By CHUCK OFFENBURGER CARROLL, Iowa, August 4, 2017 — Two months and two nights ago, the Storm Lake Whitecaps and the Carroll Merchants faced each other in the opening game of the new Pioneer Collegiate Baseball League right here in front of an overflow crowd of 1,100 fans in historic Merchants Park. Tonight, the same…
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 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 COOPER, Iowa, July 4, 2017 — Grab your cameras and head out to a farm on this Independence Day in 2017. Rural Iowa — at least what we’re seeing of it around us in west central Iowa — seldom ever looks better than this. Green, lush, full. As our pals the Lawtons…
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…