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Applause, Applause

Each Saturday, The Express community newspaper highlights people, groups and activities our readers deem worthy of applause. “The Porter Township Library staff would like to THANK The Express for mentioning our summer library program in Around the Town! The children had a great time and the program was a success! Thanks again! — Sharon Fuge and the Porter Township Library Staff YOU HAVE THE POWER If you would like to make a nomination for our weekly Saturday morning round of “Applause” for someone or some group for doing something special, send your nomination to ...

More notable Havenites

The late C. Grant Miller, founder of Mor-Car-Motors on the Bully, was a notable Havenite. One evening, sitting on a bench outside his car lot (now Dollar Tree), Grant departed intuitive words of wisdom: “Steve, sales is the only job where you write your own paycheck.” Later he grew Mor-Car into a Chrysler dealership. We stopped at “Sals,” (now Hanger 9) when a bothersome banker antagonized Grant. The annoying loan officer, along with tables and chairs, were soon strewn about the floor! The late Paul Mahoney, music lover and owner of Sals, up-righted the furniture like ...

Dear Annie: Mother in the middle

Dear Annie: I’m writing for advice about a dear friend, “Meg,” who we’ve known for more than 40 years. She has a son, “Rodney,” who went to high school with our son and who has always been on the edge of being an outlaw. Over the years, we’ve seen Rodney continuously depend on his parents to finance his escapades. We saw him wreck his car and then his parents’ so that, for a time, the family had no means of transportation. We saw Meg pay for a very expensive college education where he only took one course: bowling. We saw Rodney join a fraternity where he quickly ...

Antique musical devices are usually worth something

There is a general rule in antiques: If it makes a sound (and is supposed to), it’s worth something. The rule usually refers to chiming clocks, music boxes, instruments, and noisemaking toys. If you look into the history of these items, you can start to see some similarities. While ...

Trump’s most powerful enablers wear judicial robes

In the first Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton warned that a great risk to liberty comes from those who start out as “demagogues” and end up as “tyrants.” He nevertheless judged the risk worth taking to establish a constitutional republic. He can be forgiven for taking that chance. Back in 1787, there was no obvious suspect on the horizon about to overturn the new republic — certainly not George Washington, the inevitable choice for the new nation’s first president. Today’s justices of the U.S. Supreme Court cannot be let off so easily. A potential tyrant has arisen ...

What a 700-year-old fresco can teach America

There are moments when history reaches across the centuries with startling clarity. Standing in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, and looking at Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Allegory of Good and Bad Government,” I had one of those moments. Nearly 700 years old, the series of fresco paintings includes a depiction of a bustling city that illustrates the effects of good government, as well as representations of the decay that results from arbitrary and unjust rulers. The visual treatise on political economy holds important lessons for us today. Lorenzetti’s city isn’t thriving ...