Terre Haute News, Terre Haute, Indiana- TribStar.com

Problems Licked: You can mail letters and buy stamps again in 12 Points
It is official: Neither rain, snow, sleet nor a surety bond will keep the United States contract postal unit in 12 Points from making its appointed rounds — or, rather, opening its doors.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Another weeping, repentant cheater? Go ahead, make my day
When news broke about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his affair with a woman from Buenos Aires, I was in a meeting near a television set. As the story unfolded during the governor’s fascinating press conference, I said, “Whenever another one of these guys gets caught, it really brightens my day.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Insurance glitch temporarily closes 12 Points post office
One day from his 84th birthday, Cecil Tilford has learned to be patient. The unofficial “Mayor of 12 Points,” he discovered long ago there is always a lag — often a very long one — between the things official people promise and the promises being kept.
STEPHANIE SALTER: G.I.’s letters from 1945 belie Holocaust denial
I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: To connoisseurs, Kenny Rankin was nobody’s ‘pleasant folkie’
The news came in a late-night radio broadcast.
STEPHANIE SALTER: One potato, two potato, tons potato more; farmers market still growing
The date had been circled in my agenda planner for weeks. June 6.
STEPHANIE SALTER: When angry words help escalate the abortion wars
The day after Dr. George Tiller was shot to death in his Wichita, Kan., Lutheran church, the home page of Operation Rescue’s Web site was busy, as usual.
STEPHANIE SALTER: And now, please welcome our commencement speaker …
Esteemed graduates of 2009: I can only imagine your incredulity and disappointment at learning I would deliver your commencement address today.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Guns, poems, cruel shoes and Liberty University
Often, I think of them as “GIBNQACs” (pronounced “Gib-n-quacks”), the singular of which stands for “Good Item But Not Quite A Column.” They mount up around a newspaper office and need to be cleaned out now and then. Thus …
STEPHANIE SALTER: Long before there was ‘BFF,’ they were best friends forever
Call it luck, fate, coincidence, divine providence or all four. Some things are just meant to be.
Stephanie Salter: Lost in a universe of denial, delusion and chicken cutlets
Sometimes the young ones ask me, “Why did you become a feminist? Why are you still one?”
Stephanie Salter: All the reader responses about newspapers I could fit into print
Reviewing reader response to my question — Why do you want a real newspaper in your hands? — four natural categories emerged: Regular Features, Convenience, Other Uses and (sorry) Love.
Stephanie Salter: Readers define bliss: A cup of joe and thou, O paper-paper
Stephanie Salter: When a mouse is cold but can’t put on a sweater
The kind of work Joseph Garner does with animals might strike a lot of us as proving the obvious. But those of us who might think that are not scientists.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Lower your swine flu risk: Turn off the television
Odd though it may be coming from me, last week was not the best in which to be a news junkie.
STEPHANIE SALTER: OK with Obama at Notre Dame? There’s a place for you and it’s not Hades
Have you heard about the online petitions for people to speak out against what’s happening at Notre Dame over President Obama’s commencement speech?
STEPHANIE SALTER: Conversations with myself and Frank of Assisi
I was out in the side yard having morning tea with St. Francis when the sound of my own whining voice returned to me.
STEPHANIE SALTER: A few brave women in Afghanistan march for millions
About 300 of them took to the streets of Kabul last week. Young and middle-aged women, they were modestly dressed, their heads covered by scarves.
STEPHANIE SALTER: In a generation, a sea change has come to the U.S. Navy
It was one of those “driveway moments,” in which the contents of the car radio broadcast keep you from turning off the engine and going on into your house, office or social engagement.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Death penalty foe’s ‘awakening’ still a compelling story
Sister Helen Prejean was only slightly exaggerating Tuesday when she told her Human Rights Day audience at Indiana State University, “I have crisscrossed this nation 44 hundred thousand times.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: In the Bible, God — and humans — are in the details
Awhile back, a reader left a voice mail telling me how much that day’s column “sickens me,” and how, in general, “I usually disagree with your writings.
STEPHANIE SALTER: From police beat reporter to socio-political sage
“The Wire,” David Simon’s five-season saga for HBO, has become many things to many people. Perhaps the most useful is as a keen delineator of the perspective we possess when we look at his Baltimore backdrop and at the nation we inhabit.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Want to know the secret of life? Your guru’s in Bloomington
Terre Haute and Indiana are rich in accomplished native sons and daughters, but for deep and practical wisdom, no Hoosier or Hautean luminary can top neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor.
STEPHANIE SALTER: And that’s the way it is April 1, 2009…seriously!
Because it is nigh on to impossible to stay abreast of all the news, the following are several items you may have missed on this first day of April:
Stephanie Salter: A story of memory and misunderstanding
His look of resentment as I drove away in the night rain was withering. For a moment I thought about turning around, going back into the parking lot and trying to explain.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Are Democrats, who aren’t 100-percent Obama, lapdogs?
When I hear a call from progressives to mobilize against some obstructionist politicians, I’m ready to respond with e-mails or phone calls to the enemy camps to let them know where I stand.
STEPHANIE SALTER: If you are holding this paper in your hands, I love you
Wherever I go these days, dinner party or supermarket, I hear the same question, followed by the same general declaration:
STEPHANIE SALTER: You like music? You need to be in Tilson Saturday night
Let’s see, what are all the excuses you can come up with for not washing your face, combing your hair and getting yourself out this Saturday evening to hear the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra present two hours of Big Band Swing?
STEPHANIE SALTER: Are there ever mitigating circumstances when it’s a sex crime?
There are people who look at the arrest of Alex J. Edwards last week and see a tidy black-and-white picture of a man accused of one of the worst crimes in our society: sexual misconduct with a minor.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Just when the mind is going, the Tiny Ones come to the rescue
In the timeless Puccini opera, “La Boheme,” the argument-prone lovers, Rodolfo and Mimi, sing a poignant duet about how they must part, but can’t bear to do it in winter.
Stephanie Salter: Think there’s no longer a need for gay support? Think again
Only a few hours before I met with Jeremy Turner and a handful of folks who are forming the Terre Haute chapter of PFLAG, I listened in amazement to a local college student brag in public about beating up a couple of gay guys in a bar.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Leading the world in money thrown behind bars
One of the clichés that people in public education, health and social services frequently hear is, “You can’t just keep throwing money at the problem.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Sometimes the best civics teachers aren’t born in the USA
On their drive from Indianapolis to Terre Haute, Joaquin and Cristina Dimas talked about what Joaquin would soon be doing as he took the oath of U.S. citizenship.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Artists are workers, too – don’t they deserve to be supported?
You’ve got to hand it to Rep. Jack Kingston. In two sentences, he managed to perpetuate several of the most popular and divisive lies about art, artists and the public money that sometimes helps support a few of them.
STEPHANIE SALTER: The Indiana Legislature giveth, the Indiana Legislature taketh away
Last week, the current session of the General Assembly reached its midpoint, when legislation must be exchanged between chambers. A proverbial flurry of bills and resolutions swirled inside the Statehouse.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Repeat (often): The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
Collected anecdotes and observations that feed the beast of extreme unease about the economy:
STEPHANIE SALTER: Alive and in death, Lynn Voll was twice a victim
The murder defense that Luther Garcia mounted for Joseph C. Jenkins last week was spirited and ethical, but something larger than legal justice demands a few words for a person who no longer has a voice:
STEPHANIE SALTER: The life and times and city of a consciousness-raiser
A good friend in San Francisco told me not to bother seeing “Milk” because it is melodramatic, overly romanticized and not half as good as the 1984 documentary, ‘The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Multiple impressions of US Airways pilot ‘just doing his job’
Before we Americans move on to our next hero, I’d like to share some collected observations about Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III and US Airways Flight 1549.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Sorting fact from fiction on money for U.N. Population Fund
You probably heard about Barack Obama reinstating U.S. funding for abortion in other countries. You know, taking your taxpayer dollars to provide, or even force, abortions on women all around the world?
STEPHANIE SALTER: Snow prompts radical mode of transit: Feet
In answer to the many skeptical or scolding queries I received Wednesday, I walked “all the way” from home to work because:
My driveway is 90 feet long; I don’t own a plow or snow blower.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Medical coverage runs from Cadillac to Rent-a-Wreck
I’ve been looking through the big car lot of bills that has amassed since my emergency appendectomy, trying to determine which vehicular make of health insurance I have.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Garth, Aretha, the Boss and big-screen TV — the U.S. arts rock
Before we say good-bye for awhile to our nation’s capital and all it has represented this past week, let us sing praise for the American arts on display there.
STEPHANIE SALTER: The United States today — No country for old cynics
A few hours before the 44th President of the United States was sworn in Tuesday, an ABC television reporter was stationed in the outer-outer regions of the Washington Mall, allowing ordinary Americans — with no tickets to anything — to deliver short messages to millions of viewers.
Stephanie Salter: Whoa, there, anti-Obama Christians. Who you callin’ ‘We’?
The same week I decided I would begin each day of the foreseeable future with a prayer for Barack Obama, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission listed him No. 3 on their Top 10 list of “the most outrageous Christian bashing in America in the year 2008.”
God bless us, everyone.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Jan. 19: The first day of the rest of your community service life
Very soon, the United States may be made up of two kinds of people: Those who have a piece of bread and expend every effort to protect it for themselves, and those who break whatever bread they have and share it.
STEPHANIE SALTER: PTSD: The battle wound is there, but not the blood — or medal
It isn’t difficult to understand why Pentagon officials have decided to withhold the Purple Heart medal from military personnel whose wounds are psychological.
Stephanie Salter: For 69.5 million of us, things could be a lot worse
I know the feeling.
You are going about your daily chores, listening to the latest load of excruciating news from Gaza, Wall Street or the World Health Organization, and you begin that familiar slide into a slough of despond.
You know, the slough you have inhabited for the last eight years?
STEPHANIE SALTER: Going with the flow, even when the flow’s not flowing
The days of 2008 had dwindled to the low single digits when she found herself standing on a highway bridge, contemplating the roily, muddy waters of the Wabash River.
Stephanie Salter: Tidying up the not-quite-perfect grammar of PEOTUS
President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to meet with him and First Lady Laura Bush.
— Barack Obama, Nov. 7

OK, class. Who can tell us what is wrong with the above sentence, spoken last month by our highly educated and articulate president-elect?
Stephanie Salter: The year is ending; it’s time to acknowledge bright moments
As a nod to the late, great jazz virtuoso, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, I take stock at the end of each year for something Kirk talked and sang about in many of his live performances in the 1970s — “Bright Moments.” These are a few of mine from 2008:
Stephanie Salter: Two tech inventions Dad would have loved
There are about a million reasons I wish my dad were still alive. Two of the little ones are satellite radio and automatic Internet flight tracking.
Stephanie Salter: Sifting through the past for tidings of comfort and joy
We are, in a word, dispirited.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Along with celebs and moguls, ‘little nobodies’ trusted Madoff
Just hours before the rest of the world learned about the astounding international Ponzi scheme credited to Bernard L. Madoff, good friends of mine — I’ll name them “Jeff and Annie” — received a phone call.
Stephanie Salter: Print news — dead but somehow walking … and talking
Among a slew of angry e-mails I received this week was an unsigned missive from an e-address that would not accept my reply. (It’s the ultimate in passive aggression. Drop your cyber load and retreat behind an unbreachable wall.)
STEPHANIE SALTER: Endless line of lawsuits challenges Obama’s natural born-ness
You want to lose a day or 10? Get on the Internet and start reading the minutely detailed, remarkably long-winded analyses of what the term “natural born citizen” means.
Stephanie Salter: A Catholic priest is about to be excommunicated; guess why
The place: Heaven’s gate.
The time: Around 2028, give or take a few mortal years.
The scene: A large crowd of newly dead, not yet liberated from their earthly forms, is trying to maintain order despite a cluster of men who shout, wag their fingers and, occasionally, shove.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Thanks for donating a half a billion bucks; we need more
Note to “Obama For America” campaign manager David Plouffe, et al: Hey, guys. Give the fundraising a rest, will you? Not forever, but for a decent interval that will demonstrate that your astoundingly successful presidential campaign did not go culturally tone deaf on Nov. 5.
Stephanie Salter: Finally, I’ve got something in common with Barbara Bush
Some people might focus on the rotten appendix and post-op pain. I choose to concentrate on the marvel of laparoscopy and the memory of lying in bed in Union Hospital (on a workday morning), watching Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell tap dance on TV.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Doing God’s will by banning gay marriages in city hall
In the wake of California’s passage of Proposition 8, and similar anti-gay couples referenda in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas, I can’t help but think how pleased Jesus must be.
Stephanie Salter: Jets, Sharks, Montagues, Capulets, Dems, GOP: War forever?
One outcome of Tuesday’s election needs no poll for accurate prediction: On Nov. 5, we will awaken, still a nation divided. As we have been since the very close, polarizing presidential elections of 1996, 2000 and 2004, we will be a people standing decidedly apart.
STEPHANIE SALTER: I hear America speaking — and endorsing Barack Obama
They range in age from 20 to 78. They include college students, retirees, former Hillary Clinton and John McCain supporters, and residents of small and big cities in five U.S. regions.
Stephanie Salter: One woman’s ‘nonsense’ is another’s golden ‘opportunity’
A few days before Sarah Palin was named as John McCain’s running mate, the super-conservative, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly let go with a typical blast at Title IX.
STEPHANIE SALTER: What is it about elected office that makes a man think he’s invisible?
Do you ever wonder which state will provide the tipping point? And how long it will take to reach that pivotal day?
Stephanie Salter: It’s October, do you know the words to the Serenity Prayer?
It was one of those disorienting moments that can bring a person to near-paralysis.
I’d come from a hot, humid outdoors into an air-conditioned store in which blinking, boooooing Halloween items crowded orange-and-gold Thanksgiving gear and tinselly, red-and-green Christmas stuff.
STEPHANIE SALTER: A Nobel for a prophetic economist and outspoken Bush foe
A couple of years before my father died, he and I were getting into some fairly exercised phone conversations about George W. Bush and the impact of his presidency on the American middle class and working class.
Stephanie Salter: I don’t know you, but I hate you because I think I know you
She did not leave her name or telephone number, only her rage. Her voicemail came in just before 10 on a weekday morning. It lasted for three minutes and began in a way that would lead anyone who has not written an opinion column for a living to expect a friendly message.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Purdue alum was right guy in right place to shed light on Palin
On the morning of Aug. 29, Larry Persily was just one of millions of relatively unknown folks working on and in government in Washington, D.C. Then, John McCain named Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Before sundown, Persily’s daily existence was transformed.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Tidying up: Items, fragments, corrections and other business
Instead of one subject, I have five today. Two involve the governor of Alaska. Let’s start with the other three. Item 1: Paul Newman.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Help! We’ve fallen and we can’t get up!
Hey, great. Something new to divide us:
Something besides abortion, gay marriage and the Second Amendment.
STEPHANIE SALTER: The gender wage gap includes equality-minded men, too
Lost in the drama of the nation’s tottering finances this past week was another economy-related story. It doesn’t carry the punch of a $700 billion bailout, but the questions it raises about the U.S. workforce are intriguing.
STEPHANIE SALTER: $700B Wall Street bailout: Why do you think it’s called a ‘TARP’?
Subject: Your urgent help we seek Warmest greetings to you, Mister or Lady American Taxpayer:
STEPHANIE SALTER: Voters of the U.S. get wise; you’ve only your ignorance to lose
heirs make our blood boil. Ours calm it down. Theirs are packed with lies, misinformation and innuendo. Ours just tell it like it is.
Stephanie Salter: We may be stressed out and uncreative, but we’re nice and dutiful
Many of us have long suspected there are regional personalities in the United States, some so pronounced, a passport should be required to leave one area and enter another.
Stephanie Salter: Saying goodbye to Tagster Rinpoche’s Indiana incarnation
On the one hand, it was a funeral visitation like so many in this part of the United States.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Academic lesson from Katrina: Love and know thy neighborhood
A fascinating thing happened to Daniel Aldrich when his New Orleans home and neighborhood were severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina: He discovered how crucial a strong community is to disaster recovery.
Stephanie Salter: Republicans want to reach out and join hands — no, really, they do
If there are any Republicans reading this, you might as well stop.
STEPHANIE SALTER: A pregnant, unmarried teenager? How typically American
I’m with all the folks, including Barack Obama, who strongly suggest we back off of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old pregnant daughter.
STEPHANIE SALTER: McCain with VP choice: Made you look, made you look, made you look
I can’t repeat both the words I uttered when I heard about John McCain’s choice for vice president. But the second word was “genius.”
Stephanie Salter: Of HONOs, PUMAs and other kaleidescopic Democratic projections
Many years ago Hillary Rodham Clinton likened herself to a national Rorschach test. She’s the enigmatic inkblot on which millions of disparate individuals project their own thoughts, feelings, values and fears.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Born in Terre Haute, he was a healer, a philosopher with a prodigious mind
In the obituary section of Friday’s Tribune-Star, a belated notice ran for a Terre Haute native son. His name was James William McCullough. I knew him best by his professional and pen name, Dr. Christopher McCullough.
STEPHANIE SALTER: The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play Mungo Jerry on your snout
They strike when you least expect them, and you can’t predict how long you will be afflicted. Knowing they aren’t at all rare is of zero comfort — unless you’re the type of person who hears a mosquito in a darkened room and takes heart at how common the situation is.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Got something to say about the city’s parks? Say it here
You know how you’re always feeling as though no one ever consults you about the things that affect your life? Well, we’re going to change that — at least for today.
Stephanie Salter: Eight courses under the stars whet appetite for Valley foods
Viewed from above, the field-to-fork fundraiser last weekend for Terre Foods Cooperative Market must have looked like a scene in an Italian movie — or at least a cinematic travel commercial that’s meant to invoke, “great food, great wine, great company, great times.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Cecil Tilford: 40 straight years and never voted off the island
Forget all those people who travel to remote islands to compete on television in lizard-eating and fire-building contests.
Stephanie Salter: China has a lot more than gold medals riding on the Olympics
This will come as a shock to regular readers, but I agree with something George W. Bush is doing this week:
Stephanie Salter: What kind of helmet is best for sitting under a tree?
A neighbor and I were talking about the good old days, when thunderstorms were kind of fun and trees were our friends.
We were out in the street near the tree row where a pile of limbs and branches has been growing next to my yard since those 80 mph straight winds careened through the Valley in February.
Stephanie Salter: Vexing topic for vexillologists: Americans and their flag
Sell a Chinese-made American flag, go to jail.
Wow. Only in America.
At least one guy at Purdue security summit was paying attention
Purdue computer science professor Eugene Spafford had the best line about media coverage of Barack Obama’s extensive national security seminar in West Lafayette last week:
STEPHANIE SALTER: New Yorker Obama cover: It’s offensive, so it must be a plot
Would you like to see a terrific example of one of the worst things Americans are up against? Take a look at the reaction to this week’s New Yorker magazine cover. Note, I did not say, take a look at the cover.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Watching the fires from 2,000 miles away, and remembering
In 1973, when I made my first trip to Northern California, I sent my parents in Terre Haute a large photo postcard of the Big Sur coast. On the back, I wrote, “God lives here.”
Stephanie Salter: News from the future: Both halves of God’s children now fully serve
London July 9, 2038 —
The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain voted today to join forces with the Roman Catholic Church to “use every resource within our great institutions, including shared worship,” to combat global poverty, disease, illiteracy, discrimination, human trafficking, “the ravages of environmental exploitation” and war.
Stephanie Salter: Being a POW means never needing another job resume
Warning: This is an attack column.
In the old days, before last weekend, it would have been just a newspaper essay in which a few observations and opinions were expressed about John McCain, the most famous American prisoner of the Vietnam War.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Slow down, you move too fast; got to make the fuel last
The funniest thing happens when you drive the speed limit: You notice all the people who don’t. You also save a fair amount of gasoline
STEPHANIE SALTER: An inspired idea — Keep religious endorsements out of politics
While Barack Obama and John McCain are working out the ground rules for the next four months, it would be so great if they would agree to a moratorium on religious pandering.
Stephanie Salter: Dealing with the psychological aftermath of rising waters
The woman behind the desk was uncharacteristically tight and terse. If I didn’t know her, if I were some stranger who’d just come into her workplace for services, I might think, “Geez, what’s with her? Would it kill her to smile?”
But I do know the woman, so I asked a question that’s fairly common around these parts just now: “Did you get any flooding?”
Stephanie Salter: Free Father’s Day gift for dads of daughters: Some advice
Those of us whose fathers have left this mortal world can feel sort of useless on Father’s Day. No cards, gadgets or after-shave to buy. No heart-felt poem to deliver, no brunch to host, no Dad’s cheek to plant a kiss upon.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Operating on the silly, old notion that newspapers count
Sometimes I have this fantasy when I hear yet another smug know-it-all talk about the “irrelevance” of the mainstream news media — or “MSM,” as the abbreviated slur goes.
STEPHANIE SALTER: This little piggy went to market (in China) and Hoosier hog farmers smiled
Even in an agricultural state like Indiana, a lot of us go to the supermarket, troll the aisles looking for dinner fixings, toss plastic-wrapped foodstuffs into our cart and think nothing more about our choices than their bottom line at the checkout.

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