King, Michael Connelly “That day was model of filmmaking— by far the most giving someone else, who is really good, your book to special to me adapt, and then whatever because it felt happens, happens. less like a movie “When this movie comes set. It wasn’t out, I’m already prepared some backlot for people who liked the creation, it book to say, ‘I can’t believe what they did to your story.’ was shooting And those well-intended on location in folks will probably have no rugged terrain.” idea that I did most of the damage myself. When I was working on the script, I was throwing out everything and creating something entirely new. I don’t think a writer should work on his

64 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

“But up until I set foot on set in New Mexico, I still wasn’t completely trusting it, because it seemed like such a snake-bitten project,” Koryta says. And the process of finally watching it get made was “surreal … I mean absolutely surreal,” he continues. “I’ve got Hannah, a character who is someone that I began to envision in 2013. And then there’s an Angelina Jolie, with all that fame and such a uniquely famous face. To watch her embody the character, and actually get to points where I just felt as if, ‘Oh, that’s Hannah’— where the Angelina of it all fell away—was fascinating and surreal.”

Koryta says he disappointed friends and family with mostly celebrity-free photos of the on-set experience when he returned home, because “I was so much more interested in the details of the way they built sets and how they shot on location. This is a story that was conceived on backpacking trips in the mountains.”

When Koryta told producers that he was interested in watching a shoot that featured smokejumpers, he was told that it would be too high and difficult to reach for him to watch.

“I said, ‘Well, I came up with the book when I was hiking in some really high places that were difficult to get to,’” he says. So they allowed him to come. “That day was by far the most special to me because it felt less like a movie set.

It wasn’t some backlot creation, it was shooting on location in rugged terrain … to see the execution of that was by far the best part of On the set of Those Who Wish Me the experience to me.”

Dead. Courtesy photo

“Outstanding in every way . . .

Don’t you dare miss it.”

—LEE CHILD

3/10/21 9:48 AM

M i c hae l Ko ryta

BOOKS

by

MICHAEL KORYTA î Envy

the Night (St. Martin’s Press, 2008) î So

Cold the River (Little, Brown and Co., 2010) Koryta at Stoute Creek in northwestern Monroe County, where he spent hours hiking as a kid, and still does today. Courtesy photo

î The Cypress House (Little, Brown and Co., 2011)

Another book that is coming to life on film soon is an independent production of supernatural horror thriller So Cold the River, adapted to a screenplay and directed

by Paul Shoulberg, with Bloomington’s Pigasus Pictures co-producing. “Paul is incredibly talented. It was all shot at the West Baden Springs Resort, which meant the world to me. The only reason I wrote the book is the existence of that building and all of its history,” says Koryta. Post-production has wrapped on the film, but a release date hasn’t been announced.

And there are more potential projects at hand that Koryta feels optimistic enough about to name. He has sold a pilot and series document for How It Happened— a doublemurder mystery set in rural Maine, which “seems like it has a pretty good shot.” And he just closed on a deal to adapt his latest, Never Far Away, with producer Cathy Schulman, who won an Oscar for Crash.

While Koryta’s work has often beckoned him to New York City and Los Angeles, he has no interest in living in either city. “I like college towns in general,” he says. “And I think people in Indiana are pretty pragmatic. There’s an Indiana sensibility that I like, and Maine shares that—maybe on steroids. If you want to talk about the polar opposite of what I would find living in LA, you will find it in Bloomington and definitely in Maine. It’s like there is an active interest in being unimpressed that’s part of the ethos.”

Michael at the West Baden Springs Resort, “I think it’s better for me across the board, site for the filming of So Cold the River.

Courtesy photo professionally and for my mental health, not to live in Los Angeles,” he says. “It’s part of the professional identity that I have to go out there and take meetings, things like that, and that’s fine. If I end up working on a show that would be the thing that would force me out to Los Angeles—I have had to wrestle with that idea.”

But Bloomington is where he feels most attached. He has a detached studio lined with bookshelves—designed and built by Bloomington’s Loren Wood Builders—that was made for his writing. It’s a place he goes daily, turns off the Wi-Fi, and spends a few productive hours. And Bloomington is close enough to Indianapolis that it’s easy for Koryta to get to an international airport. Most importantly, he says, he stays here because of people.

“I mean, I love the town, but it really is people. It’s my family—my parents are still here,” he says. “I have lifelong friends here. And I can go on and on about the positive qualities of the community, but I would say, you know, home is people, ultimately.”

î The

Ridge (Little, Brown and Co., 2011) î The

Prophet (Little, Brown and Co., 2012) î Those

Who Wish Me Dead (Little, Brown and Co., 2014) î Last

Words (Little, Brown and Co., 2015) î Rise

the Dark (Little, Brown and Co., 2016) î How

It Happened (Little, Brown and Co., 2018) î If

She Wakes (Little, Brown and Co., 2019) î Never

Far Away (Little, Brown and Co., 2020) LINCOLN PERRY SERIES î Tonight

I Said Goodbye (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) î Sorrow’s

Anthem (St. Martin’s Press, 2006)

î A

Welcome Grave (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) î The

Silent Hour (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) WRITING AS SCOTT CARSON î The

Chill (Simon and Schuster, 2020) SHORT STORIES î “The

Apex Predator” Route” î “I’m Still Here” î “The Dark Side of Sunlight Basin” î “P.F.A.” î “Winter Takes All” î “Hiking Through” î “The Last Honest Horse Thief” î “Calculating

*

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 65

People take advantage of a warm summer evening on East Kirkwood near the Sample Gates.

Photo by Martin Boling

THE

PHOTOGRAPH OF

When Bloom was founded 15 years ago, we pledged that not only would the writing be first rate, but that the design and photography would be also.

To accommodate the design, Bloom’s pages are wider than most magazines, allowing our graphic designers more space to work their magic and more room to display pictures. And to present the photography in the best light, Bloom is printed on high-quality, glossy paper.

Thousands of pictures of every sort have been shot for the magazine over the years. Our photographers are versatile, but they all have preferences for the kinds of work they love to do. Their interests include portraits, fashion, nature, sports, landscapes, architecture, travel, and more.

In these pages you will meet nine Bloom photographers and see some of their personal favorite images. We hope you will enjoy them.

—the editor

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 67

RODNEY MARGISON

Like many photographers, Rodney Margison was bitten by the photography bug at a young age. His father was a semi-professional photographer, which led Margison to launch his photography career while still in high school, working as a freelancer for his hometown daily newspaper. Margison continued freelancing while studying photojournalism at Ball State University before eventually becoming the staff photographer for the daily Times-Tribune newspaper in Corbin, Kentucky.

For 17 consecutive years, Margison photographed the Indianapolis 500 and many other motorsports events around the country.

He worked for eight years at the Brown County Democrat newspaper as a reporter and photographer and is now the managing editor at Bloom. After studying fine art and commercial photography at Academy of Art University, Margison has a studio downtown where he photographs fashion- and bodyinspired portraits.

“I love photographing people and helping bring to light those parts of their personality that might not otherwise be seen,” Margison says, adding that he prefers a conceptual, fine art approach to his portraiture.

Find more of his work at rodneymargison.com.

(above) Rodney Margison. Photo by Cassaundra Huskey

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 69

KENDALL REEVES

Kendall Reeves says he learned early in life that in order to find his purpose, he needed only to look through the viewfinder. “From eighth grade on, I knew I would have a career as a commercial photographer,” he says.

Reeves, who with his wife, Stephanie, owns Spectrum Creative Group in Fountain Square Mall, says he’s learned a lot since then. “I pretty much know what the image will look like before I release the shutter,” he says. “My hands are on every step of my work. I process, print, mount, and frame everything I do to control quality.”

Reeves specializes in commercial and architectural photography, along with “things that have seen better days,” such as ghost towns, abandoned buildings, and old automobiles, tools, and toys. He is one of just two photographers licensed

by Indiana University to sell IU-related images and has a postcard series with 50 different cards of Bloomington and IU. Learn more at spectrumcreativegroup.com.

Kendall Reeves. Photo by James Haverstock

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 71

MARTIN BOLING

The photography seed was planted in Martin Boling at a young age. His father, he says, “always carried a camera growing up and on his travels in the Navy.” He passed that love on to Martin.

A lifelong photography enthusiast, Boling says he never envisioned it as a business opportunity until 2005 when he immersed himself in professional-level training. He soon set his focus on portraiture, now the staple of his photography business.

Boling says his goal is “to capture the unguarded essence of the people we know or would like to know.”

Learn more at martinboling.com.

(clockwise from top, left) Cowboy Bob; Sarah’s War Horse; Sarah Ain’t Your Mama; Martin Boling.

Photos by Martin Boling

72 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

JENN HAMM

Born and raised in Bloomington, Jenn Hamm has been a photographer since age 17. Over the years, she has participated in workshops to hone her craft and studied under some of Bloomington’s top photographers, as well as through the New York Institute of Photography.

Hamm describes her portrait photography as “showing urban and fashion flair.” She is experienced in advertorial, promotional, and photojournalistic styles.

More of her work can be found at eyemusephoto.com.

(above) Jenn Hamm. Courtesy photo

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 73

74 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

JIM

KRAUSE Jim Krause describes himself as “an accomplished adventurer, photographer, documentarian, teacher, writer, producer, musician, and composer.” Having spent years exploring the corners of the world by foot, pedal, paddle, and sail, he says his work “is awash with coastlines, cloudscapes, canyons, and mountains.”

He and his guitar, along with his wife, Anne, and her cello, spend summers living aboard their 38-foot sailboat, exploring either the Great Lakes or the Pacific Northwest.

Krause teaches video production and animation at The Media School at Indiana University and has contributed his time and talents on the boards of WFHB-FM, the Lotus Education & Arts Foundation, LifeDesigns, and Friends of Lake Monroe.

See more of Krause’s work at ttop.com.

(above) Jim Krause. Photo by Shanti Knight (clockwise from opposite page, top, left) Krista Detor–Water; Crossing the Inland Sea (British Columbia); Bustard Islands (Georgian Bay, Ontario); Discovery Park (Seattle, WA); Movits (Sweden) Lotus Festival.

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 75

76 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

MIKE

WADDELL

Mike Waddell has always enjoyed taking photos, but it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that he began to take it seriously. “I got started with nature photography and also developed a real obsession with seeking out abandoned homes and buildings to photograph,” he says.

“The photography I was doing suited my more introverted nature well,” he explains. “But over time, I have come to enjoy working with other creative people doing creative portraiture, visual storytelling, and narrative photography, often with a fantastic realism mood.”

His work has been exhibited locally at the I Fell, Blueline, Untitled Light, and Tattoo Kaiju galleries, as well as the Monroe County Public Library. In his latest project, “Reverberations,” he uses his own photos of abandoned places and found portraits from the 1940s and earlier to create composites.

See more of Waddell’s work at waddellmike.darkroom.tech.

(above) Mike Waddell. Courtesy photo (clockwise from opposite page, top, left) Rose Hill Cemetery at moonrise, January 2021; Showalter Fountain, 2019; Abandoned house in southeastern Kansas; Kirkwood Avenue hot air balloon; Paula Chambers at Rose Hill Cemetery, February 2021.

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 77

HALEY BROWN

Haley Brown has been a professional photographer for more than 10 years and enjoys photographing landscapes, interior and exterior commercial buildings, portraits, and more.

She holds a 2011 B.A. in communication and culture from Indiana University, along with a certificate in journalism. Her work has been shown in local and regional art shows, including Bloomington’s Arts Fair on the Square and the St. James Court Art Show in Louisville, Kentucky.

In Bloomington, Brown has photographs on display at the IU Kelley School of Business and Herman B Wells Library.

See more at haleymbrown.com.

(above) Haley Brown. Courtesy photo (top, right) Sunset in Key West; (right) Two Jack Lake; (far right) Griffy Lake.

78 Bloom | April/May 2021 | magbloom.com

JAMES

James Kellar’s photography interest began as a young teen when his father taught him to develop film and print pictures in a converted bathroom.

He attended Ivy Tech Community College–Columbus and was later hired as a corporate photographer for Sunrise Greetings in Bloomington.

A part-time freelance photography career followed. Now “semi-retired,” Kellar says he spends most of his time working on personal photography projects along with Bloom assignments.

Find more of Kellar’s work at jameskellar.com.

KELLAR

(above) James Kellar. Courtesy photo (far left) Garage Door; (left) Old Store Rosston, Rosston, Indiana.

NICOLE

MCPHEETERS

Nicole McPheeters is a graduate of Indiana University, where she received her B.A. in journalism with an emphasis on gender and photojournalism.

A Brown County, Indiana, native, McPheeters says her interests have always been rooted in gender and human rights but grew to include public health after she traveled to Kampala, Uganda, to report on the HIV/AIDS crisis. While abroad, her work focused on cross-generational relationships, sex work, transgender living, and sanitation efforts for young women.

Find more of McPheeters’ work at instagram.com/_nm_photography.

(above) Nicole McPheeters. Courtesy photo

magbloom.com | April/May 2021 | Bloom 79

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