Little 500 -- Then and Now

It's Little 500 weekend here in Bloomington! Get into the spirit with this feature article I wrote for Bloom Magazine tracing the race's 60-year history.

Little 500 -- Then and Now

Get your boot in gear

Exercise boot camps seem to be popping up all over Bloomington. I wrote about three of them for the April/May issue of Bloom. One thing that stuck with me was a statement by Adam Schaeuble, founder of Next Generation Personal Training.

"We'll throw some reality at people, give them tough love," he said. "Sometimes we hear, 'I'm not an early morning person.' And I'll say, 'Maybe you should become an early morning person so you're not an overweight person.'"

I started a diet that day.

Like law and sausages: the ugliness of the interview

It's said that in order to appreciate certain things, laws and sausages among them, it's best not to know how they were made. I think articles may also belong in that category -- not because anything unethical or unsavory happens, but because the interview process can sometimes be an awkward, cringeworthy experience.

My recent talk with Congressman Lee Hamilton is a good example. Originally, I was assigned to write a short piece for Bloom Magazine. When I arrived for my first interview, I handed Hamilton a copy of book I wrote on great speeches of the last half century, thinking he would be amused to recall the events of his Congressional tenure. As he thumbed through the pages, he offered personal observations about each figure.

"Gerald Ford, he lived a few blocks from us. His wife Betty and my wife were good friends. Charleton Heston, he was on the Hill all the time. Kofi Annan I know quite well. Oh, Anwar El-Sadat, he was so much like an American politician. Always saying, 'Lee, you can call me Anwar.'"

I returned to Bloom restless and a bit distraught, realizing I couldn't use anything I'd gathered during his initial reverie. I could hardly write myself into the story -- we rarely use first person, and certainly not in the section for which this piece was destined -- and it was my book that prompted the memories. My editor agreed that it would make a great story, though, so we decided to schedule a second interview designed to elicit a similar response.

I recorded the interview with my iPhone. If you listened to it, what you'd hear is me blurting out events of the '60s, '70s, and '80s in the hopes of prompting interesting anecdotes.

"So... what about Watergate?"

"What do you remember about the Equal Rights Amendment?"

"Let's move on. Gulf War?"

I was trying to recreate the flipping-through-the-book moment, and it worked. I got a great story full of historical name-dropping and behind-the-scenes vignettes. It's our cover feature for April/May. But boy, did I ever sound like an idiot.

I try to remember in these instances that I don't work for radio or television. I work in print, and when it comes to print, it's not about the interview. What I say doesn't matter. It's how the subject responds. I'm not trying to sound smart, I'm trying to sound interested and attentive and I'm trying to ask the questions that get the answers I need for the article.

Still, it may be time for me to get the interview training I missed by falling bassackwards into this profession. I welcome any tips.

Localized economic development

There's more to economic development than microfinance and investment banking. Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs Professor David Audretsch argues that economic growth is best cultivated in cultural pockets or hotspots, where innovators can riff off one another and create a vibrant industry. I wrote about this phenomenon in SPEA Magazine, which is available online here.

Here's the opener:

How did Paris become synonymous with romance?

Why is New York City the place for live theater?

What made Silicon Valley the center of the dot-com boom?

The answers lie in the field of localized economic development ... more on page 17.

Vincent Van Gogh, the opera

"Nothing in his life that he attempted to do worked except his paintings," says Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands, whose new opera Vincent will have its world premiere in Bloomington April 8. Rands describes Van Gogh as the quintessential tragic figure, who unravels into poverty and mental illness, only to be honored posthumously as one of the greatest painters of all time.

Rands, a Grammy Award winner and Harvard professor, has been thinking about the opera since he attended the opening of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam in 1973. "I was one of the first on the doorstep," he remembers. "The experience of that exhibition was so impactful and so inspiring. I found his character so fascinating and so gripping. I thought one day I would like to make a theater work."

The IU Jacobs School of Music commissioned the opera as part of its celebration of 100 years as a department. Jacobs Dean Gwyn Richards says, "You think this kind of cultural activity happens only in a metropolis, but you have enough special people gathered in Bloomington with a special talent and creative ability, coupled with an audience that appreciates and recognizes the role of culture and the importance of an expressive life, and you have a singular opportunity for excellence."

The production will take place at the Musical Arts Theater April 8, 9, 15 and 15. Read more in the upcoming issue of Bloom Magazine, or visit http://music.indiana.edu/operaballet/vincent/index.html for ticket information.

From the sublime to the verisimilitudinous: Why I don't use big words

"Get out of the way of the information."

This was the most helpful career advice I ever received, generously given by a colleague (one David Bricker) at Indiana University Media Relations. Later, an editor (who also happens to be my out-of-stepmother, Ann Taylor) told me, "Be straightforward and meaty and avoid abstractions." I try, in everything I write, to follow these precepts.

Such is my fixation on clarity that I become a bit unhinged when someone throws a giant word at me. Today an interviewee used the term "verisimilitudinous" to mean, as I understand it, lifelike, and I can't decide whether to use the quote or not. It's a delicious word, I admit, but doesn't it seem inherently snotty? If I use it, I fear I risk either alienating the reader or appearing to mock the source -- possibly both.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a dance professor at Stanford. Naturally, jargon was slung throughout every department at the school, but never in my four years was I so confused as when I attempted to converse with Robert Moses.

"Your dancing is very articulate," he told me. "I want you to emphasize that."

Let me note before I go on that rarely did I or anyone else at the university ever admit to not understanding what someone was saying. But I was so lost -- and, let's be honest, such a terrible dancer -- that it seemed worth asking what in God's name he was on about.

"What do you mean, it's articulate?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? Am I being too ambiguous or too amorphous?"

I gave up. I also dropped my dance minor.

When I do marketing and PR work, I tend to expend a fair amount of energy trying to convince smart people that they don't need to use big words to sound smart. Communications are about just that -- communicating, getting a message across. I suppose great writers manage to have some kind of recognizable flair, but my goals are not so lofty. If I do my job well, I'm not sure anyone sees me at all. Hopefully all they see is the information.