Indiana University is well-known as a basketball school — a basketball school in a basketball state. You may have seen the movie Hoosiers (1986), about a high-school basketball team from a small town. The IU team has won five national championships, three of them under Coach Bobby Knight (in the 1970s and ’80s).

IU as a football school? No great shakes. But, so far this season, they are 8-0. The team has not been 8-0 since 1967. At present, they are ranked No. 13 in the nation.

Mirabile dictu (as Bill Buckley would say). It’s as though Duke or Gonzaga had suddenly become a football power.

Want a peek at their stadium, here in Bloomington?

Memorial Stadium was built in 1960 and seats about 52,500 people. You could put two of them inside Michigan Stadium — but bigger does not mean better.

In that photo, above, you can see a portion of a sculpture. It is called “Spirit of Indiana,” and it was created by Dora Natella.

• Across from the stadium, there is a facility for the marching band — an outfit known as “The Marching Hundred,” which is a pretty nifty name, if you ask me. They’ve been going since 1896 (when they had many, many fewer members than a hundred — more like a couple dozen).

• I mentioned the movie Hoosiers. Did you ever see Breaking Away, which came out seven years before, in 1979? It’s about teenagers in Bloomington, recently graduated from high school. The score is filled with classical music — prominently, the “Italian” Symphony of Mendelssohn.

It was from Breaking Way that many people — many Americans — learned that symphony (or a portion of it).

• Indiana University has a famous school of music. For the past 20 years, it has been known as the Jacobs School.

Have a portrait of Josef Gingold:

Gingold was an eminent violinist and teacher of that instrument. He was born in 1909 in the Russian Empire. He died in 1995, in Bloomington. For many years, he taught at IU. Among his students was Joshua Bell, a native of Bloomington. (Bell’s dad was on the faculty.)

Also on the faculty, for years and years, was a great cellist, Janos Starker. Another Hungarian, Gyorgy Sebok, taught the piano. So did André Watts (whose mother was Hungarian).

Currently? Well, I’ll give you three well-known singers: Heidi Grant Murphy, Michelle DeYoung, and Carol Vaness.

HGM is a friend of mine, and so is Michelle. So is HGM’s husband, Kevin Murphy, who is also on the faculty. He is a pianist and conductor. For years, he has accompanied his wife in recital, and Michelle, too.

Last week, he conducted Die Fledermaus, the opera (or operetta) of Johann Strauss Jr. Have a glimpse:

Serving as narrator in this show was Michael McRobbie, the president emeritus. He is an Aussie and a smart cookie: computer scientist. After the show — I don’t think Strauss would mind the word “show,” applied to his masterpiece — I met him and his wife, Laurie. Mrs. McRobbie is from Ann Arbor, Mich., like me, and we attended the same elementary school.

Small world . . .

• “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way” — anyway, this is the entrance to the university (or one of the entrances):

• What a beautiful day, huh? (And on a beautiful campus.)

• Franklin Hall bears an inscription, from the Areopagitica: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit.”

I realize you can put only so much on stone: Milton’s fuller quotation is,

. . . as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image — but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

• Again, a sparkling, glowing, golden October day:

• In the middle of New York City, you can walk through the woods (in the form of Central Park). Well, you can do the same thing smack dab in the middle of the IU campus:

• The student at IU, and the denizen of Bloomington, is lucky. He can attend concerts and performances pretty much any time he wants. Here is the main auditorium, seating about 3,200:

• Hoagy Carmichael was born in Bloomington and went to IU: college and law school. He composed, oh, “Stardust,” “Heart and Soul” — and, Hoosier though he was, “Georgia on My Mind.”

Check him out, on the IU campus:

• John Cougar Mellencamp was born and raised in Seymour, Ind., about 50 miles southeast of here. He wrote “Hurts So Good,” “Jack & Diane,” etc. Here he is, not far from Hoagy:

• The greatest Hoosier composer? Probably Cole Porter, born in Peru — a town about 70 miles north of Indianapolis.

• If you have a chance, go to Mother Bear’s Pizza, a college-town parlor out of Central Casting. Marvelous pies. And they put goldfish — as in the crackers — on the salads.

• I walked into another restaurant, to meet a friend. The young woman at reception — if that’s the right word — said, “How are you?” “Fine,” I said. “How are you?” She said, “Amazing.”

It turned out that my friend wasn’t there — because I was in the wrong restaurant, a few doors away from the right one. Another young employee got me straight.

I said to him, “Does this happen often — do people make this mistake often — or am I the first? The first doofus?” The young man said, “I don’t know of another case, but, to be fair, I’m pretty new here.”

I said to him, “You are diplomatic and kind. Must have been raised right.” He said, putting in a semi-southern inflection, “I’ll tell my mama.”

• “. . . trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for ‘pool’”:

That striking room is in the IMU, which is to say, the Indiana Memorial Union.

So is this striking inscription:

• Some more beauty, on campus:

• A pleasant mural — almost Floridian or Mexican, here in the Midwest:

• I had no idea Arthur Murray dance studios were still with us — they are:

Would you like to know Arthur Murray’s original name? When he was born in 1895, he was Moses Teichman. A classic American story.

• About this little golfer, I can’t tell you anything — but I like him:

• A splendid tree, lit up, naturally:

• A banner at the Indianapolis airport:

Hang on, now, aren’t the Colts supposed to be in Baltimore? (They moved to Indy a long time ago — 1984.) (Some people think of Orwell. Some people think of Reagan’s reelection.)

I’ll leave you with a little song — “Indiana,” or “(Back Home Again in) Indiana,” composed by James F. Hanley in the 1910s. Hanley was a Hoosier himself, born in Rensselaer. His song is stylized by Art Tatum — inimitably — here.

Thanks for joining me, everybody.

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