"Is the guitar too loud?" "Nope." "Should it be louder?" "Yeah!"

Tim Harmon, local singer/songwriter, questions the audience on the noise level of his guitar at the Monday Night Songwriter Showcase on May 17 at the Player's Pub, located at 424 S. Walnut St. People continuously trickle through the door to enjoy food, drinks, good company and great music.

Suzette Weakley, one of the showcase's founders and a main organizer, says the weekly gig's reputation has grown so much in the past four years that touring songwriters from across the country looking for filler gigs find it a perfect opportunity.

Just outside the door of the Wandering Turtle Art Gallery & Gifts sits a table with refreshments and a smiling young woman to make sure patrons get what they need. Mellow, groovy, jazzlike music greets customers as they walk through the door. Their eyes instantly flood with colorful paintings, pottery, jewelry and more.

Outside, limited parking, crowded sidewalks and people of all ages are signs it's First Friday again in downtown Bloomington.

First Friday is a version of GalleryWalk, which started around 2002, according to Miah Michaelsen, the city of Bloomington's assistant economic and sustainable development director for the arts, when nine downtown galleries came together to coordinate events and exhibit openings to help each other out.

"I think it's a great example of what appear to be competing businesses coming together and promoting each other," Michaelsen says.

From all parts of the world, from south to north and west to east, Muslims celebrated Eid this year at the Islamic Center of Bloomington. At the moment when the Imam said, "God is great," they all repeated it devotionally. And their smiles told each other, "I'm happy."

Some wore traditional clothing, while others wore suits and ties. The clothes offered an "international fashion show," according to Mohamed, a member of the Muslim community. "All people here might know where they are from according to their clothes."

The Eid is the day that comes after the holy month of Ramadan, which is the ninth month of the Islamic (lunar) calendar. Eid in Arabic means "returns annually with refreshing faith." It is celebrated on the first day of Shaw'waal, the 10th month, which means "festivity," which this year was on Sept. 20.

At the Fifth Annual Midwest Peace and Justice Summit held in Indianapolis on April 4, we gave a workshop titled "Overcoming Hoosier Mediocrity." Our half-hour presentation limned concisely yet thoroughly this all-pervasive mediocrity that confronts us daily and was followed by a lively half-hour discussion that, much to our surprise, demonstrated that we were far from alone in what we sense.

For our presentation, we developed a five-page "Hoosier Mediocrity Fact Sheet" of statistics taken from numerous areas of life -- from economic and employment issues through health issues, quality of life, educational attainment (or rather, lack of it), and environmental issues -- that did, indeed, demonstrate our thesis of all-round Hoosier mediocrity.

Growing up in New Jersey, author, editor and photographer Michael T. Luongo traveled very little.

“As a child, my parents never traveled anywhere,” he says. “They couldn’t throw all the kids in the car and come back in the space of a day.”

Instead, Luongo referred to his parents’ art and archaeology books and began to discover a love for foreign places.

“It was something that started to develop ever since I was little,” he says. “I read a lot. I was constantly reading.”

INDIANAPOLIS - Indian spiritual leader and humanitarian Her Holiness Sai Maa Lakshmi Devi visited Indianapolis from Jan. 17-21 and made several public appearances, culminating with a presentation on Jan. 21 at a commemoration of the birth of Martin Luther King.

This writer attended two of these events, hearing her speak Jan. 18 at a program of mediation at Indianapolis's Unity Church and again on Jan. 20, when she spoke before the congregation at the service of the Ebeneezer Baptist Church.

At both events, she was introduced by Ebeneezer's pastor, Rev. Tom Brown, an African American versed in both Eastern and Western religious traditions, who linked both these traditions of spirituality together as complements.

Welcome to the first installment of “Alternative Conversations,” a new Bloomington Alternative multimedia reporting project. As you will see with today’s story package on local authors, artists and activists James Alexander and Dark Rain Thom, this series explores the experiences, thoughts and environments of some of our community’s most dynamic and effective voices.

This and future chapters in this ongoing, online series will feature in-depth, thought-provoking stories of the caliber our readers have come to expect, enhanced with video recordings of the conversations and photo album chronicles of the experiences.

This edition, for example, features a conversation Alison Hamm had with James Alexander and Dark Rain Thom about art and writing, the American Indian, and our current state of affairs.

I became familiar with the name James Alexander Thom at age 12, when my mother handed me Follow the River, his novel about the true ordeal of Mary Ingles, the white woman who was kidnapped by Shawnee Indians in 1755 and then made her way home with the Ohio River as her guide.

The book resonated with my mother and me -- it was such a powerful testament and tribute to one woman's strength and courage -- and from our multiple readings, the paperback cover fell off at one point. I know my mother ended up buying a new copy later, but I still have that one worn copy on my shelf in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house.

At every turn we hear how things are so much better for the LGBT community. People say that they feel safer, and we hear that many students seem to think that all is well. We also know that there are civil rights and legal protections laws being enacted in various cities and states across the country, and polls seem to support an overall improvement in acceptance of lesbian and gay folks and their families.

While we certainly don't want to discourage anyone, we always keep in mind that students and others of us are currently safe within the walls of an accepting university and academic community, and other employment venues are not so accommodating. And there are still more states without protections and partnership sanctions than there are with them.

Hence, being the skeptics that we are, we wonder if all is as good as it seems on the surface.

When IU senior Brian M. Frange came to IU in 2004, the improvisational comedy group Awkward Silence was born. Frange, along with six other IU students, performs every Thursday at 9 p.m. at the Indiana Memorial Union.

"Improv is all made up on the spot," Frange said, "but there are a lot of rules that must be followed."

Frange teaches his cast that to form a strong bond with one another and to perform well, everyone must give "relentless support, no matter what somebody does onstage," he said, "and consider every idea the best you've ever heard."