Limestone Post’s ‘A Sense of Place’: An Art Magazine More Than 200 Years in the Making

In “Native Bloomington,” Laura Martinez, a Bloomington resident and member of the Hleh-pai N’de (Lakota Apache) Nation, describes the history of our home before it was Bloomington.

“Limestone became the inevitable driving force of development in Bloomington when the first commercial quarry opened in Stinesville in 1827,” writes Emily Hines in “Built History,” a look at how architecture shapes our sense of place. Photography by Chaz Mottinger

The expert staff of the Monroe County History Center contributes a “Monroe County Almanac — The First 100 Years.” A teaser of some of the fun items they found: Between 1882 and 1898, grooms applying for marriage licenses listed these as professions: Farmer (1,560), Quarryman (106), Teacher (62), Gentleman (1), Actor (1), and Deadbeat (1).

What was Bloomington like in the 1920s when Hoagy Carmichael was running all over town booking jazz bands, playing gigs, and composing songs that would become part of the Great American Songbook? You wouldn’t call it a sleepy Midwestern college town. In “The Years Have Pants!,” Michael G. Glab writes that Hoagy and his friends made Bloomington a hotbed of Dada, the “world-shaking ‘anti-art,’ anti-war, anti-bourgeoisie movement.”

The vibrant African-American community in Bloomington is as old as the community itself. William J. Morris writes about the “sonorous voices” who have, over the years, described “the challenges, frustrations, and successes of Black people in Indiana.” In “Messengers Speak for Lives That Matter,” Morris also interviews a few of today’s historians and storytellers: Liz Mitchell, Clarence Boone, and William Hosea.

With photography by Anna Powell Teeter, Michelle Gottschlich writes “Conversations,” asking the reader to “consider that your sense of place is a deal you make with yourself.” To show this, she weaves fragments of interviews with five people whose approach to, and place in, Bloomington both diverge and overlap.

Music is everywhere in Bloomington — in the air, the water, and the circuitry. Longtime stalwart of the local music scene Jim Manion writes “An Ineffable Muse” about Bloomington’s legacy as a music town “that flourishes with energy and intent” — a place where “one can almost see the music coming up from the ground and down from the sky.”

The original Limestone Post columnist, Ruthie Cohen, gives us five Hoosier-inspired recipes and a historical look at “Feeding a Hoosier Pioneer.” Enjoy Ruthie’s perch filets sauteéd in brown butter and corn confetti salad as you read about the “fearsome story of survival” of our forebears.

Homelessness, addiction, unemployment, domestic violence, and child abuse aren’t just modern concerns. The earliest townspeople tried to find solutions to these social issues as well. “County Poor Farms Housed More Than the Penniless,” by Andrew Cary, looks into how “poor farms” were used for more than a century to deal with many of the problems in our community.

Jen Pacenza tells us in “All Bloomington’s a Stage” that the “overabundance of passion and wonder” offered by live performance lives here — “in the theaters, in the clubs, and on the streets of our small town.”

A Sense of Place also includes poetry by A. Bowden and Richard Wehrenberg Jr., a scene from a play about the opioid crisis by Bella Bravo, one of the earliest known paintings of downtown Bloomington, and photos of historic Bloomington trains, the IU Jordan Greenhouses, and even the iconic Rooftop Quarry. We have artwork by Mark Ratzlaff (cover painting), Amy Brier, Michal Ann Carley, Richard Koenig, Uel Sven, Penina Gal, Mark Blaney, Meg Lagodzki, Adam Reynolds, James Tracy, Dason Anderson, Erin K. Drew, and others who exemplify the talented artists working in so many different media.

To close out the magazine, we asked poet Ross Gay if we could reprint the title piece of his book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Poetry. This piece is something of a perfect valentine to Bloomington in verse.