Earlier this month, I went to the new Hux Cancer Center with my mother so she could be measured and marked for a series of radiation treatments on two basal cell carcinomas just south of her scalp line.

Yesterday’s impressive turnout at Indiana polls was a textbook good news/bad news equation. The good, of course, was that hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers made time on a weekday to get to their official polling place and cast a ballot.

A friend who teaches in public school here in Indiana was appalled not long ago when an e-mail from a colleague went out to everyone in the school’s cyber-address book.

This is a plea for mercy for your trash collectors.

For the next 10 days, they will be among us with microphones, cameras, notebooks and instant market-analysis software: Out-of-state news media, national campaign aides and pollsters.

Although it’s been nearly four years since I moved back to Indiana from San Francisco, there are a lot of things I still miss about California. Earthquakes isn’t one of them.

With all the other national awareness campaigns going on in April — from autism to alcohol — it would be easy to miss one of the most significant, wide reaching and long lasting: This is National Donate Life Month.

Anyone who thinks there is little difference between the practice of professional journalism and that of amateur or “citizen” journalism, should study the rich and complex story of Mayhill Fowler’s skyrocket to unexpected fame.

Judy Dukes is none of the things she is supposed to be: She is not young, black, male or a political neophyte.

When they write the history of the end of civilization, April 7, 2008, will be pivotal. On that date, scholars will note, the European Union set into motion one of the great preventable disasters of modern time

For people who like their political contests clear-cut and their candidates one-dimensional, Lee Hamilton’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president barely registered this past week.

When most people list the sites they intend to see on a spring trip to Washington, D.C., the lineup usually goes something like this: Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the White House (from the outside), the Capitol, the Vietnam and World War II memorials and — if they are in blossom — the cherry trees that ring the Tidal Basin. Less often, do you hear, “I have to see the FDR Memorial.”

One of the primary tenets of Don Miguel Ruiz’s indispensable book, “The Four Agreements,” is “Don’t make assumptions.” Filling in the blanks with speculation, the physician-philosopher warns, almost always leads to this: “We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.”

Not 75 miles from New Orleans — but cut off from that city and the rest of civilization — they celebrated Mardi Gras among themselves, electing their own queen and sometimes making parade floats of wheelchairs.

As vacation souvenirs go, it is an odd one: a black, cotton tote bag with blood-red letters that say, “It’s As Real As It Gets — San Francisco General Hospital.”

According to her enemies and much of the national news media, Hillary Rodham Clinton is cold, robotic, calculating, vindictive and about as personable as surgical steel. Tell that to Josephine Sullivan.

Once again, events remind us (some of us, anyway) that there is no female equivalent of the word “cuckold.”

David Kipen, the literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts, had the perfect retort to my question about quality and gravitas. “‘The Maltese Falcon’ is as light or as deep a novel as you care to make it,” he said, by telephone from his office in Washington, D.C.

Who said this and when?

Until the past year, an august northern Indiana company, Zimmer Holdings, was pretty much going about business as usual: manufacturing a broad array of medical devices, such as hip and knee replacement implants, expanding operations in the United States and 25 nations, and racking up annual sales of nearly $4 billion.

For several years, as he watched the U.S. Postal Service roll out one Legend of Hollywood stamp after another, retired Indiana State University literature professor James Misenheimer waited.

A coffee cake sits overnight, with only a few pieces missing the next morning. An open box of chocolate-covered cherries remains for close to two days. An order sheet for candies and snack foods being sold by the school-age child of a colleague attracts only two signatures. This is an office that, ordinarily, performs an amazing vanishing trick on anything that is edible, free and set upon the breakroom table: Now you see it, now you see … crumbs.

One of the more common sentiments expressed this campaign season about Hillary Clinton goes something like this: “I’d really like to see a woman president, but not this woman.”

We are some kind of species. Life around, above and beneath us operates fairly smoothly, and we go about our business with our heads down and our personal blinders on. Although we know better, this myopia-as-usual leads us to ignore some of the best advice ever proffered: Don’t sweat the small stuff.

It would be neat to report that there were 12 of us sitting in the pneumatic barber chairs of Medusa’s hair salon, plotting the fate of 12 Points. People who care about the historic old neighborhood — its thriving past and what we believe can be its vibrant future — are seriously into the number 12.

Ever since I read a story last week about Germany’s near-obsession with public acknowledgment of the Holocaust, I’ve been thinking about what it takes for a nation to own its sins.

So, we’re heading into a national recession and a new mayoral administration that may or may not continue some of the many projects launched by the previous mayor. All the more reason for the “Downtown Work In Progress” signs in buildings along Wabash Avenue and its adjoining side streets.

How does it feel to be a junkie among the biggest group of addicts in history? Even if you wanted to kick the jones you couldn’t. Where in the entire nation would you go to get clean, let alone stay clean? Some hippie commune in the wilds of Oregon?

I’m getting concerned about my neighbors, the Sammies. They just don’t seem to have a very realistic grasp on their finances.
For the last several years now, Mr. Sammy — his wife likes to call him “Uncle” — have been living way beyond their means. You know, as Mr. Micawber said in “David Copperfield”:

A few weeks ago I wrote about the need for all of us in the divided United States of America to try to find some common ground with people we dislike.

Following media coverage of the presidential campaigns, I’ve found myself thinking about the Coneheads.

First, an apology: I am very sorry Wednesday’s column about curbside recycling in Terre Haute was confusing. The contract establishing the program is so new, there is no way — yet — to sign up.

If you are among the folks who want to whiz all over the new plan for curbside recycling in Terre Haute, nothing I can say likely will deflect all your yeah-buts.

Jesus wept. — John 11:35
As a close election turned into a recount and legal challenge, the last few weeks have seen a truckload of nasty remarks dumped on several people in our community. Both candidates for mayor, especially, have taken big verbal hits from opposition supporters.

Along with other news traditions, the end of the year brings lists of luminaries who passed from our realm during the previous 12 months. I was lucky to meet a handful of the 2007 departed gang and grateful never to have crossed actual paths with a few others.

This will come as a shock to readers who consider me a communist and end their notes with suggestions of other countries to which I might want to move:

Just when I thought I was alone in the depths of disconnect, mine eyes were lifted and mine ears were unstopped. I saw a blond pompadour and I heard a voice ring out: “If we could change Christmas, we could change the whole year. Amen.”

One of these days I’m going to think up a name for the kind of column this is. Maybe an “assorted mini-bites collection,” stocked with items that contain just enough information or opinion, I have to share.

So, let’s see: Our nation is divided, our state isn’t exactly one-for-all, all-for-one, and deep fissures run through our city.
What a way to head into 2008. Don’t we have anything in common anymore?

From the outside, nothing appears amiss. I even sport a little smile, and chirp, “Mmm-hmm!” a lot. No one could ever guess what is going on inside.

One of the hardest parts of my work, one of the reasons I reluctantly accepted membership in the ranks of management last year, is the process of hiring a new employee.

I was deep into writing a satirical column about The People Formerly Known As Democrats for Duke Now Known As The Voice of True Elections Committee when I noticed all the misspellings and mangled syntax in the group’s introductory news release.

I am longing for a very special place to which I might escape. I don’t think it exists anywhere in the United States, at least nowhere that has indoor plumbing and electricity.

Today’s topics are movie-related and for two fairly specific groups of folks: People who have trouble finding their kind of films at our local cineplexes or video stores — i.e., foreign, independent and not featuring Bruce Willis — and people who love opera.

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible — and no one can now doubt the word of America.
— George W. Bush

As a rule, I ignore anonymous correspondence and keep my nose out of blogs and online commentary sections.

Quick quiz. How many times does the U.S. Constitution mention God? How many times does it talk about the Bible? In what sections does it address Christianity? The answers: None, none and none.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a strong need to take a short break from the all-consuming hellfire of politics — local, national and global. After all, there are other pressing issues in life that ought to be addressed.

Oh, hi, everyone. I’ve just climbed out of Kevin Burke’s back pocket — or was I in Greg Gibson’s? — long enough to pack this column full of lies and half-truths that will further the evil plot to take over, um, Terre Haute.

If politics is like sausage making, then politics in Terre Haute has begun to look like killing the hog with slow poison and gutting him with a dull table knife.

The day after my father died, our family burst into a spontaneous clearing out of all the depressing traces of his illness — the pharmacy full of prescriptions, the oxygen generator, the hospital bed and the crates full of paraphernalia that a phalanx of medical professionals threw at his cancer over five long months.

Why has everyone turned on one of the few people in the Bush administration who seems to grasp what is expected of a true loyalist? Instead of being punished, John P. “Pat” Philbin, former external affairs chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, should be given a medal of commendation for following the president’s game plan so literally.

A few nights ago, I scrambled from work to the Indiana Theatre so I could make the unveiling of Michael McAuley’s sculpture of Hoagy Carmichael and a special showing of the Bogart-Bacall classic film “To Have and Have Not.”

For decades now, Dr. Jimmie Holland has been advising cancer patients and their care providers to watch out for “the tyranny of positive thinking.” Recently published findings from a University of Pennsylvania study lend support to her counter-cultural words.

Who says words don’t mean anything anymore or that symbolism is dead? Tell that to the Turkish and Chinese governments. Tell it to the survivors and descendants of the massacre of Armenians a century ago. Tell it to the Dalai Lama.

Am I the only person in Indiana whose house looks like an outlet clothing store? Winter coats hanging next to sleeveless blouses; sandals scattered among ankle boots?

Because it is only October 2007, and no one has been nominated, I’ve no idea who will garner my presidential vote 13 months from now. However, sifting through a growing pile of goodies from the Stop Hillary Political Action Committee, I find myself longing for the kinder, gentler days of Dr. Edgar Berman.

My cheese made it to Indianapolis on the right date, but I was not so lucky. Such separations must be anticipated in this day and age, especially when a bomb threat shuts down an airport — which is what happened Monday afternoon in Oakland, Calif.

In Tom Stoppard’s 1978 play, “Night and Day,” one of the characters, a veteran photo journalist, delivers a potent statement about the value of a free flow of news.

Every year about this time, the drill is the same. I find a stationery store that handles my relatively uncommon brand of datebooks, I buy a refill for the coming year, and I throw away the new blank address insert that comes along with the planner.

Weary of our national divide, I’ve been trying to ditch generalizations about “conservatives” and “liberals.”

It isn’t often that ultra-liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy and ultra-conservative reformer Grover Norquist throw their support behind the same cause.

I have a modest proposal: An aesthetics code for Wabash Avenue from Third Street to the railroad tracks at 10th.

Two days after two hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, President Bush proclaimed Sept. 14 to be a “National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001.”

The day after Teresa Walker buried her 4-year-old son, Collin, a letter went out to her home from Hoosier Healthwise, the state’s insurance program for economically disadvantaged families. Due to a change in the family’s “resources and incomes,” the letter said, medical coverage for Walker’s 2-year-old son, Monte, was being dropped.

As he was for millions of people around the globe, Luciano Pavarotti was my gateway to the astounding world of opera. Or, as Salon’s Richard Speer put it yesterday, he was our “gateway drug.”
Without his unique voice — at once angelic, passionate and perfectly-pitched — to lead the way, I might have found my way to opera anyway, sooner or later. Then again …

Like other law enforcement agents involved that day, Terre Haute Police Chief George Ralston will discuss few of the details of the June 13, 2006, abduction of Collin and Monte Walker.

Teresa Walker would not learn of it for more than a year, but Terre Haute police made their first inquiry about a possible Amber Alert not long after Walker’s father phoned 911 to report that his grandsons had been taken from his home at knifepoint by their father [see related story].

The national Amber Alert broadcast system was named for a 9-year-old Texas child who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996 by a stranger. A significant word change in Indiana’s 2007 Amber Alert guidelines should be named for 4-year-old Collin Walker, who was taken by force and allegedly murdered in June 2006 by his own father.

So, now we all know. Mother Teresa doubted — her faith, God’s love, God — period. And she didn’t just doubt during a particularly tough stretch of her life, during her youth or as she neared the end of her mortal journey.

I don’t suppose you’ve ever said something you wished you hadn’t. Something you would give almost anything to take back. Not likely either that you’ve ever been asked about a subject, weighed in with a spirited opinion, then learned you didn’t have all the facts. Or that the facts had changed and, like Gilda Radner’s attention-challenged Emily Litella on “Saturday Night Live,” you could only offer, “Never mind.”

With the first official Atlantic hurricane of the season unleashed on the Caribbean, it’s a good opportunity to wonder who sent it and why. Is Dean the work of God or Allah or some entirely different divine force bent on punishment?

This column was going to be about hedge funds, government bailouts of private industry and the real victims of sub-prime mortgage lending. But a subject like that takes a brain, and I don’t have one today.

For an incurable city dweller like me, one of the best things about living in a temperate climate — four very distinguishable seasons — is the way nature can grab you by the collar, sit you down in a corner chair and remind you that you and all your urban neighbors are really just leasing space here.

Back when I was among a national handful of women reporting on professional basketball, we noticed a quiet bond between ourselves and black players. One of those men, a member of the Golden State Warriors, told me his theory of why.

A few years after 7-year-old Nicholas Green was mortally wounded on a dark highway in Italy, his father confided that he felt compelled to push the family’s story until public interest began to wane. A journalist, Reg Green knew all about news cycles and finite windows of attention.

Near the climax of Kurt Vonnegut’s only play, “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” the estranged wife of one of the main characters points a loaded rifle at two feuding men: her husband and her fiancé, both twanging with self-generated testosterone.

After last Sunday’s column — about “family values” politician David Vitter’s name showing up on the client list of the so-called D.C. Madam — I got to thinking about hypocrisy in general.

The quest for smooth railroad crossings and replacement trees goes on.
Regular readers may recall that this space has focused on tire-eating tracks at First and Chestnut streets as well as three city-owned trees that were chainsawed to stumps by landscapers for CVS drugstores.

Do you think it’s an accident that the New Testament is chock-full of advice about judging?
Just as Jesus repeatedly instructed us to take care of the poor, the sick and other marginalized folks, he repeatedly warned us away from our human tendency to pronounce sanctimonious judgments against our neighbors.

In Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22,” the only way a man could get out of flying deadly bombing missions was to be crazy. But if he asked to be grounded because he knew it was crazy to keep flying, it meant he was really sane, so he had to keep flying.

You always like to gossip/ Just like a girl/ You talk so damn much/ It’s outta this world/ When you’re reincarnated/ In your second life/ You won’t be a man/ You’ll be a nagging wife.
— Run DMC

Some East Coast pals and I were comparing weekend plans. They had a Friday concert, dinner out on Saturday, then church and a long walk on Sunday.

A few days ago, a thought flashed through my mind as I watched a woman tend her garden:

It has been a long time since something a politician said gave me chills or brought tears of gratitude to my eyes. How sweet that such a statement was made by one of Indiana’s two U.S. senators.

There was a time when the recent news that Mr. Bush’s approval ratings have dropped into the lower 20th percentile would have prompted hope.

As yard sale purchases go, it belongs in the Hall of Fame: a 96-page valentine to Terre Haute, published in 1968 by the Chamber of Commerce.

Maybe you can help me make up a word. I need one to describe those last couple of days of a vacation.

Some people say that U.S. society took a wrong turn when we stopped building houses with front porches. I’d add to that the juncture at which the “personnel office” became “human resources” and the five-minute firing — even of longtime employees — became the rule, not the exception.
Did I say “firing”?

Terre Haute hair stylist Sandy Burpo has a pretty succinct description of the difference between clients who come to her before a prom and those who come before a class reunion.

Thank heavens Cindy Sheehan decided to stop being “the face of the U.S. antiwar movement.” How could she ever hope to fill such a role?
After all, she’s a human being.
Whatever our politics, we really don’t want human beings to represent us in a national arena. We say we do, but it’s a lie.

Just when you start to doubt that anything good will ever again come from under the Capitol Dome, a Senate bill like Dick Lugar’s No. 1104 passes both chambers of Congress and heads to the White House for signing by the president.

With all the encouraging developments in the field of breast cancer research, prevention and treatment, one disturbing trend has surfaced. No one knows why, but a significant percentage of women in the United States have begun to skip regular mammograms.

Jerry Falwell stands in line, waiting to be admitted through what he used to think of as “the pearly gates” but now realizes is an indescribable threshold that simply — and profoundly — separates heaven from everything else.

When Tribune-Star reporter Laura Followell was assigned to cover a retired Marine’s sermon at Good Shepherd Baptist Church, she never suspected it would make her a whole new passel of friends and enemies.
Even if she’d had an inkling, it wouldn’t have done much good.

The red-haired, blue-eyed boy in the photo had changed a bit since the last time I’d seen him. For one thing, he was wearing a tuxedo instead of a toddler-sized diaper.

When the sun sets today, the only lasting trace of the tire-eating railroad tracks at First and Chestnut streets will be the smell of fresh asphalt in the air.

Every time I think that the women’s movement was a hallucination, that we are traveling backward regarding the status of females in U.S. society, something wonderful occurs to quell my fear.

The first time Frank McCulloch’s name comes up in “The Hoax,” only people who know him would notice.