PERRY, Iowa, Feb. 17, 2015 — Photographer Don Poggensee was on hand on Saturday, Feb. 7, for the start of the 38th annual “BRR” — that’s the 24-mile “Bicycle Ride to Rippey” and back — that is sponsored by the Perry Chamber of Commerce. The ride rolls, no matter the weather, and this year’s event…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER JEFFERSON, Iowa, Jan. 30, 2015 — When I heard that Chicago Cubs great Ernie Banks had died last week, I immediately thought of Randy Bunkers, co-owner with his wife Phyllis of the famous Bunkers Dunkers Bakery on the east side of the courthouse square in our county seat town of Jefferson. As…
A note from Chuck Offenburger: Our friend Paul Kurtz, whom we first came to know when we were undergraduate students at Vanderbilt University, had a long and distinguished career as a professor and administrator at the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Ga. He retired a year ago and, on Jan. 26, was…
By CARLA OFFENBURGER COOPER, Ia., Feb. 17, 2015 – I didn’t waste any time or rest on my laurels as I could have easily done after having read 60 books in 2014. My goal, as it is every year is 52 books, and in years past it’s been hit or miss, but always really close.…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER IOWA CITY, Iowa, Feb. 5, 2015 – I had a flashback the other night to April of 1983, when I learned that the University of Iowa was offering a course in “billiards.” So of course, I drove right over here to audit the class one evening back then, and wrote the following…
IDA GROVE, Iowa, Jan. 29, 2015 – Photographer Don Poggensee, who lives in this northwest Iowa town, reminds us that “in the midst of winter, there are wonderful scenic images all around us, if we take time to see them.” He said in the cold clean air, things seem to look different — in a good way. “I love…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Jan. 13, 2015 – If you were a college student in the mid to late 1960s, especially in the South like I was at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, you had a front row seat to observe some of the biggest changes in American history. But if you had any heart at…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Jan. 14, 2015 – Late last spring, an ugly story that had been hiding for 45 years erupted in front of me, and I barely knew what to think. It involves a black basketball player beating up a white sportswriter in our student years back at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. I was…
IDA GROVE, Iowa, Dec. 23, 2014 — Photographer Don Poggensee says it was 25 years ago this fall when he first saw a saw-whet owl, a small, sharp-featured “boreal” owl around his home community here in northwest Iowa. The saw-whet, also called a “northern saw-whet,” is about the size of a robin. They tend to hide…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Oct. 18, 2014 – Over the years, when the well-known Des Moines-area meteorologist Charlie Notis has mentioned what the first 10 years of his childhood were like, it’s been a shock to his friends. “When I first met my wife Elaine when we were in grad school at Iowa State,…
