Paula Dunn

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn Former State Senator Luke Kenley recently tipped me off to an alumni profile of Anne Neal Petri in the current issue of Harvard Magazine.  When Senator Kenley mentioned that Petri was Jim Neal’s daughter, I drew a blank for a moment. Then, it hit me that he was…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn This turned out to be another reader / this and that column. To begin, I have a correction to make. Larry Cloud pointed out that a person who’s celebrated their 90th birthday isn’t in their ninth decade. They’ve actually started on their tenth decade. He’s right. I checked.…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn Have you ever wondered why a couple of buildings on the south side of the courthouse square aren’t as tall as others on that block? The reason for that dates back to the year 1952. Seventy-four years ago last week, January 8, 1952, a contractor and his two…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn That recent spell of frigid temperatures took me back to my first experience working at Conner Prairie 50 years ago. (50 years? YIKES!) I was a volunteer during their 1975 Christmas celebration. I stood outside the Conner house and directed people toward the Village (aka Prairietown these days)…

This was supposed to be a reader column, but it’s really part reader and part “this and that.” After I wrote about Strawtown’s mounds, Ed Snyder emailed that he’d heard rumors other mounds had existed in this county at one time, but that they’d been lost to agriculture or used as levees along the river.…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn When I was trying to come up with an idea for this week’s column, it occurred to me that although I’ve written several times about cookies for the holiday season, I’ve never touched on the savory food that was standard fare at local holiday parties back in the…

Remember Thanksgiving? You know — that day at the end of November that’s traditionally been reserved for contemplating how grateful we are for all the good things in our lives. I can understand stores wanting to get their Christmas merchandise out ahead of the holidays and I know some people like to shop pretty early,…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn A while back I ran across a ghost story in the July 24, 1892 Indianapolis Journal that seemed like a perfect Halloween column. It’s a rather lengthy tale of a haunted farmhouse “nine miles north of the town of Sheridan, in Hamilton County.” During my background research, however,…

From Time to Thyme By Paula Dunn I usually run the winter weather forecast column during the first part of October, but I procrastinated this year because it was so hot then. I figured I’d stand a better chance of getting persimmon seed predictions if I waited until the weather was cooler. (Persimmons don’t usually…

Concluding the trial of D. C. Stephenson and his bodyguards, Earl Gentry and Earl Klinck. . .  With the jury finally selected, the trial began in earnest. Emotions were running so high that Hamilton County Sheriff Charles Gooding took to sitting behind the defendants to ensure their safety, something he’d never done before. Although nothing…