The B-Town Bee

Author: Mike Leonard

  • Joel Pett

    Joel Pett

  • Grieving, loss and healing

    Bloomington native Christy Heitger-Ewing helps others when she writes about the difficult subject of suicide in your own family It is a grief that never goes away, and often only becomes bearable when it gets pushed into that locked closet in our brains, where people put things they feel they’ll never understand, never reconcile and…

  • Joel Pett

  • The Battle for Buffalo Springs

    A well-respected environmental activist calls BS on a Forest Service plan to “restore” (read: log) a place it calls Buffalo Springs, a made-up name for a place locals call home. By Andy Mahler There is something that doesn’t sit right about the Forest Service’s plan to punch logging roads into the heart of the  hardwood…

  • Heavy Ed tries to find a reason to care about the Super Bowl

    It could be the success of small market teams, or Lindsay Lohan, or Crest toothpaste, or jobs for IU graduates. So the phone pings and like the Pavlovian dog I’ve become,  I drool, grope for the phone, and see a message from Heavy Ed. “How ‘bout them Bengals.” I write back. “WTF you aren’t a…

  • Pett cartoon

    Feb. 8, 2022

  • Sugar-coated history

    Our legislators didn’t get the ‘doomed to repeat it’ memo The Ku Klux craven attempt to make the concept of critical race theory a major legislative issue in the Indiana General Assembly makes one thing clear: we need to bring critical race theory into our public school curriculum. We all know – or should know…

  • “Get Back” adds an invaluable look at The Beatles. But.

    Beatles scholar Glenn Gass wishes someone had captured any other phase than the Beatles’ magical misery sessions Glenn Gass is a Beatles scholar. The professor emeritus at Indiana University is known for teaching the first for-credit course on rock and roll at any major university in the country – and at IU’s prestigious Jacobs School…

  • “There’s someone up there fighting for their life”

    The routes IU Health Lifeline helicopters fly have changed … and so have the type of patients they carry The night sky near my home has been eerily silent for more than a week now, and a little less sad. Nearby Bloomington Hospital closed in early December and relocated  to its modern new facility on…

  • In honor of two great men

    They weren’t just well-known physicians It’s our fate to open the newspaper or hear from a friend that someone we know has died, and, suddenly, the mind goes to memories of that person and interactions with them. In the last month, two of the most admirable physicians Bloomington has known have passed on: Jerry Ruff,…