Blaise Cronin

Bloomington Days: Town and Gown in Middle America (Revised) Blaise Cronin

Marc Notes: Incorporating Bloomington daze, Bloomington gaze & Bloomington gays.. Publisher Marketing: Frat boys who think Mario Lanza is an Italian sports car; journalists who consider "Man arrested for blowing mucus from nose at an officer" a news story. Welcome to Bloomington: a world of grey cells and limestone, catfish and cheerleaders, binge drinking and bigots, Ockham's razor and buzz cuts. This is the tiny college town where Alfred Kinsey catalogued gall wasps before stinging a nation into belated sexual awareness. If you're gay or Greek, love opera or hoops, Bloomington is heaven on earth; we have as many same-sex couples as sorority sisters, as many divas as athletes. Welcome to my home, a quixotic mix of small-town life and larger than life campus, squirreled away in the flatlands of Middle America, where torpor is sometimes mistaken for nirvanic serenity, irony for insult and "ethnographic dazzle" for deep differences. Contributor Bio:  Cronin, Blaise Blaise Cronin is Rudy Professor of Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of "The Hand of Science: Academic Writing and Its Rewards".