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

STEPHANIE SALTER: May the Spirit of love make us one, indeed
Earlier this month I spent some quality time in contemplation in a retreat house at St. Mary-of-the-Woods. Part of the stay included attending late-morning Mass on weekdays with the Sisters of Providence in the chapel of Owens Hall.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Friends don’t let friends commit felony hyperbole
Ever since I read “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, I have been an admirer of well-crafted satire, sarcasm and irony. Been known to use the persuasive little devils myself on occasion.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Remembering a man who soared high and proud
My friend Bob Cameron died this past week. Among the many things I learned from our friendship was to never again hear that someone really old has passed, then respond with a shallow, “Oh, well, sounds like he had a good, long run. I guess it was time.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Advice for birthdays big and small: Celebration time — come on!
As best I can remember, I have never dreaded a single birthday — and never really understood the popular inclination to do so.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Brad Ellsworth ends the week back inside pro-lifers’ circle
Think antiabortion rights politics is simple? Take a look at the week Rep. Brad Ellsworth had.
STEPHANIE SALTER: A boy is gravely injured and his mother learns her capacity for love
Among the many truths Joan Ryan shares in her new book, “The Water Giver,” is this:
“You don’t need to go to a monastery in Tibet to learn about living in the moment. Just spend a month in an ICU.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Another fundraiser, another $30,000; this town knows how
As I was walking out of Wednesday’s Power of the Purse luncheon for the United Way, a woman said to me, “You know, for a small city, Terre Haute really does some amazing things.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: The back story of a neighbor who loved to sit in the sun
In the 10-plus years we spoke to one another over our tiny San Francisco back yards, all I really knew about Lenore was that she was an unfailingly cheerful, elderly woman who adored the sun and wore her long silver hair in a braid down her back.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Boo! (Who? Me?) Yes, you. (But I’m grown up.) So what?
Professor Glenn Sparks’ office at Purdue University is filled with collections of written accounts from people providing detailed descriptions of film, television or other visual media experiences they wish they had never encountered.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Whatever else, try to remember to not shake the can
“Warning: Contents under pressure.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: For two months of lattes, you can own (part of) a grocery store
It’s too bad the Terre Foods Cooperative Market isn’t a Wall Street investment bank or the auto industry. Then, the federal government would come through with some guaranteed loans so the much-anticipated project could kick into high gear.
STEPHANIE SALTER: A decision made in 1994 is still saving lives today
Fifteen years ago I read a newspaper story that altered the direction of my life a few degrees. By my most conservative calculations, that alteration has saved the lives of about a dozen people and restored the sight of four more.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Revelations on the backside of a call to public prayer
Listed as the seventh reason on a flier urging Christians to attend nationwide Life Chain prayer events next Sunday is “To provide God a witness to anoint and use to save lives and change hearts in each local area.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Give me that piece of your mind with a smile and a shoeshine
Because so many of you apparently are being urged to do so by your favorite radio, TV and Internet gurus, I’d like to offer a few pointers on how to get what you want from your local, knee-jerk liberal, socialism-mongering newspaper.
Stephanie Salter: Left to our own devices, we’re dividing ourselves to destruction
As the span of years since Sept. 11, 2001, has lengthened and the people of this nation increasingly have turned their fear and frustration on one another, I often find myself imagining Osama bin Laden and whatever remains of his original gang of al Qaida fanatics.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Medical stories that have zero to do with the HC reform fight
Two items today about what we used to call “going to the doctor” or “being in the hospital,” but now refer to with a word or term whose initials are “HC.”
STEPHANIE SALTER: Big surprise: Indiana’s in the Top 10 for pregnant smokers
If Hoosiers or Americans in general really acknowledged the health threat that is smoking, we would have declared a real national war on tobacco addiction — complete with readily available smoking cessation programs and the prescription aids to go with them.
Stephanie Salter: Notes from three sad, intense days in the county courthouse
Friday afternoon, the three-day sentence hearing for Katron Walker came to a close. Judge David Bolk ordered him to serve 95 years in prison for the June 2006 murder of his 4-year-old son, Collin, and the attempted murder of his younger son, who was not yet 3 at the time of the crimes.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Even in tough times, two words ring true: ‘Bon appetit!’
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s relatives.
— Oscar Wilde
These days, I know there are many more “important” things to discuss than Nora Ephron’s new film, “Julie & Julia.” More important things than Julia Child herself, or than the difference between cooking as a task and cooking as an art.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Here’s looking at you, kid — and that is really you, right?
Not long ago, I wore a red, beaded, form-fitting silk gown for six hours and ended up remembering why I’m glad I don’t make my living in the movies.
Stephanie Salter: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon now touch me, babe
Sick of seeing and hearing my fellow Americans yelling at and demonizing one another over — of all things — the future of our good health, I need an antidote.
Stephanie Salter: We were stardust, we were golden, we were very, very wet
Forty years ago Sunday, I was trying really, really hard to get the hell out of Woodstock, N.Y.
That fact has always provided me with a classic good news/bad news story to tell. Or maybe it’s an impress/deflate story.
Stephanie Salter: The view of U.S. women religious from behind the razor wire
As a feminist Roman Catholic, I have watched with interest as news of two Vatican investigations has broken out of insider church circles and into the mainstream.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Support live music, urban renewal and accuracy — for only 10 bucks
If you are among any of the following categories of people, you owe it to yourself (and several other entities) to spend $10 for a ticket to the Claude Thornhill birthday bash Monday night in Harmony Hall:
Stephanie Salter: Something old, something new, something borrowed and Earth-friendly, too
Like so many brides-to-be, Sarah Oblon was fairly fixated on getting exactly the right wedding dress. But it wasn’t visions of Vera Wang and imported peu de soie that swirled in Sarah’s head.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Things stuck in the craw and things about which to crow
I have this list that is getting longer. It is a two-sided list of contrasting items, of things — as the headline indicates — that stick in my craw and things I am inspired to crow about in a good way.
Viewing the moon landing through a 40-year-old lens
One of the best aspects of remembering Apollo 11 is the opportunity to do a where-were-you around an event that is not about death.
STEPHANIE SALTER: They’re scared as hell and they can’t really take it anymore
My mother was pale. Her hands were shaking and her voice was choked. She was standing in her kitchen holding a one-page typed business letter.
STEPHANIE SALTER: Senate judiciary hearings: See Sonia. See Sonia not sweat
Hmmm, let’s see. What could cause a 55-year-old Puerto Rican-American, who grew up in a Bronx housing project, lost her father in childhood, excelled in academics, graduated from Princeton University then Yale Law School, and was appointed to a federal appellate judgeship by the first President Bush, to have a complete meltdown during her Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice?
STEPHANIE SALTER: Autumn 1964: What a long, strange, sexist trip it was
My favorite ad in the 174-page magazine is on the inside back cover. It features a gauzy, color photo of the torso and legs of a slim woman in a long white girdle. In bold, black type above the headless body, the ad asks: “Why do men who hate girdles like girls who wear Warner’s?”
STEPHANIE SALTER: What Robert McNamara learned about war, we need to remember
Would it have been better if Robert S. McNamara had kept all his regrets to himself?
Stephanie Salter: Give me liberty — as soon as we agree on what it is
One of the things I forgot (or never knew) was the Statue of Liberty’s official name: “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
Her French sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholi, bestowed that title upon the monumental work, a gift from the French people that was dedicated in New York on Oct. 28, 1886.
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.

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