By CHUCK OFFENBURGER BANCROFT, Iowa, June 16, 2017 — So Carla Offenburger and I, devoted baseball fans that we are, had seriously been considering taking our fold-up touring bicycles out to Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We’d stay for a week, pedaling our bikes into the nearby resort towns, which have teams of college all-stars playing in…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER STORM LAKE, Iowa, May 24, 2017 — Back to campus. While the Cullens, publishers of the Storm Lake Times, have been in New York City collecting their recently-announced Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, they asked a few old pals from journalism if we’d help fill-up an edition of the Times in their absence. And…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER HAVANA, Cuba, May 2, 2017 — For some, the most important figure in the history of Cuba is Jose Marti, the writer and philosopher who inspired the fight for independence from Spain in the late 19th century. Others would pick the Castro brothers — the late Fidel and today’s President Raul — who…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, March 17, 2017 – The University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls simply must find a prominent spot on campus – near the business school or library would be particularly appropriate – and create a landscaped “Waller Plaza” with a life-sized or bigger bronze statue of Robert James Waller. The…
By CARLA OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, June 7, 2017 — I have passed the 55-day mark with oral chemotherapy for my adenoid cystic carcinoma cancer. The daily routine seems almost normal now. At 6:30 a.m., I take four very small pills for a total of two milligrams. Then Chuck and I head out for a walk…
IDA GROVE, Iowa, May 1, 2017 — Photographer Don Poggensee says he loves the arrival of spring “with new birds passing thru,” like the northern flicker pictured here in the crabapple blossoms. Actually he was saying that he loves everything about “the change of season from winter into spring,” as he wrote from his home here…
By CARLA OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, April 18, 2017 — Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In her book, “Thanks, Help, Wow,” Anne Lamott says “thank you” can be a prayer. And I’m praying it. I am thankful for a wonderful trip to Cuba and thankful that my cancer sat idle and quiet so I could…
By DON NORTH NEW ORLEANS, La., March 6, 2017 — My father, his older sister, and their three younger brothers all left home in Clearwater, Fla., to serve the nation during World War II. In 1943 my father Donald C. North Jr. served on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in the North Atlantic and in…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER HAVANA, Cuba, April 15, 2017 – So here came a dozen of us, representing Plymouth United Church of Christ in Des Moines, all of us on our first trip ever to Cuba, visiting Plymouth’s “sister church” Ebenezer Baptist in Havana. I’d read, heard and seen enough about what Cuba is like nowadays…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER DES MOINES, Iowa, March 28, 2017 – A dozen of us who leave Wednesday on an 8-day trip to Cuba are just the kind of ambassadors that the U.S. needs to have traveling in the Caribbean nation right now – average Americans. That’s the insight of Tom Vilsack, the former U.S. Secretary…
