The 812 - Steve Volan / Plateia Media

Latest Episodes:

175 [S3E22]: Geoff McKim on the Issues of the Moment in Monroe County Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

When friend of the show Geoff McKim was on the show last May, he was in the final year of his four-term, 16-year career as a member of the Monroe County Council. Now in retirement, he rejoins us to discuss issues of the new term, like the development of the new justice complex, and the impact of the recently discovered $3.8 million shortfall in the county budget. He also looks back on his county council career, and talks about his new role as one of the seven members of the joint city/county Capital Improvement Board, which just got approval from the Bloomington City Council to issue a bond to build the expansion of the Monroe Convention Center.

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174 [S3E21]: Sura Gail Tala, on How the Center for Sustainable Living Fosters and Incubates Nonprofits Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

Our topic today is the Center for Sustainable Living, a peculiarly Bloomington institution. Since the 1990s, it has been a kind of not-for-profit co-op, foster projects that help the environment or allow people to live more sustainably. Their projects include Discardia which puts on the annual Trashion/Refashion show at the Buskirk Chumley; the Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network which advises homeowners on how to solarize their homes; and the Bloomington Community Bike Project.

The Center manages the overhead for a typical nonprofit -- insurance, taxes, governance, and the start-up costs associated with organizing a business however modest. Each project it sponsors pays a small part of its proceeds to sustain the Center. Some projects complete their missions or fade out; others grow big enough to graduate and become their own separate nonprofits. The Center has applied for and received many a grant, including from the city of Bloomington, on behalf of its many constituent projects.

Our guest is Sura Gail Tala. She's been associated on and off with the CSL for decades, and is a member of their board of directors. We get from her the scope of their work, how they manage all those projects, and we dig into her own history as an environmental activist -- which includes her story about attending the first Earth Day in 1970.

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173 [S3E20]: Julie Duhon and Erin Loughery of Tandem, on the Birth of a Midwifery Service Provider Mar 05, 2025

Show notes

Our guests today are from Tandem, the perinatal and reproductive resource center. Through Jack Hopkins grants, the city of Bloomington helped Tandem launch in Bloomington five years ago, with a certified nurse midwife, who's considered an APRN, an advanced practice registered nurse, in the state of Indiana. They now also offer a postpartum house with overnight rooms and are building a birth center, all at their location on East Third Street near the Bypass. Julie Duhon, the center's executive director, and Erin Loughery, their office manager, join us to talk about their programs, and the challenges of providing modern-day midwifery services.

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172 [S3E19]: WFHB Community Radio and the Key Piece of City Real Estate That Created an Institution Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

In 1991 the city of Bloomington sold the rights to its 1915 City Hall building to nonprofit groups. One group made most of it what you know today as the John Waldron Arts Center. Another group acquired the attached old Fire Station No. 1: with the money it raised they made it the home of Bloomington's community radio station, WFHB, which got its call letters because they stand for Fire House Broadcasting. That conveyance of a city building has been a key reason for WFHB's successful operation for more than 30 years. Money for operations can be scarce, and rent has been the undoing of more than one worthy community radio station around the country.

A community radio station is like a public radio station in that it's non-commercial and supported by underwriting and listener contributions; unlike a public station, most of the programming is also done by volunteers. Our guests are Jar Turner, the general manager of WFHB, and Brooke Turpin, its development director. They talk about what a community radio station does, how it helps make community, how you can benefit from it, and how you can support it.

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171 [S3E18]: Running the County with Commissioner Jody Madeira (D.3) Feb 28, 2025

Show notes

It's not just a new era nationally, it's a new one locally. We have the other elected county newbie on our show (besides County Council Member David Henry, who appeared late last year), and that's County Commissioner Jody Madeira. She's taking a swing at all the big local issues of the day -- the new jail, the county health department, the county's new development ordinance -- and some of the niceties of how the commissioners collectively do business day to day.

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170 [S3E17]: The Future of Kirkwood with ESD Director Jane Kupersmith Feb 26, 2025

Show notes

Our topic today is Kirkwood Avenue, specifically the five blocks of East Kirkwood between the Courthouse Square and the Sample Gates, which many people consider to be the heart of Bloomington.

Since 2020, the city has closed public rights-of-way to benefit local restaurants. Some establishments, mostly around the Square, have rented adjacent metered parking spaces as outdoor dining space. On Kirkwood, the city closed whole blocks to allow restaurants to host diners while social distancing. It also made those blocks de facto pedestrian streets. The idea proved so popular that it has continued each year since. Last month, the city council approved an ordinance permanently delegating the decision to close any and all of the five blocks of East Kirkwood as the administration sees fit, at least between the months of April and November.

Jane Kupersmith was last on almost a year ago to talk about the city department she leads, Economic and Sustainable Development. We invited her back to discuss the prospects of a seasonal pedestrian mall, and what ideas they're hoping to explore in addition to the now-usual outdoor dining and low-speed thoroughfare -- festivals, pushcarts, food trucks, and other new kinds of programs.

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169 [S3E16]: Growing the Local Arts Landscape with Cicada Cinema Feb 24, 2025

Show notes

Cicada Cinema is a volunteer-run organization which calls itself a "pop-up movie theatre". Since 2016 they've been showing around Bloomington underrepresented and what they call "underseen" films, pretty much just for the sake of cinema. The city Arts Commission strategically funded their organization with a grant to show movies in local parks, which was co-sponsored by the city Parks and Rec Dept. and promoted in their annual Program Guide, which this show recently featured.

Cicada Cinema's Josh Brewer, a co-founder and the organization's lead volunteer, along with Cicada's senior volunteer Derek Navardauskas, are our guests today. We visit with them to find out how an arts organization is born and grown, just as they're on the cusp of establishing nonprofit status.

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168 [S3E15]: Stewarding Nature with Sycamore Land Trust's Chris Fox Feb 21, 2025

Show notes

In September we interviewed the director of the Sycamore Land Trust, John Lawrence, about the idea of a land trust -- a nonprofit that preserves land from development and maintains landscape in its natural state. It also runs an environmental program that connects people to that nature.

But somebody has to manage those 144 properties, their more than 11,500 acres. That's another story, for which we turn to Sycamore's Lead Stewardship Director, Chris Fox. He talks about how he and his team deal with boundary issues, monitors unauthorized tree harvesting and the health of ecosystems under Sycamore management, and maintains the condition of Sycamore's 30 miles of trails.

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167 [S3E14]: Promoting Home Ownership with Wendi Goodlett and Lindsey Boswell of Habitat for Humanity Feb 19, 2025

Show notes

One of the most high-profile developers in the area is Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, famously builders of affordable housing (and formerly headed by current Mayor Kerry Thomson, who was a guest on this show back in August). We talk with Wendi Goodlett, current President and CEO, and Lindsey Boswell, Development Director, about their process for finding potential residents and training them to qualify for Habitat homes; how many houses are currently have under construction at Osage Place, a whole neighborhood of Habitat-built houses on the southwest side of Bloomington; and common misconceptions people have about what Habitat does and how it works -- like that their organization or their nonprofit model is going to solve the local housing crisis.

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166 [S3E13]: The 812 Work Session with Jeremy Hogan of The Bloomingtonian Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

Today's local-media guest is visual journalist Jeremy Hogan, the co-owner and editor of The Bloomingtonian, the local independent hard-news website which he founded five years ago after being laid off from The Herald-Times, where he was a staff photographer for more than 20 years. We talk with him about how he chooses stories, and some of the biggest topics he's covered lately, like the unhoused and the Gaza protests in Dunn Meadow. He also talks about how the business of journalism has changed -- and how he's gone back to shooting 35mm film in the digital age, and why.

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