Last week, I spoke to their Honors at a meeting of the Northern Indiana mayors in Logansport. The session began at the Dentzel Carousel alongside the Elk River. It was a comfortable site for officials, who are forced by an anti-urban Legislature to spend so much time going around in circles.

Friday was a busy day for me as the League of Women Voters was going to have a Meet ’n’ Greet with legislators and school board members that evening. I hadn’t turned on the news all day because I was so busy. About noon, I got a call from Evan Stoner about our event. He told me how upset he …

Humor is helpful in combating stress, but I believe grumpiness has it virtues, as well. In this column, I will outline for you the things that make me grouchy. They might be small, insignificant annoyances, but those are the best ones to get cranky about. I save humor for when I really need it.

Several stories caught my eye this past week, what about yours? Of course, one of them had to be about basketball.

“I wish I were at work instead of watching basketball all day.”

On Ash Wednesday, a priest told a story about an old man, a great sinner, who boasted that he had sinned so much that only the pope, himself, could absolve him. So, he went to the pope to confess his sins.

If you’ve reached the age of 76, beware of the time zone known as the old-age curse. It’s not pretty; it’s ugly, unless you consider wrinkles, splotches and blemishes attractive. But the worst thing is that one’s mind begins wandering to places where it’s never been before, in fantasy lands …

I have been dragging my feet on starting our income taxes this year, mainly because I don’t know what to expect. Of course, we never know what to expect. It seems like things change every year and doing taxes is always an emotional roller coaster. Psychologist Tim Pychyl, from Carleton Unive…

INDIANAPOLIS — So, 50 people have been charged with crimes related to a massive college admissions scandal.

Scores of politicians have hailed from Indiana since the state was established in 1816. Few, if any, have had the national impact on public policy that Birch E. Bayh Jr. had.

I hate to admit it, being a member in good standing of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, but I tried marijuana in my younger days.

Pro-choice advocates say two bills now pending in the General Assembly are part of a campaign to make abortion illegal in Indiana.

When was the last time anyone in this part of the country cared about a first-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Bronx?

In what modern scholars agree was one of the greatest speeches ever given on American soil, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s impassioned 16-minute address, “I Have A Dream,” resonates to this day. The speech was delivered to more than a quarter of a million people who gathered in Washington, D.C., for the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Justice.

On Dec. 1, 1971, I became principal of Jeffersonville High School in Indiana. That was a strange time to move from being principal of Pendleton County High School in Kentucky, but that’s the way it worked out. JHS was in an overcrowded and ancient building in downtown Jeffersonville, but we …

Last Sunday, my husband and I visited a church in Orlando. For years they met at a local high school, and last year they built their own building, a “campus.” Even though the place is huge, you can’t miss the sanctuary. Above the main doors it says in big letters: SANCTUARY. We’ve heard the …

Sandi Patty is the most awarded female vocalist in contemporary Christian music history. Her over 30 albums have five Grammy awards, four Billboard Music Awards, and 40 Dove awards, Christian music’s highest honor. Introduced to the world with her rendition of The Star Spangled Banner during…

INDIANAPOLIS — When my adult son decided to move back to our home state of Indiana, I was overjoyed.

“Your stomach shouldn’t be a waist basket.”

Three years ago, Dasha Fincher was arrested in Monroe County, Georgia, after deputies performed an on-the-spot test of a bag of blue substance that they found in the car in which she was a passenger. The suspicious stuff tested positive for methamphetamines. After her arrest, the judge in he…

It’s been many decades now, but I still remember a piece of advice I got not long after entering Congress. It came in passing from a prominent journalist as we were talking about the bewildering array of issues Congress faced. Every day, he told me, I should ask myself a simple question: “What’s the most important thing to be doing today?”

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is known for projecting a very macho public image. In addition to hunting, fishing, and shirtless equestrianism, he also has a black belt in judo. In a 2017 Washington Post editorial, American journalist Benjamin Wittes questioned, whether Putin was actually a “…

Elections are grueling and offer us the opportunity to vote our conscience and our values. It is the most vital part of civic engagement, sort of. Once the polls are closed and everybody goes home, the work begins for those who have been elected. But what about us? Is our responsibility over…

Many regular readers of this column are uncomfortable with data. Hence, this week we’ll go directly to the words summarizing the numbers. That’s like going out in sub-zero weather without gloves, scarf and hat. But it’s their choice.

Some hungers don’t fade with time.

I stand before the shelves of Left Bank Books in the Central West End of this old river city. I’ve come to this bookstore for decades, ever since I was in my early 20s.

As I mentioned last week, my wife and I are trying to learn a little Spanish in preparation for our trip to South America. When I searched for translation options online, I got this: Cow to English. I’m not kidding. You can look it up on the site “Lingojam.” This is news, I mean moos, you can use.

It’s a list that seems to grow longer on a near-daily basis and is sure to continue to increase in the months ahead.

The Bible paints lots of pictures for us, helping to shape our beliefs or encourage our actions.

I saw Hope running the other morning, when her two little legs moved with urgency toward the school bus, a pink yarn ball atop her stocking cap bobbing to the beat, the promise of a new day reflected in her smile.

For the past few years I’ve been following on social media the true-life saga of a lost child. The child is an adult, but he’s still a child to his frantic mother — and to God. The son is in his mid- to late-20s I think, and has been living on the streets off and on for a few years, dependin…

This week, my school (Floyd Central High School) and my brother’s and sister’s school (Highland Hills Middle School) were threatened on social media. The week started out normal. I pulled myself out of bed and got to school. What I didn’t realize was that someone had threatened to bomb Highl…

Last week, my wife Diane and I visited our daughter, who lives near Cincinnati. Our daughter was excited about a new recliner and some wall hangings she and her husband had just bought from Wayfair. As everyone knows, Wayfair is an internet home furnishing store that has all those advertisem…

Over the last few weeks, Indiana’s natural treasures have been recognized on a national scale. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was designated as our state’s very first National Park, and legislation passed the Senate that authorizes the extension of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Tra…

Warning: This is going to be a weird column. Not weird in the “aliens live among us as lizard lawyers” kind of way. But different in that unlike with my normal writing, I’m going to address several topics today. Let’s call it a patchwork quilt of my current thoughts. Or, as my husband descri…

A lot of things have happened since I graduated from New Albany High School in 1979. Marriage, kids, good times and bad. You know how it goes, life has its ups and downs.

Recently, I have been thinking about taking up golf again, after not touching a golf club for more than 20 years. We now live fairly close to a golf course and my wife Diane thinks that playing golf is something we should consider. I have always believed that there must be some undiscovered …

David Mitchell is a man with a mission. He is determined to stitch together a movement that will finally smash the power of the pharmaceutical industry and bring pocketbook relief to millions of Americans who need expensive drugs.

Trump not as divisive as leftwingers, media

On Friday, I attended a lecture at the Jeffersonville Library. It was actually a wonderful afternoon event that was something magical for those who attended. Author Hannah Drake read her poetry and talked of exploring her heritage in the Deep South as a black woman. Ms. Drake was honest, fra…

In our last column, we began examining the changing status of marriage in America. Research groups such as the Pew Research Center, the Barna Group, and Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Marriage and Family Research are releasing information that point to the changes in th…

As I said about this time last year in my News and Tribune article, we have gotten through this, another year under the leadership of the most unorthodox, unbalanced, egotistical, and erratic person this country could have possibly elected. It is still so hard for me to imagine this once gre…

We have been thinking about what it means to love God with everything that we are. Jesus was asked a question by a student of God’s Law, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

I’m still thinking about Jonah and the whole swallowed by a fish thing. Here are some of my thoughts: