by Andrea Neal Before New York had Woodstock, Indiana had Bean Blossom. It’s just a notch in the road to motorists heading south from Indy on State Road 135 en route to the art colony at Nashville or Brown County State Park. But to folks who know bluegrass, it’s Mecca — home to the nation’s oldest, continuously running bluegrass festival launched in 1967 by the legendary singer and mandolin-picker Bill Monroe. (Woodstock, a one-time three-day…

by Andrea Neal Mike Pence hit the nail on the head. On Sept. 8, while speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, he declared that the spirit of 1980 was back and that Donald Trump would win the White House. While others jeered, Pence predicted that the same forces that powered the Reagan revolution — working-class voters, union members, evangelicals — would align behind Trump and create a winning coalition. The party of…

by Andrea Neal Before they were superheroes of the Space Age, they were students at Purdue. Virgil “Gus” Grissom, native of Mitchell in Lawrence County, Purdue Class of 1950, was one of seven astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury, the United States’ first man-in-space program. Roger Chaffee, Class of ’57, helped develop flight control communications and instrumentation systems for the Apollo program. Neil Armstrong, Class of ’55, served as spacecraft commander for Apollo 11,…

By Donna Volmerding Particularly in this election year, Christians are having discussions about the candidate whom they think is the better one, and the philosophy and ideology that they believe is best for America and shows God’s love the best. In C.S. Lewis’ “Meditation on the Third Commandment,” he discussed the “growing desire for a Christian ‘party,’ a Christian ‘front’ or a Christian ‘platform’ in politics.” He expounds by saying: “Nearly all parties agree in…

by Ryan Cummins It’s municipal budget season and is anyone else tired of listening to sky-is-falling rhetoric from officeholders unwilling to make hard decisions about spending in a tight economy? Last week, yet another Indiana mayor weighed in on the fiscal “disaster” wrought by property-tax caps. David Kitchell of Logansport, in the always sympathetic Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, didn’t waste any time launching into his version of the Washington Monument Syndrome in which losing the…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. At times, one has to sympathize with public officials. Put yourself in the shoes of a member of the South Bend Board of Public Works. On Monday, Nov. 24, a plan to shelter up to 60 homeless men from Dec. 1 to April 1 was submitted to South Bend Common Council, and on the following morning, the Board of Public Works was expected to consider the proposal. According to the…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. For Christians approaching the difficult decisions of this election year, it is important to keep four concepts in balance: 1) God’s good Creation; 2) the “Fall of man”; 3) the potential for partial, earthly Redemption; and 4) an eager hope for full, heavenly Restoration. Even outside of Christianity, one still sees at least the first three elements in play: In every aspect of life everyone has an ideal in mind, a…

by Andrea Neal Diesel engines made Columbus a Fortune 500 city. World-famous architecture put Columbus on the map. Give J. Irwin Miller credit for both achievements. As chairman and CEO of Cummins Inc. from 1934 to 1977, Miller turned an unprofitable Indiana-based business into a global leader in diesel engines and related technology that today reports net income of $1.65 billion a year. As a philanthropist and man of faith, Miller took seriously his company’s…

“I have to turn on my television with a stick (for fear of getting bit)” — Mike Pence A HERO OF MINE is the unnamed police officer that a CNN camera showed walking the streets of San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake. He was yelling up to shaken residents in their high-rise apartments that nobody was coming to help them. It was a disaster, he felt the need to explain; they would have to get water…

by Andrea Neal Two of the 20th century’s most popular song writers hailed from Indiana, both so distinctive that the mention of their names brings to mind such familiar melodies as “Night and Day,” “It’s De-Lovely,” “Georgia on My Mind” and “Stardust.” Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael grew up on different sides of the track but followed similar paths to celebrity. Porter, born in Peru in 1891, had a privileged childhood as the grandson of…