Category: Indiana Writers Group

by Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. One of my earliest memories is the iceman delivering large blocks of ice to my parents’ small triplex apartment in southern California. The ice was deposited in our “ice box” and kept food cool. Frozen? Nope; just cool. Of course, the ice didn’t last forever. It melted and drained into…

by Andrea Neal In 1959, a best-selling book by Hoosier Lew Wallace became a blockbuster movie, sealing Charlton Heston’s reputation as Hollywood’s leading man and winning a record 11 Academy Awards. Paramount Pictures hopes to repeat the phenomenon in 2016 with Timur Bekmambetov’s adaptation of Ben-Hur starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman. It opens in…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. As we observe Indiana’s bicentennial, here’s something from our history that we can’t celebrate: In 1907, Indiana became the first state in America to pass a eugenics law. Eugenics is the study of the hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled, selective breeding. The word derives from its Latin components…

by Andrea Neal A walk along Evansville’s Riverfront Esplanade – even on the most beautiful of days – evokes memories of the worst natural disaster in the history of the Ohio River: the Great Flood of 1937. The levee is the most visible reminder – built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect…

by Craig Ladwig The summer doldrums, with so many officials out of officialdom, is a good time to put forward some pet public policy positions that, in my opinion, would save the world. One would abolish parking meters as we know them and the other government finance committees. They loosely follow the “Perlini Rule.” My…

by Craig Ladwig You reach an age when you begin to repeat yourself, telling your best stories over again to the pained faces of friends and loved ones. Some of my stories are the exploits of a tobacco-chewing, free-range reporter who mentored me early in my career. He came to mind this week reading some…

by Craig Ladwig Eric Holcomb, Lt. Governor and GOP gubernatorial candidate, has yet another title, Explainer in Chief. And his first comment out of the box — “I want to provide high-quality, good government” — falls short of the times. Please know that with a supermajority in the legislature, the GOP economic record these last…

by Craig Ladwig “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen.” — Gov. William J. Le Ptomaine (Mel Brooks) in “Blazing Saddles” A section of your brain becomes inaccessible once you figure out how to make a living spending other people’s money on other people. It is nature’s way of protecting the virtuecrat from mortification.…

by Andrea Neal If Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not run for an unprecedented third term in 1940, there is a good possibility that Hoosier Paul Vories McNutt of Franklin would have become the 33rd President of the United States. One of the most powerful politicians Indiana has ever seen, McNutt had “astonishingly good looks,” according…

In 1996, another Texas Senator sought the Republican presidential nomination unsuccessfully. This was his explanation for entering the race: “I am running for president because I want to finish the Reagan revolution. I am also running for president because I believe, if we don’t change the policy of our government, if we don’t change it…