My father came home from work every day with grease under his fingernails. His place of business was a southside auto-parts yard the family referred to as “the store.” The first thing he did upon coming home in the evening was scrub his hands with Lava soap, and even then, you could see the faint but indelible trace of black.
Deep in Southern Indiana, businessman Robert Vicino offers the cure for paranoid doomsday-preppers: a retrofitted Cold War–era communications bunker where 80 people can weather a catastrophe underground for up to a year—among the kind of tony trappings one might find on a luxury yacht. Vicino’s sales pitch leaves no potential natural or manmade disaster unmentioned, including nuclear explosion, biological warfare, solar flares, and, of course, the Mayan prophecy that appears to foretell an apocalypse this month.
Midway through his first term as mayor, Lugar joined Dolly Parton onstage at a concert in Garfield Park—and received an impromptu smooch on the cheek. “She said, ‘Mr. Mayor, I want you to come on down to Nashville and be our mayor,’” recalls Morris. “He blushed, thanked her, and walked off the stage.”
Sadly, there has been little in the way of breaking news to report about Lauren Spierer since June, when IM last looked into the disappearance of the Indiana University student—namely information on her whereabouts, what happened to her, or publicized leads in the police investigation.
Although World AIDS Day, marked for the 25th time overall on Dec. 1, gets just one day of recognition, a movie shown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, co-sponsored by the Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival on Dec. 1, served as a poignant reminder as to how far the disease—and its treatment and prevention—have come since the early 1980s.
My 5-year-old granddaughter and I like to play the Tea Party Game, in which you spin an arrow to determine which cardboard food item—finger sandwiches, petits fours, fruit—to put on your cardboard plate, and at what point you get your napkins, utensils, and other necessities. The first one whose plate is filled and pretty place setting completed wins. She cheats, though, thinking I don’t see her re-spin, lightning-fast, when the arrow points to “Lose a piece.” If she already has a dessert and the arrow points to that category again, she claims it’s “on the line!” The competitive streak runs fast and furious in our family, and I do not judge.
Every year around Christmas, I think what a burden it is to be Christian and consider joining another religion with fewer Yuletide demands. Addressing the cards and pretending I like fruitcake leave me exhausted. I toyed with the idea of becoming a Buddhist monk, which is just exotic enough to be hip, but then I remembered they have to set themselves on fire if a war comes along. As much as I dislike Christmas, I still prefer it over immolation.
I don’t believe the world will end this month, as the Mayan calendar dubiously predicts. But Robert Vicino is banking on Armageddon—or some other life-extinction scenario, be it nuclear war, meteorite, solar storms, bacon shortage. The California businessman hawks subterranean bunkers (“Doomsday Profit”), one of which resides in Indiana. The Cold War–esque lairs by Vicino’s Vivos Group come complete with flat-screen TVs and stainless-steel appliances for the low, low price of $50,000 a space.
With its wide bookshelves varying from dark aged wood to more modern circular cases, The Indianapolis Public Library—Central Library—writes the book on combining old with new. And now it has been chosen by MentalFloss.com as the fifth most beautiful library in the United States. With contenders among these Top 10 such as the Armstrong–Browning Library at Baylor University in Texas and the Morgan Library in New York, Indy should be flattered. Most of the edifices chosen are on the coasts, and Indy’s downtown main branch is the sole Midwest rep on this list.
On October 22, cycling’s governing body formally stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles due to alleged involvement in a doping scandal, and on November 1, the International Olympic Committee opened an investigation into the cyclist’s bronze-medal-winning performance in 2000.
Call it premature, or irrational, or morbid, but I’m convinced that I’m destined to get breast cancer. I’ve accepted it, figuring it’s better to prepare myself mentally—and take precautions like self-exams—than be caught off-guard like my great-aunt Barbara was, when she was diagnosed at the age of 39. That was back in the ’60s, and even though it was only a small lump, they lopped off her whole breast, so primitive were the treatment options at that point.
You can buy chairs at the drugstore. Granted, the selection consists of remote-controlled lift chairs for the old or infirm, but still. They are chairs, they cost $799, and you can buy them at the drugstore. On my last visit, I was tempted to try one just to see how far it would launch me, but I was afraid someone I knew might see. So I moved on to the “walking sticks”—canes, for crying out loud—and blood-pressure cuffs. Those devices I expect to see at the drugstore, but chairs? That blows me away.
