The day after John McCain flew to Canada to glorify the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 73-year-old Rosie Edwards repeatedly laughed about her flood-ravaged home in Martinsville.

"I've cried all I can cry," the grandmother of 55 grand and great-grandchildren said on June 21 in her moldy, now-gutted home of six years. "I've lost everything."

Just across State Road 37, which Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and his Democratic opponent Jill Long Thompson envision as an extension of the Interstate 69 NAFTA Highway, Bill Bergman likewise chuckled. He became a minor media star after painting "Mitch, Make Me an Offer?" on the side of his home and signed it "I-69 Backer."

"If I don't hear from him soon, it's going to be 'Ditch Mitch' on the roof," said Bergman, who sees I-69 as "part of progress."

The classrooms of Bloomington elementary schools are empty. It is summer -- no more cafeteria food, no more desks and an unlimited recess every day. At least this is how most school-aged kids view summer.

But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006 17.5 percent of children aged 18 and under in Bloomington lived in poverty. School is a safe haven for their families, a place where their children receive food and a comfortable, supervised setting during the day.

"I don't know if there's a lot of affordable summer options out there," said Rebecca Linehan, unit director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Bloomington. "There are at least scholarship options in each summer program I'm aware of."

The Boys and Girls Club and Monroe County United Ministries (MCUM) are two community nonprofits that have affordable summer program options. But space is limited. MCUM, for example, has 50 kids on a waitlist this summer.

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.”

From the street, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard (MHC) is barely visible to the eye. The building in a strip mall on Bloomington’s south side is small and modest, but the significance of its services is not.

Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard is a local food pantry that focuses on nutrition, organic growing and educating its clients, according to Brooke Gentile, the MHC executive director.

“I was really excited to work at Mother Hubbard’s because we provide the healthiest food possible,” she said. “And also because we empower everyone involved.”

At 9 p.m. on June 21, dozens of protesters gathered in People’s Park. With signs, whistles, 10-gallon buckets, firecrackers, and torches -- real fucking torches! -- we marched through downtown Bloomington to protest the building of Interstate 69 and the recent arrests of the Evansville and Berkeley tree sitters.

As we moved from Kirkwood to the Courthouse and past the jail, the march amassed both police and onlookers.

At the start of the event, I was carrying a banner at the front of the march. Eventually I managed to free myself up to take pictures. Unfortunately, those pictures were terrible, just awful. So I stopped taking pictures and started asking questions.

When it comes to respect from their constituents, state and national politicians fail miserably in Indiana, according to a poll released June 24 by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics in Fort Wayne.

Poll results also show Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and November challenger Democrat Jill Long Thompson in a tie if the election were held today.

After three-and-a-half years in office, Daniels received the equivalent of an F on constituent respect, an average of 5.7 on a scale where 10 meant "you have the highest possible respect for the person." Long Thompson averaged 4.8.

For more than 100 years, the Local Council of Women (LCW) has held significant control, on the community’s behalf, over Bloomington Hospital. On June 16 it gave up that power to pave the way for a friendly takeover of the hospital by Clarian Health Partners Inc., hopefully to improve local health care.

In return, LCW is supposed to ensure community influence through its appointments to a post-merger board. The events around the recent vote suggest LCW is not yet able to do that but could with increased community participation.

LCW founded, built and ran Bloomington Hospital throughout most of the 20th century. Eventually, the business of health care overtook the caring part, and LCW gradually ceded control to the professionals. In 1988, LCW gave Bloomington Hospital the property it was built on.

Identifying the most astonishing figure in a folder full of state government documents on Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) in Hartford City is a daunting task.

For example, the East-Central Indiana community of 7,000 has 17 combined-sewage "overflow points" on four small creeks, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). Only Kokomo and Muncie have more, with 30 and 23, respectively.

But, discharge reports from March 2002 indicate that untreated sewage flowed into Little Lick Creek, Moore Prong, Mud Run and Big Lick Creek on 239 occasions in 2001. The combined durations of these releases equaled 58 days of continuous sewage flow a year, 26.75 hours every week.

Still, city, state and federal officials identified Hartford City's CSO pollution as needing remediation 35 years ago.

Serving in a homophobic military is an experience Mark Brostoff can relate to. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1982 to 2002, before and after Congress implemented "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the military policy that allows homosexuals to serve but honorably discharges them if their orientation is discovered.

America made progress toward removing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on May 21 when three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit that could bring an end to the 15-year-old policy.

The court said military officials must prove that having a gay person in the unit hurts morale and that discharge is the only way to improve morale, according to a May 22 Associated Press story.

Brostoff, the associate director of the Kelley Undergrad Career Services, said he wants the policy changed, but he has concerns.

"I do not want (to) risk moving backwards in the achievements the gay community has gained," he said.

Steve Cotter, the natural resources manager for the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department, is at home in Bryan Park. He walks to the creek and leans against the wooden fence that protects the little-known but ecologically important wildlife habitat that exists in and around the creek.

"We had a problem with the creek here, it was badly eroded and very difficult to maintain," Cotter said. "It had steep, vertical slopes where every time it rained, the creek would undercut the bank, and then the bank would fall into the creek and go downstream. It's bad for the water quality, and it's not good for the park, either."

Part of the remedy was the Bryan Park Creek Naturalization Project, which was also one of the first steps toward Bloomington's certification as a Community Wildlife Habitat.

The project involved vegetating the creek bank, with the emphasis on native plant species, using the plants' natural abilities to protect the creek.