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How the donut man from Bunkers Dunkers in Jefferson helped land RAGBRAI XXXVI for an overnight stop here!
The route for the 2008 RAGBRAI -- that's the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa -- includes our Greene County seat of Jefferson as an overnight stop on Monday, July 21. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people will be in Jefferson that night. Read the amazing story here about a chance encounter three years ago in Florida, where our vacationing local donut king Randy Bunkers warmly greeted a stranger who was wearing a RAGBRAI T-shirt. The fellow happened to be RAGBRAI director T.J. Juskiewicz -- and now, hurrah! RAGBRAI is coming our way!
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Our hometown of
There’s the annual Cooper Prom (for all ages), concerts, basketball, suppers, ice cream socials and people coming through all the time on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. Here is the story on the little community in Greene County, Iowa, that is now home for the Offenburgers.
[READ MORE]
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Carla Offenburger's book reviews “Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl,” by Carol Bodensteiner “Boomsday,” by Christopher Buckley “The Firm,” by John Grisham “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp “Whose Names are Unknown,” by Sanora Babb “Dreams from My Father,” by Barack Obama “Susannah’s Garden,” by Debbie Macomber “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time,” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin “The Potluck Club: A Novel,” by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson “The Horizontal World: Growing up wild in the middle of nowhere,” by Debra Marquart “The life all around me by Ellen Foster,” by Kaye Gibbons “Three Junes” by Julia Glass, and “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” by Lisa See “What Do Mormons Believe?” by Rex E. Lee “The Good Earth,” by Pearl S. Buck “The Innocent Man,” by John Grisham “Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert “The Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio,” by Terry Ryan “Grace from the Garden: Changing the World One Garden at a Time,” by Debra Landwehr Engle (2003) “Water for Elephants,” by Sara Gruen “Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith,” by Anne Lamott “Rise and Shine,” by Anna Quindlen “Miss American Pie, a diary of love, secrets, and growing up in the 1970s,” by Margaret Sartor “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett “Nature Girl,” by Carl Hiaasen “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir,” by Bill Bryson “Widow of the South,” by Robert Hicks “Marley and Me,” by John Grogan “A Christmas Visitor,” by Anne Perry “If Grace is True: Why God will Save Every Person,” by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland “Hoot,” by Carl Hiaasen “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman,” by Nora Ephron “Five Days to an Organized Life,” by Lucy H. Hedrick “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison “Bad Girl Creek,” by Jo-Ann Mapson “The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother,” by James McBride “Invisible Acts of Power: Personal Choices That Create Miracles,” by Caroline Myss “One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd: A Novel,” by Jim Fergus “A Lantern in Her Hand,” by Bess Streeter Aldrich “The Three Miss Margarets,” by Louise Shaffer “The Lincoln Lawyer,” by Michael Connelly “Shop Girl,” by Steve Martin “Change Me Into Zeus’ Daughter,” by Barbara Robinette Moss “Humble Pie: Musings on what lies beneath the crust,” by Anne Dimock “Ellen Foster,” by Kaye Gibbons “How to Make an American Quilt,” by Whitney Otto “The Mermaid Chair,” by Sue Monk Kidd “Lillian’s Legacy: Marriage and Murder in rural Iowa,” by Carroll R. McKibbin “Unlikely Angel,” by Ashley Smith “Our Endangered Values,” by Jimmy Carter (2005) “Outrage, Passion & Uncommon Sense,” by Michael Gartner “Knitting,” by Anne Bartlett (2005) “Jesus in the Underwear Drawer” by Sandra Flahive (2005) “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith,” by Anne Lamott “Midnight Assassin,” by Patricia L. Bryan & Thomas Wolf (2005 “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It,” by Jim Wallis (2005) “Sky All Around,” by Sarah Shey (2005) ''Bernie Saggau & the Iowa Boys: The Centennial History of the Iowa High School Athletic Association,'' by Chuck Offenburger “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson (2004) “Standing in the Rainbow,” by Fannie Flagg “The Child Who Never Grew,” by Pearl S. Buck “Aprons on a Clothesline,” by Traci DePree “Evita: The Real Life of Eva Peron,” by Nicholas Fraser & Marysa Navarro “God Save the Sweet Potato Queens,” by Jill Conner Browne ''Charms for the Easy Life'' by Kaye Gibbons (1994) “Pay It Down! From debt to wealth on $10 a day,” by Jean Chatzky “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett “Miles from Nowhere: Tales from America’s Contemporary Frontier,” by Dayton Duncan “Cat’s Eyewitness,” by Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown “All I Did Was Ask,” by Terry Gross “Nickel and Dimed,” by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) “Blue Shoe,” by Anne Lamott “The Gift of the Deer,” by Helen Hoover “Peace Like a River,” by Leif Enger (2001) “The Only Dance In Iowa: A History of Six-Player Girls’ Basketball,” by Max McElwain “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini (2003) “Christ’s Passion – The Way of the Cross: Prayerful Reflections,” by Mary Beth Young, with original artwork by Mark Barone (2004) “Divining Women,” by Kaye Gibbons (2004) “Invisible Acts of Power: Personal Choices That Create Miracles,” by Caroline Myss “A Place in the Woods,” by Helen Hoover (1969) “Courting Trouble,” by Lisa Scottoline (2002) “The Jane Austen Book Club,” by Karen Joy Fowler (2004) “It’s Not About Me,” by Max Lucado (2004) “The Christmas Train,” by David Baldacci (2002) “Portrait of a Marriage,” by Pearl S. Buck (1941) When all else fails, buy a book “Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office 101,” by Lois P. Frankel (2002) “Tathea,” by Anne Perry (1999) “Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation,” by Cokie Roberts “Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen “Now is the Time to Open Your Heart,” by Alice Walker “The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People,” by David Niven “O Pioneers!” by Willa Cather “Journey Through Heartsongs,” by Mattie J.T. Stepanek “Tears of the Giraffe,” by Alexander McCall Smith (2000) “Ripples from the Zambezi,” by Ernesto Sirolli (1999) “Just Shy of Harmony,” by Philip Gulley (2002) “The Last Girls,” by Lee Smith (2002) “The Red Tent,” by Anita Diamant (1998) “Epicurean Simplicity,” by Stephanie Mills (2002) “A Girl Named Zippy,” by Haven Kimmel (2001) “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” by Audrey Niffenegger (2004) “The Shop on Blossom Street,” by Debbie Macomber (2004) “The Holy Ground,” poetry by Michael Carey (2004) “A Voice in the Wind,” by Francine Rivers (1993) “Pitching my Tent,” by Anita Diamant (2003) “Main Street,” by Sinclair Lewis (1920) “The Book of Salt,” by Monique Truong (2003) “Seasons of Grace: Wisdom from the Cloister,” by Mother Gail Fitzpatrick “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” by Lynne Truss “The Great Iowa Touring Book,” by Mike Whye “Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid,” “You Don’t Have to be Rich,” by Jean Chatzky (2003) “Five Thousand Days Like This One,” by Jane Brox “The Last Juror,” by John Grisham “Elizabeth and Her German Garden,” by Elizabeth Von Arnim “Blindsided by Grace: Entering the World of Disability,” by Robert F. Molsberry “Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Ecomony,” edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild “A Life of Her Own,” by Emilie Carles “The Story of My Father,” by Sue Miller “Confederates in the Attic,” by Tony Horwitz “An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood” by Jimmy Carter “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” by Tracy Chevalier “Five Quarters of the Orange,” by Joanne Harris “God is in the Small Stuff and it all matters,” by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz “My Losing Season,” by Pat Conroy “Dreaming in Cuban,” by Cristina Garcia “Evensong,” by Gail Godwin “Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die,” by “Nun Other Than” Karol Jackowski “Fahrenheit 451,” by Ray Bradbury “A Can of Peas,” by Traci DePree “Renewing the Countryside: Iowa,” edited by Shellie Orngard and Jan Joannides “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” by Mitch Albom (2003) “Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden,” by Diane Ackerman “Skipping Christmas,” by John Grisham “Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of our Elders,” by Mary Pipher “The Book of Famous Iowans,” by Douglas Bauer “The Lazy Way to Success,” by Fred Gratzon “Eyes at the Window,” by Evie Yoder Miller “Getting Mother’s Body,” by Suzan-Lori Parks “Wait Till Next Year,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin “What Should I Do With My Life?” by Po Bronson “Horse, Follow Closely,” by GaWaNi Pony Boy “Understood Betsy,” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher “Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden,” by Diane Ackerman “Our Lady of the Lost and Found,” by Diane Schoemperlen “Organizing from the Inside Out,” by Julie Morgenstein “Words Fail Me,” by Patricia O’Conner “Message in a Bottle,” by Nicholas Sparks “Celebration of Discipline,” by Richard J. Foster “Bel Canto,” by Ann Patchett “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” by Alexander McCall Smith “The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner)” by Jill Conner Browne “Living History” by Hillary Rodham Clinton “Thoughts in Solitude” by Thomas Merton “Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home” by Sue Bender “American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads” by Pascale Le Draoulec “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” by J.K. Rowling “Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden” by Diane Ackerman “All Over but the Shoutin’,” by Rick Bragg, the recently departed New York Times reporter “Small Wonder,” novelist Barbara Kingsolver's new collection of essays and commentaries “Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark’s America,” by Dayton Duncan “Passing” by Nella Larsen “On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon” by Kaye Gibbons “The Bingo Queens of Paradise” By June Park “The Wife” by Meg Wolitzer “Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden” by Diane Ackerman “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett “The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom,” by Don Miguel Ruiz (1997) and “Simplify Your Life,” by Elaine St. James (1994) ''The Secret Life of Bees,'' a novel by Sue Monk Kidd ''Enemy Women'' by Paulette Jiles "Open House" by Elizabeth Berg "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen
The route for the 2008 RAGBRAI -- that's the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa -- includes our Greene County seat of Jefferson as an overnight stop on Monday, July 21. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people will be in Jefferson that night. Read the amazing story here about a chance encounter three years ago in Florida, where our vacationing local donut king Randy Bunkers warmly greeted a stranger who was wearing a RAGBRAI T-shirt. The fellow happened to be RAGBRAI director T.J. Juskiewicz -- and now, hurrah! RAGBRAI is coming our way!
There’s the annual Cooper Prom (for all ages), concerts, basketball, suppers, ice cream socials and people coming through all the time on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. Here is the story on the little community in Greene County, Iowa, that is now home for the Offenburgers.
