Did the year 2020 get you down? Has its effects flavored 2021 so much that it tastes bitter already? Whether limited in travel or quarantines in COVID, perhaps what your spirit needs is a reason to celebrate. Try on one or more of these national days and see if your spirit becomes lifted.

“I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting me because they are the only ones that count.”

Have you ever experienced a sudden overwhelming feeling of anxiety and fear? A panic attack pummels the body with intensity that is both unexpected and debilitating. The heart pounds. Breathing seems a chore. Without warning, the sense of impending death or insanity lurks directly around the…

NOTE: The Indiana Maternal Mortality Review Committee published its findings in December 2020. Of the 63 pregnancy-related deaths identified, the majority occurred postpartum, and the most common contributing factor was substance abuse disorder. Accidental overdose was overwhelmingly the lea…

NOTE: The Indiana Maternal Mortality Review Committee published its findings in December 2020. Of the 63 pregnancy-related deaths identified, the majority occurred postpartum, and the most common contributing factor was substance abuse disorder. Accidental overdose was overwhelmingly the lea…

Wednesday happened. People stormed our U.S. Capitol. The Confederate flag was flown in lieu of Old Glory, the flag I have always known to represent our country.

The COVID pandemic inflicted sustained pain and hardship on too many for too long. The effect on our economy, however, is mixed.

It was already dark when I came to my desk to write tonight; even the stars and moon have covered themselves with a blanket of clouds on this bleak winter evening. It is a wonderful set of incongruent technologies, but all I hear as I sit in the glow of my laptop screen is a Seth Thomas mant…

There’s not much that can be added to the commentary that’s already been stated about the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

[Last] week, Americans watched a mob storm the U.S. Capitol. They saw images of shattered windows, ransacked offices, and bloody clashes between rioters and Capitol Police officers.

“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”

Franklin Roosevelt had meandered through the entire 1932 presidential campaign against Herbert Hoover promising as little as possible about what he would do if elected. He relied upon his quick wit and optimistic personality to create a positive, almost bubbly feel to the election. But in hi…

All this week I’ve had a song playing in my head, “On the Willows” from the musical “Godspell” and taken from Psalm 137. A song of bitter lament, I’ve been hearing the part that goes: “How can we sing, sing the Lord’s song, in a foreign land?”

A few days ago my wife Diane spontaneously bought a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that she saw at the grocery store. We have been working on it ever since. In the United States more people enjoy jigsaw puzzles than any other table game. The puzzle market is growing in leaps and bounds and is …

“A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.”

Christmas is no more. Its carols, such as they were this unusual season, echo but only hauntingly. Mere phantoms adding their wisps to the great mass of Christmases past. Marley molders still.

Reading my typical three newspapers on this eve of our new year, the same theme of “don’t look back to 2020” appears in all their opinion sections. I respectfully disagree and assert that if we do so, we will miss out on an incredible teachable moment and the learning opportunity of our life…

A couple of months ago, a title of a book came across the computer screen in an advertisement for Amazon. The title intrigued and the sub-title even more, so the ad was clicked. Reading the contents, the prefaces and the recommendations added to the appeal of the title. The price point was n…

President Trump’s nasty campaign to undo the 2020 presidential election and sack President-elect Joe Biden is moving perilously close to inflaming disorder.

On Wednesday, Jan. 6, the whole world will be watching Vice President Mike Pence. He will find himself in the most conspicuous set of circumstances that any Hoosier ever has.

I don’t care where you have been or even what you have done

During the pandemic, I experienced something that fundamentally changed my perspective on a problem I thought was already solved. I attended a virtual meeting with a participant connecting from her car. When the meeting ended, I asked her why. It turns out, she had returned home to care for …

As the year comes to a close, everything seems to be focused on the pandemic. We cancelled graduations, weddings, even funerals because of it. We received stimulus checks to help us through it. Our hearts are pounding in the hope of getting another one soon. Jobs have been lost, changed, or …

”A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”

Satchell Paige was one of the greatest pitchers in professional baseball. Like another great, Yogi Berra, he had a way of saying things that seemed not quite understandable, but right.

By preserving the collective work incredible Hoosier women and men made throughout this movement we are inspiring future generations.

Christmas was totally different this year. We didn’t have to rush out to yet one more house. The grandkids actually got to spend the day playing with their new gifts instead of rushing out to get more. Dinner was wonderful because I didn’t have to cook (my daughter did), and it was my first …

Time magazine, demonstrating the legacy media’s continued decline into irrelevance, has deemed 2020 “the worst year ever.”

The cab driver didn’t want to take me to the address Sister Helen Prejean gave me

Indiana utility companies are accelerating their shift away from coal to produce energy, a trend that could spell the end to nearly all coal-fired power plants within the next two decades.

Details about the War of 1812 are not as widely known when compared to the Revolutionary or Civil Wars.

Christmas traditions have added the ginger and spice to the discussions over the past several weeks. The journey began with thoughts about advent and ways to count down to the celebration of Christmas. Later the traditions centered round the use of light during the holiday. Finally, traditio…

The only reason that God created man is that he was disappointed with the monkey.”

At a recent hearing on election security, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri recalled a meeting with about 30 of his constituents just the day before.

The traditional Christmas message is pretty straightforward. The gospel of Luke proclaims “…on earth peace, good will toward men.” This year, in particular, America is at crossroads and peace and good will are more important than ever before. In 2019 Annie Lowrey, a writer at The Atlantic, w…

President Trump is scheduled to leave office at noon Jan. 20. He has had an extraordinary impact on the United States and Indiana and will leave behind a deeply divided nation.

Like most people, nostalgic or not, I like Christmas music. There are few things I enjoy more than sitting in my writing space on a wintry December night, a cup of steaming coffee nearby, a comforting Christmas classic playing in the background, the glimmer of colored lights at the eaves.

As I grow older, more and more it is the mystery of life that sustains me.

The family sat down the other night to watch the 1954 movie musical White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney. The story of two war buddies who fall for two sisters is a seasonal favorite and features the famous song of the same name. Laughter and cringing always unfurls as t…

This is the time of year that I always write about creating a life plan for the upcoming new year and create a compelling vision because as Proverbs 29:18 states, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This year is calling me to go deeper than the usual “Eat to live, don’t live to ea…

“There is no copyright on benevolence.”

On the top of one of the bookcases in the office, the tradition continues of setting up pieces of a small Christmas village.

For Ebenezer Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future forced him to do some soul searching. For folks today, this tumultuous pandemic year has led to such introspection, too.

Across the globe this week, many people have new hope for an end of the pandemic and an eventual return to normalcy, as vaccines are finally deployed. Even without COVID-19 the holidays are a challenging time for many people. While there is no evidence that supports the myth that suicides in…

There have been periods of time in our country where the poor have struggled to be housed. None as prolific as today. In the past we recognized that poverty was real and while some struggled in tenement housing or poor farms in past decades, contemporary poor people had nowhere to go literal…

It has been a summer and fall of discontent; a time of mostly unnecessary political drama and an attention-getting virus, of hurricanes and wildfires and of general unease. It is hard to imagine that much of anything has gone right this year seeing that the national mood is frumpy, its patie…

Sunday marks 40 days and 40 nights wrongly wasted by President Trump and his allies in an attempt to subvert the will of the people, cancel the results of the presidential election, and keep him in power.

“I tell you my wife was never nice. On our first date, I asked her if I could give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek — she bent over!”