The Dalai Lama has donated a huge collection of sacred texts to Bloomington’s Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Center.  Watch as WTIU’s Emily Loftis visits the center to talk with Arjia Rinpoche about the gift.

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That’s Arjia Rinpoche, a monk at the center in Bloomington, singing from the Pechas—a section of Tibetan scripture that dates back over 25-hundred years.  The Dalai Lama has donated reprints of around 100 volumes of Buddhist Scripture and 250 volumes of commentary by Indian masters to the local center.

Rinpoche says this is a great honor. “Him donating those auspicious, very important volumes, from his own collection to our monastery – it’s very rare,” he said. “So we consider it very blessed and very auspicious and very honored also.” 

Sacred Tibetan texts donated by the Dalai Lama are in the corner of a room in the Tibetan Mongolian Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind.

Rinpoche says the texts are an essential part of the temple’s fulfillment and help meet the three elements of the Buddhist faith. “One is the statues,” he says. “The other one is the books, texts and scriptures. Then there is the Chortan, the monument, like in Sanskrit, we call it Stupa. Those three represent Buddhist body, speech and mind.”

Rinpoche says the Dalai Lama has indicated future plans for making The Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Center an institution of Buddhist education.  The

center’s extensive collection is only rivaled in the US by one in Berkley that was begun in the 1960’s.

The texts are reprints of originals in Tibet and are printed with hand-carved wooden blocks. 

Rinpoche says the texts will be accessible to the public once a library system has been set up.  He also noted that the Dalai Lama is likely to visit Bloomington again in May 2010.

IU Vice President for Engagement, Bill Stephan, thinks the center will become a model for innovation across the country.

“There’s been an effort, again lead by the faculty, who recognized the opportunity to really begin to develop some space where we could  nurture technologies and other opportunities that had some market potential,” Stephan said.

IU President Michael McRobbie dedicated the 40,000 square foot center this week as part of his Innovate Indiana initiative. That program aims to combine research with entrepreneurship to expand Indiana’s economy.

The President and CEO of the IU Research and Technology Corporation, Tony Armstrong, thinks the Innovation Center will allow the university to make the most of its ideas.

“The idea of the RTC these days, as I mentioned, is a conduit or a bridge in a way that we can actually on behalf of faculty not only take the technologies that they’re developing and working on and get those licensed, but also try to work with companies and find opportunities they need and bring those back to faculty,” he said.

“So I think in a way we’re trying to broaden the reach on behalf of the university and really find opportunities for companies and alums and different folks that have needs within the university that can hopefully help solve problems for them.”  

The center will house internet and life sciences start-up companies in hopes of spurring economic development and attracting top minds to the area.

 “Actually, we’re able to, at this point, especially on the wet lab side, to custom build the labs and actually help them be a part of the design of the building and the space that they’re taking, so we’re in discussions like that as well,” Armstrong said.

“What we’re hearing from them is ‘We support a diverse business climate — one that is market-driven,’” Gillenwater said. “Many of them see chain businesses often as resources to pool and attract more people.”

Kruzan, though, was blunt in his reaction to the poll, saying “This survey has no impact whatsoever.”   “I expressed concern when the survey first went out that it did not in any way ask members to have meaningful input,” said the Mayor, himself a Chamber member.  “It instead listed all the reasons the Chamber was opposed to it and then asked people to express whether they were opposed to it or not.  That’s just not the way you would think a sincere effort to participate in a process would work.”

The mayor says he’s dismayed the Chamber would come out against a proposal which has not been written yet and which is being discussed by a committee with Chamber members on it.  Gillenwater says Chamber leaders do not see an existing problem with chain businesses and therefore do not see the need for an ordinance regulating the issue.

When conducting an underwater search, drivers need more than trunks or a two-piece. Bloomington Police Lieutenant David Goodrich described it this way:

“Wrap yourself in the tightest clothes you can, put a black bag over your head, crawl inside your freezer, close the door, and sit there for 45 or 50 minutes, and then look for a thimble with big, thick, heavy gloves on,” he said.

At a quarry on the outskirts of Bloomington, members of the dive team hone their skills.  Sergeant George Connolly leads the group in a series of exercises, practicing swimming formations that aim to make the search process more efficient. Because the water is usually murky during dives, dive team members conduct searches mostly by feel, and communicate with those on the shore by touching or tugging on a rope.  Connolly said what search pattern is used depends on what the divers are looking for and what kind of water they’re swimming in.

“If we have a large area and we’re looking for a body, and we’re in rescue mode so while the sonar is being set up we can put divers in,” Connolly said.  “And they form a V, kind of like geese flying, with a line going from the center to the surface and the surface swimmer guides them around the search area.  That allows us to cover a large area in short time period but it only works for a large item.”

Connolly said an accident in the early 1990s at Lake Monroe showed local law enforcement they needed a new unit.

“A Community member was very upset with the response time, the agencies responding at the time were the State Police and the D-N-R were the only dive teams in this area, and their response time, because they’re spread all over the place, was very long,” he said.  “Well, the family member was familiar with something called cold water near-drowning which gives you a golden hour to save a life.”

Conneley said a person submerged for an hour in cold water can still be resuscitated – hence “golden hour”.  In less than 70-degree water,  humans have an involuntary response called the mammalian dive reflex that allows survival even after prolonged periods of submersion.  The reflex slows the heartbeat and redirects blood flow from the extremities to the heart, brain, and lungs.  However, when pulled from the water, a person in this state often appears dead and requires very specialized medical care.  Connolly said in some rare cases, people have been submerged much longer than an hour and fully recovered.

“The record is over four hours for, I believe it was a four-year-old child, that fell through the ice, was submerged for four hours, brought out, and a study done years later decided there was absolutely no brain damage from the incident,” he said.

Soon after the dive team’s formation in 1992, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department opened the team up to other agencies.  Membership is voluntary.  Interested officers can sign up, but they have to supply their own equipment and commit themselves to a rigorous training schedule.  There’s also the psychological impact of pulling bodies out of the water.  It’s not all gloom though — the team has recovered murder weapons, helping bring criminals to justice… and they’ve even had the opportunity to recover a missing wedding ring.

The most visible members of the Bloomington Police Department may patrol the city in squad cars or staff big football games, but there several branches of the which aren’t as high-profile.  This week, WFIU’s Arianna Prothero explores two of those branches.  In the first of a two-part series, a ride with the newly reinstated K-9 Unit…

The newest addition to the Bloomington Police Department… is of the four-legged variety.  His human partner, Officer Jon Hoffmeister, has been with the force for 5 years.  On this particular night, the two are sent out to work as soon as they clock-in.  While navigating his squad car through busy traffic on Walnut Street, Hoffmeister explained it could be an eventful evening.

“Our narcotics unit, or Special investigations if you will, I guess they received information from one of their informants that there is a car coming back from Indianapolis with a substantial quantity of illegal contraband- I don’t even know what it is.”

Upon finding the car in question, Lesko starts barking in anticipation.  But tonight, it’s fellow K-9 Officer Pongo’s turn to sniff out the drugs.  His human partner, Officer Dana Cole, starts waving a white towel and soon the two are playing a rigorous game of tug-of-war.  To the untrained observer, this may not seem like police work, but Hoffmeister said there’s more to it than meets the eye.

“We use a towel and fake throw a towel, the towel that Dana has,” Hoffmeister said.  “So basically what it is, is that Pongo thinks that he’s looking for a towel.  So if he indicates on this car, which would be by parking and scratching at the vehicle, then Dana’s going to throw the towel in there and we know that there’s the presence of some sort of narcotic substance in there.”

On their own, dogs don’t really care about drugs.  However, they do enjoy a good game of tug-of-war.  Over the course of their training, narcotics dogs are taught to associate the smell of a towel with all sorts of different kinds of drugs.  What does that have to do with Officer Cole and Pongo?  At the scene Cole is using a scentless towel, so once he throws it into the car, Pongo will go in after it but he’ll sniff out the drugs instead because he’s been trained to think the towel smells like drugs.  But that’s not all there is to it — both Hoffmeister and Cole have to be able to read their dogs’ body language.  The officers learn how to do this both during training and by watching their partners at home.  It’s pretty standard in the industry for police dogs to live with their handlers.  Cole said it takes a lot of time and patience to establish a good working relationship between dog and human.

“I’ve been told this by numerous people, it takes the handler and the K-9 a good year before they really mesh into a team,” he said.  “You know, right now there’s a human handler and a K-9 but over time we’re learning things about each other, how we interact and work and everything, and we’re slowly becoming that team.”

Pongo and Lesko aren’t your average dogs either.  Their pure-bred German shepherds, born and raised in the Czech Republic.  Dogs of this caliber can cost anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 if they come fully trained.  That’s because there’s a lot of things Pongo and Lesko can do that their human counterparts can’t.  German Shepherds literally have a sense of smell that is tens of thousands of times better than a human’s.  They can also run twice as fast as the average human.  Lesko has even taught himself how to open Hoffmeister’s squad car door from the outside by hooking his long, thin nose under the door handle and pulling outwards.  Hoffmeister said all of these attributes are extremely important to police work, especially in a college town which sees a fair amount of drug trafficking.

“Because they are a tool we can use.  Everything we carry on our belt is a tool, you can’t put them on a belt but they are another tool on the belt.”

Both Hoffmeister and Cole are working to find creative ways to help pay for their dogs’ safety through grants and private donations.  Recently, they discovered a non-profit that gives away bullet proof vests for K-9 officers.  Sure, it’s extra work at the end of a long day, but Hoffmeister and Cole say it’s worth it knowing Lesko and Pongo would make the ultimate sacrifice to protect them and their community.

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Indiana’s senior Senator, Richard Lugar, has aligned himself with the majority of Senate Republicans by saying he will not vote for any health insurance legislation currently being discussed.

But Evan Bayh has said little about his stance, leading many to think he’s one of three swing votes in the Senate needed for Democrats to pass their plan. Hoosier native Tavis Smiley says he considers Bayh a good friend.

In town for a naming ceremony in his honor, the public broadcasting personality said Bayh has been straddling the fence on health care, at the expense of representing constituents.

“I don’t think that now is the time for coyness. Senator, what do you mean by public option? What do you think it ought to mean? He’s right when he says nobody should vote for something they’ve never read. He’s right number two that public option could be defined 18 million ways. But he’s wrong about the fact that the approach is about passivity,” Smiley said.

“I think it’s about being aggressive and saying to the people of Indiana that, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to make sure there’s going to be a public option. Here’s how I define it.’ Take your definition in there and get in the debate. Mix it up. But you’ve got to have a point of view about this.”

Susan Bayh, the senator’s wife, has earned more than two million dollars from serving on the corporate boards of health insurance companies over the past decade. While some have suggested that connection represents a conflict of interest for the senator, Smiley says Bayh’s hesitation likely stems from how much the bill will eventually cost.

But paying by credit card is creating another issue all its own.

Credit card companies always charge a fee for a swipe, but retailers usually pass along the cost by upping prices. But Indiana counties aren’t legally allowed to do this.  So they hire a third party to process the payments and  those companies are charging between two and four percent extra.

Counties could swallow those extra fees, but in an age of plummeting property tax revenue, most, if all not all, are charging taxpayers for the convenience of using their plastic.

Bartholomew County Deputy Treasurer Martha Lake says more taxpayers have little choice but to live off of credit cards, due to tough circumstances.

“This is not a good money time for a lot of people. Say they want to pay with their credit card and they find out there are additional fees. Many people they’re frustrated and I’m sorry for that. A lot of people don’t stick around to hear the whole explanation or they don’t even ask,” Lake said.

And she and others say they’ve heard their fair share of complaints. Monroe County Treasurer Cathy Smith says the fees, which could be in the thousands of dollars depending on the size of the property tax bill, could be the difference between keeping and losing a home.

Still, Martha Lake says there’s no way around the charges

“At this point this is the best we can do to provide that option,” she said. “And many treasurers are doing it exactly like we are. I don’t know of anybody who is not doing it this way under the circumstances, okay?”

But Bartholomew County Deputy Treasurer Rita Carr says some people are trying to use the card payments to their advantage.

“Well, some people want to use their credit cards because they get money back,” Carr said.

Three of the four treasurers interviewed for this story say some of their constituents are opting for the fee as a means to earning airline miles or gifts through their credit provider. Still others prefer the small credit card fee to a five or 10 percent late fee from a county and calculate it’s better to live with the smaller credit card charge…even if it carries the potential of a much higher interest later on.

John Barnes never thought he’d be digging graves for a living. In fact he’s been afraid to even enter a cemetery for most of his life.

“I’m the guy, that if I was driving down the road and a hearse pulled up beside me and we had to stop at the stop sign, I would turn just to keep from having to be beside that hearse,” he said.

Barnes refuses to watch scary movies. And now he’s in charge of opening and closing the graves at Rose Hill and White Oak cemeteries in Bloomington.

Digging a grave takes Barnes about 30 minutes with a backhoe—although he says he knows from talking to people who’ve had to dig one out by hand it takes about eight hours. To start, Barnes lays out the site using a plywood guide to be sure the lines are straight and the floor of the hole is level. The average hole is about 40 inches wide and truthfully, only about five feet deep. As Barnes digs a grave at White Oak his back hoe butts up against the edge of the grave next to it, uncovering the previously buried vault slightly. The two won’t touch, but Barnes says they’ll be no more than 5-inches apart, meaning he has to uncover the neighboring vault just to get this coffin in the ground.

The sod he unearths is used elsewhere in the cemetery and the dirt is stored, to close the same grave later and to build up fresh graves after a rain in an attempt to keep the lawn of the cemetery as even as possible. Barnes says by next summer, the grave he’s digging today should look like the ground was never disturbed. Barnes says he focuses on doing the best job he can every time—after all in the cemetery he wouldn’t want to risk it.

“Do I believe in ghosts? Well, I can say that like I told you before, I was a firefighter before I came here and I’ve seen a lot of things,” Barnesa said.  “So somewhere in the back of my mind there might be something that’s not explained all the way…so ghosts…I don’t know.”

On a tour of the grounds, Barnes confesses he’d never open a grave at night – again, precautions.

“One of the first things I did when I started digging the graves here, was I walked around to make sure I didn’t see my name on any stones. I saw, there’s a few in here with the last name Barnes and there’s only one that I saw with the first name that goes along with it and then I was looking to see that there wasn’t an “L” for the middle initial and then I was ok.”

Barnes has also exhumed bodies, but says he’s never been tempted to look inside.

“In the back of your mind you know that that was put there so now all of the sudden you’re digging it out you know… I really don’t wanna know what’s in there,” he said.  “I know basically what was in it before and then whatever comes out of it later I really don’t wanna know, because see, I have to sleep at night.”

Barnes says he’s never in a rush to get started in the morning. And who can blame him?  After all not many people are in a hurry to get in the cemetery.

The national Latino population is more than 35 million. According to the Population Reference Bureau, Latinos could account for 20 percent of the population by 2035. That means the Red Cross is in need of a greater blood supply from minority groups.

“Having a diverse donor pool helps the community,” says Loni White. She is the regional communications manager at the American Red Cross. “Some ethnic groups have unique antigens on their blood, and when that blood is transfused into a person of like ethnicity, there’s going to be a better chance of transfusion.”

White says a diverse donor pool is not yet a reality — African Americans make up only three-percent of the donor pool, Latino Americans less than two-percent and Asian-Americans less than one-percent. The problem is compounded, White says, by the fact that some rare donors have valuable blood.

“Type ‘O’ blood is universal, and most hospitals prefer. Concluding that 70-percent of African Americans have type ‘O’, and they can assist an entire community.” White says many Latinos also have type ‘O’ blood, making it even more necessary to have an adequate blood supply to administer as the nation’s demographics shift.

White says it’s very important for African, Asian, and Latino Americans to become blood donors. In order to donate blood you must be at least 17 years old and a minimum of 110 pounds. If donors are 16 years old they must have written parental consent.

There are several blood drives coming up in the next few weeks. To find out more in your area, go to GiveBloodGiveLife.org.

“”When you look at all things considered — the costs, the level of service — I don’t know that we’ll ever compete with them if you just look at the wage issue,” Goodnight said. “There are certain companies, especially a lot of the medium-sized companies that need this service and really, it’s no in their best interest to outsource this to other countries.”

Speaking on WFIU’s “Ask the Mayor,” Goodnight said some of the funding the city and county are offering is contingent on jobs being created quickly.

“The projections are for those jobs to be [created] within three years,” he said.  “We’re hopefully [creating] somewhere around 20 to 30 by the end of this year and 150 within the first year.”

Goodnight says he’s 99% sure the city will be able to announce the creation of another dozen jobs in a week’s time and about 90% sure of another deal beyond that.