You. That’s right, you. You are what this magazine is for and about. You are a part of this community. You are what makes it special, engaging and happening, which leads me to the next aspect of what the magazine is about: involving you. Not just as readers but as participants. Everyone has a story. Maybe it’s about themselves or maybe it’s about someone else. Every day as I walk down the street and pass someone, I wonder to myself “What’s their story?”
We here at Terre Haute Living would like …

Some remember it as a school where children learned to read and write. Many remember it as a stop for slaves on the escape route of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Others remember it reverently as a house of worship to which everyone in the neighborhood walked on Sunday mornings. Some remember it as the final home of the Terre Haute’s first courthouse bell. It is known as a speaking site of prominent Americans, and The National Register of Historic Places recognizes it as an important piece of …

There are two things to know.  The first is that I sell insurance.  The second is that people tell me things.  They open up as if I’m their psychiatrist.  I haven’t figured out why; maybe no one listens to them at home.  Perhaps they sense I have a caring personality.  Whatever the reason, they admit their sins and shortcomings.  They’re in confessional.  They tell me: Yes, I smoke, and I tried to quit with that new medication they have, but it didn’t work; it just made me a wreck.  I …

An earthy smell greeted artist Bill Wolfe early in the restoration of a 73-year-old mural by Terre Haute legend Gilbert Wilson. It was a smell Wolfe recognized, but it seemed out of place. He couldn’t figure out why he could smell the Wabash River as he cleaned the dark brown swirls in part of Wilson’s 1936 mural in the former Laboratory School, now University Hall, on the campus of Indiana State University. “I realized it was the river. He had used clay from the river to make some of the …

Forget the pipers piping and drummers drumming. During the 2009 holiday season, music’s top sellers are artists who might make you believe it’s the 1960s all over again, courtesy new technology.
Still, in a tough economy, local musicians hope they don’t get lost in the mix.

This is a story about children.
Erin Pringle was little more than a child when we first met, during a summer fiction writing workshop at ISU in 1999. She was 17 at the time, still attending high school in Casey, Ill., and had decided to take a college-level fiction workshop, with her mother’s blessing.
Back then, Pringle approached the writing process with the wonder and intensity of a determined youngster. She attacked the page the way so many children face down an obstacle or a challenge — she steeled her jaw, fixed …

“This is the Christmas tree emporium of the entire Midwest,” announces the tree lot proprietor in the movie A Christmas Story. Leading the Parker family around his collection of pre-cut trees, he grabs a nearby pine, “Now you ain’t gonna find no better tree, than this here tree. This here tree is built to last. Ain’t no needles fallin’ off this tree” he proclaims as the tree leaves a wreath’s worth of needles on the ground. Discarding that one, he moves on to another, exclaiming, “Now, this here is a …

The toy rat with glowing red eyes and mean plastic fangs reminds Thomas Ready of the year Christmas came early.

Ready, who’s played Santa for more than two decades, once went dressed for the part, clad in red sweatshirt and pants, to a Halloween party. The revelers, lacking a proper award for his costume as St. Nick’s surrogate, awarded him the rat as a trophy.

When Len Quinlan began giving piano and organ lessons at the Conservatory of Music while a student at Indiana State University, he could not have foreseen his family-owned Conservatory of Music still thriving today. Becoming the general manager and then the owner came later.
“My Uncle Len poured his heart and soul into the business for 33 years,” Jim Quinlan, Len’s nephew and Conservatory president, said. “He was planning to retire in 2009, but passed away in 2007.”
“I returned to the Conservatory in 2001 with the intent to make it a …

After 13 years, passion for food, dedicated staff, and loyal patrons keep Bella Rossa a staple of diets and downtown.