"What I did with my Olympic diving medal"*

  

Yep. He did it. He climbed the little tower to the even tinier platform that was eighty feet above the water's surface. Then he dove off. The climb seemed like the hard part because this guy has been diving off university diving platforms since he was a kid, but accessed those by stairs.

He was one of a half dozen people who performed three times a day to the upturned faces of hundreds of awed spectators at the Indiana State Fair, myself among them. For the past ten years, I've often watched competitive divers learning, practicing, and honing their skills at the IU Natatorium, so there was no way I'd miss this show. 

When I was a girl, I once went to a nearby shopping center to see a man named Barney Cipriani climb a similar tall, skinny tower to dive into another tank full of water. Some years later, I remember watching Cipriani taking part in a cliff diving competition in Acapulco that was shown on ABC's Wide World of Sports. 

On occasion, I've wondered whatever became of the traveling high divers, thinking that a jaded public was no longer interested in watching people hurl themselves into space, turning and twisting as they plunged towards the pool many feet below. Apparently, they're alive and well, taking their act (and their babies) on the road during the summers. And people are just as willing to watch them. 

* I'm being facetious: There were no Olympic medals involved here.

London gets the "Shard", the "Gherkin", and the "Walkie-Talkie". We get ...

 

The Underarm Deodorant Applicator!

Early one recent Saturday morning, I was waiting downtown for a bus that would take me to swim practice, enjoying the beautiful summer dawn, when I noticed the oval-shaped (sort of) building rising from behind the corporate headquarters of Cummins International.

Over the past several years, buildings have been sprouting up all around the city's downtown area. They are primarily apartment buildings. At first, I thought they were intended as housing for the large student population attending the universities located here, but they're all so expensive, exceeding what I imagine would be the usual student budget.

We have a lot of hospitals that are affiliated with the medical school. A couple of the corporate offices are the lairs of lawyers and accountants. One building, originally constructed by a large banking firm, now is the headquarters of a tech business. 

But where is the large population of a young workforce that should be filling all the surrounding apartments? I just don't see them.