More than a year into it now, this continuing coronavirus confinement is not only boring, tedious and nerve-wracking, it’s getting expensive. Granted, I haven’t spent nearly as much on dining out in the past year. But then again, my Kroger expenditures have doubled or tripled for the month as I’ve eaten my way through the grub I had stashed in the pantry and freezer...

And now … Hank Aaron. Father Time, it seems is breaking up that old gang of mine. Hank Aaron, who died Friday at age 86, becomes the 10th Hall of Famer to die since the start of 2020. He joins Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan, Lou Brock, Al Kaline, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton and Manager Tommy Lasorda in passing away and taking generations of memories with them. Wasn’t it bad enough that 2020 had already taken sports greats Gale Sayers and Kobe Bryant from us?...

So Election Day 2020 is in the books, folks. All together now, exhale. Thank goodness. The results speak for themselves. Getting there, as they say, is half the battle. More like 75 or 80 percent this time. Being a journalist in this Time of COVID hasn’t been easy, believe you me. And now with the greatest show on earth unfolding in front of us, we have to play with one hand tied behind our back ... or maybe both hands. Sorry, no Zoom meetings allowed...

Last Wednesday night I was hunkered down in my living room, watching a late-night August hockey game, when the peace was disturbed by the arrival of an Indiana bat. He zoomed overhead, looped around the room, fluttered into the dining room and made the downstairs loop complete by sailing into the utility room, re-emerging into the hallway and back out for another lap of the living room. I had no clue what I was going to do...

Divide and conquer. It’s a simple strategy really, although it didn’t work so well for General Custer and his 7th Cavalry...

If I remember right, a year ago at this time, the only meds I was putting in my body were the three Aleve tablets I took each morning...

Like everyone else, I've seen the videos of so-called porch pirates making the rounds. The lady making off with a couple big boxes only to have them turn out to be cat litter. The people who send their little girl up to the porch to pilfer a parcel...

Over the course of covering 30-plus Putnam County Fairs, I've formulated my own series of platitudes about the fair and when to really consider it in full swing. To me, the fair never officially starts until we've been rained on at least once (that's been every day so far)...

Until recently, cemeteries essentially were something I have mostly hoped to stay out of for as long as humanly possible. But on a recent visit to Boone-Hutcheson Cemetery, the beauty of the rural surroundings captivated me. The property is nothing short of beautiful to behold with a gorgeous backdrop of the Big Walnut Valley creating postcard-like photo opportunities all around...

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, one of the great delights of my youth was listening to WLS Radio and particularly disc jockey Larry Lujack and his "Animal Stories" segments. That's where "Old Uncle Lar" would read "Little Snot-Nosed Tommy" an exaggerated and weirdly written animal-related story that never failed to entertain and always ended with Little Tommy pleading,"Is the (insert beaver, buffalo or baboon here) OK, Uncle Lar?"...

If you've been following the work of the Greencastle City Council in recent weeks, you know that its members have endeavored to right some longtime wrongs by turning a couple of perilous intersections into four-way stops. One is the no-brainer at Vine and Franklin streets, where even before Wasser Brewing Co. ...

We're right in the thick of baseball season these days as pennant races loom. And football season awaits, kicking off within the week in the college ranks. But keeping our eye on the ball here in Greencastle, we know it's really music season. As The Zombies once sang, "it's the time of the season when love runs high."...

Perhaps not since Frank Valli, his falsetto and the Four Seasons has anyone hit the high notes better than the last four mayors of Greencastle in their recent panel appearance at DePauw University. The brainchild of DePauw political science professor Bruce Stinebrickner, the two-hour mayoral event earlier this month was interesting, insightful, funny and a great reminder of how far we've come as a community and how we've gotten there...

Honestly, I don't know what it is about me and musicals. I enjoy the heck out of some of them. Others not so much. "Guys and Dolls" is an oldie but a goodie. I inherited my appreciation of that from my dad, who had me singing "I got a horse right here, his name is Paul Revere ..." when I was about nine. And betting harness races when I was 15...

In what probably should have been a foreboding admission but my "ex" never got into "Seinfeld." In fact, she acknowledged she only watched it because that's what everybody would be talking about it the next morning at work and she didn't want to be left out of the conversation...

Ad-libs, political zingers, a dash of innuendo and a few quips about our Hoosier neighbors from Carmel to Greenwood ... What could be more fun than all that rolled into a whodunit in which the audience helps determine the culprit? And no, it wasn't Col. Mustard or Professor Plum, candlestick or not...

OK, so it's not even officially winter yet, and already I'm over it. The first day of our annual winter indignation doesn't technically arrive until next Wednesday (Dec. 21), yet here we are already talking single digits and windchills and school delays...

Being a Chicago Cubs' fan has instilled in me several virtues over the course of my lifetime. Perseverance. Loyalty. Humility. Futility. Patience. Ah, patience. It wasn't bad enough that the baseball gods made us wait 71 years for a return to the World Series and 108 years to repeat victory there. But when the Cubs whittled all that frustration down to one single, solitary baseball game Wednesday night, they felt compelled to tax our patience even more...

It's been 36 hours or so now and my feet are still moving like the music is still playing. Wow, was that a great time Saturday evening on the courthouse square or what? Like R-O-C-K in the U.S.A. good ... Crash! Boom! Bang! The seventh annual Greencastle Music Festival certainly didn't disappoint...

Marvin's -- the Greencastle eatery that famously "delivers anywhere" -- has made some noteworthy "deliveries" over the years. There was that time students unfurled a "Marvin's delivers" sign on Red Square in Moscow and found themselves in some Cold War hot water...