Editor's Note

EDITOR'S NOTE: April 2013

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:03:00 GMT

I am a notorious packrat. My preteen summer-camp tees are stuffed into memory boxes, as are the artfully folded notes friends passed to me in high school. I also like to keep compliments, to reread as pick-me-ups after a tough day. I still have the first one ever given to me by Emmis editorial director and IM columnist Deborah Paul, when I was still an underling at another Emmis magazine, Atlanta. The fashion feature I helped produce as one of my first assignments was “better by far” than the previous ones the magazine had done, she wrote to my then-editor.

I didn’t really know anything about Debbie back then, other than she oversaw the direction of Atlanta and our sister Emmis magazines. I didn’t know that this powerhouse of a woman stood only a breath under 5 feet tall, or that she was dubbed “Xena, Warrior Princess” for her ability to fight for editorial integrity. But I had heard that her critiques—handed down via monthly issues she’d tagged with her signature “stickies,” Post-its filled with her neat, tiny script—were often ruthless. “At a lot of magazines, there’s no one to push them to be better,” she explained to me later. So I printed out this first bit of praise, and floated home.

This month, Debbie retires (“Free Time”). Though she has agreed, thank goodness, to continue her column, she’ll no longer be keeping watch over us from her office here on Monument Circle. But what she has taught me—and the effect she has had on IM—will endure. When she arrived here in the early 1980s, the magazine was in dire straits: bankrupt, with only 18,000 subscribers. “It was my job to put the thing back on track,” she says. She wrote under three different names, so the staff looked bigger than it was. And when the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists awarded the publication first place in the city-magazine category, Debbie ran down the street to buy champagne—a memory she still recalls as one of her proudest: “I was just so thrilled we were finally on the map.”

One recent afternoon, Debbie plucked an old mechanical crank pencil sharpener from an office cabinet. Her predecessor had left it behind, those three decades ago. “I will always keep it,” she says. “Because I got the job. I got a chance.” She gave me a chance, too. And she’ll be missed dearly, sticky notes and all.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the April 2013 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: March 2013

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:06:00 GMT

The night of the Richmond Hill explosion, my husband and I were sitting on our couch, 10 miles north of the southside neighborhood. It was just after 11 p.m. when we felt the house shudder. “What was that?” I asked, and we guessed that the dog had knocked into something upstairs; I even got up to check on him.

When I returned, I happened to look on Twitter. “Did anyone else feel that?” posts were flooding my timeline, and someone had created a tongue-in-cheek hashtag: #indyboom. Over the next few hours, our eyes were glued to social media as the seriousness of the situation set in: The boom was an explosion, possibly gas related. Homes, lives—obliterated. It was unfathomable that someone could have set off the blast on purpose, yet the police now allege that’s exactly what happened.

So why did we devote the core of this issue to crime? Why now? Isn’t there always crime, and hasn’t there always been? The short answer is yes—and in the section, helmed by executive editor Evan West, we even delve into some of Indy’s historic crimes. But the long answer is more nuanced. For starters, safety may determine whether we become the world-class destination we aspire to be.

NeighborhoodScout.com, which analyzes FBI data, ranks us in the bottom 3 percent of U.S. cities when it comes to crime. “Few communities of this size have a crime rate as high as Indianapolis,” it reports. Indeed, violent crime was up 5 percent last year. I live in Arsenal Heights. Knock on wood, I’ve never felt ill at ease there, but even neighborhoods perceived to be safe aren’t without their headlines. How about the 17-year-old girl shot in a Carmel home invasion last fall? And jeweler Gary Thrapp, shot during a break-in at his home near The Fashion Mall?

Fortunately, there are creative, ambitious people working hard to make Indy a desirable place to live. With a new public safety director (p. 52 in the print edition, available digitally here, and live online on March 29), one hopes that 2013 becomes a turning point for the city’s crime problem. We don’t expect change to happen overnight. Our problems didn’t develop that quickly. Unless, of course, you live in Richmond Hill.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the March 2013 issue.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the February 2013 issue.

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Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the February 2013 issue.

- See more at: http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/editorsnote/story.aspx?ID=1874913#sthash.HbOERhWS.dpuf

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the February 2013 issue.

- See more at: http://www.indianapolismonthly.com/editorsnote/story.aspx?ID=1874913#sthash.HbOERhWS.dpuf

EDITOR'S NOTE: February 2013

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:00:00 GMT

Most of this magazine’s staffers are born-and-bred Hoosiers. Many attended college at IU, or Purdue, or Ball State. And now they’ve settled here, too, to work and play. This is a place where people stay (or return). The native knowledge of our readers is something we think about a lot when picking which stories to cover—and especially as we planned this month’s “Hidden Indy" (p. 44 in the print issue).

Co-editors Megan Fernandez and Julia Spalding boldly approached the challenge of unearthing under-the-radar or little-known gems for the feature, but it was a beast. How to truly surprise our readers, who know this city so well?

Here’s just one example of how they went about it: An important part of our reporting comes from simply prying our eyes away from our computers (harder than you think!) to talk with local honchos, who often share juicy tidbits and rumors for us to pocket and investigate. This past November, Megan and I met with Tina Connor, the executive vice president of Indiana Landmarks, to hear about what was shaking in the world of preservation. Did we know, she asked, about the soon-to-be-spiffed-up Oliver’s Woods, a Zen-worthy dairy farm–turned–nature preserve within a stone’s throw of the Fashion Mall? (We’d always wondered what that big barn was off of I-465!) With the Central Indiana Land Trust planning to move its offices there and open it to the public, it was obvious the project had plenty of “hidden potential.”

Fabulously popular young-adult author John Green (his The Fault in Our Stars made it onto just about every “best of 2012” list, with Time naming it the year’s number-one fiction book, period) offers another avenue. For his essay “A Brief Plunge," Green explored a hidden facet of the city he literally found in his own backyard. The surprising discovery reminded me that it’s easy for our eyes to glaze over the familiar after a while. We should be paying closer attention to our own corners of Indianapolis, the ones we think we know so well. Otherwise, we might miss out on a chance to dive into a mystery of our own.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the February 2013 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: January 2013

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:27:00 GMT

For this month’s “What I Know” column, we asked WTHR meteorologist Chuck Lofton for his life wisdom, and after almost 28 years with the same TV station, he’s accumulated quite a bit. That kind of workplace longevity, though, is becoming rarer than a full 401(k) match. I recently read a study alleging that “Millennials”—those 30 and younger, otherwise known as Generation Y—change jobs every two years on average. I keep cheap pens longer.

The study’s spokesman called Gen Y not fickle but “entrepreneurial,” a group that “prefers freedom and flexibility.” The report further concluded that Baby Boomers average only seven years on the job, but I beg to differ. The post–WWII generation instead seems to be the last bucking the short-tenure trend, at least anecdotally. My mother just hit 35 years at the same hospital pharmacy, and Dad has worked at his NBC affiliate for 37 years. Our own columnist and editorial director, Deborah Paul, has been with Emmis 24 years, and with IM seven before that.

For a long time, I thought that’s just the way careers worked: You start somewhere and work your way up that specific ladder. Now I know better (and realize that with downsizing and layoffs, tenure is sometimes out of your control). Job-hopping can be liberating, sure, and broadens skill sets. But building a history with a company rings up its own payoffs.

I often spend as much time with my staff here on Monument Circle as I do with my husband, and I know I’m not the only one. But if we’re lucky, the people we share office space with can evolve into a cherished family, too. When my grandfather died last year, my parents’ co-workers—people who knew me in kindergarten, sent checks at my graduations, attended my wedding—also came to the funeral to comfort us. That isn’t the kind of benefit that shows up in LinkedIn posts.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with reinventing yourself or following your dreams to a new venture, and we highlight two people doing just that in this issue as well: governor-elect Mike Pence and newly minted Purdue president Mitch Daniels (p. 56 in the print issue). They both know a thing or two about seizing opportunities too good to turn down—no matter when in life those chances happen to appear.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the January 2013 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: December 2012

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:06:00 GMT

I don’t believe the world will end this month, as the Mayan calendar dubiously predicts. But Robert Vicino is banking on Armageddon—or some other life-extinction scenario, be it nuclear war, meteorite, solar storms, bacon shortage. The California businessman hawks subterranean bunkers (“Doomsday Profit”), one of which resides in Indiana. The Cold War–esque lairs by Vicino’s Vivos Group come complete with flat-screen TVs and stainless-steel appliances for the low, low price of $50,000 a space.

When you read the story, you’ll notice we didn’t interview anyone who bought a bunk; Vicino did put us in contact with one alleged customer, but that fizzled when the source wanted to remain anonymous. And the secrecy makes sense: Would you admit you’d sunk your savings in a nuke-ready nook?

Me, I’m planning for Christmas just in case. But as I reviewed our “Best of Indy” picks, I realized that if it were the end of the world, if I had just one day to live here, this year’s compendium was a valuable resource for planning my last 24 hours.

For instance, I’d start with a breakfast of B’s Po Boy beignets, perfectly soft and sugary replicas of the ones I first tasted at Cafe du Monde, in New Orleans. An espresso or three and gelato at Lino’s Coffee, the Dallara factory’s new caffe autentico, would follow, because calories? Who cares! Sitting at one of the mod bistro tables, I could close my eyes and pretend to be back on the piazza in Urbino, Italy, where I studied for a summer. Buonissimo. It might be hard then to turn down one of Dallara’s street-legal IndyCar joyrides through Speedway, but at this point, legal, shmeagal. I might as well drive my four-door sedan through a few barriers, onto the IMS track, and floor it. Mankind will be at the brink of extinction; no one would mind if I took a few laps, right?

There’s a countdown clock on the Vivos website, and I watched this fall as it ticked down to the point of reckoning, December 21: 63 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes, 40 seconds … 30 … 20 … The pessimistic timepiece reminded me that our moments are slipping away to some end, and that I shouldn’t wait ’til doomsday to try the best our city has to offer. Except falling on my face at Skyzone trampoline park. I’ll hold off on that.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the December 2012 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: November 2012

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:28:00 GMT

Call it premature, or irrational, or morbid, but I’m convinced that I’m destined to get breast cancer. I’ve accepted it, figuring it’s better to prepare myself mentally—and take precautions like self-exams—than be caught off-guard like my great-aunt Barbara was, when she was diagnosed at the age of 39. That was back in the ’60s, and even though it was only a small lump, they lopped off her whole breast, so primitive were the treatment options at that point.

After reading the Indy-centric medical-innovation stories that accompany our annual list of Top Docs—like Community Health’s super-targeted, 30-minute radiation device—it’s clear how far breast cancer techniques have come. But as medicine improved, the family history on my dad’s side just became worse. In 1997, my grandmother, Barbara’s sister, was diagnosed with it, too, and it spread to her lymph nodes. She went through a mastectomy and chemotherapy, my grandfather spending every night by her side in the hospital.

A few years later, another of her sisters, Rachel, contracted the cancer. It metastasized, spreading slowly from her bust to her brain, devastating her body and her family. So when a 2011 mammogram caught a tumor in Grandma’s remaining breast, she didn’t hesitate. Off it came, the surgery officially flattening her chest. All right, I sighed, looking down at my own C-cups. Let’s just enjoy them while they last.

After Grandma’s second bout, I even considered genetic testing to see if I had the breast cancer gene. But it was costly, and I wondered how the results would affect my psyche. Now I have a much better idea: donate my (hope-upon-hope) healthy breast tissue to IU Simon Cancer Center’s Komen Tissue Bank (see "Banking on It," p. 60 in the November issue), believed to be the first of its kind. The procedure is quick; just a small incision, and off the sample goes to researchers looking into what normal cells can teach us about diseased ones. There may be some bruising and a tiny scar, but it’s worth it.

Donating is the least I can do to honor the women in my family who came, and suffered, before me—and the ones who might one day follow. Instead of just fretting about breast cancer, I can be useful. The last donation session this year is on November 3, and you can sign up at komentissuebank.iu.edu. I could use some company.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the November 2012 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: October 2012

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:59:00 GMT

When I read about how ostracized novelist Dan Wakefield felt here after the release of his excellent 1970 debut novel, Going All the Way (“All the Way Home,” in this issue), I was a little surprised. Sure, some of his fellow Shortridge grads were horrified to recognize themselves (so they were convinced) in his sex-crazed, McCarthy-era characters. After all, who wants to be guessed as the hot-to-trot ex-girlfriend who “did it” in the bushes outside the high-school variety show? But the legacy of Hoosier writers—even during the “golden age,” at the turn of the last century—has never been squeaky clean.

Take communist-leaning Terre Haute native Theodore Dreiser. Carrie Meeber’s tawdry-for-1900 life choices—leaving small-town life to become a “kept woman” in the city, for instance—were the only thing that kept me awake during Sister Carrie in high school. And as our excerpt from the forthcoming Kurt Vonnegut: Letters reveals (see excerpts here), some of the Slaughterhouse-Five writer’s family were too scandalized to even read his subversive success. Vonnegut himself often felt at odds with Indy and its values, only feeling accepted—and celebrated—here later in life.

Wakefield (who also happened to edit Letters) should have fit right in. Instead, his Circle City peers latched onto the backseat exploits of his two Korean War vet leads, Sonny and Gunner, instead of appreciating the themes that still ring true today: those confusing post–high-school years, when no matter your birthplace, you can’t help but wonder: Is that all there is? Wakefield deftly channels those sentiments through Gunner—whose deviant (for 1954) behavior includes wearing a beard (Pinko!) and daring to dream beyond Indianapolis. “I’d like to get away, see something different,” he says in the book. “Live in a real city.”

More than 50 years after leaving, Wakefield is back and living in his hometown—now much more the “real city” Gunner desired. Wakefield was even honored with a Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award in July, along with two writers who have thrived living here: Barbara Shoup and John Green, whose The Fault in Our Stars shot to No. 1 on the young-adult bestseller list. It’s thrilling to see the next generation of local authors making their mark on the world—and Wakefield finally getting the Indiana love he’s due.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the October 2012 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: September 2012

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:30:00 GMT

“Do you know which one was Peyton’s?”

A group of Lucas Oil Stadium visitors shuffled into the Colts’ home locker room, all true-blue carpet and cherrywood shelving, as a middle-aged woman with dark cropped hair posed the question. Our guide gestured to what she called “Quarterback Corner,” the nook where the starter and his backups hang their helmets. Smartphones whipped out, and the 25 of us formed a huddle around the niche.

I booked a spot on the tour to see if the preseason hype over Andrew Luck had rubbed off on the “House Built by Champions” yet. That tagline is posted inside the entrance, though I’m pretty sure no one has ever really uttered it—“The House that Peyton Built” is more like it. Manning may have moved 1,000 miles away, but his ghost followed us around Lucas Oil that day, shaking its chains. There, in the locker room. In the pro shop, where his 6-foot, 5-inch cardboard cutout still holds court. In the pressroom, where a white-haired grandfather said: “This must be the place where the guys who can’t shut up about Manning hang out.”

I know what he means. Our tour only hinted at the legacy Luck will inherit this month—
and much hay has been made over whether he’s up to the test. But after reading Michael MacCambridge’s profile, for which he not only spent time with the QB but went
long, canvassing family, teammates, and coaches for insight, the answer seems clear: The Irsays couldn’t have scored a rookie more like No. 18 if they had ordered up Luck from a Perfect Playmakers catalog.

Taking over a position, though, is one challenge. Endearing yourself to a city whose skyline and hospitals and charities changed because of your predecessor is another. But the uphill battle to gain our trust may not be such a bad thing. Peyton joined the Colts with one chip on his shoulder—failing to win an NCAA title at Tennessee—and battled naysayers for nine years before he won a Super Bowl. Don’t we all perform a little better when we have something to prove?

In the meantime, let’s help out the young Stanford grad by giving him time to settle into Quarterback Corner—and earn our respect. Who knows? As tourists wind past the locker room next summer, maybe the question instead will be: “Do you know which one is Andrew’s?”

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column appeared in the September 2012 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: August 2012

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Just two weeks before my first day of work at Indianapolis Monthly, my husband and I were crisscrossing the city at breakneck speed. We needed a place to live, and quickly. Renting was a necessity (at least until our house in Atlanta sold), and after living in gridlock for almost a decade, a short commute to IM’s Monument Circle office was a must.

Indy natives gave us the lowdown on in-town neighborhoods. And as we drove back and forth, touring condos and scouring Craigslist, I noticed something: Beautiful historic homes abound here. Statuesque Queen Annes on the Old Northside. Classic bricks in Butler-Tarkington. But another motif struck me, too. No matter what side of town we visited, dotted among those swaths of finely renovated homes stood their boarded-up brethren, houses dealt a losing hand by time.

It turns out that the city had noticed all the derelict edifices, too. One year ago, Mayor Ballard’s office began an initiative to knock down 2,000 dilapidated buildings. When I found out, the news made me wistful. Maybe not all of the structures are worth saving. But architecturally notable dwellings like the ones chronicled by Alicia Garceau (“Condemned”) could be great again with a little care.

My husband and I ended up finding our own historic dream spot via a decidedly modern venue: Twitter. Justin wrote about our search on the social-media site that weekend, and soon an Indy resident replied that he had a friend who might have a place for us to rent. When I saw the photos, my jaw dropped.

It was a Victorian in Arsenal Heights, a long-established neighborhood centered on Arsenal Avenue, just a mile east of downtown. Built in 1900, the two-story’s interior stunned—gorgeous woodwork throughout, an intricately carved staircase, elaborate stained-glass windows. Our soon-to-be landlords not only lived in this old house, they loved it, restoring original details and adding updates like double-paned windows to conserve energy, preparing it for generations to come.

Right behind our abode is a rickety version of our own, slated for demolition. I wonder what might have been, had someone possessed the desire or means to cherish it. It’s a stark reminder of how important that kind of commitment is to a home—and to our city’s character.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column originally appeared in the August 2012 issue.

EDITOR'S NOTE: July 2012

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:48:00 GMT

My fascination with money as an object of beauty started with the tooth fairy. Every time I lost a molar, she slipped a Kennedy half-dollar under my pillow in its place, along with a note written in a script that, come to think of it, looked suspiciously like my mother’s. The morning after, I would weigh the 50-cent piece in my hand. It felt heavy—important. Something to be savored, not spent. And so they came to be tucked away in a box, like rare jewels from the Nile instead of a novelty.

Bernard von NotHaus, the subject of deputy editor Daniel S. Comiskey’s “Mad Money,” created a currency that has become, with its downfall at the hands of the federal government, something of a novelty itself. His Liberty Dollar bills and coins—once backed by silver—now circulate on eBay for double or triple their worth instead of through the pockets of Americans, as NotHaus had originally envisioned. Handling a painstakingly designed Liberty in the office, even Daniel couldn’t deny his admiration for its craftsmanship. “It sounds like you have the fever,” said one of our colleagues. Daniel answered, “I do!”

My mother has a bit of the fever, too, collecting money in all its global forms. She has Mexican pesos and now-defunct Italian lire and Lincoln wheat pennies. She has a stack of every state-themed quarter and gold presidential $1 coin released so far by the U.S. Mint. From that interest, she spawned two children who couldn’t approach money more differently. In our youth, when we passed the Jolly Time arcade, my brother would sputter, “Got a quarter?” and rush in to play Pac-Man. My parents, fair to the core, gave me an equal amount. Usually, I pocketed my coin and watched my brother work the joystick, pitying him as I had Pinocchio when the puppet fell into the clutches of Pleasure Island.

Reading Daniel’s story on the Liberty Dollar, I realized that in my enduring frugality, I hadn’t considered one thing: whether American cash will last. Sure, NotHaus’s predictions of the dollar’s demise and the need for a gold standard are a little out there. But the greenback doesn’t go nearly as far these days as it did in decades past. Even my beloved Kennedy half-dollars, once mostly silver and now made from a nickel-copper combo, are not worth the metal on which they were originally minted. Jolly times, indeed.

Amanda Heckert is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. See her bio here.

This column originally appeared in the July 2012 issue.