News From Terre Haute, Indiana Mike Lunsford

MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see

2012-02-06T05:01:00-05:00

I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.

MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap

2012-01-23T05:02:00-05:00

I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.

MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder

2012-01-09T05:00:00-05:00

The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.

SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff

2012-01-04T05:00:00-05:00

Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.

THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing

2011-12-26T05:01:00-05:00

I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.

Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds

2011-12-08T05:00:00-05:00

Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.

MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox

2011-11-14T05:07:00-05:00

As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.

MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales

2011-10-31T05:05:00-04:00

We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.

MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…

2011-10-17T05:03:00-04:00

I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot

The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax

2011-10-03T05:01:00-04:00

Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.