Opinion & Columns

More than 100 judges from the likes of Esquire, Bon Appetit, and Vanity Fair narrowed the field of finalists, including these from IM’s 2013 issues.

Those who carry on about flying saucers and abductions are often considered kooks (and let’s face it, some of them might be). But the odds of life beyond our planet are great enough to make even a skeptic wonder.

The Star has more local stuff than it once did, I’ll grant you that, and much of it is good. Sometimes, though, you must get desperate to fill space, as with the piece you ran about a deer beaten on the head with a hammer on I-70.

We’ve forgotten how to die in this country. Death with dignity? Fuhgeddaboudit. Not so long as there are fortunes to be made in keeping us alive.

These days, most gripers seem to be white guys. Every now and then, I hear a disgruntled woman whine about things, but she’s likely married to a grouchy white guy, and the surliness has rubbed off on her.

It was then I realized how lonely I was without a pet. For the first time in my 60-plus years, there was no dog or cat to greet me at the door and warm my lap, no adoring creature to nurture and feed, no nonjudgmental soul to whom I could pour out my heart.

There are new traditions and rites of passage taking root here, from reading (and spotting the local landmarks in) John Green’s novel to hovering in the helium-filled balloon over Conner Prairie. So we created a fresh set of iconic local experiences—“The New Indy Must-Do List.”

For Kristine Bunch, prison was not hypothetical. It was her life—unjustly, she maintains—for more than 16 years before she was able to gather enough evidence, with the help of Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, to convince appellate judges she had been wrongly imprisoned for arson and the murder of her son.

We’ve become accustomed to leaving the bed with what appears to be a temporary crime-scene drawing of our bodies imprinted on the mattress.

When I start my third party, I’ll have to suck up to some rich people to get their money. I don’t ordinarily like spending time with billionaires, but I’ll do it for the good of the country.

“The fact that I’m a woman is the hustle. I could be No. 1 in the world, and some local guy would think, ‘I can beat her.’”

If your spouse ever asks if you’re mad at him or her, do not say “yes.” Don’t believe that psychobabble about the importance of open and honest communication in a marriage. Everyone who says that is divorced

Mary was critically ill, and although she had implored her family not to worry me, they decided I needed to know. All I wanted was to climb in bed beside her, lay my head on her shoulder, and cry, but I didn’t.

Death, though certain, is anything but predictable. And how we react to mortality can be just as unforeseeable.

Until recently, I was unacquainted with Walmart on a personal level, unless you count my son having been fired from his high-school job stocking the candy aisle for declining to work on the night of the first Passover seder.