In which Moominmama visits her alma mater to see what's become of the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism....

Indiana University at first glance has enrolled an entire class of cicadas. They clutter the pathways the way students do during the school year, with one bold cicada attempting to use Moominmama for a ride. They're loud but glitter like gold in the sun.

There is very little I recognize in Bloomington, Indiana after more than 30 years, but I did make it to the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism. And while the exterior is still that familiar grey limestone, everything inside has changed. It's now the admissions center, and the interior -- where I spent hours of my life in class -- is polished and modern.

Journalism is no longer a separate school within the university, but subsumed under the College of Arts and Sciences, reconstituted as the Media School in a different building. Now you can major in game design or specialize in social media. No one trains for print journalism; all must learn to work in a multimedia environment. And the once vaunted photojournalism program? Barely get a mention.

What I was pleased to find, albeit in the basement of the Media School, was the display above about IU graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ernie Pyle, who reported from the foxholes of WWII and whose work had a real impact on my own.

Pyle's columns described the war from the soldiers' perspective. His stories feature on-the-ground (or in the foxholes) reporting with enormous heart and attention to detail. The way soldiers spoke little and said much. "I'm sorry, old man," a soldier says to the body of Capt. Waskow after the well-loved leader is brought down from the hills in Italy. "God damn it to hell, anyway," says another.

Pyle showed a level of respect for the people he covered that I aimed to emulate for the rest of my career. Besides his typewriter featured here, there is his shovel -- recognition that when the bombs and bullets flew, he was digging for safety same as any of the soldiers he covered. And in fact, he would die of sniper fire on April 18, 1945 on the island of Ie Shima.

I had no desire to be a war correspondent, but I did love covering the daily lives of people in their communities -- the town council meetings, proposed developments, new initiatives in the public schools, country fairs, and budgets, always budgets. Controversies about opening or closing the town dump or building a new school. Feature stories about a new business or interesting person. 

Reporting in New England, I remember sitting in municipal meetings alongside reporters from a couple different dailies or weeklies. I got up every morning eager to see what my competitors had written and compare their work to the story I'd filed the night before. It was tremendously exciting, and the competition pushed me to do my best each time.

I loved my job and developed great relationships with my sources after sitting through long nights of discussion and debate to capture the issues that would inform readers the next morning. When I moved to the Associated Press and began covering the NH State House, I kept all these readers in mind, writing so they might understand how legislation at the state level could affect their lives.

It is one of the great sorrows of my life to watch local, small-town journalism dying a slow death. The way it documented and dignified the communities it served has not been replaced by social media, and I doubt it can be. 

But I didn't come to Bloomington just to cry in my coffee, I came to drink some! One of the great delights of my trip has been to revisit my favorite coffee shop. So much has changed, but The Runcible Spoon remains, the name taken from the nonsense poem, "The Owl and the Pussycat."

I'm writing from a table here as I did for all my years of college. I spent so much time here, I should have paid rent.

And joy of joys, they still roast their own coffee, and the smell is incomparable. I wrote so many rough drafts here, read through the Indiana Daily Student, met people for interviews and wrote journal entries and letters to my dearest friends from these old tables. My blood is partly Runcible Spoon coffee and egg sandwiches. 

Another meal now fortifies me for the second leg of my trip, this time heading west. I'll spend another week here then slowly work my way to South Dakota, Montana and Oregon via Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota.

I had a great time in Rochester reconnecting with old friends, sharing meals and running errands with my daughter. Plus Moominmama got vaccinated! I also ordered a few new items for the trip forward, including this folding kayak, called a Tucktec. Here I am testing it out in an inlet off Lake Ontario. Today, I'll try it on Lake Monroe. I hope to continue posting weekly of my adventures now. Westward ho!