Articles

Commentary: Gray is the new blonde-not!

Photos of four area university presidents graced the cover of The Indianapolis Star’s Sunday arts and entertainment section back in March. They were all female. My first reaction was, “Isn’t it cool that women are reaching the highest echelon of higher ed?” My second reaction was, “Why don’t any of them have gray hair?” Well, surely some of them do, since at that time their ages ranged from 59-66. It just doesn’t show. I was surprised. If there is a…

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Commentary: Can we Bank on Indianapolis?

Whoa. Those figures, based on national averages from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., don’t paint a pretty picture. People without bank accounts tend to keep cash at home or in their pockets, which increases the likelihood of crime. They create a market in which predatory lenders can thrive. They fail to reach their full potential, and so do the cities where they live. We have a problem. Now what can we do about it? We could take a cue from…

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Commentary: Do we need a disaster to wake us up?

About 20,000 historic properties were damaged in the storm, and Gay, executive director of Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, has led the charge to save them. “We never felt like throwing up our hands,” Gay said. “We don’t do that.” The Preservation Resource Center contacted owners of the nearly 4,000 historic properties that were condemned after the hurricane. About 600 of them have been spared to date. The PRC also has been helping review the planned demolition of buildings…

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Commentary: A kind of blast kids can live without

Apparently, teen-agers driving around with 5,000-decibel subwoofers in their trunks are not the only ones who don’t get this: Many of us are slowly going deaf. Ten percent of Americans under 70 suffer from noise-induced hearing loss, according to the National Institutes of Health. It’s bad enough that the average 25-year-old carpenter has “50-yearold ears” thanks to noise on the job, and that noise-induced hearing loss is the most common work-related medical problem. But we’re not just talking about adults….

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