…is what Muncie, Indiana was “thinly disguised” as for the “Middletown Studies” led by sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd back in the 1920s. Then as now, Muncie was home to Ball State University, which is where I got to read last night as part of their Visiting Writers Series. The turnout was great, and included these lovely people (that’s poet Mark Neely waving)… 
…and these: 
There in the front row is literary citizen extraordinaire Cathy Day and also the inimitable Sean Lovelace, to whom I am grateful for the invitation. Major gratitude also goes to graduate student Melissa Glidden who picked me up yesterday afternoon from the Megabus stop in Indianapolis and drove me here. I’m about to go visit Mark Neely’s poetry class, and then hop said Megabus back to Chicago. I don’t know when one of Muncie’s nicknames became “Funcie”–if it was called that at the time of the Middletown studies or not–but it certainly deserves that title now. Thanks, Funcie!