Big Talk – WFHB

She’s the queen of events in Bloomington and south central Indiana. Kel McBride has been hatching quirky and crazy event ideas for years, organizing like-minded characters, and staging extravaganzas that draw hundreds and, occasionally, thousands. The wizard behind Eroticon, the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls, Krampus, and many others, McBride’s Ms. Lake Lemon pageant pits gowned, muck...

Grief and healing are important themes in her work. When Katina Bitsicas’s father was dying of cancer, she recorded his feelings and impressions. Then after he died, she created a liquid light image of the type of cancer cells that ran through his body. Bitsicas also has compiled a book, Luci: The Girl with Four …

Her boss at a previous job inspired her to get involved with Court Appointed Special Advocates as a volunteer. Now, Tia Arthur is Monroe County CASA’s executive director. CASA, a nationwide network of nonprofit organizations, provides help, comfort, and guidance for kids involved in court custody proceedings. Judges depend on CASA’s reports and advice before …

The historian and author has devoted five years of his life to studying and writing about what he characterizes as this country’s first major foreign policy initiative. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led some 40 people in an exploratory mission, hoping to find a water route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest. They failed …

Born and raised in the middle of Siberia, Daryana Antipova comes from a singing family. Her family band, Vedan Kolod, has played throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. She co-founded an influential Russian folk music organization and is the author of three published young adult novels. Antipova was bound and determined to come to …

She’s appeared before audiences since she was three years old, when she dashed onstage, unbidden, during a Shakespeare production in Leningrad. Kate Weber arrived in Bloomington from Russia and other outposts, including a 15-year stretch in New York City theater. She, her husband Jeremy Weber, and Konnor Graber have co-founded Eclipse Theater Productions here. Kate …

Was it just luck that his given name is a mash-up of two Bloomington streets? Woodlawn is becoming this town’s Matt Groening, taking real people — politicians, sports stars, entertainers, and more — and fictionalizing their foibles. He’s the editor-in -chief of the local satiric website, Limestone Ledger, and has been lovingly skewering people, places, …

Author Julia Karr has been presenting a series of writers workshops at the Owen County Public Library in Spencer, Indiana. Karr wrote the XVI trilogy, dystopian fantasy novels set around the year 2150. These young adult books portray a world where teenaged girls are told their only worth is as sex objects. One girl attempts …

Science isn’t just for scientists. That’s what Erika Biga Lee realized during a scientific conference some 20 years ago. The IU Luddy School senior lecturer on computer technology with interests in journalism and education learned about Cafe Scientifique at the conference and decided to bring the informal, public discussion of scientific matters to Bloomington. Europe’s …

Like many creative folks in recent years, LuAnne Holladay felt a need for comfort and relief from the unending stream of disturbing world and national news. She hoped to create a simple, collaborative project that would allow people to create, to breathe. She came up with “Give Your Word,” a crowdsourced, ephemeral accordion book on …

The co-founders of MDWST Fable, “a benevolent conspiracy aimed at promoting more interaction and collaboration across arts, ideas, and media in Southern Indiana,” are staging an interactive exhibit probing the ways artists and the community seek solace and comfort in these turbulent times. Trista Newyear is an author and historian and is the lead writer …

One of Bloomington’s beloved and definitive characters, Dan “Carp” Combs died suddenly at home earlier this month. We sat with the long-time Perry Township trustee in November 2016. The last of a breed who describe themselves as “FDR Democrats,” he was a teacher, a public servant, and a refreshing straight-talker. Combs viewed himself as a …

Not only is the nation gripped by polarization these days but so are the worlds of science and higher education. Traditional scientists tend to thumb their noses at those who call for scholarly inquiry into subjects such as astral projection, extrasensory perception, hauntings, UFOs, seances and mediumship, and so many more. The two Indiana University …

We remember a Bloomington titan. Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.

It’s a good bet many of the websites you visit know as much or more about you than your friends and family do. Journalist, author, and blogger Doc Searls wants the one-way relationship between sites and users to change as our cyber-lives evolve. We’re still in the nascent stages of the internet, he argues, so …

He didn’t realize it when he was reading Jack London, Jack, Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and Edward Abbey but the authors who waxed literate about the road were preparing him for an odyssey. Last summer, Jon Vickers embarked on a five-week, solo motorcycle trip from Bloomington to Alaska. Along the way, the retired founding director of …

She fell into cosplay in 2018 and now has no desire to lift herself out of the pool. Steph Slone, a communications specialist for Indiana University by day, is an imagineer,  designer, seamstress, and mechanic by night. She uses all those skills to fashion fantasy costumes for characters adopted by her and her husband Myles. …

A true south central Hoosier — he swam in limestone quarry pools as a kid — Dason Anderson now guides this region’s online magazine as its executive editor. Running a news operation is especially challenging as we enter the second half of the decade. With many news outlets suffering due to federal funding and granting …

Steve Higgs has had two overwhelming passions in his adult life: the environment and journalism. He was a reporter for the Herald-Times as far back as when it was known as the Herald-Telephone. He’s also been treading through and savoring the land in every corner of Indiana, photographing and writing about this state’s natural wonders. …

She grew up in a comfortable Chicago suburb not really knowing what her ethnic heredity entailed. Then Dena El Saffar delved deep into her Iraqi roots. Along the way she became a classically trained musician, specializing in the stringed instruments. Dena now leads the Salaam Band and is part of a number of other performance …

She’s fast becoming Bloomington’s empresario of author events. Molly Gleeson and the Writers Guild at Bloomington staged last year’s successful Local Authors Book Fair. This year she and the Guild are bringing the noted novelist, essayist, and journalist, Aminatta Forna, to town. Born in Scotland and of Sierra Leonean and Scottish ancestry, Forna was a …

She happened upon a glassblowing exhibit at a Sandusky, Ohio amusement park and was immediately hooked. Abby Gitlitz has been working with glass — she makes it from scratch — her entire adult life. She founded the Bloomington Creative Glass Center and launched the annual Great Glass Pumpkin Patch open-air market for the delicate handblown …

He experienced one tragedy that nearly cost him his arm and witnessed a second, fatal, tragedy. The incidents forced Bert Gilbert to assess his life. He opted to dive deep into his untapped reservoir of creativity. He was a construction contractor by day (now retired) and an artist and poet in his spare time. Gilbert …

Minka Wiltz will be telling a story this coming Saturday at The Hundredth Hill’s Tale Blazing fireside storytelling event. Sponsored by MDWST Fable, Tale Blazing will feature five creative raconteurs moving around campfires for an evening of woodsy community and Fall frolic. Wiltz, originally from Georgia, has experience as an opera singer, a composer, an …

She wondered, Why couldn’t the visual artists of Bloomington, in all their different genres, get together for a community-building exercise? So, Babette Ballinger founded the Bloomington Paint Out. Artists of any level of proficiency, from professionals to wannabes, will gather Saturday at Bryan Park for the fourth annual celebration of en plein-air painting, drawing, watercoloring, …