- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks,
- so I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices. On this
- day in history, May 19th,
- Good afternoon. Psalm 118, 24 says, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in
- it. Abraham Lincoln said, folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
- Charles Schultz says, happiness is a warm puppy. Or one of my favorite, a scout is cheerful. Proverbs
- 17-22 says, a cheerful heart is good medicine. Being happy offers significant health benefits, including
- stronger immune system, lower stress levels, improved heart health, reduced pain, and increased longevity.
- Happiness fosters better habits,
- such as healthy eating and regular exercise, which can increase your lifespan. It also boosts resilience
- and cognitive function. Finding happiness in the face of adversity involves cultivating resilience through
- gratitude, maintaining a growth mindset, and nurturing social connections. It is a proactive, dynamic
- process of focusing on what can be controlled, celebrating small victories,
- and finding meaning despite challenging circumstances. Practices like mindfulness, self-care, and humor
- help manage stress and build lasting strength. So key strategies for cultivating joy during hardship
- is one, practicing gratitude. Actively acknowledging the good things, even small ones, shifts our focuses
- from deficiencies to abundance.
- Foster a growth mindset. View challenges as opportunities for personal growth rather than insurmountable
- obstacles. Focus on control. Concentrate efforts on actions within your control while accepting the
- things that cannot be changed. Connect with others. Lean on relationships and supportive communities
- to feel less alone in your struggle. And engage in self-care. Prioritize sleep, exercise, and activities
- that bring joy or peace.
- to manage emotional regulation. So I hope you can use this reflection to center your thoughts and actions
- towards pursuing more happiness. Thanks. Thank you, Randy. Leslie Kutsenko will introduce some of our
- guests today, and also, while she's up front, provide us with a brief update of this week's Wonderlab
- Summer Blastoff Service Project. Hello.
- How is everybody? Awesome. So I have some limestone host guests. So with Michael Shermas, I have Ann
- Kibler, Noelle Herhusky-Schneider, and Becky Wan. Nope, nope. Dacen Anderson with Joy Harder. So then
- I have Betty Coffee, who is the sister of Glenda, who's a clergy member.
- Raise your hands. Emily Reynolds with Michael with Limestone Pose. This is going swimmingly. And anyone
- is a guest of Brad Meyer. Do we have any guests online? Well, we have one person who is identified as
- user. So that's our mysterious guest or Rotarian of the day.
- That's all folks. Summer Blast Off. Summer Blast Off. Okay, so we're getting ready for Summer Blast
- Off, which is from 3 to 8 p.m. outside at Wonder Lab. We need volunteers for the Rotary to hand out STEM kits
- All of the STEM kits have been completed or will be completed by the end of today. So you don't actually
- have to assemble anything. You don't have to create a science project. We just need to show up and be
- Rotarians for service. Where it's in a shaded area, you don't have to bring anything. We have chairs,
- tables, all the banners are coming, et cetera. You just have to bring yourself. So there's a sign up
- sheet that's at the checkout desk.
- Please, please, please sign up. We would love more Rotarians. There's only five people that have signed
- up so far. So please, please, please volunteer for Summer Blast Stop. Question. It's not going to rain.
- If it rains, everything gets moved inside Wonder Lab. We've had big events inside Wonder Lab before.
- The explosions will have to be eliminated though. What day this Thursday?
- from three to eight and with the Rotary Foundation giving the $6,000 grant, it's not only coming free
- admission, all of the STEM kits and everything that goes along with this. So it's a free admission day
- the entire day.
- However, the block party is when school ends. We have everything from the STEM bus, the ROI bus. We
- have all of the local museums, including Monroe County History Center, the Terre Haute Children's Museum.
- We have Wesselman Woods coming, Parks and Rec, the library, Morgensterns, Bloomington Fine Arts, and
- I know there's more. So it's going to be a big party. Thank you.
- Thanks. Thanks, Leslie. Guests, certainly, if you'd like to learn anything about rotary, please ask
- someone at your table. Can we have a round of applause for today's guests? And Sally, the phrase big
- brother is listening when you find out who unknown user is, let us know. My theory is that Tyler planted
- someone. Ah, I see.
- birthdays. We have a number of birthdays to observe today. Tomorrow, Melinda Cedar and Alice Zulman.
- On the 21st, Marcy Hibbard. On the 24th, Tina Swanson. And then Bill Brown has a birthday on the 25th.
- We also have some anniversaries to note. Jim Griffith, one year tomorrow. On the 22nd, Maria Carraschio,
- one year. On the 23rd, Girono Rotich, three years. And on the 25th,
- Marcus Debro five years. Tyler can you fire up the PowerPoint. Okay well we'll start with the district
- conference which is a week and a half ago in Louisville. Three districts Kentucky Tennessee and southern Indiana.
- Here is the entrance to the reception area at Galt House before the crowds arrived. Here's a picture
- taken during one of the meeting sessions. It was well attended. There was a full room. Here are pictures
- from the Friendship House. And on the left, you can see people looking at baskets, deciding whether
- to bid on baskets. And on the right is a picture of our basket, which was
- prepared, donated by Judy Witt. You can see there were a number of bids, and there were more bids after
- that. So this gathering was a week after the Kentucky Derby. So one of the themes was all the hats and
- things that people wear at the Derby. And so Alann was not to be outdone. I don't know if there was
- an award for best dressed, but he would have been a contender.
- And you can look in the background and see people wearing lots of different hats. And if you really
- focus in, you can't see it on the screen, but his name tag indicates district governor nominee. So at
- the business meeting, Judy Witt made the motion. We unanimously vote for a land to be the district governor
- for 28-29. So he's on his way. It's official.
- So here's a picture of us winning the Club Excellence Award. It was called something else years ago.
- This is something that we won last year. My guess is we probably won it every year. A handful of clubs
- received this award. It's based on you set goals at the beginning of the year. You're allowed to make
- a few changes. And then if you meet 13 of the 24 goals, you get the award. And here is this.
- So it's kind of cool. I remember last year, Tracy handed it to me to look at. And I think this will
- probably endure the same fate. Within a month or so, it'll end up in a box at Teacher's Warehouse. But
- in the meantime, it's kind of nice to have. So social event. So Saturday was all business stuff, informative sessions.
- Friday evening, there were four different outings. One was the Louisville Slugger Baseball Museum. Alain,
- my wife Lisa and I went to the Peerless Distillery, which is a craft distillery just a few blocks away
- from the hotel. So here are barrels of bourbon aging. And then the last thing we did on the, yes, they
- even aged as we watched. And the last thing we did was go to their tasting room.
- A tasting room, you'd go in and you'd get four small servings of rye or bourbon. And this is my wife
- Lisa after the tasting. Lisa slumped on the bar and then from here I carried her back to the hotel.
- This picture was posed, my wife and I are both lightweights and just to make sure there was no club
- money being used to buy bourbon.
- So highlights, the Friendship House raised $14,000 for the Rotary Foundation, money used to eradicate
- polio and to do international projects. We donated a number of shoes. Some of you donated your gently
- used and new shoes. Lots of other Rotarians did the same. They had a box on each floor for shoes, and
- they were always full. So I don't know how many shoes they left with, but there was a bunch.
- It was interesting meeting Rotarians from Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee. The Tennesseans had very deep
- accents. So it was interesting. Sessions were informative, and the social outings were fun. Louisville
- was a really fun place to have it. So let's move to a celebration of service, and let's look back to
- last week. And the scholarship committee has traditionally been one of our stronger committees. This
- year was no exception.
- And we had a really upbeat, joyful session last year. But that starts with a lot of work. So here's
- a picture from one of the planning sessions. I think Jim Shea took this picture. Jeff Richardson was
- one of the co-chairs. Jeff is a wonderful host. So if you attended this meeting at Jeff's house, look
- at all the food is served.
- Jeff has been on our club board. He's leaving at the end of the term. Always brings cookies to the meeting.
- Jeff is the guy you want to have in your organization. So here's a more traditional meeting with some
- of the club members talking about scholarships. Like I said, there was a lot of planning. I want to
- say they had nine finalists and they had to get down to four. And that was really hard because they
- liked the nine individuals they had.
- So the scholarship committee, Jonas Chang and Jeff Richardson were the co-chairs. Jeff Bradley,
- Diana Hoffman, Steve Engel, Tim Jessen, Sandy Keller, Leslie Kutsenko, Connie Chakalas, Jim Shea, and
- John Zote. Hopeful I didn't miss anyone, but can we have a round of applause for our scholarship committee.
- And then this is the end result. Here are the four high school seniors we heard from last week. Just
- very upbeat, knowledgeable. I enjoyed all four of them. And they're heading off to do great things.
- So here's a picture of an empty plate. And this is a reminder to me that we ran out of food last week.
- So that hasn't happened in my year of president.
- I really want to apologize. We had communicated to the IMU beforehand that we are expecting a big crowd.
- And evidently the word didn't get through the system properly. So we ran out of food. I think everybody
- got something. Lots of people didn't get what they hoped to get. So the IMU was very apologetic. But
- I will want to remind the group that for a group our size, when we eat somewhere, if you go other places in town,
- they want a fixed number a week, five days ahead of time. The IMU lets us roll with whomever comes in
- because we just fit into the other things that they're doing. So that's really convenient. And sometimes
- it's easy to forget. So now we're in the summer. There were fewer things going on. So they're having
- to adjust to their workload. But anyway, so sorry for running out of food. I see.
- Yes, and Tracy does say that it definitely keeps the cost down. I would say if we had to have a firm
- number each week and ask each and every one of you if you plan to attend, we'd build in a little bit
- of pad and the extra costs would get spread out among the members. So anyway, hopefully it won't happen
- again. But if it does, just please roll with it. So Wonderlab summer blast off, I want to echo what
- Leslie had to say.
- Once again, this is a Rotary Foundation Rotary Club-sponsored project. Here is the kit. You can see
- the glow worm. I've already helped assemble some of these kits, so it's kind of cool. And here is what
- Leslie's shown, and the actual sign-up sheet is there, and Leslie's sitting here at the front table.
- So other things going on.
- Business After Hours is on the May 21st, Central Supply Company, 1150 Sunrise Greeting Court in Bloomington,
- 530 to 730. So after you've volunteered at Wonder Lab, you can go to Chamber Business After Hours or
- you can go there and do work cleanup at Wonder Lab. We, Rotary Club members, attend free of charge.
- So fifth annual Refugees Summer Pitch In is this coming Sunday, May 24th at the Upper Cascades Lions
- Den. Refugees, volunteers, friends are welcome. Bring a dish to share if you can. I don't see Cindy
- Neidhart here today, but probably Sarah Laughlin or Dave Meyer can help if you need more information.
- One thing to note, I think that the bridge from Lower Cascades to Upper Cascades is now out. So if you
- want to get
- to the upper cascades, lines, dens, shelter, you need to get there from Kinzer. Okay, we need two volunteers
- to work Meals and Wheels the morning of Friday, May 29th. Diana Hoffman is here today. Please see her
- if you're interested. And then some other things coming up, June 5th and into the 6th, the Beacon Solidarity Sleepout.
- So June 9th is one of the Tuesdays when the union is fully booked and they ask us to go elsewhere. And
- so that day, we're meeting at the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center. So kind of file that away on June
- 9th. We won't be meeting here. We'll be going to Neal Marshall. And then the same thing is true on June
- 23rd. The union is fully booked. So we're having our club picnic that day. And it'll be at lunchtime
- on Tuesday the 23rd at the Bryan Park Woodlawn Shelter.
- And it's a shelter with plenty of parking right next to it. July 11th, the Teacher's Warehouse Supply
- Drive will need lots of volunteers for that. And then November 6th, the Rotary Toast, if you want to
- buy a table, they are for sale, not yet selling individual membership or individual tickets. Rotary
- Seven Area is a focus. And then a reminder that May is Youth Service Month.
- I think that's everything, and Joy Harder will introduce today's speaker. Thank you, Steve. Hi, everybody.
- Nice to see you all in person. Can you hear me well? OK. So it is my pleasure to introduce our guest
- speaker today, Dason Anderson.
- Dason is the executive editor for the Limestone Post digital magazine. And he's been in that role for
- about a year. Limestone Post is a local nonprofit organization serving our community through in-depth
- journalism and cultural storytelling. I'm proud to be involved with Limestone Post since 2021. I currently
- serve as the president of the board.
- Dason grew up in south of Bloomington in Lawrence County, where he loved to spend time in the woods.
- Yes. And the quarries. Yes. He's a real nature guy. And he now calls Bloomington his home after being
- out west Colorado for quite some time, returning to Bloomington. And he's still out in the woods, traveling,
- being a nature guy.
- And interestingly, especially now that we know, we're reminded that May is Youth Services Month. When
- Dason was in high school and he attended Bedford North Lawrence, he received a high school scholarship
- from the Bedford Rotary Club. How cool is that? We're gonna clap for you. All right. Dason is an Indiana
- University alumnus with a degree in creative writing. He is an award-winning journalist,
- published poet, and he's actually been involved with Limestone Post for many years. He joined Limestone
- Team in 2016 as assistant editor and then over the last 10 years still had involvement and was engaged
- with Limestone Post in a variety of capacities. For the past two years of note, Limestone Post contributors,
- so I mean writers, including Dayson, have received back to back
- Best of Indiana Journalism Awards from the SPJ. SPJ is the Society for Professional Journalists. And
- we're quite proud of Dasin and our other writers who have distinguished themselves with some excellent
- in-depth writing. I don't know if Dasin will remember this, but when we met about a year ago, you said
- that being the executive editor of Limestone Post would be your dream job.
- And he's fulfilling his dream. He really is. Dason is enthusiastic, he's creative, and he will lead
- Limestone Post into the future and help us grow and expand our service to the community and help us
- all stay informed, engaged, and inspired. Please join me in a warm welcome to Dason Anderson. Thank you.
- Hello, Rotarians. I will probably echo some of what Joy has said and expand on it. And I'm going to
- start with an unplanned anecdote just because you brought it up about my dream to step into this position.
- I was moving home from Colorado after a few years of attempting to live there. I've decided it's a place
- worth vacationing and not so much residing. But I was in the U-Haul with my brother-in-law at the time
- driving through Kansas in the middle of the night. And he says, what are you going to do when you get
- back home? And I had a job lined up. And he said, do you still
- write for the magazine, because actually he and I had collaborated on a story once. And I said, oh yeah,
- I've continued to write for it. And he was like, would you ever want to run that ship someday?
- And I said, well, if Ron ever decides to retire, sure, why not? And lo and behold, it happened. So that
- was great. Now back to the script.
- First of all, thank you Rotarians for all the wonderful work you do in the community and around the
- world, the money that you make accessible to community members and children, and the needs that you
- provide are invaluable. Of course, I was a beneficiary of the Rotary Club when I was a wee high school
- lad, and it really helped me in my journey at IU.
- in that education. I remember I believe it was a man named Irvin. And he had one arm. And I had to shake
- his hand with my left hand, which I just remember that that moment so distinctly and then being so thankful
- for for that opportunity. So thank you again. I am indeed from Lawrence County. I still secretly live
- in Lawrence County, about a mile south of the county line. So I have a Bedford address. Ironically,
- I thought I'd never
- move back to my childhood home, but there I am. Bloomington, however, is my chosen home. I spend almost
- all of my time here in this community with these people. I come up to Bloomington to work from various
- coffee shops or wherever. And so this is, Bloomington is my chosen home. And I'm very happy and very
- proud to be a representative member of that. And one of the things that Limestone Post allows me and
- allows us to do is to give this community a voice and a platform
- to speak and to share news and information, arts, history, culture. So I'm very happy to be able to
- do that. I indeed did grow up in the woods. My family, so I say I'm from Bedford, I'm not.
- I'm from Avoka, Olidick, Springville kind of wilderness area. And so, you know, my backyard was the
- Avoka State Fish Hatchery.
- which is now a community foundation run public park, which is great. And so, you know, I just grew up
- running through the woods and exploring caves and wondering why the fence had danger, no trespassing
- explosives. And boy, what was on the other side of that fence? I'm glad we never ventured to find out.
- Otherwise I probably wouldn't be standing here. But, you know, that was just part of growing up in the
- quarries and on the other side of the highway,
- my family's from a litic and we lived on our well that my grandparents lived on the dead end street
- that used to be highway 37 and it dead ends of a cliff with that the Indiana limestone company. And
- you know it was common practice to just jump off of a giant cliff into dark deep mysterious water and
- go swimming.
- So again, amazing that I'm standing here before you today, given the adventures of my youth. But it
- instilled in me a great love, not only for this industry that has shaped so many of these buildings,
- the one in which we stand now, so much of this campus and so much of this town and state. Growing up
- in the limestone quarries, I think, see, I say quarries instead of quarry. So, all right, I think it
- was a common misnomer around these parts.
- It gave me such an appreciation for the history and the industry of where we live here in southern Indiana
- and the limestone belt. And it was a lot of fun. Let's see. So I attended IU where I did major in religious
- studies and got a minor in creative writing technically. But that was kind of my passion and my pursuit.
- I started with poetry and in fact this hallway adjacent here to the Georgian room, there's restrooms
- down at the end.
- I had to use the facilities one day as a student walking through the union. And I just happened, oh,
- there's a restroom. And I turned down this hall. And it's lined with these photographs. And I was fascinated
- by the Frank Hohenberger photographs that this guy went over to Brown County and took pictures of the
- people living there. And I really had to pee. But I also had to really get to class. So I was like,
- oh, those are cool pictures. And I came back soon thereafter.
- And I spent, I think, two or three hours at night one time with my notebook. And I think there are 27
- photographs. And I just stood there and I wrote a poem about each one. And I did that because I am so
- invested in the stories of this area and the history of this area.
- And seeing the photographs of those people, it's going to make me cry because there's this one of this
- old woman on a porch. You got to go look at it. And just the humanity in those photographs sticks with
- me to this day. So I was so happy when we got here. I was like, oh, it's in the Georgian room. I can
- look at those photographs again. So that was awesome. One of the things I did in IU was co-facilitator, co-host a
- poetry reading, a group of poets. We got together and we did this for almost, I think, three or four
- years. We published a zine. That was my first foray into publication. We did six runs of a zine. And
- as IU students, you were allocated printing pages that you can go to the library or wherever and print.
- So when our poetry group wanted to do the zine project, we asked all of the members of our poetry club
- to donate their page
- quota. And so we just ran off dozens of copies of these zines and we were in the
- Herman B. Wells Library, my friend Pierce and I just commandeering printers and just printing off stacks
- and stacks of pages of these zines and had a big stapling party and it was a lot of fun. But we would
- do poetry readings most often at what was Rachel's Cafe is now Uncle Wang's Alley there on the third
- street by the police station. So that was a wonderful space that they allowed us to use every month.
- What did we call it first?
- Thursdays, I think is what it was, we would do poetry readings on the top of parking garages in caves,
- wherever we could find a spot to read poems to each other. And so that was just another way that I early
- on got involved with the voices in my community, and learn to love and appreciate the art that comes
- from collaborative storytelling. After IU, I was looking for a career I worked at
- Blooming Foods. I was an independent gardener, landscaper, and sticking with the limestone theme, I
- put up posters at Blooming Foods for hire. The limestone garden gnome. Thank God that didn't take off.
- But I did have a few private clients. Doug Wissing, who some of you may know, a journalist.
- So that kind of got me, oh, journalism, that's an interesting, I would speak to Doug after working at
- his house. And again, just got my hands dirty and invested in the community and continued to get deeper,
- more deeply knitted into the fabric of Bloomington. Then in 2016, I wanted to get more involved in writing
- and I thought, well, maybe publication
- our publishing and editing or journalism would be an avenue of pursuit. And a friend of mine very briefly
- was the, I think, marketing and advertising person for Limesome Post in 2015-16 when the magazine got
- started. So I hit him up and he connected me with Ron. And I went into their office, which was at that
- weird curved intersection on 11th Street by the train tracks or Cottage Grove, I think, maybe.
- I think now it's a yoga studio. At the time it was kind of a half unfinished blue building. And I go
- in there and they sit me down at the desk and they give me a laptop with an editing quiz on it.
- And I passed. And I still, I have a, they gave me a cheat sheet of editing shorthand, which is still
- in my backpack now with the notes and the margin.
- And so that was kind of my beginning with Limestone Post. Ron and Linnae, Ron Eade and Linnae Sawinski
- started Limestone Post in 2015. At the time it was a for-profit publication and we're an online digital
- magazine serving Bloomington, Monroe County and surrounding areas. Ron was publisher and Linnae was
- editor, lead editor. They both edited but
- And so they hired me on as assistant editor and it was a wonderful opportunity and I loved it so much
- and we had so much fun working together for a few years. I was on the team. I mean, I've never really
- left the team. But I was on the early years we had that really quirky office up on the northwest side
- and then we moved to
- Graham Plaza Hotel on the square, which was luxurious. It was very nice. I loved going to the office
- there. We had those arched windows with the flower boxes that look over college. So I mean, it was just
- ideal. But that was very expensive. So then we moved to another shared office location downtown. And
- those were just wonderful years. We not only was I assistant editor, so I was working on
- stories from people in the community like Michael Glab and Laurie Borman and Ruthie Cohen and many,
- many others. And very likely, I probably worked on a story of yours in the early days and didn't even
- realize it. And I lost my train of thought on that one. Oh, but Ron had also allowed me to be a contributor
- as well as
- the, you know, 10 or 15 hours I was putting in every week as assistant editor. And so that's when I
- really got my chops in more formal writing, because up to that point, I had just been a fancied myself
- a poet and a creative writer. And so really was able to invest in practice in journalism. In 2018, I
- moved to Colorado, and I tried to continue working as assistant editor, but 1000 mile gap is quite the
- gap to bridge when
- You're working for a magazine that is so hyper focused on one community and so not being here made it
- very, very difficult to stay involved to the depth and capacity that I wish. So at that time, about
- 2018 or so, I stepped down from the assistant editor position, but I continued to contribute. I wrote,
- I think in 2018 or 19, I wrote a
- piece which is still very near and dear to my heart and may actually be one of my favorite articles
- that I've written about the history of Hoosier barns and the preservation of those. My family, my family's
- been in Lawrence County since the 1800s and we have a barn on my dad's mom's childhood home property.
- A barn that was built in the 1800s and I remember you know as a kid climbing up the ladder and and
- trying not to get eaten by the buzzards that lived up in the hayloft and just playing there. And they
- kept cows in the fields then. And I don't think I would do this today. And I probably wouldn't let my
- son do this. But back in the mid-90s, you got hot. It was July. You go lick the salt lake with the cows.
- I didn't know that it was gross. Don't recommend doing that, though, because it is very gross.
- that was just part of it. So writing stories like that was not only a way for me to honor, again, the
- history of where we're from, but also to honor my own history and my own stories of where I'm from.
- And so I'm very grateful that Ron allowed me to continue writing for the magazine, even when I lived
- 1000 miles away. I covered the first eclipse that happened and I covered the second eclipse that happened
- that story, which I kind of weaved into a larger narrative of
- Art going on in town with sculptors and performances and live music and all that. That was an award-winning
- article that I was awarded at the Society of Professional Journalists Awards. We'll get back to that
- though. In 2019, I was still living far away and Ron and Linnae decided to transition to a nonprofit
- model for the magazine, which changed
- more probably behind the scenes than necessarily the the front page of our our website the front page
- of our magazine but what it did do is allow for a lot more community involvement and sponsorship
- opportunities and just kind of not share a charitable participation in the community i moved back in
- 2020 immediately
- went to the Hundredth Hill with Krista Dutour, wrote a really long piece about a theater residency she
- was doing there in the midst of COVID, and pretty much just got back to town and jumped back in with
- the Limestone Post crew. And, you know, Ron and I are buddies. We've been friends for a long time. We
- would go hiking. And so I got reintegrated into the magazine.
- I did, however, miss out on the Sense of Place publication because that's our one physical magazine,
- kind of a coffee table style magazine book. I was somewhat involved, but I was living in Colorado at
- the time and so they published it while I was away. Someone, I didn't catch your name and I apologize,
- but somebody asked me, you know, where did you print it? And I said, I don't know.
- Are you printing more? Maybe. I hope so. And we would love to. We would really love to do another print
- edition. However, that does require a lot of that, a lot of money. So maybe that will be an opportunity
- we have in the future. But for now, you'll have to visit limestonepost.org to see all of the stories
- that we publish. I try to publish weekly, twice if I can. We're not
- We're not consistent with that by a rule, but I like to and each of our stories is going to be covering
- a topic of maybe what's happening in the news scene, what's happening in the political scene, the economy,
- the education scene here in town, local government, county government, maybe adjacent county governments.
- We're also going to cover the arts and the culture and lifestyle. We're going to tell stories about
- the people that live here and feature the artists who work here and the nonprofit organizers who strive
- to make this community the wonderful, impressive, amazing community that it is. And what sets us apart
- in the local news scene from, say, the Herald Times or the work that Jeremy Hogan and Dave Askins do
- is we're not daily news.
- We're long form investigative journalism. So we spend time with our stories. We spend time with our
- writers. There's a dialogue that occurs that goes back and forth when we're in the editorial process
- so that we can really craft the best quality, you know, deepest diving look into the stories that are
- being told. I say deepest diving because one of the things we have done in the past was our collaboration
- with WFHB. We did the deep dive series where FHB would
- We would write a story, long form investigative journalism story on food pantries or many topics that
- we covered, housing. And then WFHB would air a radio segment on their news program. Good news is we
- are bringing back a similar project that is as of yet unnamed. But we will again be collaborating with
- WFHB to do an even bigger news program.
- And it'll follow a very similar model. We will do an investigative journalism piece. WFHB will do a
- joint broadcast piece. But the difference this time is that we are going to continue to go even deeper
- and engage even further with that story by bringing on perhaps the person who wrote it, the contributor,
- maybe someone who was interviewed, people from WFHB, and we will have a roundtable discussion.
- and provide our community with an even deeper look at what's going on. So that's one of the projects
- this year that we're very, very excited about. We've applied for some other grant opportunities waiting
- to find out if we'll be awarded those. And if we do, that will be wonderful. It will increase the number
- of stories that we can write. But we've got a very full editorial calendar. Aside from the
- grant opportunities, I am
- so excited to be able to work with contributors to the magazine that have been writing for us for many,
- many years. Steve Hennefeld, Ruthie Cohen, as I mentioned before, Michael Glab is still one of our regular
- contributors and we all know he's such a talented individual and storyteller. We've got a really good
- one from him coming out. But also new
- community members and people who are eager to try out their hand at journalism or maybe it's friends
- that I had from back in my poetry collective days or my IU days. And being so integrated in this community
- for so long has allowed me to really tap into the talent that Bloomington has and fill our magazine
- with wonderful stories. While I'm
- At this point, I do want to shout out our staff and our board of directors, Noel and Anne and myself
- are the staff of Lime Sunpost and I really could not do this without the two of you. So immense thanks
- and graciousness. And then of course, our board of directors, Joy and Emily, who are here today, probably,
- no, undoubtedly work harder than I do to keep this magazine alive and to keep it thriving and
- the effort that you put in is invaluable. And your volunteers, which is amazing. So I appreciate both
- of you. When the magazine, I know I'm almost on time for the Q&A, so I'll wrap it up here. When we started
- out our, right, am I good on time or am I over? Good, okay, perfect. Riders with a Voice, Photographers
- with a Vision was the original motto for Limestone Post Magazine. And we stand by that, we still are
- a place for that. But now, as we move into our 10th and now 11th year as an organization with a new
- executive editor, Ron has finally slipped away into retirement and obscurity and no one has heard from
- him in months. Now, that's not true. I saw him last week. But we're taking on a new approach.
- to inform, engage, and inspire our readers. And that is something that we all thought about very hard
- and that I feel really captures our mission as Limestone Post, to inform our community, to engage with
- our community, and to inspire our community to do more, to contribute more, to write more, to tell stories
- more, to do what you Rotarians do, and keep community alive. And I'll just wrap this up quickly. Again,
- yeah, we went to the SPJs this week.
- this year, SPJ awards this year, and won again as we do every year. So congrats to us. We have a new
- website. We switched from a .com to a .org, which I think is important. We also shortened the URL from
- limestonepostmagazine.com to limestonepost.org, so you can get there a lot quicker.
- I could speak about our partnership with the Arnold Center. They did a big story for us last year, and
- they're going to do another one for us this year. And it's always great to partner and collaborate with
- students here at the university. So that's another community partner that we're very happy to have.
- We're growing. We're getting new readers and new subscribers all the time. We just got a new subscriber
- this morning. If it was one of you, and I forgot your names, I'm sorry, but thank you regardless.
- And lastly, I'll just say one of my goals when I came on as executive director is I was thinking of
- what can we do differently? And I wanted to establish columns. We now have three columns. I can only
- take credit for two of those. Ruthie Cohen's stirring the pot cooking column has been going on since
- day one. I think it was legitimately one of the first articles that ever got published was was one of
- her first stirring the pot columns. But we now have Stephen Higgs doing an environment environmental
- column for us.
- and Steve Hennefeld doing an education column for us. So we're off to a good start with me at the helm,
- and I'm happy to take any questions you might have. I saw your hand first, sir. No, no. Oh, we stuck
- up on you. I defer to you. Fair, fair. First of all, thank you for all that you do. Thank you.
- was a sophomore last year at IU, junior this year. And his girlfriend last year was doing zines. I don't
- know how many people in this room know what zines are. So you might want to explain that. Firstly, second,
- because I had no idea what it was. Secondly, it was interesting because it opened my eyes to at my at
- that point in time, I was like, oh, there's an underground current because I don't think kids are that
- informed. And I'm like, oh, no, they're quite informed. So I think it's if you could share that with
- this group, that would be helpful. And then how are you or are you leveraging the university
- talent that's out there. Thank you. Those are very good questions. Zines. Sorry, I'm trying to get my
- notes back out of my pocket so I can have a scratch pad. So zines are little bits of paper folded up,
- stapled together that are filled with typewritten words, scribbled words, drawings, and then you Xerox
- off or print off
- hundreds of copies and give them to your friends or slip them into the bookcase at the at Runcable Spoon
- or leave them on a table for someone to find. So it's kind of an underground distribution of an art
- magazine. And it was a lot of fun. Our zine, of course, was poetry and visual art. We called it eggs
- with all caps because Michelle Gotchlich and I, who we were the co-hosts and co-organizers, we were
- walking outside the Union over by like we're done meadow.
- of comes over to the union there's that little I guess facility door where they move in trucks and whatnot
- and they had these big boxes of eggs out there and we said that's a good name all caps so that's where
- that came from I think today though kids I mean people's young people still do zines I still see them
- there's zine conventions and and it's a it's been a thing since I don't know the 60s the 40s
- forever since we've had paper and could stand right on it. And but I think social media is really influencing
- the distribution of knowledge amongst young people and the distribution of art amongst young people.
- And I think like digital zines are a thing that are out there. So I don't know. I mean, I'm not as young
- as I once was, but I still think zines are fun. Now, how do we collaborate with with students at IU?
- A lot of times I'll have
- young journalism students who have maybe graduated or soon to be graduating and they want to work with
- us. I think we've got three all young women journalists, Ellie Alban, Meredith Perkins, maybe two or
- one or two more, who came directly from IU and reached out to us to write. And I, Meredith Perkins had
- submitted her story recently on maternal mental health.
- We haven't published it yet, but when we do, holy cow, it's amazing. She did an incredible job. So keep
- an eye out for that one. And then we collaborate with the Arnold Center as well. They do like one big
- story for us every semester. Yeah. Thank you. Again, thank you for taking the job, coming back
- to Bloomington, and for all that you do. So my question is sort of on the financial side.
- What percentage of your of your revenue is coming from subscribers versus other sources? Can you talk
- a little bit about that? A small amount. Very small amount. We are a free magazine. And as long as I'm
- in charge, we will always be a free magazine. I don't believe in paywalls. We publish a story.
- It's out there. It's up there. Anyone can read it with a click and we'll always have free access to
- that story.
- We do allow for paid subscription tiers on our site. You don't get anything extra except for the good
- fuzzy warm feeling of having supported a nonprofit publication. But again, that ties into my philosophy
- of it's a donation. It's, you know, we're not cordoning off content behind a paywall. That's just how
- I feel about it personally. But we are very happy to have paid subscribers and we do have a few.
- Um, it's a very small percentage of our revenue. A lot of what we get is just, uh, larger donations,
- maybe a one time donation. Um, our donation box or whatever on our website is open perennially, but
- in the winter, uh, like November, December, we are a part of the news match, uh, campaign,
- which is the INN, which helped me and is independent.
- nonprofit news network, something like that. So one of we're a member of a number of other
- news organizations. So the news match campaign drive is one of our big fundraising opportunities. And
- that's where a lot of our revenue comes from is just from donations. We also do like community sponsorships.
- And we you know, we allow for sponsored articles. So instead of me paying you to write, you pay me to
- publish you. And
- Am I missing any other grants, grants, grants and donations and sponsorships? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
- I'm just curious if any of us have a subject that might be of interest to your post for publication.
- How do we contact you? Absolutely. This way.
- Um, no, you can visit our website and we'll have contact pages on there. My email is editor at limestone
- pos limestone post.org. Um, and yeah, visit the website, email me directly. Um, also that's my personal
- phone. So, you know, after 8pm, no, just kidding. You can text me. It's fine.
- Well, first of all, thank you for your family for preserving the barn. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. In Indiana,
- we seem to tax people on what are just not farms, not using those barns, but they're being taxed. Yeah.
- So that causes them to take them down. So we need to do something legislatively, maybe to stop that.
- Yeah. There's a few.
- you know, historical preservation societies, especially, and ones that particularly focus on barns,
- but there aren't many left of those structures standing. Sorry, no, this is weird having me ask you
- a question. It's not so much a question as I think people will be really interested to know what the
- Bloomington Monroe County Community Foundation is doing and how that's
- helping us because what they're doing is really significant. Yeah, it really is. So essentially the
- Community Foundation invited a number of the local news organizations to apply for this grant and it
- was kind of one of those things where they were like, hey, we really want to give you this money to
- bolster and improve the news network here in town. And the idea behind it was that it's a collaborative
- news effort. And
- I'm not sure as to all of the recipients, but I can say that Limestone Post and WFHB were both awarded
- a nice sum of money that will adequately facilitate a long-term collaborative news effort. So we were
- very happy to come to the table with them. At first, it was supposed to be
- remember the name of like a receipt based structure where you know you pay for something and then give
- them a receipt and they reimburse you a reimbursement structure but the community foundation was actually
- able to give us the money up front which i think will be helpful in just kind of executing the project
- so we will be bringing on you know i'm going to look for a few other writers or contributors that can
- dedicate to the themselves to the project so we kind of have like a core group
- moving ahead. But yeah, we're going to meet with FHB later this week to strategize. So we're very, very
- excited for this opportunity and very, very grateful to the Community Foundation for making this possible.
- Jason, what would you do if you had unlimited money and dreams to spend it with limestone folks? Work
- from a beach in the Caribbean? Work remotely in the cabana? No.
- It's a very good question. First of all, I would use that money to do a print project. I would use those
- unlimited funds to pay our contributors more. I think I'm very, very proud of what we are able to pay
- our contributors. Having been a Limestone Post contributor, you get that invoice or you get the rate
- from Ron and I was like, damn, okay, yes, thank you. That's, that's generous. And so I make sure to
- always try to compensate our contributors well. But I would increase that. What else would I do? I think
- one of the secret projects which I'll let slip because I like you people are archiving the the writer
- magazine digital archiving the writer magazine, which is a project that we really need funding for we don't
- We're still in the planning phase of that. So if any of you are lovers of the writer and have ideas,
- I would be happy to speak with you about that. But that is something that we would immediately put money
- towards to preserve that gem of Bloomington art.
- And yeah, I don't know. I mean, do charitable things. Donate, share with other news organizations. Donate
- to WFHB during their fun to drive. Buy a Corvette. I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't do that. I'd
- buy a 1969 black Mustang. And on that note. Thank you. All right. Jason, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.
- When I was here as an undergraduate, I remember stumbling across the photos in the hallway. And so I
- was really thrilled when I came back here as a retiree, and many of those same photos were up. But I
- never thought about writing a poem about each one. So yeah, 27 poems, very impressive. So in honor of
- your talk, a donation will be made this quarter to Wheeler Mission. I'd like to thank today's volunteers,
- Jim Shea, Leslie Katsenko, Joy Harder,
- Sally Gaskell, Randy Saunders, Bill Oates, Michael Shermas, Dave Meyer, Sarah Loughlin. I'd also like
- to thank our Zoom and audio producer, Tyler Martin-Nichols, who regularly bails us out during meetings.
- So our next meeting will be here in the Georgia room next Tuesday, May 26. Sergeant Jordan Hassler of
- the Bloomington Police Department's Canine Unit. And Michael Shermas will his dog Twix be here.
- And his dog Twix will be our special guest. We really loved having the raptors here a few months ago.
- I think having Twix from the canine unit will be pretty cool. So please join us. Tyler, if you could
- share the graphic for the four-way test, please join or stand if you're able. And join me.
- of the things we think, say, or do. First, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned? Third,
- will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? And fifth,
- is it fun?