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(12/04/06 3:02pm)
Friends and members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community gathered in red T-shirts yesterday for a walk across campus commemorating the National Day of Silence.\nBeginning at 5 p.m. near the Showalter Fountain and taking a path along major campus traffic routes, the procession of about 50 people ended at the Sample Gates and returned to Dunn Meadow to listen to several who spoke about their sexuality, including the transgender former IU student and Little 500 rider Deane Lahre.\nLahre, who once used the name Robert Dean Lahre, now uses a derivative of her middle name as she transitions from male to female. When she was an IU student, she qualified to ride for her team, Magee-Foster, in the annual bicycle race in both 1973 and '74. Her team finished eighth the second time around. \nBefore she moved to Bloomington, a city she calls "trans-friendly," she lived a seemingly normal life. She had an unhappy 13-year marriage that produced three children -- two boys and a girl. She worked 21 years as a pit trader -- 18 in Chicago, three in Kansas City. She said the reason the marriage failed was directly tied with her internal struggle searching for her gender.\n"(My wife and I) were in trouble for over half of it," she said. "(The male-to-female transgender community) don't function well as men -- sex was infrequent, and not high on my list. That tends to put a lot of stress in a relationship," she said during the stretch of the walk up North Jordan Avenue.\nBut she said the trouble started before then. She said she knew something "was up" when she was 8 years old growing up with her family in Windfall, Ind. \n"It's a struggle 24/7," she said. "You've got these feelings, and you don't know what to do about it because you think you're all alone. And no one talks about it, especially (in the 1970s), and in Indiana."\nWhen she began her transition four years ago in 2001, she said her parents has trouble accepting the change. \n"But they knew I've struggled with this ... even before my teen years, they knew," she said.\nFor those of the GLBT community, the teenage years can be traumatic and plagued with various mental health issues, among them depression and suicide. According to the University of New Hampshire's Health Center, a growing body of research indicates that GLBT youth attempt suicide at a rate two to three times higher than those of heterosexuals. But it seems that in the case of transgender youth, the suicide attempt rate is more than 50 percent. Lahre escaped becoming part of that statistic, but not without problems. \nShe said even though she never tried to kill herself, the thoughts were there and so was the depression. She said she was always in counseling and noted that "over half of us don't see their 30th birthday."\nDuring the sunlit procession through campus, many drivers passing by honked their horns and waved, an offering of support to those brandishing T-shirts reading "Gay? Okay with me." But it was the reaction of some that made it apparent why a day honoring those who have been silenced was important.\nDuring part of the walk down 10th Street, a high school student riding on Monroe County Community School Corporation bus number 45 shouted, "Hey, those guys are gay." On Woodlawn Avenue, passengers in a grey Ford Mustang shouted "Fags." A heckler driving north on Indiana Avenue as GLBT members spoke at a microphone in Dunn Meadow shouted obscenities a third time.\nGLBT Student Support Services Coordinator Doug Bauder was at the microphone and highlighted the final incident saying it was the very reason for the importance of the National Day of Silence. \nIU student and GLBT community member Rynn Hagen attended the Dunn Meadow segment of the procession. \n"It's a way for the straight community to show support for those who have been silenced for so long," she said. And now it's a time when people don't need to be silenced. Even here on the IU campus there's so much discrimination against the GLBT community."\nHagen also said she brought her son because she thought it was important for him to experience growing up in an all-inclusive community.\nLahre said she heard all of negative feedback, but ignored it saying of the hecklers, "I guess ignorance is bliss." She said she didn't really pay much attention to those motorists driving by staring at the procession.\n"I'm indifferent now as to what people think," Lahre said. "I have good hair days and bad hair days just like any other girl on campus." \n-- Contact Staff Writer Brandon S Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.
(06/29/06 1:40am)
For the Monroe County Civic Theatre turning complex pieces of literature into productions staged in unorthodox spaces is half the battle. Making it work smoothly is the other half. And most of the time it isn't done easily. \nThe upcoming performance of Alice's Adventures is Wonderland is no exception.\nThe play opens July 1 in a venue many would not expect to house a theatre performance, The Irish Lion, located at 212 W. Kirkwood Avenue.\nPlaywright Russell McGee adapted Lewis Carroll's story of a young girl bored at a picnic with her sister. Alice is the young girl's name, and she starts to follow a white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat muttering "I'm late!" Alice follows down a rabbit-hole, floating down into a dream underworld of paradox called "Wonderland." \nContinuing her pursuit of the white rabbit, she has several well-known misadventures involving Mad Hatters and unruly royalty dressed in shades of red and white. Eventually, Alice wakes up underneath a tree and back with her sister. This is the narrative as told by Carroll, but it isn't necessarily going to be told the same way by McGee, who sometimes reworks the order of dialogue in the original to help keep his adaptation flowing. \nIn addition to moving dialogue in later chapters to earlier chapters, in "Alice," McGee omitted a scene from the book where a pigeon calls Alice a serpent because he thought it would be too difficult recreate the spectacle. \n"There was just no way that I could see pulling the poor actor's neck to make it long enough," he said.\nJessica Ciucci is triple-cast in "Alice" playing the Mouse, Caterpillar, and March Hare. Ciucci said the play is riddled with difficulties young actors have to face since the Carroll text and Walt Disney films have set precedents in the minds of potential audiences. \nBuilding a character means different accents, or adding quirks or gestures to characters can help bring Carroll's character's to life through McGee's adaptation. \n"As much as we would like to imitate voices given to us by Walt Disney, it is necessary that we begin at square one, reread pertinent chapters in Lewis Carroll's initial text, and begin building a character never before seen by Alice," Ciucci said.\nIt's Director Jim Hettmer's job to make work on stage the scenes McGee kept, while making the best of a venue like The Irish Lion. \n"We don't have a stage, a curtain, lighting, or an exotic set, but we and the audience can use our imagination in ways that would not be possible in a more formal setting," he said.\nAimee Taylor plays Alice in the MCCT's upcoming production and is used to more formal settings. \n"I am used to big stages, big sets, lighting, backstage and a lot going on," Taylor said. "[Here] the audience doesn't have these distractions so it is up to you as the performer to tell the story." \nThis is Taylor's first leading role, and she said she was nervous at first, but not any more, thanks to the support she's gotten from fellow performers and her director. \n "I am beginning to believe it now myself and with that every scene is getting better and better to, ultimately, create an awesome show," she said.
(06/21/06 11:06pm)
The Brown County Playhouse is a summer tradition of live theater for locals and tourists alike. For more than five decades, the Playhouse has been a vital source of education and financial stability for IU students and Nashville, Ind., residents.\nJonathan Michaelsen, the IU Department of Theatre and Drama chairman, said ensuring the success of the annual summer theater is a balance of picking a season sure to do well at the box office while challenging IU Department of Theatre and Drama students. He added the success of the playhouse affects the village of Nashville, where the economy is driven by tourist dollars. \nMichaelsen wants his students to feel challenged by their work at the playhouse. He said it's an important part of their training.\n"We need to find challenging work for them to do ... but we also need to get audiences in, too. We can't just live in a void and be training. We have graduate degrees where we're training artists, and we need to also be mindful that these people need people to go out and perform for."\nThe playhouse summer season also challenges the cast and crew because of its accelerated production schedule, said John Armstrong, who plays Dennis Sanders in the show.\n"We rehearse two months for shows during the school year, but in the summer, we only have two weeks," Armstrong said. "It's kind of hard since normally, with two months, the show becomes ingrained in your brain, more solidified. We still have plenty of time, but we have to jump right into the show."\nThe current production at the playhouse is "Smoke on the Mountain" and is challenging to students in that there is a lot of music, and the students play the instruments themselves. It also has the potential to sell. \n For every production at the playhouse, Michaelsen has to sell at least 90 percent of available seats, otherwise the production loses money. \nOne way the department of theatre and drama is hoping to attract audiences is through reduced ticket prices for anyone under the age of 25. John Kinzer is the department's director of audience development. Theater patrons under 25 receive a $7 discount on the normal $18 ticket price for Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday performances. They receive an $8 discount on the normal $20 ticket price for Fridays and Saturdays. Kinzer said the savings program didn't work as well as he would have liked last year.\n"It wasn't promoted as well as we could have," Kinzer said. "As simply as making certain all the ticket prices were posted at the box office, and training our box office staff to ask a few more questions when they're selling tickets," Kinzer said as to how he could have improved the reduced price ticket scheme he considers "vitally important" to attracting the younger professional. \n"We realize students have a lot of things they want to do, and some of them have never gone to the theater before and don't have that experience. We can't sit back and do it the same way we've attracted people before. We have to be a little more creative in the way we attract students."\nAttracting students, and other theater patrons is not just about taking out newspaper and radio ads. It's about \nrelationships.\nKinzer said merchants, like the Brown County Inn or the Seasons Lodge, offer packages combining a room, dinner and show tickets for one price.\nKinzer also said building a presence on Web sites relating to Nashville is a necessary part of attracting audiences.\n"The tourist who is trying to find out about Nashville is going to learn about us pretty quickly if they visit one of those Web sites, and that's \nvitally important," Kinzer said. \nBrown County's Convention and Visitor's Bureau said one way the playhouse (BCCVB) and other Nashville attractions fight promotions costs is by co-op advertising. Marketing maneuvers like media partnerships where goods -- like tickets or dinners -- are traded for advertising time instead of cash. Packages from hotels or inns including rooms, dinner and a show are not uncommon either. Both work to ensure steady visits to Nashville. \n"It's definitely a cultural selling point," said Debbie Dunbar, who works for the BCCVB. "People do depend and look for that, so that is something we can offer them while staying quaint."\nMichaelsen also said he hopes students, and other potential theater goers see the value of that cultural selling as well. "Art can define life in a way nothing else can. We think it builds our society in a positive way. Not every play has a sledge hammer that goes after people in terms of their ideas, some of it is just good \nentertainment"
(06/12/06 1:55am)
In the mid-19th century, a Scottish doctor started writing short stories to whittle away the boring hours he faced thanks to an all but failing medical practice. The doctor's name was Arthur Conan Doyle and the main character in the four novels and more than 60 short stories he would write during his lifetime was named Sherlock Holmes.\nDoyle's creation of the world's most famous consulting detective through his short stories in the London-based Strand Magazine have been performed on both the stage and screen. Almost as soon as silent films came about, a 1915 picture was made featuring one of Doyle's pieces. Most notably, Holmes and his faithful chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson, were played in the early days of radio by Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richards the last remains of Victorian theater. In the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played the roles. In a BBC series, Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke played the roles, their collaboration continuing into the mid-1990s.\nBut with the incredibly huge number of films produced now and in the past, many titles go by the wayside and are forgotten. It's a tragedy that even a few of my favorite Holmes titles have also become forgotten cans of celluloid.\nTwo of these are 1978's "Murder by Decree"and 1988's "Without A Clue." One is a clever intertwining of historical fiction, while the other is pure, mad-cap satire of the Holmes and Watson personas.\nYou're all familiar with the whole Jack the Ripper thing, right? You know, crazy guy in black goes around knocking off harlots in London's slums. Well, in "Murder by Decree" Holmes and Watson are mixed in with Jack the Ripper.\nThe film stars Christopher Plummer and James Mason. Mason plays Watson with an excellent amount of seriousness balanced with charm, humor and patriotic fervor to the Empire he served in India.\nMason's acting capability is unique in that he can convey meaning with conservative body movements, but also with excellent control over his melodic, rhythmic voice. His inflection is so near perfection, that no matter what the scene -- complaining about a pea, cheering a future monarch or bashing some scoundrel with his walking stick -- he never has to raise his voice above conversation volume. It is sheer pleasure to watch Mason's portrayal of Dr. Watson. He is perhaps the most believable and honest actor to play Watson in a film version.\nPlummer's portrayal of Holmes is also unique. Doyle's original analytical, almost cold-hearted and very impersonable Holmes was played quite the opposite by Plummer. Plummer played Holmes with the normal attributes of great observation, analytical skills and dogged pursuit of justice. But he also played the role with a sense of humanity that isn't seen often. He plays Holmes with a sense of humor -- he and Watson laugh together about Watson's ability to get himself into trouble. There is one scene where Holmes is greatly disturbed that he can do nothing for a damsel in distress and he shows an intense anger and even sheds tears.\nUntrue to Doyle, yes, but a good way to freshen up the staleness.\nThe most unorthodox and most entertaining tale of Holmesian lore takes place in a 1988 film released by Orion starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. \nScreenwriters Gary Murphy and Larry Strawther have Sherlock as the same dashing, flamboyant character you'd have always imagined. But just because he tends to amaze people, doesn't mean he's the brains of the crime-caper solving mastermind of the pair.\nIn this film version, Watson scripts all of Holmes's solutions and serves as the PR genius that makes Holmes's character as well known as it is. And the reason for this is "elementary, my dear fellow," as Holmes would say. At the time Watson initially created Holmes, he was trying to land a job with a conservative medical college that probably would have frowned on his moonlighting as a gumshoe.\nBut all the bumbling badness Holmes creates finally becomes insufferable, and Watson throws him out and tries to make a go of it himself.\nAnd the antics begin.\nKingsley, who won the 1982 Oscar for Best Actor for playing the title role in "Ghandi," plays a stern and humorless straight man in what is one of his best performances. It's flawless. Kingsley creates for Watson a publicly loyal aide, but a privately bombastic, humorless genius, whose use of the slow-burn technique creates endless numbers of good set-ups for Caine's schtick as Holmes.\nCaine brings his versatility as a dramatic actor and skilled comedian to this role. His timing is exquisite in getting the most out of every laugh. Most of the laughs, by the way, are ones you need to look for. \nWhile Watson is always in the foreground of the shot being a clever detective, Holmes is in the background mumbling about something totally off the wall, stealing a pair of shoes or messing around with Watson's chemistry set to a disastrous end. \nI've watched this film at least eight times since I saw it for the first time in the early 1990s. Each time I watch the film, I still catch something I never saw the last time. I know every line to the film, but it's still just as fresh the eighth time as it was the first time.\nAll in all, if you have any appreciation at all for the classic tale of mystery and criminal connivery, these are definitely two movies worth the time and effort in tracking down and watching.
(06/08/06 12:01am)
The IU Department of Theater and Drama summer season opens tonight at the Brown County Playhouse in Nashville, Ind. with "Smoke on the Mountain." It runs until July 2.\nThe year is 1938, and the Sanders Family Singers are returning to the gospel singing circuit after a five-year hiatus. Their comeback performance takes place at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in North Carolina with the help of the flamboyant Pastor Oglethorpe, who wishes to bring his church into the "modern world." Despite a fiasco early in the evening involving a toppled bus and the seemingly insurmountable resistance from two of the church's most important patronesses, the show must and does go on. Complete with personal testimonies and over 27 songs, the "Saturday Night Sing," starring the returned Sanders family, "Smoke on the Mountain" sparkles with light-hearted, daffy and touching moments.\n"It was challenging to deal with material that, for some of us, strikes very close to home," said John Olson, who plays Pastor Oglethorpe. "It's very reminiscent of our own backgrounds. This especially causes us to feel a responsibility to bring as much truthfulness and authenticity to the performance."\nThe cast, which is responsible for playing the entire gospel group's instruments live for every production, includes Brown County regulars like Dave Cole, who was featured in past Playhouse productions of "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "The Odd Couple," as well as John Armstrong, who bedazzled Brown County audiences in "Forever Plaid." Professional Equity performer Paul Blankenship, who hails all the way from New York City, is also amongst the cast. Blankenship brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience from working with renowned directors like Doug Hughes and George Faison, as well as highly-esteemed actors such as Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris. Blankenship received his Master of Fine Arts degree in acting from Southern Methodist University and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater from Missouri State University. \n"Smoke on the Mountain" is directed by George Pinney, a professor of theater and drama at IU. He has directed or choreographed more than 150 productions for national tours and regional and university theaters, including IU and the Brown County Playhouse. His recent productions at IU include "Sweet Charity," "Sweeney Todd," "Parade," "A Chorus Line" and the IU Broadway Cabaret. \nAt the Playhouse, Pinney directed "Forever Plaid" last season. Pinney also teaches musical theater and stage movement and mentors numerous musical theater majors. \nThe Playhouse summer season poses challenges for cast and crew because of its accellerated, summer stock like pace, according to John Armstrong, who plays Dennis Sanders in the show.\n"We rehearse two months for shows during the school year, but in the summer, we only have two weeks. It's kind of hard since normally, with two months, the show becomes engrained in your brain, more solidified. We have still have plenty of time, but we have to jump right into the show."\nTonight's opening marks this show's debut at the Playhouse. \n"Smoke on the Mountain" opens June 8 and continues Wednesday to Sunday until July 2 at the Brown County Playhouse in historic Nashville, Ind. Audio description for the blind and visually impaired will be offered July 2. Curtain time for performances is 8 p.m., except Sundays, which begin at 3 p.m. Ticket prices are: Sunday, $18.00 ($10.00 for age 25 and younger); Wednesday to Saturday, $20.00 ($11.00 for age 25 and younger). Tickets are available at the Brown County Playhouse Box Office or the IU Auditorium Box Office, by phone through Ticketmaster at 333-9955, at Ticketmaster outlets or online at ticketmaster.com.\nVisit www.indiana.edu/~thtr/bcplay.html for more information. For ticket information, please call the IU Auditorium at 855-1103 or the Brown County Playhouse Box Office at 988-2123.
(06/05/06 9:43pm)
Blockbuster movies aren't the only thing IU students can see this summer; they can see blockbuster museum exhibits, too. \n"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," on exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago, gives Tut-maniacs a second chance at seeing artifacts belonging to one of ancient Egypt's most well-known prelates. Almost 200,000 tickets were sold prior to the exhibit's Friday opening and an estimated one million visitors will flock to the lakefront museum before the exhibit closes Jan. 1, 2007.\nThe show features more than 130 treasures from the resting place of the "the boy king" and other royal tombs, all between 3,000 and 3,500 years old.\nThis is the only Midwestern stop for the show, which was previously on exhibit in Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and will go on display next February at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.\nWith its appearance in Chicago, the exhibit comes full circle. The Field Museum was one of the museums that attracted a total of 8 million visitors in the late 1970s to see another version of the Tut show.\nThe result was the birth of the museum blockbuster, the shows where hype, ticket price and crowds sometimes threaten to overshadow the artistic or cultural value of the objects on display.\nThe Field Museum has already sold nearly 200,000 tickets for Tut, despite a hefty $25 ticket price. Museum officials believe that timed-entry tickets and extended hours will cut down on wait times.\nOnce visitors get inside the exhibit, they will likely understand archaeologist Howard Carter's awed first impression when he uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922: "As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold -- everywhere the glint of gold."\nCarter's discovery of the remarkably intact tomb created a worldwide sensation and burst of Egyptomania. Movie theaters were decorated with Egyptian themes, Hollywood churned out mummy movies and rumors of a mysterious curse on those who entered the tomb captured the popular imagination.\nMore than 5,000 amazingly preserved artifacts were found in the tomb. About 50 were included in the first King Tut tour of the 1970s, including the piece that would become an icon, his solid gold death mask.\nThat piece is missing from the current show, as Egyptian officials won't let it leave the country. There are about 50 objects recovered from Tut's tomb -- most were not included in the original show -- with the rest connected to the tombs or lives of other royal family members.\nOne of the most amazing objects in the show is a miniature coffin made of gold and decorated with carnelian, obsidian, rock crystal and glass. Approximately one foot high, it portrays Tut as Osiris, the god of the dead.\nOn the back of the figure, wings sprout from his back. On the front, Tut's beard is braided and his crossed hands carry the crook and flail, symbols of kingship.\nThe coffinette held Tut's mummified liver, and on the inside -- which is viewable -- the Book of the Dead is carved. Illustrating how the ancient Egyptians' concept of identity valued the name over an exact likeness, the coffinette was originally created for an earlier ruler, but Tutankhamun was inscribed over the earlier name.\nThe exhibit seeks to place Tut in the greater religious and historical context of the 18th dynasty, the golden age of the pharaohs. Tut was a relatively minor king who probably died before he was 20 but became famous because of the splendor of his tomb.\n"Ironically, he's the one most remembered, but it's his ancestors who had all the clout," said David Foster, project management director of the Field Museum.\nThose included his father, Akhenaten, who rocked the country by banning the worship of many gods in favor of Aten, a god portrayed as a sun disc. He's represented in the long, narrow face of a head from what was once a massive limestone statue.\nMuch of another entire gallery is dedicated to items from the tomb of the couple believed to be Tut's great-grandparents, Yuya and Tjuya.\nIn addition to exhibiting splendid craftsmanship in Tjuya's massive gilded coffin and elegant funerary mask, the gallery illustrates how carefully Egyptians prepared for the afterlife.\nA container for perfume is camouflaged as a kneeling male servant balancing a pot on his shoulder; hundreds of figurines called "shabtis" were placed in tombs and carved with spells ordering them to perform any necessary labor for the deceased when summoned.\nThe final portion of the exhibit features details on the most scientific research on his mummy. CT scans discounted the theory that his sudden death was due to a blow to the head and instead raised the possibility he died of an infection after breaking his leg.\nWhen visitors leave the show, they do so through a special King Tut gift shop. Visitors are urged to "celebrate your inner pharaoh" with a $34 velvet-and-lame striped headdress.
(05/18/06 12:13am)
What do you get when you mix the Knights Templar, buried treasure and a bunch of clues only a Sherlock Holmes with a religious studies degree would understand? \nA mediocre knock-off of "The Da Vinci Code." \nThis one's called "The Templar Legacy," by Steve Berry. Published in February, it is part of a new genre of religious history/thriller novels filling up the spaces made for them on bestseller lists when Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" took off as a world-wide success.\nBerry's tale starts off in Copenhagen, Denmark, where retired federal agent Cotton Malone has purchased a bookstore and lives in the apartment above. Stephanie Nelle, Malone's former boss at the Justice Department, is in Copenhagen burning up some vacation time as a pretense for working unnoticed by her employer as she tries to unravel two mysteries: the death of her husband a decade ago and the secret he may have died for. But when her purse is stolen by a common thief, Malone gives chase, and the foot pursuit ends with Nelle's purse snatcher jumping to his death from a tower, slitting his own throat as he falls to the pavement below. \nTurns out, Malone's friendly lunch date with Nelle turns out to be one last mission.\nIf you pay close attention in the beginning of the book, you will find out Nelle is in her 60s. This makes her more like a Bea Arthur with street smarts, though she's obviously a desk jockey who doesn't know what it's like to be out in the field. The characters are interesting and well-written, which is why it's possible to assign a face to them.\nBerry also writes his scenes very well, with obvious attention to detail and descriptive writing. The novel feels at times like a travel piece mixed with international intrigue against a backdrop of religious history -- with a few thrills thrown in. This attention to detail, however, doesn't take care of a couple of small problems worth mentioning: At the end of one chapter a character has a revolver, and at the beginning of the next has an automatic. Or, characters will sometimes pull back the hammers of their guns -- usually Glocks or Berettas -- but you don't need to pull the hammer back on an automatic before you fire, which is something any gun-fighting halfwit would know. But Berry isn't expected to be a firearms expert in addition to all the effort he went to in creating such verbal imagery.\nAs Berry's fourth book on the best seller list, "The Templar Legacy" feels familiar if you've read "The Da Vinci Code." \nThe Knights Templar were entrusted with treasure. To protect it, they hid it. The order survived attempts to purge it from the Roman Catholic Church, and the location isn't known, but there are plenty of clues people could use to lead them to the treasure.\nIn "The Templar Legacy," Malone has a patron who doesn't quite measure up to "Da Vinci Code's" Sir Leigh Teabing, but there are some similarities. The antagonist is part of a religious order and wants the treasure for himself, and he does everything he can to stop Malone while trying to get information from Nelle. The list could go on.\nWith 67 chapters, the book seems longer than it is, but there's enough action to keep you turning page after page, even though the style is a little too obvious. Good foreshadowing forgives the predictability of the plot and a couple of deus ex machina's showing up at the last minute.\nThis is a book that, though mediocre, is interesting enough, and has a different spin on the Templar Knights than "The Da Vinci Code"
(05/05/06 3:27am)
When you take college students overwhelmed by a Vanity Fair of electronics, pile on some unusual architecture, followed by an awkward location, you begin to ask yourself the question IU Art Museum Director Heidi Gealt asks herself: how do you get IU students to visit the museum?\nWith three decades of experience working at the museum and a Ph.D. in art history, she still can't answer that question.\nGealt oversees a collection rivaling universities like Harvard, Princeton and Yale, but in general, the only IU students who walk through the museum's front doors do so because it is part of a class assignment. The current solution to getting students to visit the museuma is making sure art becomes part of the curriculum with guided tours designed by a museum educator who works with class instructors.\nOne such course is called "Traditions and Culture of IU," and it routinely brings more than 900 IU freshmen into the museum. Students take a guided tour and do a computer-based interactive assignment. Gealt said planned visits, as these tours are called, are integrated into enough departments that she's trying to find money to hire a second educator to help handle the more than 14,000 IU students who visit the museum every year, a partial result of these planned visits.\n"We're all about seeing ... if you're a University student you should expect to understand your basic nature better when you leave than when you came," Gealt said. "Well, you won't understand that unless you've taken the time to look at some of these things and understand what the phenomenon of seeing leads to. And Monet is one of the transforming voices in that. Yes, absolutely, and how the phenomenon of seeing ... led to a whole new way of looking."\nAmericans attend more art shows featuring Impressionists than they do anything else, and Gealt said IU students can use Impressionists like Monet to help them see the world through a new perspective.\nBut if the museum's collection helps students see this, why don't they come without being forced to by a class assignment? It's all about the stimulation.\n"You are swamped, or could be almost over-stimulated on any given day with the amount of stimulation that comes through the iPods, the televisions, all these things that are constantly streaming into your world -- plus classroom, plus recreation, plus dating, plus family, plus all the things that happen," Gealt said.\nShe said another way of trying to expose students to the museum collection's value is by using a Web site to reach students on their own terms. Gealt said the museum's Web site is a way to let students see what the museum has to offer on their own terms, in hopes the virtual collections will draw students into the real ones.\nSome students, like freshman Corbin Elliott, don't have much of a chance to soak up the rays of art and culture shining across Bloomington's limestone campus. His work load forbids him the chance at more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, let alone a leisurely stroll through the art museum. But thanks to the museum's Web site, Elliott can plod through the WebWork he has to finish for his math class in one tab and browse through one of the museum's online collections in another.\n"I like art, especially the kind that makes me feel something," said Elliott, who walks past the art museum at least three times a week on his way to class. "But I just don't have time to do a lot of extra stuff around town, or on campus."\nElliott could look at a number of special exhibits online, including "Swing Landscape," an oil-on-canvas by the American painter Stuart Davis. The Davis piece was completed in 1938 with funding by the Works Progress Administration. It is mural size and part of the "Top 120" category on the museum's Web site.\nBut if you make the museum's collection available online, doesn't that make it easier for students to not go to the museum? \nNot according to Gealt, who said students today see so many images reproduced on a computer screen, the chance to see something tangible makes the museum all the more relevant. "The one thing I've heard is authenticity," she said. "The idea that this is not just something duplicated on the screen, not just something that's an off-print from a computer, but that this actually was made in 1869. That is the hook -- the authenticity, the truth, the honesty. It's tangible."\nThat tangibility is all thanks to one man -- Herman B Wells.\nWhen Wells was in the third year of his presidency in 1941, he used private donors to provide the amenities he thought IU students deserved.\n"He wanted any student coming to IU to have the same experiences, and the same amenities they had in the big city, and he found the people to make it happen because he knew it wouldn't happen through state funds - even then," Gealt said. "So everything -- the building, the art -- it all came from private philanthropy."\nThe museum's present edifice was designed and paid for the same way. Private donors and architect I.M. Pei designed the building, located between the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and the School of Fine Arts. The museum was built from poured concrete and colored to match the surrounding limestone, and has no right angles. \nFreshman Chris Burgess said he has been to the museum at least five times, a high number in comparison to other students. Burgess said the design isn't what you'd expect.\n"When you think of an art museum you think of great Corinthian columns on the front, and very bland on the inside and you're there for the art," he said. "But for the IU Art Museum it's like the art museum is like art itself, so it's very interesting how they have art inside art"
(04/30/06 4:59am)
A bouquet of flowers marks the pit in the ground made when a plane slammed into the muddy earth at speeds exceeding 150 miles per hour, claiming the lives of five IU students. \nRobert Samels, Zachary Novak, Garth Eppley, Georgina Joshi and Chris Carducci were killed when the six-seat Cessna flown by Joshi crashed during a final approach for landing at the Monroe County Airport. The five IU Jacobs School of Music students were returning home from a community choir rehearsal in Lafayette. When the plane disappeared from radar around 11:40 p.m., a rescue operation followed bringing together local emergency services. \nA day after the Federal Aviation Administration released a preliminary report on the fatal crash a half-mile south of the airport, those responsible for leading the recovery operation met Thursday night in a conference room at the Van Buren Township Fire Department, where agency leaders analyzed their roles in the emergency operation.\nMonroe County Coroner David Toumey's pager brought him to the command post first at nearby Dillman Farms, and then the nearby fire station on the airport grounds where he used a hanger as a temporary morgue.\n"I have a unique perspective because I work with so many different agencies and departments, and I've never seen this kind of cooperation before. There was not a turf issue whatsoever," Toumey said.\nThe Indiana State Police have responsiblity for securing the scene of plane crashes pending the arrival of National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration investigators. After the NTSB and FAA inspect the crash site, the scene is opened up to the Coroner's office, which retrieves the victims for identification and autopsy. Toumey said the scene transfers couldn't have been handled better, and said he was also impressed with how information about the incident was controlled, thanks to Deputy Chief Mike Cornman and State Police Sgt. Joe Watts. \nUnder the National Incident Management System, a federal system for organizing the chain of command in handling a large emergency, the role of Public Information Officer fell to Cornman, as well as ISP Sgt. Joe Watts. Toumey said the crash investigation wasn't a media frenzy.\n"I was really pleased with myself, my staff, and others that the media didn't know what was going on," Toumey said. "It wasn't that we were trying to keep information away from the media, but it was a matter of ensuring the correct information was released at the proper time, by the proper person."\nA report released by the NTSB Wednesday said airport visibility was 100 feet at the time of the crash, thanks to fog. Minimum visibility to make a landing at the airport is 200 feet.
(04/17/06 3:51am)
It was July 25, 1975, when "A Chorus Line" opened on Broadway, letting audiences know there was still life to be lived by big musicals. This big musical paid tribute to the thousands of chorus dancers called "gypsies" roaming New York City's cast calls. \nThe IU Department of Theatre & Drama's season finale is a show about dancers trying to get a job in a dance chorus. The production opened Friday at the Ruth N. Halls Theatre with additional performances to be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.\nRunning more than 6,000 performances on Broadway, "A Chorus Line" began as a workshop. A group of dancers met after rehearsals for other shows to talk about their personal and professional lives. The sessions were tape-recorded, written down and a musical libretto was pieced together. Playwright/novelist James Kirkwood and a former dancer assembled the book. Marvin Hamlisch composed the music and Edward Kleban wrote the lyrics. Playwright Neil Simon was called in to do some unaccredited book doctoring and their combined work was closely guided by director and choreographer Michael Bennett.\nBut a skillfully crafted musical is only done justice by a skillfully crafted rehearsal process reaching into the hundreds of man hours with rehearsals devoted to music and choreography thrown in on top of an orchestra, and mixed in with the inevitable stops and starts. \n"The trick is to find a good balance between dance rehearsals and music rehearsals," said Adam Burnette, one of the show's two music directors. "This show is obviously a dance-heavy show, so it's important to get the actors moving. But just like choreography, the actors must have equal muscle memory in their singing. It really depends on the situation to say how long this show needs to really get polished and good."\n"A Chorus Line" has a "staging scheme," rather than normal narrative. It's set at an audition for an upcoming Broadway production and a director and choreography assistant choose 17 dancers. The director tells them he is looking for a strong dancing chorus of four boys and four girls, and he wants to learn more about them. They are then told to talk about themselves. The audience finds out one chorus hopeful used ballet classes to hide from a bad home life. Another dancer says if George Hamilton can be a movie star, so can he. And another dancer who's a little long in the tooth wants one last part. \nThe show's characters are introduced through a series of episodic introductions overlapping each other like cinematic jump-cuts. These introductions give a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers. Highlights include the songs "One," "Nothing," "The Music and the Mirror" and "What I Did For Love."\n"This is not your regular 'boom-chuck' Rodgers and Hammerstein kind of show," Burnette said. "The effect is whimsical and very charming, capturing the various stories of all the actors with lots of energy. It's one of the hardest moments I've ever encountered in a musical to pull off well."\nPart of the show is called "Montage." Burnette said this is the most difficult part of the show for him because the effect happens with quick shifts and mixed meters. But the choreography is no less intricate, making a delicate balance in dividing up the rehearsal time. \n"A Chorus Line" held the distinction of being the longest-running show on Broadway until "CATS" surpassed it in 1997 and "The Phantom of the Opera" in 2006.
(04/03/06 6:10am)
What do you get when you mix the Knights Templar, buried treasure and a bunch of clues only a Sherlock Holmes with a religious studies degree would understand? \nA mediocre knock-off of "The Da Vinci Code." \nThis one's called "The Templar Legacy," by Steve Berry. It came out in February and is part of a new genre of religious history/thriller novels filling up the spaces made for them on bestseller lists when Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" took off as a world-wide success.\nBerry's tale starts off in Copenhagen, Denmark, where retired federal agent Cotton Malone has purchased a bookstore and lives in the apartment above. Stephanie Nelle, Malone's former boss at the Justice Department, is in Copenhagen burning up some vacation time as a pretense for working unnoticed by her employer as she tries to unravel two mysteries: the death of her husband a decade ago and the secret he may have died for. But when her purse gets stolen by a common thief, Malone gives chase, and the foot pursuit ends with Nelle's purse snatcher jumping to his death from a tower, slitting his own throat as he falls to the pavement below. \nTurns out, Malone's friendly lunch date with Nelle turns out to be one last mission.\nIf you picture a retired Lt. Comm. Harmon Rabb, Jr., from the late CBS drama "JAG," you'd be close in assigning the face of actor David James Elliott to Malone, but Nelle is no Catherine Bell, the actor who played Rabb's teammate, Marine Col. Sarah MacKenzie. \nIf you pay close attention in the beginning of the book, you will find out Nelle is in her 60s. This makes her more like a Bea Arthur with street smarts, though she's obviously a desk jockey who doesn't know what it's like to be out in the field. The characters are interesting and well-written, which is why it's possible to assign a face to them.\nBerry also writes his scenes very well, with obvious attention to detail and descriptive writing. The novel feels at times like a travel piece mixed with international intrigue against a backdrop of religious history -- with a few thrills thrown in. This attention to detail, however, doesn't take care of a couple of small problems worth mentioning: At the end of one chapter a character has a revolver, and at the beginning of the next has an automatic. Or, characters will sometimes pull back the hammers of their guns -- usually Glocks or Berettas -- but you don't need to pull the hammer back on an \nautomatic before you fire, which is something any gun-fighting halfwit would know. But Berry isn't expected to be a firearms expert in addition to all the effort he went to in creating such verbal imagery.\nAs Berry's fourth book on the best seller list, "The Templar Legacy" feels familiar if you've read "The Da Vinci Code." \nThe Knights Templar were entrusted with treasure. To protect it, they hid it. The order survived attempts to purge it from the Roman Catholic Church, and the location isn't known, but there are plenty of clues people could use to lead them to the treasure.\nIn "The Templar Legacy," Malone has a patron who doesn't quite measure up to "Da Vinci Code's" Sir Leigh Teabing, but there are some similarities. The antagonist is part of a religious order and wants the treasure for himself, and he does everything he can to stop Malone while trying to get information from Nelle. The list could go on.\nWith 67 chapters, the book seems longer than it is, but there's enough action to keep you turning page after page, even though the style is a little too obvious. Good foreshadowing forgives the predictability of the plot and a couple of deus ex machina's showing up at the last minute.\nThis is a book worth reading because it is interesting, and has a different spin on the Templar Knights than "The Da Vinci Code"
(04/03/06 5:34am)
The Jack Twist character played by Jake Gyllenhaal in "Brokeback Mountain" has a line summing up how I feel about the way homosexuals are portrayed in 21st century mainstream media: "This is a bitch of an unsatisfactory situation." \nThanks to television shows like "Will & Grace," the gay culture is slowly creeping its way into mainstream entertainment, but just because it's creeping doesn't mean it's creeping in the right direction. \nThe NBC sitcom is a show giving more than 30 million Americans a weekly dose of homosexual hysterics about two gay men and their respective fag hags. This homosexual entry into mainstream television is both a good and bad thing for the gay rights movement: Gays are central characters in a national television show produced by one of the major networks. Its duration for eight seasons shows that mainstream America is OK with gay people, so long as they aren't "too" gay, or as long as they are "funny," or as long the characters appeal to stereotypes already in place.\nBut the show also continues a trend where homosexuals are second-citizens in the world of entertainment, and it's not the only time. \nAs soon as the civil rights movement started taking off, the subservient roles blacks had, in both television and film, started to grow, slowly but surely. It's not unusual at all now to see a black hero leading a cast, and for a time, there was talk the next James Bond would be black. Gays aren't so lucky.\nMy mom thinks "Will & Grace" is funny, and watches the show regularly. She thinks it's cool to see gay people clown around, the same way white people lapped up the Sambo characters from the "Amos & Andy" days. While Mom thinks it's funny, I think it's worse than getting called a "fag." You can ignore one bigot, you can't ignore a long-running sitcom and subtext it keeps alive.\nLook at the story line of the show and characters, and you'll see why.\n"Will & Grace" disarms television viewers and softens the tension they feel toward depictions of homosexuality. The show never depicts intimate gay love scenes, or has explicitly gay dialogue between Will -- the successful and very straight-acting lawyer -- and Jack, Will's swishy foil. The show also reinforces the stereotypes many have towards the gay culture. Will is successful because he "acts" straight, or normal. Jack is funny because he "acts" gay. \nThis appeals to a mainstream middle-America who demonstrated in the last presidential election they didn't like gay people because it doesn't show gay men as people, it shows them as caricatures. But thanks to films like "Brokeback Mountain," a love story between two ranch hands in rugged 1960s Wyoming, gays might finally begin to achieve the same level of equality in films and television that black characters have.\nNominated this year for eight Oscars and winning three, "Brokeback" shows full frontal nudity, sex and dialogue that actually hits on the issues faces by homosexuals working as cowboys, and living incognito among an intolerant society. This is the first time any film has entered into the mainstream film culture actually showing gay characters with depth, and not simply keeping them around as token fags for the sole purpose of grabbing a laugh with a funny walk, or a lisp.\nThis film takes the first step and raises gays to a higher status in mainstream entertainment, a raise that's long over due.\n"Will & Grace" goes off the air in late May and, hopefully, Hollywood will remember a place called Stonewall and continue the fight with more films like the one set in the grasslands of Wyoming.
(11/21/05 4:56pm)
COLUMBUS, Ga. -- Several IU students traveled to the U.S. Army base at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., this past weekend to participate in the symbolic protest against a military-run school, formally known as the School of Americas. \nThe base, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, houses a controversial training facility that has been linked to human rights abuses in Latin America. The weekend's protest included a mock funeral procession, live music and speeches.\nSOA faced criticism from church and civil rights groups. In 2001, School of Americas was closed and WHINSEC was put in its place.\nMany demonstrators said they pay no attention to the name change and simply continue to call the school SOA -- what they call the "School of Assassins."\nCrowds of people moved freely in and out of the section of streets leading up to the base. Area law enforcers sealed off part of the road that led up to the fence so that there would be an area to accommodate the protestors that attended over the weekend. There were about 15,000 protestors Saturday and an estimated 20,000 Sunday.\nAt each of the annual protests an act called "Crossing the Line" takes place where demonstrators deliberately breach a fence guarding the perimeter of the army base. Protesters crawl to the other side where military police are waiting to flex cuff them. \nOnly 40 of the 300 who pledged to cross the line followed through on their claim.\nIU freshman Tim Gross saw at least one demonstrator "cross the line." Gross said he was struck by the protester, a young college-aged man in a brown hoodie and glasses, who crossed under the line and displayed conflicting emotions after he made it across. He looked like he just didn't know what to do -- his face showing both triumph and confusion, Gross said.\n"I think it's amazing people would give up six months of their lives for this," he said, referring to the maximum sentence allowed to be handed down by federal law for those charged with trespassing with intent to protest. \nIU student Jeremiah John, who attended the protests, did so for a second time. It was his first trip back to the protests held outside the 289-square-mile army base. \nIn 2003, with his now-wife Charity, the pair clipped the fence together, each holding part of a pair of bolt cutters. After six months in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, John said he knows full well what it's like to have your lifestyle crimped with a federal prison sentence. \n"Prison is like a vice: it just keeps tightening and tightening," John said. "Prison is awful. It's like we're using injustice to teach people to be unjust."\nVoices in opposition of the SOA were counteracted by voices of surrounding the community in support of the military. \n"God Bless Fort Benning" was a festival running in the Columbus Civic Center on Saturday. It had live music, food and carnival rides for all the servicemen and women posted to the base. Many community members said they don't understand why the protesters are in their city and while they don't hate the protestors, they are considered an annoyance. \nJoe Leuer, the assistant dean of academics at WHINSEC, acknowledged that teachings at the SOA were sometimes used inappropriately by graduates who committed human rights violations. He also acknowledged the role SOA had in South America. \nLeuer says he's grateful for groups like School of America Watch because it brings attention to issues that need to be changed. \nJAG officer Capt. Brian Battles, a military attorney assigned to WHINSEC, said he respects the right of the demonstrators to protest. He said even though it is a military base, members of the community can enter and exit the base freely if they show a valid ID. The protesters are being arrested because of their intent to deliberately enter the base to demonstrate. \nGross said he didn't think anyone who crossed the line had any ideas about what a possible prison experience might be like. Gross said he didn't either, and while he said he might not have crossed the line, he's not sure if he'll stay opposed forever.\n"I don't feel like I'm called to do that right now, but who knows in the future," Gross said.
(11/18/05 4:16pm)
Students from the Collins Living-Learning Center and Global Village at Foster Quad are planning to drive to Ft. Benning, Ga., this weekend, risking the possibility of arrest to protest a military-run school located on the 289-square-mile Army base.\nThe facility, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, replaced the School of Americas, a training center with notoriety among human rights groups for its possible connections with human rights abuses in Latin America. SOA faced criticism since its creation in the late 1940s and was shut down in 2001. Human rights advocates fear WHINSEC is simply SOA in disguise. \nThe school received much criticism during its more than four decade existence because students were sometimes implicated in human rights violations. \nFreshman Tim Gross and sophomores Brian Pike and Carley Knapp are planning to attend the demonstrations.\nGross, who represents Collins, said his interest in the human rights issues presented by antagonists of the School of Americas began because of a class he took while attending high school at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis.\n"This demonstration is important to me because it represents a way for me to do something to make a change in the world," Gross said. "By educating myself and by participating in such an event, I hope to contribute to causes that I feel are very important, such as the pursuit of peace and the availability of basic human rights to everyone."\nAccording to Center for International Policy, a private center studying U.S foreign policy, training manuals used at the SOA from the early 1980s through 1991 promoted techniques that violated human rights and democratic standards. \nFor years the School of Americas faced accusations that students who attended the school went on to commit human rights violations similar to the Jesuit murders, or work for corrupt Latin American governments supporting the violations. \nThe School of Americas Watch was founded in 1989 after six Jesuit priests were killed in El Salvador. Since its beginning, SOAW has committed itself to closing the SOA and ending what it calls "oppressive U.S. foreign policy" through non-violent protests. \nThe protests might have worked.\nIn 2001, Congress shut down the School of Americas replacing it with WHINSEC. The school is located in the same building as its predecessor and it's mandated by Congress to focus on leadership development and counter-drug operations. It has also mandated students receive at least eight hours of human rights courses. \nThe weekend schedule includes a Sunday event where demonstrators commit what they call an act of civil disobedience, and trespass onto the base drenched in fake blood and carrying dummy coffins to symbolize what they think are the results of SOA training. Participants deliberately get themselves arrested for trespassing as a way of making a point.\n"I think most of us who have anything to do with Fort Benning just see the protests as an expression of American-style democracy, although one that is misguided," said Lee Rials, a public affairs officer at Ft. Benning. Rials said the protests are misguided because it takes Congressional action to close WHINSEC, so SOAW's efforts should be directed toward Congress. \nRials also said the sight of the protest is near a gate that no longer serves as the main entrance to the post, so the protests aren't expected to disrupt access to Ft. Benning.\nGross said he doesn't plan on getting arrested, even though it is a possibility.\nIt isn't known yet how many students living in Foster Quad's Global Village or the Collins Living Learning Center will be taking part in the protest. It is equally uncertain how many IU students will face felony charges this weekend when they cross the line into civil disobedience by trespassing onto a U.S. military installation.
(05/12/05 8:46pm)
Since Valentine's Day, the Ellettsville Police Department has been policing the town it serves from a new, $1.5 million headquarters situated on State Road 46, west of town. The 22-man department will celebrate the end ofconstruction with a dedication ceremony and open house Saturday at 1 p.m.\nAs Chief Deputy Marshall Jay Humphrey directs a tour of the 9,000 square foot facility built in the shape of a square, he does so with a smile brighter than Times Square on New Year's Eve. And he has good reason. \nThe first location occupied 900 square feet of the old fire station and was plagued with a series of floods. The most recent one three years ago stole everything the department had, from chairs to computers. Ellettsville Marshall Ron McGlocklin even said there were substantial health concerns since the flood created a sewer back-up forcing officers to fill out reports while they walked around in solid waste.\nAt the time, McGlocklin said the Town Council took action partly because it didn't want its police force to work in those kinds of conditions, but also because of the growth within the 20 square miles of a chopped up jurisdiction EPD is charged with patrolling.\n"Some people may ask what's the big deal with a new police station?," Humphrey said. "Well, this is a small community, it's a big deal here."\nThe station boasts a number of features it didn't have before. There's a new dispatch center that will eventually be able to work as a back-up to Monroe County Central Dispatch. Secure interview rooms make it possible for officers to work more efficiently on station without having to drive to the Monroe County Jail to interview suspects, or take statements from the public. A new Breathalyzer room allows the department to video tape and get a breath alcohol reading on their own so they, again, don't have to drive into Bloomington and use someone else's. Another major improvement comes in the form of a squad room giving each officer his own computerized work station, and an enhanced training room allows all department meetings to be held at the station.\nRussell Harris, one of the department's eight full-time officers and a training officer as well, spoke of the improvements because of construction.\n"It's going to make it easier because of what we have at this facility as compared to the old one," Harris said. "It's not like in the old place where people sat people down between the microwave and coffee pot to interview them … We don't have to go to the Odd Fellows Lodge or the library like we used to to conduct training seminars."\nBut making the department's clerical and administrative work more efficient isn't the thing Humphrey smiles the most about. It's little stuff that most people would take for granted.\nThanks to the construction, Humphrey and the other full-time, part-time, and reserve officers have a state-of-the-art locker room to shower and change clothes in. There's an actual restroom for both men and women so now neither they nor the public have to use the filthy port-a-pot like they previously did at the construction trailer. \nMarlene Moody is a floral designer at Unique Flower and Gift Shoppe on Sale Street in downtown Ellettsville. Moody knew about the sordid history the department had when it came to working facilities.\n"It should have been done long before now … It's definitely something that needed to be done," she said.\nBut not everyone seems to share their sentiments.\n"If you're going to spend that kind of money, you need to build for the future, not just the present," said former Town Council member David Drake, who was on the council when the project was approved. \nDrake said he thought the building was bigger than was currently needed, but suggested that Ellettsville is growing and that if you're going to build a building that's supposed to last for 20 or 30 years, then you need to build one keeping that in mind.\nBut overall, Marshall McGlocklin said he thinks the community has been very supportive of the facility.\n"I haven't heard one negative comment," said McGlocklin. "John Q. Public gives us a pat on the back"
(03/31/05 4:48am)
The IU Foundation announced Monday that IU ranked No. 1 in the Big Ten and 13th in the nation when it comes to garnering financial support from the private sector.\nIn the 2004 fiscal year, the IU Foundation collected $248.5 million in gifts and grants, placing it in the top percentile of 971 institutions of higher learning that receive support from the private sector, according to a survey by the Council for Aid to Education this year.\nOf that $248.5 million, $136.3 million came from private gifts and $112.2 from nongovernmental research grants, according to statement released Monday.\nMoney from "private sector support" is used in a variety of ways on the IU campus, including student retention. Amanda Burnham, executive director of development and alumni relations for the School of Journalism, said private sector support accounts for roughly 20 percent of the school's budget for fiscal year 2005-06. Burnham said Sunday at the journalism school's annual scholarship ceremony that the school will award more than $200,000 in scholarships to IU journalism students. She said the scholarship money is available only because of financial support from private donors -- these funds are not built into the school's budget. \nMuch of those "extra-bugetary funds" are managed by the IU Foundation. The Foundation is an University-affiliated entity that functions similarly to a bank. The Foundation collects donations, oversees the money, monitors investments designed to benefit the fiscal health of IU and acts as a liaison between the University and potential donors. Foundation President Curt Simic echoes Burnham's emphasis on scholarships stemming from private support. He said students going through college today do it two ways:\n"They are either going into debt or working their way through. The scholarships ameliorate that. I worry so much because so many of our students are growing deeper in debt, and that makes education less accessible," Simic said. "These scholarships make education more accessible." \nThe IU Foundation also runs an endowment designed to ensure the fiscal stability of IU. According to the Foundation, in the 2004 fiscal year, the IU Endowment grew past the $1 billion mark. According to Simic, during fiscal year 2003 and 2004, there was at least a 20-percent growth rate for the endowment. Simic highlighted these statistics to demonstrate that IU manages its funds well and to show investors that if they make a gift to IU, it won't be wasted.\n"We won't blow it, and we'll grow it," Simic said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Brandon S Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.
(02/11/05 4:39am)
"Give me five dollars" was the name of the game last night in the Indiana Memorial Union Gallery. Latinos Unidos held a date auction to raise money for an annual athletic event and to raise cultural awareness towards the Latino community at IU.\n"Love Don't Cost a Thang" was the date auction sponsored this year by Lambda Upsilon Lamdba, the Latino minority-based fraternity, as well as Latinos Unidos. \nJunior Aldo Huitzil, a member of Lambda, said five men and five women were each being auctioned. The highest bidder would then win a free Valentine's date with the auctionee courtesy of gift certificates donated by area businesses.\nFreshman Ricardo Hernandez, one of the men being auctioned, said he wasn't too worried about the public humiliation he thought he might face.\n"I don't want to be embarrassed, but I'm not worried about it because its going to a good cause," Hernandez said. "(We are) trying to build ourselves into a stronger community and have a better voice at IU."\nHuitzil said the proceeds from the auction will go to help pay for Latinos Unidos' annual Sportsfest held April 2 in both the Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center and Dunn Meadow. Huitzil said Sportsfest involves several other Latinos Unidos groups coming to participate in events such basketball, volleyball and tug-of-war. Participating teams must have at least 20 players; and Huitzil said teams from other colleges and universities, including both Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis and Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, have already signed up for the event.\nJunior Jeremiah Ashe, a member of both Latinos Unidos at IU and Lambda, is helping to organize this year's Sportsfest. He said the athletic conference serves a similar function to the date auction by bringing members of the Latino community together to help foster a sense community. He said he's expecting at least 100 players from at least five different schools to participate this spring.\nBoth Sportsfest and last night's date auction have a similar function according to Huitzil, who called the concept behind them a "collaboration of minds."\n"We are trying to unify as a group and be aware of those differences," Huitzil said, "but that we can still collaborate despite those differences and then move forward."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Brandon S Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.
(02/04/05 4:27am)
I've heard it said that writing is easy. Sure, you just have to be willing to sit down in front of a computer and open a vein. \nWriting is hard, but not because the actual writing is hard. It's hard because many of us haven't found a process that makes it easy. \nThe first thing I do in the writing process is think. I think about what I'm trying to accomplish with what I'm writing. Then, I condense that want of accomplishment to one sentence which runs through my obsessive-compulsive mind until I'm so brought to the brink of collapsing from self-inflicted aggravation, I want to collapse in a pool of my own vomit. \nThen I pop a Xanax, and it's on to the next step.\nThis is usually where the breakdown occurs. Now that I know what I want to say, I can't seem to say it. The answer is simple: I've written so much in my life that I just don't want to write anymore.\nSo how do you find the inspiration to keep on writing just when you think you can write no more? \nI decided that because I'm an old soul who would have been better placed during the uncertainty of the Great Depression and the sadness and turmoil of World War II that I should make like Ernest Hemmingway.\nI use a typewriter. That's right, a typewriter. \nI execute the whole writing process on a typewriter. It's an old Quiet Deluxe portable made by Royal in the mid-1930s. It's made from all metal parts and even being 60 years old, it's better than any office machine hanging around Staples today. I know a lot of people who do everything on the computer. They can even manage to write. But some people, like me, got burned out because we simply lost the intimacy between our thoughts and our words and we could write no more. \nThe human dependence on computers leads simply to a utilitarian relationship with the computer, and it's devoid of intimacy. With that lack of intimacy comes a lack of inspiration and energy. For you to excel at any activity, there has to be some sort of romantic pleasure to be enjoyed from the process. A computer is a tool. A typewriter is art.\nI use a typewriter because it's simple, and there's something therapeutic about it. I enjoy the perpetual clickety-clack of metal type bars, whacking a once blank sea of white paper, leaving their black impressions and linking thoughts upon thoughts together across each page. \nI make my revisions with a pencil, thus merging the new thoughts among the old for a harmonious blend of ideas that make up the second draft. \nI retype the next draft with all my changes from the first. \nThis is nice because it, through repetition, forces you to fully comprehend what you've written. Highlighting and cutting and pasting is something you don't usually have to think about much. But when you retype whole sections, you cement what you've written in your artistic conscious.\nAnd you keep repeating this part of the process until you're happy with what you've written, and you feel like the final sentence on the last page reflects the final sentence of the first page.\nAnd then, you've become a writer. But just as this is archaic and a Ted Kaczynski-like form of withdrawal, it's what makes the writing process individual to me.\nThe trick is this: Don't worry about the writing. Worry about the process behind the writing, because when you find a process that works for you, good writing is sure to follow.
(02/01/05 4:44am)
The story that began the musical genre of "a star is born" and spawned a slew of movie musicals during Hollywood's depression era comes to the IU Auditorium Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. Although "42nd Street" originally was a 1929 film, Warner Brothers remade it as a musical in 1933 with choreography by Busby Berkeley and introduced a number of classic Hollywood stars. In 1980, the film version was adapted into a long-running Broadway musical, and it was revived in 2001, earning a Tony for best revived musical. With that revival closing this year, the national tour of "42nd Street" is the only place you can see the show live, said Jennifer Sims of Big League Productions.\nSparking the whole idea of "a star is born," which forms the basis of its plot, "42nd Street" tells the story of a young girl named Peggy Sawyer who goes to New York and makes it into the chorus of the latest Broadway production by producer/director Julian Marsh. While in the chorus, she doubles as an understudy for the star of the show, Dorothy Brock. During the course of the show, Brock takes the saying "Break a Leg" a little too literally and proceeds to do just that. \nHarvey Cocks has a special relationship with "42nd Street," and he recounted the production's tremendous influence on future films. He worked in New York for 30 years and now serves as managing director of the Fort Wayne Youtheatre. He knew many of the actors in the 1933 film and saw the 1980 stage version and the 2001 revival.\n"I thought it was a great show with the most exciting tap dancing I have ever seen on a stage," said Cocks. "Some of the choreography is original, with some of it taken from Gower Champion's original staging from the 1980 production." \nCocks also said the 1933 film managed to revolutionize the \nmovie musical. \n"42nd Street" is about a bunch of artists trying to put together a show, Cocks said. A young chorus girl gets to be the understudy for the original leading lady. Then chorus girl and the leading man fall in love. This formula took off and led to a chain of movie musicals from 1933 until the mid- to late-1940s. Many people who have seen a version of the show liked its one-time revolutionary trend. \nLinda Rolfe, a long-time IU employee, saw "42nd Street" in a scaled-down production a few years ago at Indianapolis' Beef and Boards. It was the dance that sold the show to Rolfe, just as it did film audiences during the Depression and Harvey Cocks during his two trips to New York. But overall she said she liked its fun atmosphere.\n"This musical is light and fun, (you don't have to think a lot), and it has a happy ending -- that's why I liked it," said Rolfe. "It's not powerful like 'Les Miserables' or 'Miss Saigon,' but you don't always need that."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Brandon S. Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.
(01/27/05 5:08am)
The Middle Way House will offer a women's self defense class Saturday to raise money for its outreach programs that help women who are victims of domestic violence or rape. \nThe class teaches women how to use the body's pressure points against an attacker. Open to the public, the class costs $20 per person and is taught by Bloomington martial arts expert David Rhodes. The class will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Stonebelt Gym.\nRhodes will teach pressure point self defense -- a technique using the application of pressure to one or more natural points in the human body to disable an attacker. \nOr at least knock the assailiant down long enough to get away. \nMiddle Way House, a nonprofit organization helping victims of domestic violence and rape, is the fundraiser's beneficiary. With 75 employees across several counties, more than 25 percent of its $2 million budget comes from money raised at fundraisers such as Rhodes' class.\nRhodes teaches this course regularly at the Ryukyu Kyusho Martial Arts, his "dojo," or school, located on North College Avenue. He said PPSD is a self defense technique that can be used by anybody and requires little or no strength on the part of the defender. \n"Pressure point self defense gives a woman options to defend herself, if she chooses to do so," Rhodes said. \nWhile these options have a practical use in escaping from an attack, they also have a more visible benefit, said Toby Strout, director of Middle Way House. She said some research shows women who are victims of rape are often targeted because they appear to be unsure of themselves. \nStrout said particular benefit of the PPSD class is that it might help women appear more confident, thus reducing their chance of being a victim.\nBut Rhodes and Strout made it clear that knowledge is the key to the "empowerment" Middle Way House tries to promote among women. \nStrout spoke first and foremost about the guilt many women feel after being victimized -- an emotional double-bind. She said if a woman is attacked and she does nothing, she feels ashamed. Likewise, if she is attacked and isn't able to defend herself -- even if she had the training -- she feels ashamed.But Strout emphasized that a woman's first obligation is to survive an assault.\n"Taking a self defense class does not mean you won't be assaulted," Strout said. "It doesn't mean you'll even be able to use what you learned if you are assaulted. Whatever you did to stay alive was the right thing to do." \n-- Contact Staff Writer Brandon Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.