By CHUCK OFFENBURGER DES MOINES, Iowa, Sept. 26, 2018 — For more than 30 years, public officials, individuals and groups in Iowa have been advocating for better U.S. relations, trade and tourism with the neighboring island nation of Cuba. That effort will be explored and renewed on Sunday, Oct. 7, with an afternoon forum “Why Cuba…
DES MOINES, Iowa, Oct. 5, 2018 — Rev. Stan Dotson — pastor, professor, author, musician, tour guide and raconteur of the first rank — is one of very few Americans now actually living and working in Cuba. The 56-year-old Dotson, whose permanent American home is in Asheville, N.C., is now associate pastor of the First…
Republished here is my column from the Feb. 15, 1983, edition of the Des Moines Register, a sort of review of the annual “victory party” that a slow-pitch softball team in the city had at the Des Moines Club, of all places. It was headlined “The Mad Dogs howl again.” This is now getting some…
IDA GROVE, Iowa, Sept. 17, 2018 — Photographer Don Poggensee says in his observations of birds in Iowa, he notices that the hummingbirds are usually the first to start moving south, “as early as the end of August or the start of September.” So he took a few photos of ruby-throated hummingbirds, “our most common…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Aug. 19, 2018 – I’ve long said that one of the things I like most about being a Catholic is that the church is slow to bend to the social whims of the moment, including my own. That has probably helped Catholicism survive for centuries in the many very different…