by Mark Franke Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that. James McNeill Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will. I have mixed feelings about Oscar Wilde. He was witty, sure, but one senses that he was more impressed with himself than others were. Perhaps I am being unfair, but then Whistler’s retort suggests that Wilde’s contemporaries felt the same. Were some of Wilde’s bon mots, shall we say, recycled? With a pervasive and ubiquitous internet…

by Leo Morris Suppose I told you I spend a lot of time putting out bids in hopes of winning a contract. You might think I was a construction engineer, planning to cash in on the hefty contribution I made to the mayor’s re-election campaign. If you have a darker turn of mind, you might suspect that I moonlight as a hit man for the mob. But, no, I’m just an old man who plays…

IT WAS MEANT TO BE a stirring summation of the decision to move forward on building a multi-million-dollar government-subsidized grocery in the center or her councilmanic district, one within walking distance of her downtrodden constituents. She mentioned small children and healthy, fresh food to power their brains. She herself had witnessed a single mother laden with bags of groceries struggling to get off a city bus. She says it opened her heart to the inconvenience of long trips to get the…

Garbage In, Garbage Out IT’S HUMP DAY but the mood is dampened by an Indianapolis Star story saying Indiana will be a humid, overheated dystopia in a few years. The state’s largest if not most respected newspaper predicts increases in heatstroke and cardiovascular collapse as well as longterm organ and cell damage. The warning is clear:  If we don’t reduce greenhouse gases to the level of a medieval village we are doomed. But don’t hook the oxen up to the manure spreader…

by Mark Franke Americans have a reputation, well deserved, of being language agnostics. Maybe that is the wrong characterization but I can’t think of a better term. In our defense English has become the lingua franca of the world, most everyone’s first or second language. Note the irony in my choice of words, resorting to Italian to describe English. But then English is a borrower language, importing words from Latin, Norman French and German to construct our…

by Leo Morris When I was a newbie reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer, I started hearing about a young woman named Brenda Webb, just a few years out of high school and beginning to make a name for herself as a country singer. Since she was the younger sister of superstar Loretta Lynn, it was the consensus that Brenda just might make it. And so she did. She grew up to become Crystal Gayle,…

by Jason Arp Sometime between the reign of Nero and Marcus Aurelius, the Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase panem et circenses, or bread-and-circuses. This was the practice of appeasing the masses with a powerful combination of entertainment and free food. By the Pax Romana, the practice was over 300 years old as the trappings of democracy (like a senate and courts) devolved into an Empire ruled by an almighty Caesar. The phrase was in the forefront…

A Million Here, a Million There I AM IN THE HABIT of “attending” local council meetings on my Mackintosh via our municipal television channel. The magical intersection of technology and democracy? Not really, more like malfeasance up close and personal on your laptop. This week’s meeting, however, saw a member of our foundation, Jason Arp, successfully challenge the promoters of a downtown development project, a $286-million gussying up of an abandoned factory. The issue before the council was whether to…

by Mark Franke “I hate inflation.” I could have heard this from my wife when she returned from the grocery. I could have said it myself at the gas pump. It could have been the topic of conversation at one of several monthly get-togethers with groups of retired friends. Instead, it was my granddaughter who made this pronouncement one day last week while I was driving her and her brother to school. Ah, a teachable moment.…

The Generation Gap Widens “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” — Thomas Sowell I FOLLOW THE TWITTER ACCOUNTS of Indiana journalists, many of them millennials. Hey, it’s my job. I can tell you that they feel unappreciated. It’s hard work and it’s underpaid. They want the government, their union, somebody, anybody, to do something. It doesn’t occur to them that…