Sister Fun in Indy

One of my regrets from this final semester (ever?) of teaching at DePauw is that I haven't made enough time to savor the charms of my adopted state. My first years here I was obsessed with exploring Indiana. I would stay up late reading Indiana guidebooks, too excited to sleep. My sister, then living in New Jersey, would come to Indiana on business, and we would have weekends crammed full of sister fun: outings to the former utopian colony at New Harmony, Lincoln's boyhood home, the early territorial capital of Vincennes, the stunning resort at West Baden Springs, museums in Indianapolis.

Now my sister lives right here in Indiana, just an hour away from me, but I've had less time for sister fun than I did before, given my heavier teaching load and more frequent  visits home to Colorado. But with just two weekends left before I drive home to Boulder on May 15, sister fun could be postponed no longer.

So yesterday she and I headed to the Indianapolis Art Museum for their new exhibit honoring Indiana's bicentennial. What would be the most fitting way for an art museum to honor two hundred years of Indiana history and culture, you might ask. Why, a mini-golf course on a rooftop plaza with each of the 18 holes designed by an artist in celebration of some aspect of this state's life and lore, of course.

The first hole honored the Great Squirrel Invasion of 1822, a moment from Indiana's past that I must confess had not been on my radar.

I did not succeed in getting my ball to drop out of President Benjamin Harrison's mouth.

My ball did ping off the chimes set to play "Back Home Again in Indiana."

Naturally one hole depicted Indiana's patchwork quilt of farmlands:

And another showcased its covered bridges.

Cheryl and I are both decidedly non-athletic, and even though the little buttons we were given to wear proclaimed that mini-golf was "like a sport, only easier," we were both very bad at it, which only added to the hilarity. Candor compels me to confess, however, that she beat me by three strokes in the end.

I've so loved being Hoosier sisters! But even if, in another two weeks, we'll no longer be living in the same state, we'll still be sisters, and silly sisters, forever.