Letter From Michiana: Legalizing Cannabis in Indiana (Don’t Hold Your Breath)

Hoosiers like to say that Indiana waits. Waits, that is, for other states to make changes and adopt new-fangled ideas so that we don’t have to. This attitude is promoted by many of our reigning elected officials, who like thinking of Indiana as the cracker barrel philosopher of states, the winking codger who spits and […]

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Letter From Michiana: Weird Spring, weird climate

The lake’s cycles can seem hard to predict. They happen and people get used to them, forgetting that things are bound to change. Now, though, there’s a wild card that’s put the old certainties in a new light — make that a strobe light: climate change.

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Letter From Michiana: Mayor Pete

His eclectic personal story seems uniquely suited to our moment…he can, in other words, speak personally about a variety of experiences in ways most other candidates can’t.

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Letter From Michiana: Our newest national park

This national park, you realize, is actually a last line of resistance, a green and blue membrane holding back the accumulated pressure human will has piled on the earth and insisted was progress.

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Letter From Michiana: Addicted to coal

This wasn’t going to be easy. Getting over an addiction can be excruciating. And everybody knows Indiana is hooked on coal. The Hoosier state ranks third in the nation in coal consumption. We’re seventh in coal production. Being this dependent on a famously cancer-causing substance can cause an addict to resort to all kinds of […]

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Letter From Michiana: Waiting on a train: the pressure to suburbanize

Suburbanization could efface the remarkable compound of urban grit and natural beauty that makes Michigan City unlike any other community in Michiana.

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Letter From Michiana: Standing up to Hoosier colonialism: Karen Tallian’s SB 553

Hoosiers in Michiana are long used to being treated like a colony. In the first place, where most of Indiana is landlocked, we live on one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. This has not only set us apart, it has set us up for exploitation

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Letter From Michiana: Battling Privatizing Beach Zombies: Who Are Those Guys?

A lot of people — Hoosiers included — don’t think of beaches when they think of Indiana.  But our beaches are one this state’s most valuable natural resources, places of great beauty that also create and contribute to a sense of shared community.

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