The Active Aging Coalition is a grassroots organization consisting of seniors, their families, caregivers, and other community advocates interested in improving lives of seniors in our community. Through monthly meetings and community engagement, we learn about each other’s participation in the senior community, find ways to work together more efficiently, and increase our own understanding of available resources.Sometimes, when searching for these resources, gaps in services are discovered as well. This has encouraged creativity among the group to find better ways to use resources that already exist or at times to create entirely new solutions. One such solution was the creation of the Commission on Aging. They have been responsible for the very successful Creative Aging Festival, a month long city-wide celebration of elder artists addressing the benefits of creativity to healthful aging.We produce a monthly newsletter that includes up-to-date meeting minutes, announcements, and upcoming events. We also send out monthly invitations to our upcoming meetings. If you would like to receive these, please click the Contact button and send us your name and email address. Meetings begin and end promptly in recognition of everyone’s busy schedule, but you are welcome to stay longer to visit and network with those you meet. We hope to see you at one of our meetings!

The Secular Alliance of IU is a group of students, faculty, and staff from IU and the Bloomington community. This group is focused on joining together those with a secular outlook on life, including atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and humanists, and promoting a worldview based on science and reason as opposed to belief in the supernatural.

Venus is a lifestyle photographer in Bloomington and this is what she has to say about her work, “I love my job. Whether its the first days of your newborn’s life, birthday number five, or your wedding day, I get to be there. We will play, laugh, smile, and take some pictures! So, invite me to your home or your favorite park and we can capture some moments in your life that you will cherish forever. I capture images of life using natural light and an eye for composition. My work focuses on the comfort and lifestyle of my subject. I prefer shooting on site in homes, parks, and any everyday location. The images that I create will reflect a moment in your life.”

Les Champs Elysees is an Aveda Concept Salon, a place where beauty and well-being converge: a spa and salon devoted to bringing you back to balance with products and services based on Aveda’s pure flower and plant essences. Rituals of Renewal for your mind, body, skin, and hair. So you become the peace you seek.

The Ryder Film Series has presented the best in foreign-language, independent and classic American films in Bloomington for 25 years. The Ryder’s primary home is Bear’s Place, a cozy bar/restaurant located across the street from the Indiana University campus. Food and drink are served in a cabaret-style screening room. A diverse menu includes burgers, burritos and tuna steaks. Filmgoers can enjoy a soft drink, a beer (domestic and imports) or a glass of wine while watching the latest cinematic offering from France or Germany. You must be 21 at Bear’s Place. The screening room is well air-conditioned in the summer; do not wear shorts. Films are also shown in the IU Fine Arts Theatres (there are two screening rooms) the Cinemat and the Laughing Planet Cafe. The viewing experience at Fine Arts is similar to that of a traditional theatre–reasonably comfortable theatre seats on a sloped floor. There are two screening rooms — the downstairs theatre seats 250, the smaller, more intimate upstairs theatre seats 99. The temperature at Fine Arts is computer-controlled. Once again, don’t wear shorts in the summer. Think about a sweater. In the summer The Ryder and Bloomington’s Department of Parks and Recreation sponsor a series of free films under the stars in Bryan Park. Before the film, you can shoot free throws at the nearby basketball court. When it gets dark, the lights on the basketball court are turned off and the film begins. Bring a blanket. Bring a snack. Bring the dog. Outdoor screenings of course are weather dependent; if it rains in the afternoon, even if it clears up, or if there’s the threat of rain, please call the Ryder movie line — 339-2002. Wear anything you want.

Natural light photography including portraits for all ages, events and nature. I offer nature/art prints for sale on my website.I shoot on location using natural light.

After receiving a doctorate in philosophy in 1972 from Boston University, I was hired to teach full time at an experimental college in California. After one year I was fired, as “too experimental.” I then became a student of astrology, working and writing in that field for over two decades. Along the way I founded and published three experimental magazines, one of which, “Crone Chronicles: A Journal of Conscious Aging” (1989-2001), was twice nominated for “Utne Reader”‘s annual awards. (www.bbimedia.com)At the end of 2008, I agreed to serve for three years as Founding Editor for a new crone magazine, “Crone: Women Coming of Age” that publishes twice per year. That service is now done!My book, “This Vast Being: A Voyage through Grief and Exaltation,” which tells of the multidimensional experiences during my first year of “conscious grieving” after my husband died of a heart attack, was released in March, 2007, and received a Best Book award from USA Book News in 2008 (www.tendrepress.com). I lived for 20 years in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, most of that time in a 20-foot diameter yurt surrounded by wild animals. My forays into art started there, when I knew I needed to enter “beginner’s mind,” and art was the most scary place that I could go.I moved to Bloomington in August of 2002, four months before my husband died of a heart attack and left me alone and bereft in a new, and, I discovered, sweetly nourishing town. I live in “Green Acres,” where I’ve established the GANG (Green Acres Neighborhood Garden). I work with others to transform our neighborhood into a sustainable urban village. (www.ganggarden.com, www.greenacresneighbors.com, www.ganecovillage.org).I was a member of the Initiating Group for Transition Bloomington (www.transitionbloomington.org) and continue as Vice-President of the Association for Regenerative Culture (www.arculture.org)In early 2010, after a seven year sabbatical, I returned — very part time! — to my profession as a professional astrologer. In January 2011, noticing that I belong to two cultures, one metaphysical and the other pemacultural, I launched a website/blog at exopermaculture.com that bridges/blends Above and Below. This blog is very active, featuring about five posts per day where I either post original material or material from others with original commentary. (www.exopermaculture.com)In February and March of 2013, I traveled to Southeast Asia, to learn Vipassana Meditation in Thailand and tour the places in India and Nepal where the Buddha was born, received enlightenment, taught his first students, and died. (Chom Tong Insight Meditation Center: www.dhammathai.org/e/meditation/page28.php)I see my life as a constantly evolving experimental process, my actions in the outer world in response to ongoing inner promptings.