Community News

03 Nov That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

I have a terrible memory.  I hate it, but it’s true.  My entire family makes fun of me for it.  But, what’s a girl to do?  In fact, my brother and I were joking on Halloween about how I don’t remember even one costume I wore as a kid.  I do have a vague recollection of wearing plastic masks with the elastic bands that wrapped around your head.  That image is etched in my brain because I can almost feel the moist condensation that would collect inside the mask after a chilly night trick-or-treating in Indiana.  Gross. I used to think I had to push some stuff out of my brain only to stuff more knowledge in as I learned and read more.  But, that doesn’t explain why I know all the words to American Pie and vividly remember Mrs. Hall pinning a tail on the back of Lee Adrianson’s blue jeans in third grade to detour him from being a tattletale.  (In a crazy plot twist, Lee’s is an amazing elementary school teacher now!) One detail I probably would never have remembered was the exact section I was in for 6th Grade Social Studies.  Every time I see Mike Burchette, he...

05 Oct The Red Devils

This year marks two years in a row that one of my nieces aced the 3rd Indiana iRead test. Aced it. As in 100% on a state test. Pretty remarkable. Or perhaps I think it’s remarkable because I could never have aced the iRead test when I was in 3rd grade. Why? Because I was a Red Devil. Maybe they still do it, but back in the day, Reading Groups were all the rage. It made sense. Give the students a pre- test, find out what reading level they were on, and group them accordingly. This is where theory and practice wreak havoc. In theory, it had some educational legs to stand on and seemed relatively efficient. In practice, I was in the low reading group and everyone knew it. I was in a group with a bunch of cootie-ridden boys. As the sole girl in the group, when it came time to vote on our reading group name, they all thought the Red Devils would be amazing. Me, not so much. I was outvoted.   Later in my school career, I watched friends excel in art and music, some were Spelling Bee champs, others were trophy-winning athletes.  There were many standard ways the...

17 Aug The First Last

Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down...

12 Jul Augmented Reality

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.  We’ve all heard this. We’ve all read this.  Though, for the life of me, I do not know why we all read the back of the shampoo bottle.  Are we that bored while taking a shower?  I guess it’s our desire to quench our thirst for knowledge.  Like when one of my sons asked as a child if shampoo as a compound word.  Or maybe it just stems from growing up reading cereal boxes—back in the good ole days when you didn’t need to take out a short-term loan to buy cereal.  Nonetheless, you can imagine my surprise when I recently read an article that undermined a lifelong beauty ritual of mine and advocated to condition your hair before the lather, rinse, repeat loop.  BEFORE!  I think even Elle Woods would object to such blasphemy since she taught us all that “The rules of hair care are simple and finite. Any Cosmo girl would have known.”  Alas, I did not.  But, I do read more Seth Godin than Cosmo these days, so I’ll blame Seth.  (Bald may be beautiful, but I think we can all agree that it doesn’t make you a haircare expert.)  This is an...

20 Jun The Farmer and Adele

Historians know the significance of the Monroe Doctrine well. Passed in 1823 by the fifth President of the United States and the doctrine’s namesake, President James Monroe, this judgment was issued at a time when most Latin American colonies had declared themselves independent. The goal of the Monroe Doctrine was to maintain that independence—to ensure the free American continents would never be subjected to colonization of the European powers again. The boldness of such a declaration at that time put the USA on the map as a definitive world superpower. While I’m no expert on politics, we certainly have spent a great deal of time this past year ‘studying’ superheroes and their superpowers. Around here superheroes are ordinary people who happen to do extraordinary things. Think Clark Kent. Think Superman. Grant County has so many leaders, donors, and volunteers who humbly fall into the superhero category—you know them, you love them, you may even be one of them! What you may not know is that Indiana community foundations have a superhero like that, too. Although you’d never find it in any history books, she’s made much ado about philanthropy with her very own Monroe Doctrine…the Helen Monroe Doctrine. Everyone in the...