Category: Indiana Writers Group

Goodbye, Dilbert  THIS MORNING my egregiously silly local newspaper declared that it is taking a most serious stand on the highest moral ground. In a one-paragraph front-page notice it canceled the comic strip, “Dilbert.” The strip is drawn by Scott Adams, winner of the national Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Adams made a comment that the editors…

by Richard Moss, M.D. This week’s forecast reminds us that the depths of winter are the bleakest of times, gray and fallow, the trees emptied of life, the wildlife desperate and sullen, the earth a crystalline tomb. The winter mires us and spreads its desolation before us. It sinks its fingers into our flesh, immobilizing us as…

by Leo Morris I was not raised to say “sir” or “ma’am,” so those words have never been part of my regular vocabulary, except for three years in the Army when they were forced on enlisted personnel as the required way to address officers. I say this without regret or pride. It’s simply a fact…

Clothes Make the Man — Sad to Say  I USED TO FOLLOW men’s fashions. I had learned to trust it as a barometer of the male zeitgeist and an indication of the national direction. Men’s fashion moved more slowly than women’s and was therefore the more predicting. This was a time, please know, when men still mattered — somewhat…

by Mark Franke I am proud of my wife. Now that can be taken as a generalization, given that we have been married for more than 50 years. But in this instance it is very specific. Earlier this month she was inducted into membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). That is a…

by Leo Morris While we were all busy monitoring the General Assembly as it slogged through proposed legislation, the Indiana Supreme Court sneaked a pretty big development in on us. After an apparently successful experiment in several jurisdictions, the justices have authorized judges throughout the state to allow cameras in courtrooms if they wish. Hoosier…

By Mark Franke Several books and opinion columns I’ve read in the past months have sounded the death knell of the two-party system in America. Or at least encouraged those bells to toll. The basic argument is that both the Republican and Democrat parties have become too entrenched within the Washington elite so that there…

by Leo Morris I am not the world’s greatest housekeeper, so if you enter my home, you are likely to detect a musty, stale odor or two. I don’t notice them myself. Being around them all the time, I can easily forget they are even there. You’ve undoubtedly experienced the phenomenon. You visit a friend…

By Mark Franke “[All men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Declaration of Independence The above snippet is from the most well-known and beloved paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. School children are taught it . . . well, used to be taught it at least. Even if most adults cannot…

A Brief Monograph on Facial Hair  MEN’S FASHION in facial hair should be taken seriously. Throughout history, it has informed the observant of societal bent, usually downward, sometimes in a martial direction. Look, I don’t have anything against mustaches and beards intrinsically. I grew a mustache in the Navy because I imagined it would make me look grownup and…