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…
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…
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…