Our town

I thought The Journal Gazette's editorial Sunday on traffic tickets was thoughtful and well-said, and I found myself largely in agreement with it right up until the unfortunate last sentence.

Is cornpone humor acceptable if we pretend it isn't cornpone humor? I ask having attended the "Red Green Wit & Wisdom Tour" show on Saturday night. We were in the $10 balcony cheap seats, but that was OK -- no seat in the Scottish Rite is that far away from the stage. It wasn't necessary to see Red that clearly anyway; if you've ever seen his PBS show, you can easily fill in the facial-expression blanks somewhere below the hunting hat and above the plaid shirt.

If a school system has to adopt a "show up or else" policy, it's a good sign things have gotten out of hand. At IPS, they plan to start firing teachers who fail to report absences or tardies, flunk students who don't show up regularly and on time, and even report parents to Child Protective Serives if their children rack up too many absences or tardies. This is how bad it's gotten:

Public Access Michiana Inc. wants a share of cable franchise fees collected by South Bend so it can bring back Channel 99, the public accesc channel they once had there. Fort Wayne gets a good mention:

How to kill competition and drive up the cost for consumers -- just try a little overregulation, the way a Republican administration in Indianapolis is doing:

Seven cab companies are no longer able to operate in Indianapolis after their licenses were not renewed by the city's Department of Code Enforcement for a slew of major violations.

There are a couple of significant changes in the city's new trash contract:

For the past two days, I've been harangued by phone and e-mail and in person over a letter to the editor we published Monday. It spoke against the recent City Council proposal to ban K2:

The "Mayor's office may be too lavish" story keeps making the rounds. We had something on it a couple of weeks ago in which Councilman Tom Smith said he thought "the posh executive suite of the former Lincoln Nationl Corp.

(This is an expanded version of my column in Saturday's paper.)

The last time I had been to Highland Park Cemetery was four years ago, when we buried my mother there. The time before that was 1984, for my father. Fair to say I don't like cemeteries, I guess.

Desperate times:

More than 1,500 picked up applications for 80 new hotel and restaurant jobs in Fort Wayne Tuesday and more people are applying today and tomorrow.

People waited up to three hours for a chance at the 60 full time and 20 part time positions at Fort Wayne's newest hotel and restaurant, Courtyard by Marriott and Champions Sports Restaurant.

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