With the Freedom Festival set to begin this week, most people will be looking forward to hydroplane racing, greasy food and air shows. While I’m looking forward to those things as well, I can’t help but to be excited to enjoy another local festival that brings together all walks of life in a centralized location.

After the success of last fall’s inaugural Fall Festival Bingo card, it was only fitting to do one for Evansville’s summer tradition.

• Freedom Festival Bingo 2008 PDF

The Freedom Festival Bingo card is a mixture of festival events, attractions and sights you might see as you walk around the festival during the day or night.

While you’re eating your cotton candy and playing your carnival games, carry around this bingo card and play along with other readers. If you hit Bingo, come back to the comments and let everyone know how you did it. Bonus points if you have photos to share.

If you know someone who will be at the Fall Festival but who does not read this site, send him or her a link to this post or the PDF itself.

More details after the jump.

Continue reading Freedom Festival Bingo 2008…

On November 6, 2005 I was still at Purdue and turned on my TV to see my town had been ransacked by a massive tornado. It was a bit surreal to say the least. My house is right in the path of the tornado so I’ve watched the reconstruction, and things are pretty much back to normal. The tornado brought about legislation like CJ’s Law which now requires weather radios to be installed in mobile homes after an entire park was obliterated by the tornado. CJ’s Law is on its way to being signed as national legislation.

Flickr users from around the area contributed photos to show the devastation. Here’s some selected ones.

photo courtesy of Jenna2794, twistedtrees, IncogNEAToEmily and carpeaqua

Continue reading The Tornado: Two Years Later…

When I got news from the Trespasser that the TB hospital is being renovated, I decided to make a trip out to the West side of town to see for myself. the Mills building is indeed under construction as while I was there, a worker dumped a massive pile of rubble out a window. I immediately noticed that each of the windows has new glass and trim. Many are also adorned with brand new black shutters.

I didn’t venture inside the building, but hopefully these exterior shots are interesting enough to whet your appetite for more.

Continue reading Boehne Camp: Current Day Photos…

With all of the news in the past week about Andrew Speaker, the Atlanta attorney who was diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) and then flew to Greece to be married, we thought we’d share a bit of Evansville’s history and how it relates to this story. In case you don’t know, tuberculosis is an infectious disease that affects the lungs and nervous system. It can be transferred via cough, sneeze, spit, kiss or even speaking, which is why it was highly unintelligent of Mr. Speaker to take a trans-continental flight while infected.

During the early 1900s it was an epidemic, but today is treatable using antibiotics in many cases. There is a strand of TB known as drug resistant tuberculosis that can withstand the main antibiotics used to treat TB, isoniazid and rifampin. Since 2000, there have only been 17 cases of extreme drug-resistant TB, which Speaker is infected with.

So where does Evansville fit in?

Continue reading Boehne Camp: Evansville’s Abandoned Tuberculosis Hospital…