Here’s what I want you to do: Take your left index finger and place it on your chin. Now, slide it along your jaw up to your left ear. Now slide it straight down your neck. When you’ve reached the base, slide your finger outward, halfway to your shoulder. Now, imagine that instead of a fingertip, you employ a head-and-neck surgeon with a scalpel. And imagine that after slicing your jaw and neck, he pulls down the resulting flap of…
My son, Austin, is in love. He doesn’t use those words, exactly-at least not with his old man. But he’s listening to moody music, meeting his love’s parents and taking her out to movies. Most telling: When I suggested he spend time with other teen-agers during our Christmas-week cruise, he said, “No, I’m taken.” Last weekend, Austin was listening to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” Deeming it “a very sad song,” he was inspired to write a poem. “I’m not usually much…
TO: Elected officials in Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Johnson, Madison, Morgan and Shelby counties FROM: Bruce Hetrick, Marion County Center Township peon Years ago, I wrote an advertisement for my boss. Under the headline “A different drummer,” it began: “One way to lead is to find a parade and step before it. A better way is to start the parade and keep it going.” Well, my friends, as stewards of central Indiana’s suburban communities, you face an unprecedented opportunity to…
The other night, former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton appeared on my TV. They said the tsunami had been devastating. They said people need help. They asked me to send money. “No one can change what happened,” Bush said. “But we can all Slow tsunami wreaks havoc in Indiana change what happens next,” Clinton said. I went to lunch with my editor. After the waiter announced the specials, he pointed to a tent card on the table. It…
In the Jan. 3 issue of The New Yorker, writer Malcolm Gladwell reviews Pulitzer Prize-winner Jared Diamond’s new book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Diamond’s premise, says Gladwell, “stands in sharp contrast to the conventional explanations for a society’s collapse.” While conventional wisdom has it that “civilizations are destroyed by forces outside their control, by acts of God,” Gladwell writes, “the lesson of ‘Collapse’ is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they…
My family and I spent Christmas week on a boat, in the ocean, with hundreds of people from Indonesia. And because they were comforting us, not vice versa, it seemed all wrong. The day after Christmas, Pam, Austin, Zach and I awoke at 3 a.m. We showered, dressed and lugged our suitcases downstairs. At 4 a.m., the limousine pulled up in our snowy driveway. The chauffeur loaded our luggage into the Cadillac’s trunk, helped us aboard and drove through icy…
Bruce Hetrick is on vacation this week. In his absence, this column, which appeared on Jan. 28, 2002, is being reprinted. Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, died this month. Most folks remember Dave for his TV commercials. I recall hometown pride, because Dave learned the restaurant business from a Fort Wayne chicken establishment I frequented in my youth. Over the years, I helped build Dave’s fortune one “single everything, no onion” at a time. Wendy’s ads-especially the ones before…
