Category: the Midwest

Local news story of the week

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Local news story of the week:

Police: Funny fudge made with lavender, not pot

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Indiana University police say brownies a girl gave to dorm workers didn’t contain marijuana at all. The leafy substance mixed in was lavender.

IU Police Capt. Jerry Minger said the 13-year-old girl came forward after the case was publicized to let officers know the brownies were safe.

The fudge was given to workers at IU’s Eigenmann Hall on May 23 and police were called after one of the employees took a bite and noticed a green, leafy substance inside.

The girl gave some of the lavender to police for a field test, and Minger said it registered a “weak reaction” on a test for marijuana.

The girl made the fudge for a school project, in which she had to make a Swedish food.

Information from: The Herald-Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com

This story received coverage and updates all week. The Herald Times even saw fit to bestow one of their dreaded ‘onions’ (as in Orchids and Onions, an editorial system of praise and blame) on the malefactors who decided to secretly intoxicate the unwitting IU administrators who work in Eigenmann Hall. Quite a letdown to learn it was all a misunderstanding borne out of a local student’s quest for better understanding of world cultures.

Sarah pointed out that it showed a confused, Reefer Madness-esque mindset to believe that someone would make a big expensive batch of pot brownies and… hand them out to random university administrators.

One question: what kind of school project requires that you “make Swedish food”? Hmm, maybe there is more to this story after all…

First the voter I.D. law and now this

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First the voter I.D. law and now this: on July 1 a new law is set to go into effect in Indiana that will “force any bookstore that sold even one book that could be broadly described as ‘sexually explicit’ to pay a $250 license fee and be classified as an ‘adult bookstore.'” Indy Star story; NPR story. Under the state’s definition, according to a suit filed by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the ACLU, “nudes by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and books ranging from John Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men to many modern romance novels ‘could be deemed harmful’ to minors of varying ages.”

Perhaps they should combine the two laws so that one would have to show a state-issued I.D. to buy any sexually explicit material.

Visit to New Harmony

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The (grand)parents were in town and had arranged a road trip to New Harmony, site of the failed socialist/utopian community founded by Robert Owen in the 1820s. I’d always heard this was worth seeing, but the recommendations tended to sound a bit restrained, enough so here it is 7 years after we moved to Indiana and we hadn’t gone yet. We had a great time, though. The weather was gorgeous, which helped, and the sights were more plentiful and interesting than I’d anticipated. Lots of fun to wander around the historic/reconstructed section of town, a little bit of a Colonial Williamsburg sort of thing.

Highlights of the trip included:

-Golf carts. Though not part of the original Owen community, nor the preceding German Lutheran one of 1814-1820s, golf carts play a crucial role in today’s New Harmony. Vera was somewhat obsessed about them and insisted we go at 8 a.m. or so on Sunday to claim one at the Inn. We made fun of her, but we had to admit that it was great fun to zoom around town. By some oversight we don’t have a photo of us on our cart.

-Labyrinths. There are two, a three-dimensional one of bushes and shrubs — this in an early 20th-century re-do of a creation of the Lutherans — and a two-dimensional one of stone in a beautiful little garden. See above for a shot of the ladies working on this one (they gave up after about 5 mins, Sarah said she got dizzy.) Sarah returned on Friday night to see the monthly candle-lit Moonlight Labyrinth walk which sounded slightly witchy.

-The dog and cat at our B&B. See my previous post about the Grimm House B&B. The girls fell in love with the sweet dog Henry and the cat. They also really hit it off with Grafton, the 7 year-old boy.

-Some neat modern architecture: the Philip Johnson Roofless Church, and the Richard Meier visitors’ center; this latter is a late-1970s structure that sticks out of the landscape like a gleaming postmodern ship — doesn’t exactly blend in, but I liked it. We watched a little introductory/historical movie about the town here, which was extremely silly and full of bad reenactments and unconvincing beards. Iris found a snakeskin just outside the center.

Oh btw we also visited French Lick on the way to see the grand refurbished domed hotel, originally built in 1901. Supposedly Al Capone used to hang out here.

What’s the Matter With Kansas

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This is incredibly condescending but also pretty funny: Kansas as a Burmuda Triangle of dullness and vacuity. “The last known communication from Corcoran was sent from somewhere within the Rectangle, and made reference to plans to marry a large blond woman and enroll in a local technical college.” I remember one holiday party in Cambridge, a year or two after moving to Indiana, when we had the distinct impression that people were racking their brains to remember something about the difference between Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. It was then, perhaps, that I truly started to become Midwestern (as a mode of resentment of/opposition to bi-coastal condescension/ indifference).

I guess since the Onion is Midwestern (at least in origin) it’s OK for them to make jokes like this.

30 Years Of Mans Life Disappear In Mysterious Kansas Rectangle

The Onion

30 Years Of Man’s Life Disappear In Mysterious ‘Kansas Rectangle’

Counting

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I enjoyed this Keith Olbermann diatribe about which states & votes “count”, according to the Clintons. “When you boil it all down, only one vote really matters: the 50-something conservative registered Democrat who’s not independent but not part of the base, and skipped college so they could go straight into teaching rather than become a casino worker, who votes on domestic issues but not in a primary or caucus in a big state that doesn’t border Illinois….” etc.

It was exciting to count for once here in Indiana yesterday.