Category: Indiana Writers Group

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. In times gone by, dress salesladies would often volunteer an opinion, at risk of losing a sale, if a garment were inappropriate for the buyer. This advice was generally welcomed, particularly when offered by someone who represented a similar taste in fashion. It was most likely to be sought and…

by Andrea Neal From his pulpit at Plymouth Congregational Church in Indianapolis, the Rev. Oscar C. McCulloch missed no opportunity to push his congregation out of the pews and into the world. “Here lies our work,” he exhorted one Sunday, unveiling a vision of a church that educated, entertained and provided role models to the…

For the use of the membership only (674 words) by Tom Charles Huston The French domestic intelligence service, the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI), is one of the two best internal security operations in the world. The other is Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency. The successor of the Direction de la Surveillance…

by Craig Ladwig You know there is a political element when the sponsors of a research study announce in advance what the research is going to find. So it is with a study from the University of Southern Indiana directed by the Indiana Economic Development Association (IEDA) that promises to debunk the “myths” of tax-increment…

(For the use of the membership only) by Craig Ladwig I have been waiting for one of the many famous graduates of the Missouri School of Journalism to step forward and explain the difference between the protests of the early 1970s and what occurred this week. It is left to me, a graduate-school washout there,…

A LOCAL COUNCILMAN was discussing what the recent municipal elections might mean for economic development, the subject of this quarter’s Indiana Policy Review. He surprised us by suggesting that his town’s fortune would not depend on any of the expansive plans being floated by the regional economic-development group. It would depend on civic character, specifically…

by Andrea Neal It’s time for Indiana lawmakers to scrap ISTEP. The test is nothing but trouble, and it’s taking valuable time away from classroom learning. During the two years I served on the State Board of Education, I developed a short list of what’s wrong with the state’s high-stakes exam, formally known as the…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Kwang Jin Kim was born to a middle-class family in North Korea. In his book “Under the Same Sky,” he gives a first-hand account of his family’s fall to destitution during the North Korean famine in the late 1990s. Forced to sell all it had to get enough to eat, the…

by Andrea Neal The date was July 4, 1894. The location was Pumpkinvine Pike, three miles east of Kokomo. Elwood Haynes had hauled his newfangled carriage — a horseless one, no less — to the edge of the city for a test drive. He unhitched the horses that towed it there, mounted the driver’s seat…

by Craig Ladwig The Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, writing his political confessions for the Village Voice, famously argued this: In the abstract, we might envision an Olympian perfection in our courthouse, “but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to…