by Mark Franke This is the season of patriotic display on my cul-de-sac. Three important patriotic holidays occur within a six-week period: Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day. I call this the patriotic pause, a pause to reflect. Several years ago one of the neighbors suggested we put a few small flags along the street to mark the summer holidays. A few soon doubled in number and eventually all neighbors joined in. Memorial Day…

by Leo Morris Niki Kelly, in a column for the news organization Indiana Capital Chronicle, expresses a forlorn disappointment in Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch. It seems that Crouch, in all the time Kelly has been covering her as a journalist, “has never really been about politics” but has worked instead on “moving the state forward,” unabashedly using words “like cooperation and collaboration.” She has focused on “practical changes to government that would help Hoosiers.” But now that…

The annual seminar is Dec. 8-9 (attend one or both days). For details and tickets, please click HERE or on the artwork above. Friday — “No Name Tag” We will convene in the Ford Room (new this year) where you still will be able to order food and drinks off the menu. Andrea Neal and Craig Ladwig are putting together a book celebrating the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. They are inviting the book’s contributors to help lead a…

by Mark Franke A group of friends were talking one afternoon about what we should look for in our elected officials. What characteristics must be displayed in a candidate in order to deserve our votes? It is easy to be cynical given the clown circus on display in Washington D.C. I just succumbed to this cynicism myself with the previous sentence. Such an attitude is not helpful; the crisis must be addressed. My standard operating…

by Leo Morris Imagine no possessionsI wonder if you canNo need for greed or hungerA brotherhood of man  — “Imagine,”1971 I don’t know if John Lennon was self-aware enough to see the irony of a filthy rich superstar longing for a utopia in which everything belongs to everybody, so nobody has to do without anything, the perfect equality within our reach if we just wish for it hard enough. But before he was murdered in…

by Mark Franke Allen County, where I live, is known for several things but perhaps the genealogy department at the public library is one of the best-known outside God’s country. I am told it has one of the largest collections of official and family documents in the nation. Serious researchers know its reputation and use its expansive digital and paper resources. While I have never visited the genealogy department, my wife spent many hours of…

by Leo Morris There are several stories about the origin of the three-shot volley fired at military funerals. Some go back to ancient Rome. At the end of the day of battle, one story goes, when the field was cleared, those removing a fallen soldier would say his name three times in honor of his sacrifice. Then there’s the one about Roman mourners casting dirt on a coffin three times, constituting a burial. The story…

By Richard McGowan, Ph.D. ”It is illegal to tattoo anyone under the age of 18 unless they are accompanied by, or have written consent from, a minor’s parent or legal guardian. This written permission from a minor’s parent legal guardian must be obtained on-site before any body piercings or tattooing is completed.” — Indiana Tattoo License Regulations The law on minors getting a tattoo has two important implications for procedures that would allegedly transform a…

by Mark Franke A friend of mine, a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, was musing about what artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT could do to teaching. What he really was asking is what it would do to traditional grading of tests and papers. How can he know if a student actually did the research and wrote the text for an assigned paper? At the root of this question is another: How…

Economic Development: Return of the Music Man Friend, either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge,Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.Well, you got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City. — Harold Hill, “The Music Man” IT IS HARD to get the score of “The Music Man” out…