Opinion

As I put pen to paper, the Christmas forecast is for a huge storm. Some are calling in Great Lakes Hurricane, others a bomb cyclone and still others a regular old blizzard. My preferred term for it is not printable in this family-friendly publication. That’s mostly because I have family scrambling to get here before the weather closes airports and roads. Mother Nature appears angry with Father Christmas this year.

If you want to understand why government in our country is so often lost, ineffectual and misguided, just look at what’s happening in our Indiana General Assembly.

To the Editor:

Christmas Part 1 is in the books.

I was watching a movie version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” with my wife recently when I had a strong feeling that I’d encountered this story before. No, I’m not talking about earlier film versions of Dickens’ classic, but something far more ancient.

You realize that it’s not a proper Christmas season unless the realist killjoys among us start whining about “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Sometimes this column just writes itself. That usually occurs when I see something that is so teeming with potential that even the humblest writer can explain it. That happened earlier this year when retired Sen. Doug Eckerty showed me to the work he was doing at the Family Scholar House in Anderson.

Reading is a gift. It may not be one you can wrap up and put under the Christmas tree, but it is a gift that can be given.

To understand Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch’s governing philosophy, one only needs to look south of the Ford Center to the beautiful Stone Family Center for Health Sciences that houses the Indiana University School of Medicine’s southernmost regional campus in Evansville.

Christmas and books just seem to go together. At least they do in my world.