News Columns
- News Columns
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MARK BENNETT: How much of your spring break will be spent in the digital world?
It seems harsh to give folks a math assignment on the brink of spring break, but wisdom should never take a holiday, so here goes.
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MARK BENNETT: Litter trashes scenery on first day of spring
A mop is an ironic piece of litter.
Someone once used it to keep floors spotless. When its utility ended, this cleaning device became trash on the edge of a road. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MARK BENNETT: Manning leaves great memories for Colts fans
The emotion behind the words was obvious.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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MARK BENNETT: Year of the River a common interest for diverse entities
Water can compel people to get better acquainted.
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MARK BENNETT: Our greatest president had some help from an obscure relative
On this Presidents Day week, historians weigh the impact of Washington, Jefferson and the Roosevelts on Americans’ lives.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
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MARK BENNETT: Electrician proves to be a real handyman for ad agency
On a billboard hovering over a busy stretch of U.S. 41 south of Terre Haute, the gritty hands of an electrician look 30 feet wide.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
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.
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MARK BENNETT: Super Bowl luck? His is mostly bad
I’ve learned to take a Seinfeld approach to Super Bowls.
In a flash of clairvoyance, Jerry excitedly reminded buddy George Costanza that “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” -
MARK BENNETT: On the banks of the Wabash, a sculpture
Paul Dresser remembered his hometown at its best. Terre Haute should remember him the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
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.
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MAUREEN HAYDEN: NFL players in ‘lock step with organized labor’
It’s not uncommon to see lawmakers in the Statehouse sporting American flag pins on their coat lapels.
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MARK BENNETT: Hall-of-Famer Larkin delivered more than clutch hits
A logjam of kids swelled behind the first-base dugout in Riverfront Stadium.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Legislative labor bill banter goes on
No one really expected the start of the 2012 session of the Indiana General Assembly to be uneventful.
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MARK BENNETT: Polian, Colts and Terre Haute were good for one another
Sentimentality seems alien in a discussion of Bill Polian.
That emotion rarely influenced his decisions in 14 seasons as the day-to-day boss of the Indianapolis Colts. He surely felt it, but seldom submitted to it. The NFL is a business, after all, with winning as its bottom line. Polian knew how to make that happen, and did. Anyone or anything threatening to divert the Colts from title contention could not linger. When it came to that mission, Polian functioned with all of the sentimentality of Joe Friday. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: A house with a hearth becomes a home
My son came home with a load of wood one day last week. Our little two-wheeled mowing trailer was groaning under the oppressive weight it held, its tires as pudgy as a glutton’s belly and its tongue nearly lapping the ground.
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MAUREEN HAYDEN: Higher ed tops the list in a week full of headlines
There’s a lot that went on in and around the Indiana Statehouse last week that made headlines:
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MARK BENNETT: Holiday season makes going to the mailbox fun again
Ants decided to set up a colony in our family’s mailbox last summer.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Persimmons planting a few seeds in our heads for winter
Surely, you have heard that we are in for a long, rough winter. The local weather forecasters are saying it; “The Farmer’s Almanac” is warning us of it; and now, the persimmons have confirmed it.
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MARK BENNETT: When it comes to retail, Thursday is the new Friday
The new Thanksgiving dinner tradition?
Turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie served at a family tailgating party in a big-box store parking lot on Black Thursday. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
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.
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MARK BENNETT: Guess where the newest THPD headquarters is?
The city election involved lots of debate over a new headquarters for the Terre Haute Police Department.
But is Raleigh, N.C., really a fitting location? The 750-mile commute for the cops would be dreadful.
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MARK BENNETT: In Prairieton, renovation gives new life to old park
There wasn’t much leg room in that Radio Flyer wagon.
Our sons — two years apart but squashed together inside its fading wooden rails — always fidgeted until the black wheels started rumbling over the uneven WPA-era sidewalks running through Prairieton. -
MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MARK BENNETT: Just another Terre Haute celebrity sighting
At some point, this stuff becomes routine.
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ARTHUR FOULKES: Growth in the national-security state undermines freedom
I first heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center about 10 a.m. after teaching a class in American Government at the Ivy Tech Wabash Valley campus.
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MAUREEN HAYDEN: State Budget Committee thumps public university chiefs
To get an inkling of why the State Budget Committee is so honked off at the public university chiefs over rising college costs, it helps to know how contentious some of their conversations have been.
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