WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> BRANDON: Coming up.

>> ASHLEY: Travel to an historic monastery.

>> BRANDON: Explore the legacy of a pop culture icon.

>> ASHLEY: Visit a sci-fi wonderland.

>> BRANDON: And taste some timeless treats.

>> ASHLEY: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> ASHLEY: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Ashley Chilla.

>> BRANDON: And I'm Brandon Wentz.

And we're coming to you from WTIU's studio in Bloomington.

>> ASHLEY: And today, we're starting out in Dubois County, where producer Nick Deel introduces us to the Sisters of Saint Benedict.

>> The Monastery Immaculate Conception is home to the Sisters of Saint Benedict of Ferdinand.

This is where we live.

It's where we pray.

It's where we follow the rule of Saint Benedict as best we can today.

There are about 106 of us in the community.

We are an active monastic community.

So as a monastic community, that means that living together in community, praying together on a regular, daily basis is central to who we are.

And we're active.

So we also have ministries.

We have sisters who work in education, some in healthcare, some in parish ministry, chaplaincy in a hospital, a variety.

>> The Monastery of the Immaculate Conception was established in 1867.

Four sisters were asked by the parish priest to come to Ferdinand, Indiana, from Covington, Kentucky, to teach the German children.

When they came, they lived downtown by the parish church, and they stayed there until 1886, when they moved up here to the first building which is the Quadrangle.

>> We have four guiding principles: Prayer, community, hospitality, and work.

So prayer, that we come together three times a day to pray together the liturgy of the hours.

We also have mass several times a week that we pray together.

Community, that we are not just living alone or working alone, and that this becomes our family.

So we act as family with one another.

We celebrate birthdays.

We -- we celebrate major events in individuals' lives.

Work, Benedict told his members that they should balance their life with prayer and work and that they should not just be idle.

So sometimes our work is our ministries out with other people.

We do operate a bakery.

The bakery is now known for some artisan cookies and products.

And then the fourth one, hospitality.

Saint Benedict said that we should receive every guest, every person who comes, as if we are receiving Christ.

And we really try to take that to heart, that this could be a place of safety and comfort, a place of quiet, a place where someone could come and just nourish him or herself in the atmosphere that we have.

We have a limited number of overnight rooms.

It is available for anyone who wishes to come for a program.

We have some retreats and workshops that we will schedule.

So many people, I think, at this time, don't even know if sisters are in existence, that we are active and have a life.

They don't understand what that life is.

We welcome individuals to come and visit us and learn more about who we are as sisters of Saint Benedict, and how can we help a person grow in his or her relationship with God, and how do we do that together?

>> ASHLEY: Brandon, you know that my favorite part of the show is when people give us baked goods to eat.

>> BRANDON: Oh, right.

>> ASHLEY: So I'm super excited about this.

I got the rum cake.

What did you get?

>> BRANDON: I have a Hildegard cookie, which is believed to help cure ailments.

>> ASHLEY: Oh, well, let's see if it works.

Are you ready?

>> BRANDON: Okay.

Yeah.

>> ASHLEY: Oh, that is rummy, but very good.

>> BRANDON: I feel better already.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to thedome.org.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Nick Deel takes us to Marion County, to hit the books at the Ray Bradbury Center.

There are many strange and wonderful collections scattered across Indiana's many universities, but none are quite as fantastic as the Ray Bradbury Center at Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis.

>> The Ray Bradbury Center is a very large single author archive.

We have a wonderful mix of his personal effects and things that he was writing professionally.

He's one of the most widely translated authors in the world.

I believe we've got over 40 languages represented in our reference library.

>> Ray Bradbury was a 20th century science fiction and pop culture icon.

Many of us are likely familiar with his writing from a high school or college English course.

Fahrenheit 451 , a dystopian novel about a totalitarian society obsessed with burning books, is a classroom staple.

Bradbury's long and wide-ranging career began in 1941, when his short story "Pendulum" was published in the pulp magazine Super Science Stories .

He kept at it for the next 70 years, publishing dozens of books and hundreds of short stories.

>> Look.

>> He worked on Hollywood films, such as It Came from Outer Space , >> Now hear me.

>>>and John Huston's classic Moby Dick .

>> Youre to look... for the white whale.

>> Burn it.

>> And his works have spawned countless film and television adaptations.

>>> Weve burned almost every physical book in the country.

>> He had a remarkable career, seven decades as a professional writer.

And the collection is literally exploding with vestiges from every part of his career.

>> But why, you ask, is this writer's repository here?

Bradbury wasn't from Indiana.

He never lived here, and he never taught here.

The Ray Bradbury Center is here largely because of this man.

>> Jonathan R. Eller.

>> Jonathan Eller's relationship with Ray Bradbury goes back to the late 1980s when he hosted the sci-fi superstar during a science fiction conference at the Air Force Academy where he was teaching.

>> Well, it was like meeting Santa Claus.

It was like meeting someone you know in legend and mythology or through literature.

From then on, I just felt that it was important to go ahead and begin to do the academic work required to continue to understand Ray Bradbury and document his life and his amazing career on into the next century.

>> In 1993, Eller moved to Indianapolis to teach in the English department at IUPUI.

There he met William Touponce, a professor, who, as fate would have it, was also a Bradbury scholar.

In 2007, the two academics persuaded the university to establish the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.

>> He was already an icon, but we wanted to make sure that he would be around in the 21st century and beyond, because his themes were so timeless and universal.

But we wanted to grow that more into the literary mainstream and the academic mainstream.

>> At first, the center wasn't much more than the new Ray Bradbury Review, an annual collection of essays, surveying the writer's cultural impact.

For his part, Eller began a lengthy three-part biography of Bradbury, and through regular visits to his home in Los Angeles, he came to know the famed futurist on a personal level.

When Bradbury died in 2012, his family, along with biographer Donn Albright, agreed that the Bradbury Center would be the perfect place to receive much of Bradbury's papers and artifacts.

>> That changed, of course, the Bradbury Center into a destination, but it also changed -- psychologically, it changed me and others who were close to Ray Bradbury, because now it was a house that still had his magic in it, but now it also had his benign and inspiring ghost as well.

>> Walking into the center, one might be forgiven for believing that that inspiring ghost followed the 18,000 pounds of professional and personal belongings shipped from Bradbury's home.

>> We wanted that space to be special for visitors on -- on more than one level.

People, we expected, would want to see copies of his books, his own copies of his books.

His own working office references, and they did.

They wanted to see these things and touch these things, and in some cases, they can touch these things.

We also wanted them to see the treasures that inspired Ray Bradbury.

>> Eller and his team even went so far as to recreate Bradbury's basement office where he did much of his writing.

>> Ray Bradbury often would just let his subconscious bring up story ideas, objects.

Or he'd look around his office and see things.

>> Ill never starve here.

I just look around, find what I and begin.

>>> And we wanted people to have Ray Bradbury experience.

>> Although it's been more than a decade since the center received Bradbury's belongs.

>> I am Dr. Jason Aukerman.

>> Jason Aukerman, who took over as director of the renamed Bradbury Center, says there's still much to do.

>> Bradbury had a very reactive filing system, which is our very, very polite way of saying he didn't really have a system.

He was not -- not a well-organized writer.

So you open one of these drawers, and you are not really sure what you are gonna find.

>> Which has led to some surprising discoveries.

Such as an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back .

Bradbury, it turns out, had been asked to guarantee the work of his terminally ill friend and colleague, Leigh Brackett.

>> If you see the fine print right here, it says this needs to come back to the studio.

He probably had quite a few different drafts that he was keeping up with.

This one just happened to get stuffed in a drawer and forgotten about.

>> These days, the Bradbury Center, much like the man himself, is focused on the future.

Aukerman hopes to one day raise enough funds to move everything into a museum-quality space which will better protect the collection and make it easier to host visiting scholars and members of the public.

>> We're barely scratching the surface of what the Bradbury Center could be.

I mean, it's such an amazing resource.

The collection is valued at over $7.8 million.

We've got art from Jack Kirby in here.

We've got letters from Stephen King and Steven Spielberg, and teachers and students and fans.

We've got 40 years of incoming correspondence for Ray Bradbury, and these things all shed a light on how essential his role was, and we want to keep the spark of Ray Bradbury's imagination alive.

>> ASHLEY: I think I know the answer to this, but Brandon, have you ever read any of his works?

>> BRANDON: I have.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah?

I remember Fahrenheit 451 being, like -- I mean, everybody had to read that in middle school maybe or early high school.

So that definitely sticks with me.

>> BRANDON: Yeah.

Want to learn more?

Head to the address on your screen.

>> ASHLEY: Up next, producer Russell McGee takes us to Hendricks County to space out at Who North America.

♪ >> Doctor Who is a British science fiction series broadcast by the BBC since 1963.

The Doctor travels through time and space, sorting out galactic problems and battling monsters in the name of truth and justice.

In fact, the Doctor is no stranger to the Hoosier state.

Camby, Indiana, is the home of Who North America, the largest Doctor Who retailer and museum in the United States.

>> As people come into the store, they're greeted by a Dalek.

>> I am a lazy tour guide.

>> The Dalek has various things that he says.

Most of them, in typical Dalek fashion, are, well, menacing.

>> We are the superior beings.

>> When they first open the door, they see the TARDIS right there.

They see other Doctor Who paraphernalia and the toys and stuff around them, and immediately, their jaws drop.

And they will stand there a step or two inside the door and just look.

And Keith's first question is: Have you been here before?

And the funniest part about that, some of them say, yeah, but I am never bored when I step through this door.

>> Even as a kid, I couldn't get Doctor Who stuff, and that's one of the things that I really wanted to, you know, find Doctor Who products.

>> I had to write to people in London, and it was discouraging because a lot of times they would have an offer in Doctor Who Magazine for these wonderful tiles or plates.

So I'd go to the bank.

I'd get a draft.

I'd fill it out, and then I'd get it back saying, I'm sorry, we don't sell to the United States.

>> So with the Internet, I wanted to start contacting some companies in the UK like Dapol, that was making the Doctor Who toys and action figures.

And they said, well, we don't have anyone really bringing it in the United States, and we don't sell direct to retail customers.

But if you buy a certain amount, we would be happy to sell it to you.

So I talked to my wife, and we were really tight on funds, but I said if I can buy $1,000 worth of toys, I can keep some of them and sell the rest on our website that we were developing.

I think they'll sell.

>> Very selfish motive.

>> Yes, selfish motive because I wanted to keep some for myself.

You know, she agreed to go ahead and we'd do it.

And the funny thing is they came in, and within a week, I had to order more.

They were all bought out that quick.

So that's really where we began in 1998.

>> I knew about the shop, of course.

Had a great reputation.

They imported many things.

I bought quite a few videos from them over the years, especially back in the '90s, some Doctor Who Magazines that I couldn't get locally.

It was just really a nice option, especially being in Indiana.

It was really quick for shipping.

>> When you come to our facility now, one of the things you will notice is there's lots of Doctor Who items on display, and that's kind of what we started doing, is we always wanted to set one aside for the museum eventually, which we now have, and, you know, that's where all my collection is, is now the museum of our store.

>> It is a museum of products and toys and some prop replicas.

And we even have a few items in there that were used in the shows.

Things that are really big and well-known, to things like this was a piece of wallpaper from this particular scene in the show.

And sometimes just seeing the magic of all of that is enough to see somebody's eyes light up.

>> The first time we brought an actor over was Nicholas Briggs, the voice of Daleks.

We brought him over for Gen Con, and Nicholas Briggs was doing Dalek voices during the event and doing autographs.

>> Humanoid detected!

Sterilization proceeding.

Destroy!

Destroy!

Destroy!

>> So it was a lot of fun.

So we had him.

And then the next year, we -- for the 50th anniversary, we brought over Peter Davison, who was the fifth Doctor.

>> That's the trouble with regeneration.

You never quite know what you are going to get.

>> And then following that, we started working with Pop Con, and Pop Con wanted to bring Sophie Aldred -- no, Sylvester McCoy first, and then Sophie Aldred.

So we had both the seventh Doctor and his companion.

>> Ace, where do you think you're going?

>> Perivale.

>> Ah, yes.

But by which route?

The direct route with glitz or the scenic route?

Well, do you fancy a quick trip around the 12 galaxies and then back to Perivale in time for tea?

>> Ace!

>> And that's when we got to know Sophie, and she was so very genuine and so enjoyable to be with.

We were just so excited to have her come back.

>> The thing that my character was best known for, and probably me as well, I beat up a Dalek with a baseball bat is my kind of opening line to -- to somebody who says, what do you do?

>> Small human female sidekick of level three.

>> Who are you calling small?

>> I was obviously absolutely thrilled to do it all over again in "The Power of the Doctor" with Jodie Whittaker's Doctor.

>> Oy, pepperpot!

>> That cabinet is where I put all the special, one-of-a-kind items you will never find sold elsewhere, because they are all custom made.

Where, you know, people either make it by hand, and then we kept a set for our museum.

One of the things was a TARDIS made out of foam board, and that was actually made by Sophie Aldred.

>> Jany reminded me that when I was at Pop Con, right next to us, there was a craft store.

And they were making these TARDISes, and I thought, I'd really like to make one of those.

During the not-so-busy time, she likes to make crafts like me, and so she built a TARDIS, and she even autographed on the top of it.

>> And I kind of decorated it all up, signed it, and Jany says that it's a centerpiece in one of their cabinets, which I'm very proud about.

>> With Doctor Who, you could spend a lifetime trying to watch it all or read it all or see it all.

You will never get there.

It's one of those things, it's kind of the curse of the collector, because once you start, it's like, you know, how far are you going to take your collection?

Well, if you are going to take it all the way, you eventually start your own store.

>> One thing I want to say is that Who North America is a store that is set up by a fan for the fans.

>> Yeah.

>> It's a place for Doctor Who fans to come and congregate and have fun.

>> Yeah.

And that's one of the things we always wanted.

We want it to be fun when you come here.

And we want you to be able to spend an hour and a half here and feel like, wow, that was not a wasted trip.

There's so much I can do.

And there's stuff you can do for free.

That's why the pinball machine is on free play.

So people can come and play it and enjoy it.

You know, people can look at the museum for free, because it's there for you to experience it, to sit down and have fun and, you know, be able to be here and relive your childhood.

>> ASHLEY: I have to admit, I don't really know a whole lot about Doctor Who.

I do know that the people who love Doctor Who, I mean, they love Doctor Who.

They are fans.

And clearly, because these folks are such fans that they bought $1,000 worth of stuff.

>> BRANDON: Right.

>> ASHLEY: And turned it into a business.

>> BRANDON: And, like, speaking as someone who is in a lot of different fandoms, being able to find a place like this, some kind of a cultural Mecca and head there for the thing that you love is just phenomenal.

>> ASHLEY: Yeah, you gotta have a place to call home.

>> BRANDON: Mm-hmm.

>> ASHLEY: Want to learn more?

Head to whona.com.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Nick Deel takes us to Wayne County to savor the sweets at Abbott's Candies.

Passing through Hagerstown, Indiana, you are likely to spot this large, pink brick building just off the main drag.

Step inside, and you will find yourself in a sugary wonderland, the Abbott's Candy Shop and Confectionery.

♪ >> What makes Abbott's special, as far as I'm concerned, is that we try to do everything the way it used to be done.

>> And the way it used to be done dates back to the 19th century.

The company was founded in 1890 by Hagerstown native, W.C. Abbott, making it the oldest candy company in the state of Indiana.

>> W.C. Abbott was a sales representative for Dilling Candy Company, which was out of Indianapolis.

It was a very large candy company.

And W.C. decided that he wanted to have his own business.

So he came back to his hometown of Hagerstown, and he opened up a restaurant to start with, made candy at night.

Decided candy was what he really wanted to be into.

So he opened up in the back garage, behind the house, he started making candy in 1890.

>> A century after W.C. Abbott started making candy, the company had become a beloved Hagerstown staple and Jay Noel was one of the company's suppliers.

>> I was in the food business.

I got into sales.

Abbott's was one of my accounts.

I sold them paper goods and sugar.

Made mention in 1991 that I would like to have my own business.

1993, we actually opened up the north store in Indianapolis.

>> Jay would eventually manage two Abbott's satellite shops in Indianapolis.

They were so successful that in 2012, when the opportunity came to buy the company outright, Jay didn't hesitate.

>> It's the history of the business.

You know, it's been here since 1890, and I think there's a lot of mystique with that, that, you know, people, they're looking for more of those things that are made the old way.

It's, you know, a pure product.

>> And there's nothing more pure than Abbott's caramels.

>> What we sell the most of is the caramels.

I would probably say 75, 80% of what we sell out of this building are the caramels.

We'll make about 27,000 pounds of caramels a year, and it's all handmade and hand wrapped.

>> And although it's been more than a century, the process is largely unchanged since W.C. Abbott's time, down to the kiss cutter, purchased by Abbott himself.

>> Well, basically, you are going back to using all the products that they would have had back then, corn syrup and butter and margarine and salt and, you know, all the things that they would have had back then is what we use today.

You know, we're not using any fillers or preservatives or anything like that.

So our caramels, you want -- you either want to eat them, freeze them, or refrigerate them to keep them fresh.

We like to think that we're doing it the same way W.C. Abbott did, to be able to produce the same product that he did in 1890.

High-quality product that the people want to buy.

So that's why we don't do any automation as far as cooking or wrapping.

That's all done by hand.

We feel it's important to get the quality that we want because we have a little bit better eye on it than some of the large candy manufacturers.

>> Simple ingredients and a personal touch.

It's a classic recipe that has so far stood the test of time.

>> It's been in Hagerstown since 1890.

We're hoping that it makes another 130 years.

It's the same thing in food or candy or anything.

If you have a good product, good service, you are bound to be successful.

>> BRANDON: All right, Ashley.

So important question.

Carmel or caramel?

>> ASHLEY: You know, when I'm driving through the town, I call it Carmel.

And I think when it's a sweet ingredient or when I'm eating, it's a caramel.

It seems a little fancier.

>> BRANDON: Oh, what do you get on your ice cream?

>> ASHLEY: Hot fudge.

I'm not -- I don't normally put carmel on my -- on my -- oh, caramel.

Oh, who knows?

You tell us.

What should we call it?

Carmel or caramel?

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Just head to Abbottscandy.com.

>> ASHLEY: And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> BRANDON: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> ASHLEY: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been, and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

Not only were the sisters nice enough to provide us with some cookies, Sister Anita also performed some harp music for us, which we'll listen to now.

>> BRANDON: We'll see you next time on -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!