Pause with the founder of Pandora
Inside called Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategist of Pandora online radio. The Stanford alumnus immediately identified IU for its music school. Thank you.
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Inside called Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategist of Pandora online radio. The Stanford alumnus immediately identified IU for its music school. Thank you.
The details of how Christopher Raphael’s “Music Plus One” project works include plenty of computer and math jargon like “Gaussian random variables.” Here’s what the project can do for you, the musician.
Red gum is wedged into the corner of the wall. When practice room 228 sits empty, it still resonates from the droning cello and soaring voices of students in neighboring rooms. Its baby grand piano fills most of the space, and a chair confronts a full-length mirror, waiting for a musician to fill the chamber with sound. Water stains pattern the peg-board walls. Outside, the door is gray and covered in scuff marks from violin, cello, and saxophone cases bumping into it. There’s a small square window for practice-room-hopefuls to peek in and see if the room is occupied. The walls lining the hallway are green or blue depending on the light.
Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora online radio, says bands and solo artists send him thousands of submissions each month, hoping to get played on a Pandora radio station.
Fill up your tank, find some friends, and grab a pad of Mad Libs, because it’s time for an excursion. We’ve hunted down adventures within 30 miles, and we talked to one student who will be driving across the country over winter break. Also, take some advice from one group of cyclists who pedaled from the mountains to the Midwest.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Joannah Peterson pulls up to the curb in front of Goodbody Hall. A handicap tag hangs in her silver Honda Accord, but the reserved spaces are taken. She parks behind them illegally, along the curb. She’s already found six parking tickets tucked under her wiper this year, but she can argue her way out of another one.This fall Friday morning, she’s running a little behind. She has office hours for an Asian history class and a few e-mails to send off.She opens the car door, lifts out her wheelchair frame, attaches one wheel and then the next. After scooting herself onto the chair, she closes the car door and rolls up to the sloped entrance. She zig-zags along the ramp, lifting up her wheels slightly so she won’t get stuck in cracks. She reaches the big blue button with the image of a stick man in a wheelchair. Instead of pressing it, she opens the door herself and rolls inside.The basement of Goodbody is stark white. It smells a little moldy. Sometimes Joannah calls it The Dungeon, sometimes The Belly of the Beast.Inside, Joannah looks left. There’s a hallway and then a staircase. The East Asian Languages and Cultures department is on the second floor. There is no elevator. Thirty-five steps separate Joannah from her department.She turns to the right and wheels silently down the hall and into room 003-6, the corner room that serves as her ground-level office.LITTLE BASEMENT OFFICEThe first time you meet Joannah, it’s her huge brown eyes you notice, and the expressive way she laughs with them.She doesn’t usually tell people this, she says, but she loves to pop little wheelies and crunch Coke cans under her wheels.Some Friday nights, she and her friends visit Asian grocery stores and experiment with the ingredients. Or they play Apples to Apples, and turn it into a drinking game. Joannah’s best friend lives in Louisville, Ky. They’ve been friends since they were kids.A car accident the summer before her freshman year of high school paralyzed Joannah. She can’t walk, but she has full use of her arms.She picked a wheelchair that’s narrow and strong like those used in the wheelchair-rugby movie, “Murderball.” Joannah is not disabled because she uses a wheelchair, she says. Joannah gets around because she uses one.She confesses to studying about 10 hours a day. As a Ph.D. student in the East Asian Languages and Cultures department, she’s both a student and a teacher. She writes papers about voyeurism — peeping through fences and blinds — in Japanese literature.She doesn’t have free time to make sculptures, something she loves to do. Now, her creative releases are pumpkin carving and cake baking. This summer, she made a cake that looked like a platter of sushi with jellybean fish eggs and fruit-leather seaweed.She wears her brown hair pulled back from her fair face. She rests her freckled arms on her still legs.This fall Friday, three other people are already crammed in Joannah’s basement office, which also serves as a resource room for six Japanese assistant instructors. The room is crowded but the walls are not. On the big bulletin board, there’s a business card for Domo, a sushi restaurant.Joannah is an assistant instructor for E-100, East Asia: An Introduction. Friday mornings, she talks with students in the office, and the department gives her the room to schedule meetings and print papers. There’s a phone to call upstairs if she needs something carried down.Today, she has pulled her red spokes and rubber tires up close to the desk across from the door. She is frustrated. She has 15 minutes to send her thesis to a regional competition, and the computer won’t read the document, a huge PDF file that includes full-color illustrations. It’s about female peeping in the Japanese novel, “The Tale of Genji.” The old Dell can’t handle it.The graduate secretary of the department enters the room and Joannah asks her to save the file on a computer upstairs. Joannah hands her a green flash drive shaped like edamame, a soy bean pod served in sushi bars. The secretary hikes the thesis in the bean pod upstairs.Joannah has never seen her printed thesis, which she completed last spring. She says it’s just a big heavy book. She could have someone carry it downstairs, she says, but perhaps she’d notice a mistake.Although Joannah’s adviser calls her one of the brightest scholars in the department, she can’t drop by for office hours or use the computer lab upstairs.Joannah is one of about 10 IU students in a wheelchair, according to Disability Services for Students. These students struggle through buildings with inaccessible areas, stairs to get to elevators, and narrow passageways.DSS addresses issues as they arise for each student, although there are only four professional DSS staff members. In 2007, IU’s disability services had the worst student-to-staff ratio in the Big Ten. For even the most focused small staff, an elevator is a $100,000 beast of a construction project to initiate.DSS director Martha Jacques Engstrom pushed for larger restrooms in the basement of Goodbody. Joannah was grateful, but soon realized the bathroom — not an elevator — was the University’s contribution to her case.“Martha fought tooth and nail to get that bathroom in,” Joannah says. “But the bathroom reminds me of how long I’ve been in that building without an elevator.”WHAT’S UP THEREThe walls on the second floor are bright yellow. Japanese tapestry hangs along the staircase. At the top of the second flight is a shelf of free books and magazines. A sign invites, “Please help yourself.”The department chair sometimes brings his famous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to share.Down the hallway, the graduate lounge is quiet. There are Chinese and Japanese characters on the blackboard, remnants of earlier meal-time talks. There are plants in the corner and a table in the middle, covered in crumbs. The refrigerator in the corner holds someone’s Slimfast touching someone’s salad.There’s a reading room full of theses bound in hardcover, including Joannah’s. At the end of the hall is a computer lab.Her adviser’s office is in the middle.“It’s a real loss to her not to be able to come into my office,” Edith Sarra, director of graduate studies, says. “She should be able to see what my research collection looks like. This is where the scholars of her field are.”Joannah wants to see that shelf of free books, the computer lab, and Sarra’s office. “I’ve been thinking about having a friend bring me up there,” she says. “Maybe just carry me.”UNIVERSITIES ARE MADE OF INDIVIDUALSJoannah doesn’t dwell on what she’s missing.“I’ve got too much to do to wait for other people to fix things for me,” she says. “I have too many places to go. Maybe that’s why I’m not a good activist. My focus is on being a good student.”Joannah has been asking for access since she arrived five years ago. She was admitted into the graduate department in 2004. In 2006, she traveled in Japan through a Stanford program. When she returned to IU in 2007, she pushed for recognition. She went on a local radio show. She challenged administrators and demanded action.As a state institution, IU must follow the Americans with Disabilities Act, which lays out codes for new buildings. The guidelines apply to structures built after 1990. Old buildings are only required to add accessible features if a renovation takes place.In 2007, Joannah met with Provost Karen Hanson. Hanson remembers meeting with Joannah, although she didn’t share good news.No one wants to deprive Joannah of access to her department, Hanson says. But the buildings are old. Goodbody was built in 1936. It is not high on the construction priority list.A university architect says it’s about money, of course. It’s expensive to conduct a survey to see if an elevator could fit inside Goodbody. There’s also the possibility of a chair lift, but that would also require an overall accessibility survey.Joannah is pinning her hopes on 2012. That would mean access eight years after Joannah’s arrival. By then, she hopes to have finished her three-year fellowship at IU, traveled and researched in Japan, then returned to Bloomington to finish her dissertation. There’s talk of construction: a new international building behind the Herman B Wells Library. EALC would move there, hopefully.Hanson says that in this economy, it’s a long shot to hope for a 2012 completion date.Joannah lives in a world where frustration is part of life. She knows the problems with asking for an elevator, she’s heard the reasons. She also knows that Kirkwood Hall, one of the campus’ older buildings, just finished its installation of an elevator.It is painted a gold color and its lights cast a soft glow.“I think they could have put one in here and one in there for the price of having it gilded,” she says. “It’s like if you needed five staircases, and instead you put one marble one in.”THE SAMURAI TEACHERAt 2:15 p.m., it’s time for Joannah to leave the little office and teach her second discussion section.She drives to the Ballantine Hall parking garage using hand controls made of long poles attached to her car’s pedals. The handicapped parking spots on the ground level annoy Joannah. They lead to stairs to get into the building, meaning there is no accessible entrance there.She drives past those spots and onto the first level. After parking in a handicap spot, she gets out of her car and slips onto her wheelchair. A ramp guides her way. Inside, she has a key to the elevator. She takes it up two floors and enters the classroom on the third floor.Joannah teaches with a calm command of her students. She wheels across the front of the classroom. When she asks questions, students are quick to respond. Today, she’s leading a discussion about Japanese history: about collectivism and unity, individuals and struggle. Joannah asks the students to write an essay about samurai warriors. “Why did we describe them as outsiders?”ACROSS THE OCEANJoannah traveled throughout Japan for the first time from 2000 to 2002. The prestigious Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme had never accommodated someone in a wheelchair before.The Japanese students who met Joannah were fascinated by her. She came at the end of one of Japan’s most successful TV shows, “Beautiful Life,” starring a mega-idol who falls in love with a woman in a wheelchair, also played by a Japanese superstar.Japan’s NHK news covered Joannah in an hour-long TV special, and she was the focus of a Japan Times article titled, “Challenging the stereotype: Breaking down people’s mental barriers.”Joannah is a teacher, a cake-baker, a scholar, and a woman who laughs when she pops cola cans with her wheelchair. She is, above all, a tired activist and an excellent student.If Joannah could roll onto the second floor of Goodbody, she could brush aside the crumbs on the graduate lounge table, set her bound thesis down, and pull her wheels up close to the table. She could flip to the back of her book, where colored pictures jump from the page.The final illustration in Joannah’s thesis—she hasn’t seen it in print— shows a large room divided. On one side of the room, two men play Go, a game with black and white pieces.On the smaller side of the room, two women in bright flowing robes look through a crack in the door. They move aside a veil of fabric and peer in.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Grab your pals and some snacks, split the gas and get out of Bloomington.See a photo slideshow of a creepy local jointNashville, Ind.19 milesThis quaint town would be your mother’s favorite. It’s a sweet place for old-fashioned holiday presents like popcorn and crafts. Nashville is worth a visit just for the antiques stores and the stories behind each busted up piece of furniture.Popcorn, Ind.22 milesOur art director was excited to drive here. It was a letdown. Popcorn is not full of popcorn. In fact, it was just a small town with a cool name and an even cooler set of road names: Popcorn Church and Popcorn River roads.Story, Ind.26 milesBlink and you’ll miss this adorable Southern-Indiana town. Stay at Story Inn, which smirks with the slogan, “One inconvenient location since 1851.” Check in with your sweetheart to the Blue Lady room for $129 and turn on the blue light next to the bed. You may be visited by the inn’s friendly ghost. A cozy front porch features a checkerboard with beer cap pieces and the door to one of Indiana’s most delicious down-home restaurants. No more Cracker Barrel, this is true country comfort.Bakers JunctionBloomington3.8 milesJohnny Baker owns Bakers Junction, a railroad museum, haunted house, and his home. The horseshoe-shaped enclosure is formed by 40-ton cabooses. Old rusting farming equipment and railroad antiques bought at auctions are tacked to the sides of sheds Baker made himself, or sit on shelves and in cases inside his haunted house. There’s a greenhouse with multiple broken windows and stray gourds and melons.The place feels a bit like a historian’s utopia, a horror movie director’s dream, and a child’s ideal playground. If you’re looking for a short trip to one of Southern Indiana’s most surreal and unpolished jewels, don’t skip this one.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Edie fills a small plastic tub with water from a pressurized hose and sets it in the microwave. When it boils, it will turn oats into oatmeal. The buttons beep as she puts three minutes on the timer.“At 7 o’clock when we open, I just know there will be someone who wants oats,” she says, now cleaning out coffee pots. She washes three green-rimmed pots for decaf and three black for regular. “The first thing is to get the water hot. I need to get oats going first thing.”Before the first plate of hash browns, the first bowl of oatmeal, the first scrambled egg at Wee Willie’s diner on South Walnut Street, Edie Heltenburg, the waitress who has worked there for 27 years, boils water.Edie’s hair is short, curled, brown with wisps of gray. She wears jeans and a denim shirt, glasses and no jewelry. Her 75-year-old body probably stood 5-foot-and-change before her back stooped.She arrives at 6:15 a.m. to open the diner on Tuesdays, and works every day except Wednesday and Thursday. Her alarm clock rings at 4:30 a.m., but it’s 10 minutes fast and she’s usually awake before it goes off.“I thought I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, but I was all right when I got here,” she says later. “Sometimes I think I’ve got nine lives like a cat. Now I’m living the Wee Willie’s part.”She makes $2.13 an hour plus tips. That’s minimum wage. Though her regulars are generous and she hasn’t seen her tips slow since the economy tanked, Edie probably will never retire. She’s among the only 5.3 percent of Monroe County residents over 75 who still work. She can’t afford insurance if she quits.The microwave beeps. She takes out the water and pours it in a metal pot with oats.It’s 6:45 a.m. when she starts the first pot of coffee. Any sooner and it’ll taste old. In minutes, the nutty aroma zings the air.The diner is dark, but when the sun rises, light will pour through the huge windows. From the inside, Wee Willie’s looks like a log cabin, with timber walls and forest green booths. Outside, you’ll miss it if you aren’t a local. It’s a plain wooden building. There’s no sign, but regulars don’t need it. Customers know where to show up for their eggs.Bill “Willy” Lutgens, the owner, walks to the front of the one-room building and unlocks the door at 7 a.m.The first customer enters, walks to the booth closest to Edie and sits down with his wife. He wants an honest cup of coffee. She wants decaf. He orders a bowl of oatmeal.***Ice water splashes out of two glasses that Edie grips while balancing a plate of toast and another of biscuits and gravy. Lunchtime on Friday.The owner’s wife, Brenda, says Edie isn’t the fastest waitress, but she’s the customers’ favorite. The five waitresses—Edie, Holly, Cindy, Phyllis, and Mary— have personalities as distinctive as their hairstyles. They are among the 64,000 Indiana residents who work on minimum wage.Edie glides back behind the counter, checking the coffee maker for its level of the almost-bitter liquid that fuels this whole place. She picks up a green pot and a black one and visits each table to fill up cups.“Edie! Order up!” Bill shouts from behind the grill window. As Edie hustles back to fetch her plates, she bumps into Holly Faulk, the youngest waitress.“Oh, I’m sorry, Edie,” Holly says, and turns her head and swishes her long brown ponytail. Her eyes beam from behind glasses. She is 36 but moves like she’s 25. She wears dangling earrings, a black t-shirt, and jeans.It’s no problem. The waitresses are used to dancing around one another in the crammed space behind the counter.Edie carries away a plate of hash browns as Holly turns to a man sitting at the counter. His name is Tim Johnson, but here he’s Timmy, and he wants his pancakes.He calls in his lunch order most weekdays. He programmed Wee Willie’s number in his phone. Timmy is in his 40s, a construction worker at IU who gets a half-an-hour lunch break. He’s got dark hair and a happily fed belly.His pancakes arrive in a Styrofoam to-go box.“I don’t know why they make it to-go every time I call,” he says, meeting Holly’s gaze.“You want me to put that on a plate for you?” Holly asks.She slips the pancakes out of their box. Fork in hand, he warms up. He’s an easy friend of all the waitresses.One time he asked them to find out what made Willie’s pancakes the best in Bloomington. It’s the Gold’s Best Flour, he learned.He loves the flour and the pancakes, but he loves the staff the best. He’s known Edie since he was a freshman at Bloomington South High School in 1980.“She was a waitress then. She is still. She was a nice woman then, and she’s a nice woman now,” he says. “The only thing different is her age.”Holly brings Timmy his bill. $6.26.“What the!” he says. “I shoulda asked what the special was. Bacon burger. I remember when that was $2 in the ‘80s. Now it’s $4.99.”He pays, tells Edie and Holly goodbye, and heads out the door to work. His day will end at 5 p.m. Wee Willie’s closes at 3 p.m., but after the customers leave, there’s still work for Edie.***The sky threatens rain. It’s Saturday at 3:30 p.m., Wee Willie’s has been closed for half an hour, and Edie sits at the counter with the day’s receipts piled in neat stacks around her.Edie checks every girl’s receipts for errors. Today, someone forgot to charge for a piece of cheese. The biggest mistake she can remember is a $6.10 undercharge for a breaded tenderloin.Mistakes like that cost Bill money, Edie says. He’s threatened to take dollars out of waitresses’ paychecks, but he never does. Edie hopes the others will slow down when they ring up customers.Cindy always has the fewest mistakes, she says. Edie doesn’t make many mistakes herself.“I’m pretty much part of the woodwork,” she says. “I try to get it so they don’t notice me. I get it written down right so the kitchen gets it right.”Edie takes on the extra task of checking receipts on her own, usually on the clock, sometimes not.She loves math. She loves numbers. She calls herself a “pinch-penny.” She never eats out, has a freezer full of frozen food, and makes her own bread with wheat flour and honey.Money goes straight into her bank account, and her biggest expense is health insurance. It’s worth her sweat, she says.In 1999, insurance covered the radiation that beat her breast cancer. In 2002, insurance covered the three strips of metal, 18 screws, and bone graft it took to fix her arm. An oncoming car hit hers when she turned in to work that morning. She remembers walking in the back door, dripping with blood.“The only thing I remember telling Bill was, ‘you better get someone in here to replace me,’” she says.For nine months she did physical therapy. She couldn’t work, but she had a little money saved until she could get back to earning tips.“I’m not going to run my bank account down,” she says. “I’ll never get rich, but I do all right.”At one time, Edie wanted to be a music teacher. She grew up in Ohio and majored in public school music with a minor in math at Capitol Hill University. She moved to Bloomington to earn her master’s degree in music education at IU. She was a student at the same time David Baker was a student. Baker is a world-renowned composer, multi-instrumentalist and the chair of IU’s Jazz Studies Department.After finishing her degree, Edie worked at Kroger to pay off student loans, and soon got married. The marriage ended when she was still a young woman. With two sons and no job, she needed to find work fast. She waitressed at a few restaurants, then settled at Willie’s.Her eldest son died nearly 20 years back. He was 29 when his motorcycle hit a car that turned in front of him. Edie can talk about it, but she does only briefly. Edie lives with her younger son, who is now 43. He is the production services coordinator at the IU Auditorium.“People ask me when I’m going to retire,” she says. “It doesn’t look like I will soon or at all. My mother lived to be 85. I’d run out of money if I live to be 85.”***Water stains the ceiling above booth seven as it rains outside. A gray bucket catches the drips by a sign that reads, “Out of use due to leak. Don’t sit!”Booth seven is Mary’s. On Sundays, Edie serves tables four and five and booth five, just behind the leaky waste of space.It’s Sunday at 1 p.m., and the loss of a booth means people crowd the door. The place is crammed like a container of sugar packets.Edie weaves between chairs. She carries waters and menus to a mother and her son. They stare at the downpour as rain hits the window.At Edie’s table five, four boys finish their midday breakfasts. They are university students who look like they woke up on couches, zipped up hoodies, and drove straight to Willie’s.One boy flags her over, hoping for the check. Edie points to the paper on the table, hidden beneath a glass of water. She smiles and one boy jokes that she teleported over when they weren’t looking. They laugh.When she clears away their plates and forks, they leave bills and change on the table. The boy who teased her pats her back quickly and thanks her for the food. College kids tip well, she says.She hurries behind the counter, bends down, and dips her hands into a tub of suds. She brings up a small towel and wrings it out.As she carries it back to the table, a balding man with only a few strands of gray hair rises. He’s got an announcement to make.“I’m just recovering from a tooth extraction, and this is the first real meal I’ve had. And I loved it,” he says. “I just love being here.”Edie looks up from the table she’s wiping and smiles at him as he opens the door to leave.The circles of hot soapy water dry in an instant. She slides the towel across each empty seat until they’re all clean and waiting.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After freshman year, 64 percent of students opt to live off-campus, according to IU’s Common Data Set report. John Sacchini, owner and operator of Energy Design Home Inspections, Inc., is an Indiana-licensed home inspector. He said student renters don’t need to worry too much about construction and the structure of a home, but should keep a few essentials in mind.IDS: What details in particular should a new renter look out for?John Sacchini: The first thing would go back to the contract for rental. I would make sure that the homeowner defines what the homeowner is responsible for and what the renter is responsible for, like maintenance of heating and cooling equipment.If something fails, like a dishwasher, whose responsibility is it to take care of it? Another thing to look for depends on whether it is occupied or vacant when you visit. When you walk around, see about the owner. See if you notice odor, dog prints or dog scratches around windows and door cracks. There could be a flea infestation problem or animal signs that could affect someone with an animal allergy.They should also make sure that all the bedroom windows are operational by code. They should be able to open up and stay open so that if you had to get out during a fire, the window wouldn’t be hitting you on the head. I would go around and flush the toilets to make sure that they flush. In the sinks and tubs, run just a little bit of water to make sure that they drain.The general overall cleanliness is important, too. The homeowner – has he been maintaining the house? Also, curb appeal. When you drive up, is there a bunch of clutter? If I were a renter, I would probably try to find a place that was neat and tidy. It shows that the homeowner cares about the place. If there is a problem, the homeowner will jump to take care of it.IDS: What big problems do students often overlook when renting a home?JS: Utility bills. Find out who is responsible for the utility bills. Is the house well-insulated? Ask if the homeowner can provide the renter an earlier bill, especially in the winter, so that the renter is not stuck with a $300 or $400 heating bill. I would ask if the heating and cooling system has been maintained yearly.IDS: What would the ideal rental house look like?JS: I think it goes back to a statement I made earlier about the curb appeal of a home. They can know right away if trees aren’t overhanging the roof and there’s no clutter. When you walk inside, get a general feel. Does it look clean; does it feel clean, and does it smell clean? If a renter has allergies to molds and mildews, do they notice it when they go in there? Does it feel musty? If you walk in a place and suddenly you feel clogged up, or you go down in the basement and it feels damp and musty, I would not rent that place. Sacchini also offered a tip for those who sign the lease and pack up their boxes to move in: Take a video camera around the house, or snap photos of problem areas. If there is damage to the house, but the renter has taken a dated picture to show the homeowner, the renter can save their damage deposit when they move out.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A chalkboard leaning in the window beckons strollers by Le Petit Cafe:Delicious ThingsSold at this windowSaturdays 9 - ?Underneath the flexible hours, a scrawled heart. Inside the window, the heart’s scrawler: Marina Ballor, chef and co-owner of Bloomington’s only exclusively French restaurant.Every Saturday since the B-Line Trail opened, she sells delicious things: mushroom quiche, quiche Lorraine, fresh coffee and hot chocolate so thick it nearly clots on the spoon. One Saturday in September, as Ballor bent down and reached into her warm oven, wisps of brown hair fell around her face. A green apron folded softly over her jeans at the knees. She peered into the oven and blew a strand of hair away from her eyes.Ballor’s business operates with simple materials such as disposable plates and flatware, and she sells from a window that opens out onto the world of farmers’ market ramblers.Marina sips her coffee like she serves it, a pouring of half and half swirling in a rich darkness. But don’t call her food fattening. Yes, she drowns her bread pudding in English custard – “My kitchen will never run out of custard!” she assured a customer in her sing-song French accent. More than one customer mentioned how richly delicious she found Ballor’s quiche, but Marina preferred words like decadent, creamy and even voluptuous, but not “fattening.”“I don’t want the ‘f-word’ in my kitchen,” she said. “French food takes all the blame for the crap people eat elsewhere.”She uses real ingredients and cooks food like she ate it in France, before she moved to the United States in the mid-1970s. She has cooked in the back of the restaurant she has owned with her husband for more than 30 years. With the opening of the B-Line bicycle and walking trail this June, Marina watched as a graveled, unwelcoming side passage transformed into a paved walkway. It links downtown with the farmers’ market at her Sixth Street and Morton Avenue corner.A crop of hungry passersby ramble past her window each Saturday morning and Friday afternoon for lunch. The window is Marina’s place, a place for meeting customers, a window for serving food and watching people love it.Two women approached the window. Ballor chirped when she saw them and asked them what they’d like to eat.“We’re celebrating my daughter’s birthday,” one woman said, nodding to the younger woman, who stepped closer to the window.“Would you ever consider giving up the secrets of your quiche?” the younger asked.“It’s my shortcoming,” Ballor said. “I don’t give up my secrets. It’s nothing magical, but it’s my secret. You won’t get me like this. I try those kind of tricks on my husband.”The women laughed. They knew her husband, Patrick Fiore, too.* * *Fiore rumbles down the stairs that connect the house to the kitchen. He’s got a shock of white hair. He hops around, he shouts happily when he talks. He serves the diners in the restaurant on every day except Mondays, when he takes his wife out to eat.That Saturday, the morning after a night of Lotus Festival, Fiore bounded into the kitchen and heard music. It was Leonard Cohen’s “Songs From a Room” playing on a CD player in the corner. A classic, he said. He walked to the table and picked up a wrapped croissant.“D’ou vient ca?” he asked in French. "Where is this from?"A boy who works at Scholars Inn stand at the market brought it for me, she replied.As she glided between customers at the window, her warming oven and the table with the silverware, she sang, sometimes with Leonard Cohen, sometimes with her own walking beat.Fiore looked through the kitchen’s refrigerators. He was looking for food, or for a reason to be with his wife at her window.The window has opened a space for Ballor in the restaurant that has always starred her food and Fiore’s personality.She and Fiore moved to Bloomington from France so he could study at IU with a Fulbright Scholarship in percussion. They married here and had two children: a daughter who is a sophomore at IU and a son, who is an IU graduate living in New York and also works at a little French restaurant.That Saturday, only half the family was in the kitchen. At Ballor’s feet sat a basket with a roll of brown yarn. She worked the yarn between knitting needles and formed a neck warmer for Winston, her son.Next to the knitting basket was a wooden wine box – Product of France 1982 – filled with CDs. Lightnin’ Hopkins, “The Best of Michael Bloomfield” and blues, blues, blues.They also own TDs CDs and LPs music shop, a tucked-away record store inside Soma Coffee House. Ballor said she has too many favorite songs. She said she loves what her husband loves.* * * Fiore left to make his coffee. It was quiet at the window. Ballor looked puzzled. Why weren’t more customers trying her hot chocolate? It was the first chilly morning of fall.“Come on people,” she said quietly. “I’ve got hot chocolate, too.”Her Swiss drink is a mix of cocoa, milk, cream and sugar. It costs $1.50. “I like to keep math simple like that,” she said. “Tax included and all.”She leaned against her oven. She looked at the shelves by the window. On the top, glass jars and tins. The bottom shelves held beer, a bottle of Martini and Rossi.A marketing idea struck her. “I need someone to go out there and talk very loudly about my hot chocolate,” she said.She wanted someone to make sexy noises in the farmers’ market. As in, have a verbal foodgasm. That made her laugh.A customer approached the window. It was a woman holding a bouquet of colorful zinnias. She was exactly who Ballor had been waiting for. She ordered hot chocolate.“Oh! You don’t want a lid?” Ballor asked. “Perfect! Then I can put more cream. I don’t like to be restricted by lids.”She pulled out a bowl of whipped cream from the refrigerator and plopped a huge dollop onto the cup of chocolate. The woman smiled and asked Ballor if she could adopt her.Ballor then shared her market-moaning plot. The woman laughed. As she walked away, Marina called after her, “Don’t forget to make the naughty sounds as you drink my chocolate.”The woman was already walking away, sipping her chocolate. She may have been moaning quietly. Who knows?Marina filled another cup for herself and peered out her window.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Rosemary Pennington tells stories. She is the program coordinator for a podcast series called Voices and Visions: Islam and Muslims from a Global Perspective.“If you’re not from that community, you don’t really think about how it’s represented in the media,” she says. “Not because you don’t like them, but because it’s not right there.”Pennington’s podcasts present the experiences of Muslims in both longer narratives and brief “crash courses.”One short piece discusses Halal, or Muslim food restrictions. It drew comments that revealed differences between Muslim traditions.“It’s giving Muslims from other places access to other Muslims,” she says. “Even Muslims have stereotyped ideas of what other Muslims are like.” Pennington says she appreciates feedback on the Web site. “The whole point of this project is to have these conversations,” she says. “It’s not to resolve any of these conversations, because they’re never going to be resolved. I mean, we’re all human beings. We’re messy.”Through the experience, Pennington has bridged her own gaps in understanding.“I remember walking in with my shoes and realizing as I was sitting down that I should have taken those off,” she says of early interviews with families. “Now I know to walk in, take your shoes off, and just sort of settle down and not worry about it.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Isak Nti Asare calls people towers of Legos. If we join in conversation, we should leave with a piece of the other, the way Lego structures never make a clean break.Nti Asare explains ideas in simple images, but his vision is anything but portrait-sized. “Sometimes people ask you what your vision is and you feel like you have to ratchet it down,” he says. His face stretches into its comfortable smile. “I would like to change the world.”For Nti Asare, that change will come through the languages of the continent his father called home, the continent he calls the next Middle East — Africa.Although his father is Ghanaian and speaks the Ghanaian language Akan-Twi, Isak didn’t learn the language until he came to IU in 2007. Now, he speaks Twi comfortably, but he’s also studied Bambara, Swahili, Portuguese, and speaks fluent Spanish.“The best way to know a people is to know their language,” he says. He spent last summer in Ghana, studying the relationship between Ghanaian institutions (chiefs, kings, sultans) and democracy. He stayed with extended family members who shared the stories of his family, passed down verbally through generations. “In the West, we’re all about finding out how we’re different,” he says. “In Africa, we’re trying to find a way to make people African.”Nti Asare said Africans try to find a way to connect with everyone they meet, and this mentality infuses his leadership style. He is the president of the African Student Association, which welcomes both African students and those interested in Africa.“Our goals are to highlight aspects of the African continent that people may not realize, to foster conversation, to incite action, and to help students reevaluate the beliefs they hold,” he says.He takes inspiration from the current president of the United States, as well as a past president of IU.“Herman B Wells said that small minds think about 10 years and big minds think about 50 years ahead,” he says. “It’s not to say that I have a big mind, but I aspire to be one who has a big mind.”The only thing that can shrink a curious mind, Nti Asare says, is envisioning too little.“We have this mindset of trying to get to whatever standard we set for ourselves, and the truth of the matter is that we can achieve whatever we want to achieve in life,” he says. “The difference between those who go far and those who don’t is just where they place their own ceilings.”Nti Asare says he hopes to shape the world through the study of language, foreign policy, and a focus on Africa. He says he believes a world connected by language is a powerful one. He tells the story of the Tower of Babel as an example of the strength of language. In Genesis, the story goes something like this: People start building a tower to heaven, God realizes they just might, God trips up their tongues and scatters them, people are weakened by their lack of understanding. For Nti Asare, this story reveals the ability of language to unite and empower.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU Dining Services is, for the second year, serving apples grown only miles away from Bloomington. Inside tracked an apple from the orchard to your order. The Apple Works, a farm 35 miles northeast of Bloomington, supplies IU’s dining halls with crisp apples every week. Director of Dining Services Sandra Fowler says the Apple Works is the only farm capable of supplying the quantity of apples the school needs for its students. “We continue to look for local food and local produce,” Fowler says, “but sometimes it’s difficult for local farms to provide us what we need.”The Apple Works has been able to keep up with the demand. IU purchases between 40 and 100 bushels each week, keeping in mind leftover stock. The bushels hold about 90 apples, but that depends on the apples’ size.The Apple Works co-owner Sarah Brown said she thinks the University cares about the food it distributes and is catching on to the “buy local” trend. “The fact that these are local means they’re going to be as fresh as they can be,” she says.TASTE TEMPTATIONThe apples are picked, washed, and graded for size, then stored in a chilled (33-34 degrees) room. Every Friday, IU places an order and the Apple Works employees pull and box the apples. The University selects two varieties each week from among Molly’s Delicious, Ginger Gold, and Gala.On Wednesday, Brown’s husband and co-owner, Rick Brown, loads a van with bushels of fruit. Rick drives the apples to RPS Food Stores, an IU warehouse on 10th Street, before 2 p.m. so workers can distribute the fruit.When the apples reach the warehouse, they are stored at 66 to 68 degrees for no longer than a week, says Ancil Drake, the executive chef and associate director for production. Next, the dining halls and kiosks order what they need for the week, and the apples make the journey from the warehouse on IU trucks.Once the apples reach the residence halls, apple lovers can purchase the fruit with meal points or money and crunch away.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A limestone ranch house at 321 Wylie St. (at the corner of Wylie and Grant streets) could be any party house, but the joint known as The Statehouse has become that house, the house that makes students leave other parties at the drop of a text message.Leah Rosenthal, a frequent Statehouse attendee, has walked out of other parties to head to The Statehouse before. “It’s not close to Collins, where I live, by any means, but people still walk blocks to get there,” she said. “It’s all for the good music and friends.”The Statehouse is a rented house-turned-basement-venue that has become a hip concert scene for local bands, touring artists and college students looking for a hangout.Two years ago, three friends lived in the house and hosted about two shows per month for a year. A Facebook fan site lists more than 65 bands that have performed – and crashed after the party – at the house.“It’s the excitement of a basement show where everyone is packed in and sweaty and you can’t get that in a bar,” Bryant Fox, former tenant and concert scheduler said. “People aren’t there to drink. They’re there for the music. That’s what we wanted.”The layout, Fox said, is perfect for funneling concertgoers to the basement. The side doors lock, forming one entrance in the back for attendees to walk in and hand over a couple bucks cover. All donations go straight to the bands, funding gas money and sometimes noise violation charges. One special concert raised money for Fox’s friend, sophomore Rob Funkhouser who needed help paying for a surgery.“They had close to 200 people in that basement,” Funkhouser said. “People were so tightly packed that they moved in waves like water.”Funkhouser added that he was touched by the more than $200 the concert raised that night for his surgery.Josh Greenberg, current tenant and member of the band Slippertails, which played at Funkhouser’s benefit concert, said the show was testament to the Statehouse’s legacy.“We have a loyal fan base in Bloomington so we knew that we would have a large turnout,” Greenberg said. “We knew how to run it, what times would work, and we knew how to organize it so the show wouldn’t get busted. It was organized by friends, played by friends for a friend.”Other bands that played the venue have gone on to become big names in music. Titus Andronicus, a band from New Jersey that performed at The Statehouse last January, is now signed to the same label, XL Recordings, as recording artist M.I.A. Indie artists Deer Tick and BLK JKS have also played at the venue along with local acts Prizzy Prizzy Please, Alexander the Great and Husband&Wife.Even the big names can’t get enough of The Statehouse, said Aaron Boroughs, who lived in the house and organized shows two years ago.“Bands come back to Bloomington,” he said, “and the first thing they want to do is play The Statehouse.”Though the concert bill overflowed last year, somewhat less-frequent weekend shows still keep the venue rocking. One hint at the venue’s success, tenants said, is that they don’t sell alcohol.As Boroughs put it, “We focus on the party of the music.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Allison Anderson says planning is the best way a prospective freshman can get through his or her first year. Oh, and a shower caddie. MAJOR: PsychologyHOMETOWN: Zionsville, Ind.DORM: CollinsQ: If you could give one piece of advice to new freshmen, what would it be? A: My advice would be to just don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You’re going to get there, and it will be hard to settle in at first, and no matter what there’s a place for everyone here. I just think that IU has a lot of different types of communities. Just relax and have a good time. Be open to meeting new people.Q: How were you able to fit in?A: Try to find a place with people with similar interests. Really it’s about talking to new people. Introduce yourself and also go the Welcome Week events. If you’re there at the beginning, everyone is trying to meet new people, so you’re all in the same boat.Q: What do you know now that you wish you would have known earlier?A: A shower caddie is really useful. It saves a lot of time in the shower. You don’t have to bring everything and then unload it. I had a cloth bag at first, but a shower caddie can just stick in the shower with you, and your showers are a lot shorter.Q: What other things should people remember to bring or leave behind?A: You think that you need a lot of clothes, but you really don’t need to bring your whole wardrobe. It doesn’t fit in your closet and in your drawers. There’s only so much space in a tiny dorm room. The less clothes you have, the less laundry you have to do all the time. Q: What has surprised you this year? What didn’t you expect?A: Classes are difficult, but it’s nice because they don’t meet every day. You have more time to do things, but you have to be responsible because it’s also a lot more intense. I mean, just go to class. Make sure you make enough time and figure out what works for you. Find a good place to study.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Ronak Shah held down a laundry list of activities during his freshman year. He was a part of the Collins Board of Education Programming, math tutoring, social justice league, Abe at IU and even had his own radio show on student-run radio station WIUX.MAJOR: Cognitive science, criminal justiceHOMETOWN: IndianapolisDORM: CollinsQ: What surprised you most about your first year here?A: It surprised me how easy it was to meet fascinating and open people without having to resort to booze-filled parties where you have to scream over noise to talk.Q: If you could have given yourself one piece of advice before you came here, what would it be?A: Be less hesitant to try new things. Other than that, keep doing what you’re doing. No matter how prepared you think you are, it’s still going to be a learning experience your first year.Q: You chose to live in Collins LLC. What’s so good about a living-learning center?A: It doesn’t make any sense to live in a place where you go just to sleep. At Collins, there’s a sense of community. I know that’s a word that doesn’t mean anything at first, but it really applies here. There’s a willingness to know other people outside your floor or building.Q: What advice do you have for new students?A: Try to be as honest as you can with who you are, and then you’ll meet the people you really want to meet.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Lamine Sylla travelled nearly 4,500 miles from his home in Africa to IU’s campus for his freshman year of college. MAJOR: French education, social workHOMETOWN: Dakar, SenegalDORM: CollinsQ: What is it like to be an international student at IU?A: It’s a fun experience. It’s an opportunity for me. Before, I didn’t know all of these cultures, and I’m learning a lot from them. I’ve met so many people and have hung out with so many different people, I could live anywhere.Q: What advice do you have for new freshmen?A: Stick in school and don’t party a lot. College and fun go together, but work is a part of that. You can’t party every week and forget about your work. Also, just try to get to know other people. Be open. Talk to your peers. That’s the college experience.Q: What difficulties did you have this year and how did you overcome them?A: I thought high school would be more of a transition into college, but it was a lot harder than I thought. But since I started working harder, I picked up the pace and got used to it. Writing essays and reading surprised me but it worked out.Q: What surprised you the most about this year?A: I met students from all over the world. I met people from all backgrounds. It is very diverse and I didn’t expect that. It really impressed me. I can hang out with any group of students I want. There are so many opportunities with culture here.Q: What would you have done differently?A: I would have tried to get ready more and read more. I would tell everyone that college is not easy. You pay a lot of money to come here and you need to spend time on your work. Not everyone has this opportunity. This is a blessing and you should do the best you can to make your parents and everyone who is behind you proud.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sophomore Brooke Lichtman stepped into the stairwell of the Herman B Wells library to text her ex-boyfriend. They were fighting through cell phone messages. As she walked down the stairs, eyes locked on the screen, her foot slipped, and she plopped down one, two, three steps. The pain won’t slow her thumbs, she said.“It was like out of a movie, and you could see the whole animation and sound effects going on,” Lichtman said, adding that she sprang back up after her fall. “It was because I was not paying attention whatsoever. Literally all I was doing was looking at my phone and texting.”Everyone has heard that text messaging while driving is dangerous, and Monroe County commissioners made it illegal for motorists to text while behind the wheel.But for college students who log more miles by foot than by car, text-walking is a threat to both their bodies and their prides.Consider senior Justin Liu.He was walking down Grant Street, texting, when he ran into a “No Parking” sign.“I hit it with my chest and the right part of my shoulder,” Liu said. “I looked around, and there was a girl looking at me and laughing. No bruises: My pride was injured, that was all.”Nationally, text-messaging pedestrians are enough of a concern that the American College of Emergency Physicians issued a warning last summer that as students returned to school, they should be cautious of the dangers of text messaging while walking. The alert said physicians were seeing chin and face injuries and, in rare cases, death from collisions with cars.In London, British telephone directory service 118 118 wrapped lampposts and telephone poles in thick padding to protect text-walkers from injuring themselves. A YouTube video of incidents released in 2008 raised awareness of the growing issue.In the Illinois House of Representatives, Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, introduced a bill in January 2008 that stipulated anyone caught text messaging while crossing an intersection could be fined $25.Before cell phones, reading books distracted students, said Melissa Henige, chairwoman of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Commission of Bloomington. Then came CD players and iPods. And now cell phones are the main dangerous diversion.Outside the Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel on a recent afternoon, out of more than 150 students who passed by, nearly 80 held onto, talked on or text messaged with their phones.Henige said she is concerned about pedestrian safety when technology and transportation overlap.“Anytime your senses – especially eyesight and hearing – are impaired, there probably will be an increase in accidents,” she said. “Overall, when you’re text messaging, reading, listening to an iPod – you have to raise your awareness of the areas that could have dangers like roads and places with higher traffic.”Henige mentioned Jordan Avenue in front of the Musical Arts Center and 10th Street between the Wells Library and the Kelley School of Business as places to exercise particular caution.“You know your schedule,” she said. “Figure out your routes, and figure out the safest way. You need to be aware of your surroundings. It’s not necessarily the iPods and the BlackBerrys that are causing the accidents – it’s the people that are unaware.”Junior Ian Thake was leaving class at Ballantine Hall when he decided to send a text message to his mom, whom he said was just learning to text. Thake, an experienced texter, briefly looked up to check for cars, then, looking back down, stepped directly into the path of an oncoming bicycle.“He hit my side,” Thake said. “I didn’t see him at all. I don’t remember any thud, but he fell over. I didn’t go to the health center. It was just sort of a scrape-your-knee injury, and there were no lasting effects. I was just embarrassed.”The biker rode away from the scene.Nancy S. Macklin, director of nursing at the IU Health Center, said she has not seen a notable increase of sprained ankles, cuts or bruises from text-walking.Lichtman said injured students are more likely to tell their friends than a registered nurse about their incidences.“I wasn’t going to go in to the health center and be like, ‘I have a bruise on my butt,’” she said. “I’m sure there are people who walk off curbs and run into things, but it’s not always big enough to seek medical help.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Pizza lovers like junior Danielle Leimbach help local pizzerias stay afloat during turbulent economic times. Leimbach broke her New Year’s resolution two weeks after she swore to order the “Big Bargain” from Pizza Express only once a month. “Everyone knows about my obsession,” she said about the pizza, breadstick and soda deal that she ordered three times a week last semester. “I tried really hard to order less, so I compromised a thin instead of a thick crust.” Some local pizza restaurants are staying ahead of a wave of slowing sales across the country, showing that college students will still shell out for the pizza they love. Franchise Direct, an organization that gathers data on national businesses, collected information from 20 pizza chains and reported sinking sales since 2007. The Annual Pizza Power Report from 2008 noted a 1 percent decline in national sales from 2006 to 2007, the report’s most recent figures published in PMQ Pizza Magazine.Restaurant business was down 1 percent at the end of 2008, according to a press release from The NPD Group, a marketing research company. The group predicted an even bleaker 2009.Pizza in a college town is different than pizza sold to families, said Pizza Express founder and CEO Jeff Mease. There’s a demand for quick and cheap food, no matter how bad the economy becomes. Mease said sales aren’t dropping, but they might be growing at a slower rate than in the past.“Any time you’ve got an economic issue, it helps if you’ve got brand loyalty,” Mease said. “We haven’t seen a strong drop in sales, but we’ve had really strong growth in the last couple years, and we can feel that it’s not as strong as it has been.” Jesse Bloom, Pizza Express general manager for the 10th Street location, said he sells a strong 500 to 700 pizzas every night of the weekend. He said at his specific store, sales are slightly lower than last year at this time, but it’s not enough of a decrease that the phone seems to ring any less. On the last Saturday in February, Bloom said his store sold 585 pizzas, compared to 597 last year on the same weekend. Aver’s Pizza owner Brad Randall said the speed and ease of ordering pizza actually increases sales during economically rough times. January’s sales were up 6.5 percent compared with January 2008, he said.“When people cut back on dining out, they cut back on going out to eat at larger chains,” he said. “That’s when we actually do a little more carry-out.” He said coupon inserts in the Indiana Daily Student drive up phone orders, and the “Family Feeder” of two large pizzas for $16.99 has been a hit. Price is just one factor that affects brand loyalty during hard times, said Raymond Burke, a professor of marketing in the Kelley School of Business. A pizzeria can brand itself in four ways: the pizza itself, the cost of the pie, the location of the business and its promotion, he said.Aver’s, Pizza Express and Mother Bear’s share one large benefit: a party-friendly college town that’s as open to late-night food as it is to keg stands. Price-wise, all three brands offer cheap specials and coupons. Mother Bear’s sold heart-shaped pizzas on Valentine’s Day weekend, and sales were around $30,000, a 23 percent increase from last year’s sales that weekend, said owner Ray McConn. He said overall sales are up 16 percent compared to last year.Pizza Express also plans to simplify its name from “Pizza Express” to “Pizza X,” and is rolling out an advertising campaign for the new name starting March 31. Mease said the switch protects the company’s identity if it grows or changes hands.Leimbach said despite the name switch and the wake-up call of what she called a “$30-a-week-habit,” she makes room in her budget for the pizza she craves. “It doesn’t bother me that the name will be different,” she said, “as long as the pizza doesn’t change.” Pizza Express manager Bloom said business relies on that kind of student support to carry the brand. “At our campus store, we’re seeing more growth than at our residential stores,” he said. “I’m no economist, but the University is essentially our industry.”
You don’t need a gallery to showcase these done-in-an-hour art projects. Make a corkboard out of memorable wine stoppers, or string cup lights around your basement bar. Most of the supplies can be found at a thrift store, or if you feel like going for a dive, your neighborhood Dumpster.