By MARY RICHE DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 19, 2023 — I love celebrating my birthday. And I like the pivot point of a birth date, giving me reason to reflect on the past year while dreaming about the year ahead. On my birthday in late 2021, there was absolutely nothing, not even a distant glimmer,…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER DES MOINES, Iowa, Feb. 1, 2023 – As my wife Mary Riche has reported elsewhere, we recently spent five days in New York City – an experience that was my gift for her 75th birthday. It was as fabulous as you might imagine. We saw “Music Man” and “Funny Girl” on Broadway. …
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 19, 2023 – It was cold, gray and snowing in Iowa as I started writing this. The weather forecast was for up to a foot of snow in parts of the state. Mid-January. A perfect time in Iowa to, uh, be in Cuba. Know what I mean? In…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Jan. 8, 2023 – When your 97-year-old neighbor dies and you find yourself sitting in church at his funeral thinking “I want to be like Stephen Molle when I grow up,” that’s a pretty good measure of his life. Hundreds of us have been remembering and sharing our stories about…
PHOTOS BY MARY RICHE DES MOINES, Iowa, Jan. 21, 2023 — There was a beautiful snow Wednesday evening into Thursday morning. We got four inches on our patio in Des Moines, eight inches around our apartment in Jefferson and nearly a foot in areas on to the northwest. That made Mary Riche decide to spend…