Stories from Thursday, March 31, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS -- Amos Lee doesn't get loud on stage. His vocals are soulful, but controlled. He calmly strums his acoustic guitar. He tells stories between songs, but they are always in the same measured tenor as his songs. This doesn't prevent him from reaching his audience...

BY CAINE GARDNER Film Critic Disney Animation Studio's "Tangled" is a loser. A loser in the sense that another Disney release "Toy Story 3" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature this year and the fact it wasn't even nominated, with "How to Train Your Dragon" and "The Illusionist" taking up spots...

Do you like high school sports? Do you go to the games? Are you interested in writing about those games? If so, the Banner Graphic is currently in need of sports stringers to cover high school sports for the spring season. Those interested should contact Caine Gardner at cgardner@bannergraphic.com...

CLOVERDALE -- A year ago the Cloverdale softball team fell victim to the injury bug and struggled throughout their season. This season head coach Kim Bailey hopes the team can stay healthy and make a run as the season progresses. A key factor in achieving that will be a 22-player squad that features three returning seniors -- Sam Smith, Shanna Schmutte and Breegan Andersen -- and a big class of incoming freshmen...

Eric D. Modesitt, 42, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. died Monday, March 28, 2011 at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was born Aug. 16, 1968 to Jon F. and Diane Lee Gardner Modesitt in Terre Haute. He received a bachelor's degree and was director of social work at Lincoln Hall at Lincolndale, N.Y...

City Police Four young people were arrested for allegedly being minors in consumption of alcohol early Wednesday on Greencastle's northeast side. Officer Matt Huffman responded to 625 Northview, where he and DePauw Police Sgt. Rick Keller arrested: -- Erin Fasulko, 20, Brazil, who registered .09 percent blood-alcohol content under PBT testing...

One day after releasing County Health Rankings that listed Putnam County as the 11th healthiest county in the state, the announcing agencies have revised those rankings. The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which released the figures, rate overall health for every county in all 50 states by using a standard formula to measure how healthy people are and how long they live...

CLOVERDALE -- Cloverdale Cub Scout Pack 93 will participate in the annual food drive for the Cunot Community Center on Saturday. All scouts will meet in the Cloverdale Elementary School parking lot at 9:30 am. for material distribution. Members of Pack 93, along with their families, will be "scouting" local neighborhoods and surrounding areas for non-perishable food items...

Cinergy MetroNet customers in the Greencastle area experienced an interruption in service Tuesday morning that was the result of equipment failure. The company originally intended to have their network down during the night to perform routine maintenance work on their broadband servers. The equipment failure caused service interruptions to last until 11 a.m, with some sporadic service earlier in the morning...

Tomorrow will see the initial entry in the Greencastle Arts Council's First Friday Events, which will highlight a broad spectrum of arts in the community. Constance Ferry with Hobbit Gardens described the event as a chance to expose people to a number of local artists...

Anyone coming into Wednesday night's debate between Jimmy Wales and Nicholas Carr looking for a rousing debate about the benefits vs. dangers of the Internet probably left DePauw's Kresge Auditorium disappointed. Only the second debate in the history of the university's Ubben lecture series, the event yielded far less rancor than the September 2009 debate between Karl Rove and Howard Dean...

Nancy Marie Rice Buck Robertson, 76, passed away at her home in Nashville, Tenn. on March 12, 2011. She was born Jan. 3, 1935 in Seven Mile Ford, Va. to the late Carl Coleman and Helen Reynolds Rice. Nancy was a 1953 graduate of Virginia High School in Bristol, Va. ...

Devona H. Beaman, 87, passed away March 24, 2011 in Orlando, Fla. She was born July 10, 1923 to Clyde and Ruth Miller. She is survived by her son, Ray Beaman, Orlando; daughter Pamela and son-in-law Steve Payne also Orlando; five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren; sister, Sharon Hutcheson and brother-in-law Frank...

Patricia Ann Jordan, 54, Plainfield, passed away on March 31, 2011 at The Mill Pond Health Campus at Greencastle. She was born on Oct. 18, 1956 in Greencastle and was the daughter of Elmer Lee and Phyllis Ann (Paddock) Bryant. She was employed at PNC Bank in Indianapolis as a technology technician and was a 1975 graduate of South Putnam High School...

DePauw students walk to class, sit outside and lounge in their dorm rooms. All the while, there is not a cell phone, laptop or I-gadget in sight. That would have been the ideal on Wednesday. Sadly the ideal isn't always possible, especially when it comes to being connected to the world...