October 27, 2005

Winter Blues

Jill Brooks, INtake columnist

Sometimes I can’t wait to get out of Indiana. It’s especially bad when Old Man Winter celebrates another birthday and comes to make his rounds: the humdrum lackluster wears on me like a hot, itchy sweater. The bleak, cold days begin to play tricks on the mind, and I consider sitting in a dark room carving the alphabet into a bar of soap “entertaining.”

I bundled up for an early morning run over the weekend, and as the chilly air filled my lungs I repeated in the rhythm of my pace, “I gotta get out of this place…”

I returned home for my morning ritual of coffee and NPR, I caught the show “Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know?” which was being broadcasted from the Pike Performing Arts Center here in Indy (ok, Zionsville).

I attended Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion at the state fair grounds two years ago, and I remember the collective shudder and disappointed moan that spread over the crowd when one of our locals used bad grammar. It was a colloquial mistake anyone could have made, but still, it’s what “wordly” people might have expected from a Hoosier, and they got it live on radio.

I listened to Whad’ya Know with my shoulders tight and ready to shudder, but like a bee that somehow pulls itself out of your beer and flies away, the contestants were amazing. What poured from the radio waves were effervescent personalities and bright, shining intellects from not only the good “people of Indianapolis” (the official term we call ourselves, according to the show), but from all over the State as well.

This was our moment, and it was live on radio.

There was a great interview with Matthew Tully from The Indianapolis Star, and many erudite call-in guests who’d actually studied their Indiana history. I felt like everyone was winning at Final Jeopardy!

The most impressive interview, however, was with author Susan Neville. I once took a writing class at the Indianapolis Writer’s Center, where Susan was lecturing. She talked about her life and writing experiences and then said, “Ok, now write something from the top of your head…”

I was so inspired and in awe of her that I couldn’t form a single sentence. Everyone wrote and I doodled, “I want to be like Susan” in curly script for thirty minutes.

Listening to Mr. Feldman’s show made me proud to be a Hoosier, made me want to stay in this place.

Catch the show on Saturdays, or check out the website: www.notmuch.com