Tiptoeing through the tulips . . .

Scattershooting while missing the wonderful work of Bob Collins . . .

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FOR THE record, I’ve never been confused with Tiny Tim (Google him, millennials – Baby Boomers remember him . . . and probably wish they didn’t). My hair was never that long. I sang bass in the choir. And I can’t play a ukulele. Now that we have that cleared up . . .

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THIS WILL be my final column for a few weeks (I hope). If the good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be back and better than ever sometime in March.

For the eight or nine of you regulars who follow my scribbles, this is the week for my bypass surgery. And for you guys keeping score at home, I’m hoping the good folks working here will be kind enough to throw an update in and share how the whole thing went. Hopefully it’ll be good news or that statement about “a few weeks” might be a tad off-base!

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HERE’S A question: When did we become so soft as a society that we now need warning labels on television shows . . . AFTER EVERY COMMERCIAL. Do we really need to be alerted that the next few minutes will contain smoking? Or bad language? Or violence? Heck, that sounds like any weekend from back in the day.

Surely we’re tougher than that. Maybe? Hopefully?

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WHO ARE “they?” Ever notice how many times “they” get the blame or credit for something? Exactly who are “they?” And where are “they?” I’d like to talk to “them.” It sounds like “they” have a lot of answers to questions I’d like to ask “the.”

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FEBRUARY, as you know, is Black History Month. Isn’t it astounding and sad that we still care deeply about the pigmentation that causes skin color? Wouldn’t it be nice (and far more important) if a person’s character mattered more than skin color? Heck, wouldn’t it be even nicer if we all left the judging of others to the man upstairs? I’m not an expert on the Bible, but I seem to recall that’s what He told us to do.

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HERE IS a heart-felt and very sincere thank you to all the wonderful people I am lucky enough to work with. They will all take on more work in the next few weeks, and I want to publicly acknowledge how much I both appreciate and admire them. As many of you know, it’s a new and very different day for newspapers and I am truly lucky to be with the team we have here. Many thanks, Gang!

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I’LL BET several of you remember Robert Joseph (Bob) Collins. The former Sports Editor of the Indianapolis Star was one of a handful of scribes I read as much as possible 100 or so years ago when I was just a lad. He and Don Jellison, Wayne Fuson, Blackie Sherrod and so many others had a lot to do with this newspaper vagabond going into the business. All of them are gone now and newspapers are much poorer for that fact.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically on Wednesdays in The Paper. Timmons is the publisher of The Paper and can be contacted at [email protected]