Our Iowa News Digest

Recent items of interest in our perhaps peculiar view

TOP REPUBLICAN COMES TO TOWN

May 21, 2009, Jefferson -- Matt Strawn, the new state chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, says that despite lopsided GOP losses across Iowa and the nation in the last election cycle, the state party is sitting in a pretty good position.

Strawn 35, is a partner in the Iowa Barnstormers, the Arena Football League team in Des Moines that plays high-scoring, bombs-away offense.

That may give you some insight about what he means when he says what the Republican Party needs to do now in Iowa and elsewhere. ''We are going on offense,'' Strawn told more than 100 Greene County Republicans who gathered in Jefferson for a fundraiser on May 14.

''We have solutions that are consistent with our principles that will win elections,'' Strawn continued. ''We just have to do a better job of communicating them to the public.''

ROLL ON, YOU STEADY BEASTS!

Cooper, May 20, 2009 -- We jumped in our 2002 Chrysler Sebring earlier this week and headed into our county seat town of Jefferson on an errand. Whatho! Just as we pulled out on Iowa Highway 4, the odometer on the car turned over 200,000 miles!

There was a time when we never drove cars past 50,000 miles before we traded. But when we moved out of the Des Moines area and began doing more of our driving on highways instead of city streets, it seems to have extended the life of our cars. When we lived in Storm Lake and were active in a lot of state government, politics and the State Historical Society in Des Moines, I once figured that I had averaged 40 trips to Des Moines per year for five consecutive years. Imagine that -- 200 round-trips, Storm Lake-Des Moines, in five years!

We've also been steady in having our service work done by the same mechanics. For several years, that was at the dealership in Perry, and the last couple of years it has been in Jefferson at McAtee Tire Service.

And the only wreck I recall the Chrysler having is when I backed it into the flagpole that formerly stood outside the Cooper Community Building, thus the wrinkles on the car's left rear end.

The 200,000 miles is far and away the most miles I've ever put on one car. So, in observance of that record, I noted it in a Faceback entry. And I added that I was catching up to my friend Herman Richter, who always has astounding mileage totals on the cars he drives around the Iowa Great Lakes.

Alas, newspaperman Peter Wagner of Sibley and the lakes, responded, ''You can't catch up with Herman until you hold two-thirds of the car together with a half-dozen rolls of duct tape. Give it another 300,000.''

Another newsman Mark Hamilton, of Iowa Falls and Ames, reported, ''Hell, even I am at 260,000.'' Des Moines Register sportswriter John Naughton checked in, ''I think you should get a free oil change from a dealer. My Buick is up to 226,000, but I rarely take it on out-of-state trips any more. You might pass up my tally.'' Ronn King, an old friend and former radio man in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said my news was reassuring ''since I have a 2001 Sebring with 89,500 miles. Hopefully it will make half as good as yours, and then some.''

And then there was this report from Des Moines political activist Ed Fallon: ''Ours turns over 200,000 this week, too. I wonder if I'm getting close to that on my 1985 Schwinn Varsity?''

Oldies but goodies. (I am referring to our vehicles.) -- CHO

LET'S HEAR IT FOR RHUBARB!

Cooper, May 19, 2009 -- Carla Offenburger says there is rhubarb growing in the intended places on our farm, but that it just keeps popping up several other places around the gardens, too -- even in places where she's tried hard to kill it.

I was thinking about that the other day when I practically had the shivers over how good a plate of her fresh rhubarb crisp was. She'd made it with some cherries mixed in with the rhubarb. We've already had one rhubarb pie, with more to come.

Yes, it's the time of year when we should all appreciate rhubarb for the miracle plant that it is. Actually, it seems almost a weed, one that pops back up year after year after year. You can bake it into pies, cobblers, muffins and more. It may be the most versatile plant in the garden, and best of all, it costs almost nothing.

No wonder Garrison sings of its healing powers. Here he is in the song he has made famous on his ''A Prairie Home Companion'' show on public radio:

''...it's at times like that, you want Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie. Yes, nothing gets the taste of humiliation out of your mouth like Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.

''Just one little thing can revive a guy,
And that is home-made rhubarb pie.
Serve it up, nice and hot.
Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought.
CHORUS:
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb,
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb,
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.'' -- CHO

A FAMILY'S DOZEN BAPTISMS

Thurman, May 17, 2009 -- A United Methodist pastor we know, Rev. Jaye Johnson, was chitchatting on his Facebook page on the Internet about a week ago that he had a big Sunday morning coming up on May 17.

Johnson serves churches in the southwest Iowa towns of Sidney, Riverton and Thurman. He noted that in the small church in Thurman, pop. 225, he would be baptizing 12 people in four generations of the same family -- all at once!

Johnson said that normal attendance at the church on a Sunday morning is 30 or fewer. He speculated that there had not been a dozen total people baptized in the church in the past 50 years.

Then here came Marilyn Chambers, the city clerk in the community, along with 11 of her children, grandchildren and great children to be baptized at the same service!

''We truly are blessed by the way the spirit of God is moving in this church,'' Johnson said, ''and I am personally excited to have the honor of celebrating this day with the family.''

He said he ''cannot help but think of Acts 16: 'Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved...and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.' ''

Nicest news story we've seen or heard in months! -- CHO

''OFFICIAL CAR'' OF HIS WEBSITE

Cooper, April 30, 2009 -- My biggest laugh of the week may have come from an item I read online the other day.

Ron Maly, retired Des Moines Register sportswriter, stays active doing a mostly-sports blog, doing Twitter updates and more. Maly, who lives in West Des Moines, recently announced there is now an ''official car of Ron Maly's Website.''

The car, which he has pictured with his blog, is his ''1989 Toyota Camry with 103,527 miles''!

You can go to Maly's blog by clicking here. -- CHO

THE CHORUS OF THE CRITTERS

Cooper, April 28, 2009 -- We're used to stepping outside our farmhouse and hearing pheasants squawk, or one of neighbor Jim Giese's cattle bawling.

But after approximately 4.5 inches of rain around here on Sunday, April 25, we went out Monday morning and heard what must be thousands of frogs singing ''Brrreeeep! Brrreeeep!''

We only know the approximate amount of rain we received, because we discovered that our farm dog Sally ate the rain gauge last week. -- CHO

A ''MAXIM'' NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

Cooper, April 22, 2009 -- We are thinking this morning about our ol' Des Moines friend Max Rauer, play-by-play broadcaster, adman, emcee extraordinaire. His funeral is today.

Once when we were near tears with laughter over some story or incident, Rauer sighed, shook his head and said with a big grin, ''Ah, yes! Who has more fun than people?''

I've loved that line ever since. It's a Maxim we'll never forget. -- CHO

A RECORD THAT'S STOOD 50 YEARS?

Jefferson, April 21, 2009 -- We were recently reading microfilm copies of the Jefferson Bee & Herald newspapers, doing a little digging on school consolidations in our Greene County during the 1958-'59 school year.
But another short, page 1 story in the Jefferson Herald on April 16, 1959, is what amazed us most.

The story reported that a new Walt Disney movie ''The Shaggy Dog'' had just finished a four-day run at the old Iowa Theater in Jefferson. And it had set an attendance record at the theater that is shocking today.

Theater manager J. Louis ''Doc'' Smith reported that in its four days here, the movie drew 4,226 persons!

The largest attendance day was a Sunday, Smith said, when 2,193 came through the turnstiles.

He noted that the new attendance record for a single film was about 75 more than another Disney movie, ''Old Yeller,'' had drawn in March of 1958.

We can't imagine that there's been any other movie over the years that has drawn more people here than ''The Shaggy Dog'' did. If you know differently, tell us! -- CHO

ROBBERY AT WELLS FARGO ARENA!

Des Moines, March 10, 2009 -- We still can't get over it. We attended the Iowa girls' high school state championship basketball games that were played last Friday night at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. Between games, we decided it was time for popcorn and pop. Two small bags of popcorn and two medium-sized Cokes were $13! Someone should be embarrassed. -- CHO

AMAZING BROADCASTING FEAT

Des Moines, March 10, 2009 -- In order to fully follow the action at the Iowa girls' high school state basketball tournament last week, and the boys' state tournament this week, we have purchased the full ''tournament pass'' package on the online Iowa High School Sports Network. That gives us full video and audio coverage of all the games for $9.95 per tournament. It works amazingly well.

It also lets us listen to the broadcasts of one of our favorite sportscasters, Lee Hughes, now the voice of the IHSSN and for more than 20 years earlier, the sports director of radio station KMA in Shenandoah.

Hughes is calling all the games. He did all 28 girls' games last week. He intends to do all 32 boys' games this week. That's 60 games in two weeks! Is that some kind of broadcasting record?

''A record?'' Hughes said, repeating our question. ''Nope. I did them all last year for the network, too -- 60 games in two weeks. It's fun. Hell, it has to be or I wouldn't be doing it!

''Steve Allspach from the Sioux City Journal asked me how many state tournament games I've broadcast over the 25-plus years I've been doing them,'' Hughes continued. ''I had to really think about that one, and do some averaging from what at times seems like failing recollection. I came up with a figure of between 700 to 800 games at state! God help me, I do love high school sports!'' -- CHO

''DIG OUT'' THOSE SADDLESHOES?

Arnolds Park, March 10, 2009 -- Our friend Doris Welle, who runs the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Museum at the Iowa Great Lakes, sent along a party invitation she thought we would enjoy.

It tells that the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Music Association is hosting a party on Friday, March 20, at the Arrowwood Resort Event Center in Okoboji. The party is being held to help shake cabin fever, and also to commemorate the anniversary of a March 21, 1952, party in Cleveland, Ohio, that is now recognized as the first rock 'n' roll event ever held.

So, anyway, the invitation to the Okoboji party says this: ''Costumes are not required but attendees are invited to dig out those saddle shoes, poodle skirts and letter jackets if they want to.''

We responded to Welle with a question: Who has to ''dig out'' their saddle shoes? They're always in the front row of our closet, if indeed they're not on our feet.

For more info on the party, click here. -- CHO

A SEMESTER'S BOOKS IN A POCKET

Cooper, January 12, 2009 -- It's probably fudging to include a story that originates in Maryville, Missouri, here in ''Our Iowa News Digest.'' But our defense is that the story comes from Northwest Missouri State University, which many of us have long thought of as Southwest Iowa State University, since so many kids from Iowa's corner have gone south to do their college there.

Anyway, we noticed in the news on the excellent Internet site of KMA radio in Shenandoah, www.kmaland.com, this story from the Associated Press that just astonished us:

UNIVERSITY OFFERS MOST TEXTBOOKS ELECTRONICALLY

MARYVILLE, Mo. (AP) -- Officials at Northwest Missouri State University are looking into replacing traditional textbooks with electronic versions.

About 4,000 of the university's 6,500 students will be using electronic textbooks when the spring semester begins tomorrow. A lightweight electronic device that can fit in a coat pocket will hold the textbook material for all of their classes, with some students downloading the information to their laptops.

The pilot electronic textbook program began last fall with four classes and about 200 students.

Dean Hubbard, the university's president, says the movement is limited by how quickly publishers provide their books in electronic format.

We have long enjoyed watched the march of communications technology in our culture, but this seems a whopper of a step! Think of it -- a whole semester's worth of text books, all loaded onto a digital device small enough to carry around in your coat pocket!

This is going to require a trip to Maryville to give this a look and ask a few questions. It seems to indicate just what we've thought might happen eventually to most book publishing.

Wow. -- CHO

LITTLE RIPPEY'S DUTCH TREAT

Rippey, Nov. 10, 2008 -- You might not think that college football players would get real excited about having their dinner after a big victory in a church hall in a town of 319 people.

But several veteran players on Central College's Flying Dutchmen were quick with testimony Saturday night, after their 23-14 win in Storm Lake over the Buena Vista Beavers: Of all their post-game meals, the one they get every other autumn at the United Methodist Church in little Rippey ''is the best.''

The tradition started in 1986.

''When Central would go to Storm Lake every other fall to play at BV, they'd stop afterward on their way back to Pella to have supper at a restaurant somewhere,'' said Velda DeMoss, of Rippey, whose son Marc DeMoss played on the Central teams in the mid 1980s. ''I started thinking about it and called Gert Beintema, who was office manager in the athletic department at Central, and asked if they'd want to eat at our church. I told her we'd get the team a better meal, quicker and it'd be cheaper, too.''

She said Beintema and then-coach Ron Schipper ''were a little worried at first that we wanted to get their kids in here and preach at them, or something like that. But I told them, no, when we hear the air brakes on the bus, we'll have supper all ready to go. You come in and eat a good meal, and within an hour, you're on your way. That's it.''

LET'S HEAR IT FOR BREITBACH'S!

Balltown, October 2, 2008 -- In this tiny northeast Iowa town, the legendary Breitbach's Country Dining has risen from the ashes -- literally. The 156-year-old bar and restaurant, located about a dozen miles northwest of Dubuque, burned to the ground last Christmas Eve. But owners Mike and Cindy Breitbach boldly rebuilt, and as the photo shows here, the new building has some nice reminders of its predecessor while being bigger and better than ever before.

THE MARLBORO MAN IS NOT HAPPY

Shenandoah, Oct. 1, 2008 -- Nearly everybody we know personally is thrilled with Iowa's new law which, since July, has prohibited smoking in public places. But we got a reminder, as we were strolling around my hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa, that not everybody agrees. See the photo below here, of a sign in a store window in the business district.

WHAT A BUNCH OF FOOTBALL HOOIE

Cooper, September 16, 2008 -- We were distressed to see this brief sidebar report in the Des Moines Sunday Register's coverage of the Iowa vs. Iowa State football game, played in rain at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City last Saturday:

''The Iowa State and Iowa marching bands were not allowed to perform on the field Saturday, as officials tried to prevent deterioration of the waterlogged playing surface. Iowa State's band belted out music from the north end zone, while Iowa played in the south end zone.''

Uh, did the football teams go out and warm up on that playing surface before the game? Did that cause some deterioration? And just how much deterioration would two marching bands cause?

The bands are owed apologies.

By the way, the Iowa Hawkeyes won 17-5 over the Iowa State Cyclones. But it did seem like every time the Cyclones' offense tried to make something happen in the ''red zone,'' the playing surface there was indeed badly deteriorating. -- CHO

TALLEST CORN STALK & BIG TALK

Guthrie Center, September 6, 2008 -- We were browsing our way around the 150th Guthrie County Fair this past weekend in west central Iowa, and we noticed a display featuring the winner of the fair’s “Tallest Corn Stalk” contest.

Jacque Hoover, whose farm is near Monteith, southeast of Guthrie Center, had the tallest at 12 ft. 5 5/8 in. Besides the corn stalk being displayed there, there was a photo of her receiving the blue ribbon and a nice tiara, the latter of which must have been a special award.

And there was also this rather bold statement on an accompanying poster: “Attention, guys! Move it on over! The women are taking over!” -- CHO

THE HUMOR OF CHURCH MUSICIANS

Jefferson, June 9, 2008 -- Rev. Don Ries, pastor of our St. Joseph Catholic Church, began the mass on June 8 by noting we'd just had another drenching rain in the early morning hours, following several days of heavy rains and other foul weather.

''But our music people here at St. Joseph have a sense of humor,'' Father Ries said. ''You have to have a sense of humor to pick the hymn that they picked for us to open with today. So let's all open our hymnals to No. 634.''

And then we all launched into the 1991 hymn by Jaime Cortez, ''Rain Down,'' based on Psalm 33. Here's the refrain, which some in the congregation did not sound so enthusiastic about when they were singing it:

Rain down, rain down,
Rain down your love
on your people!

There were several more hours of rain the rest of Sunday. Enough already! -- CHO

WELCOME, STRANGER, TO COON RAPIDS!

Coon Rapids, May 30, 2008 -- U.S. Senator Charles Grassley probably knows Iowa better than anybody living in the state. Ever since Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford in northeast Iowa, was first elected to the Senate in 1980, he has made it a point to visit each of the 99 counties every year.

He also did a lot of traveling during his earlier six years in the U.S. House, and during his even earlier 16 years in the Iowa Legislature. But somehow he kept missing Coon Rapids, a town of 1,300 in west central Iowa. Grassley had not been here in 30 years, the Coon Rapids Enterprise reported recently. But on Friday, May 30, he made up for it -- spending three hours here visiting with local leaders and other citizens. He pointed out that he's been in Carroll and Guthrie Counties many times through the years, but generally it's been for ''town meetings'' in the county seats of Carroll and Guthrie Center. He said he finally made it to Coon Rapids ''because I knew Rachel Garst wouldn't stop pestering me unless I came here.''

SPRING '08: WET, COOL, BEAUTIFUL!

Cooper, May 19, 2008 -- In many ways, this spring of 2008 has been a nasty one -- late arriving, wet, cool, even cold. But in other ways, we've loved it. When have the tulips been prettier? Have you ever seen this many goldfinches before? And how about the flowering trees? When can you remember them more beautiful?

STARRING IN AUDUBON AS “ELVIS”

Audubon, March 31, 2008 -- Some of the most popular music concerts held in Iowa never get reviewed in the local or state newspapers or other media. Yet, they are generally performed in auditoriums packed by especially devoted fans. We refer, of course, to the local elementary school's periodic musicals. The one that started us thinking about this was held last Thursday, March 27, in the southwest Iowa town of Audubon, where music teacher Tami Meiners' fifth and sixth grade students starred in show titled, “Cinemagic.” You need to look at only one photo to know how much fun it was.

ONE EXCITING TRAIL BRIDGE!

Council Bluffs, March 31, 2008 -- Our bicycling friends Joe and Cindy Connolly of Council Bluffs are our official observers of progress on one of the most exciting cycling-related developments ever -- construction of the trail bridge across the Missouri River between Omaha and the Bluffs. The Connollys were out this past weekend, and sent back this photo of the construction project.

SECOND BEST BARBER IN IOWA?

Ames, February 18, 2008 -- Publisher Roy Reiman and Editor Jerry Wiebel of the new ''Our Iowa'' magazine may be on to something. As a promotional gimmick this winter, they asked their readers to nominate local barbers for a contest to determine the ''Best Barber in Iowa.'' Ten finalists were picked from throughout the state -- each won $200 -- and they all came together for a barbering competition on Saturday, February 16, in one of the handsome buildings in Reiman Gardens adjacent to Jack Trice Stadium on the Iowa State University campus here. Yes, publisher Reiman and his wife Bobbi were the lead donors funding the gorgeous and elaborate gardens at ISU.

The biggest surprise to us was that our personal guru Sam The Barber Kauffman, who cuts hair in the shop that has long served as our ''sample precinct'' in Audubon in southwest Iowa, finished only second. Word is that the winner, Kitty Snakenberg of Miss Kitty's Barber Shop in the southeast Iowa town of Ollie, out-talked him! The fact that anybody could out-talk Sam Kauffman is astonishing everybody back home in Audubon.

Maybe Kauffman's grandson Matt Kauffman, 28, of Granger, was most surprised at the outcome. ''Grandpa!'' this former champion wrestler said, ''you got beat by a girl!''

Snakenberg won another $500 for her championship.

The second biggest surprise to us was that all the finalists brought along big cheering sections, so big that at one point, more than 200 people were jammed into the building to witness the hair-cutting competition. If this kind of event can draw that many people to Ames on a cold Saturday morning in February, it seems to me that ''Our Iowa'' magazine could turn this into a major event at the Iowa State Fair.

Their first run at it, in Ames, was sure nicely done, complete with a barber shop quartet performming and WHO Radio's regular morning team of Van Harden and Bonnie Lucas on hand to report results to listeners across the state. -- CHO

BRR! IT'S ANOTHER BIKE SEASON

Perry, February 2, 2008 -- We Offenburgers joined the happy crowd on Saturday for the 31st ''BRR'' festival sponsored by the Perry Chamber of Commerce. The event, which features the 23-mile round-trp ''Bicycle Ride to Rippey'' is sponsored by the Perry Chamber of Commerce, and is the traditional opening event of another cycling year in Iowa. It was a delightful day, as Iowa winter days go, with a high temperature of 33 degrees, just a bit of snow blowing around at midday but otherwise the roads were dry and safe.

IN LITTLE YALE, THEY ARE GAMERS

Yale, January 21, 2008 -- There are more good things happening in this west central Iowa community of 287 people than you'd find in most towns 10 times its size. We've told you before how West Des Moines native Sarah Brewster is renovating the 118-year-old, long-deserted Windsor Hotel into a fine new inn. The City of Yale is doing a total renovation on the classic 75-year-old round gymnasium for concerts, theater, basketball and other gatherings. And you can't beat the food and fun at Just Ethel's cafe & bar. Well now, there's more in this town that has long been a favorite of those of us who are regulars on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. In a partnership, the City of Yale and the Yale Community Club are now running a Sunday evening bingo game -- with all proceeds going toward building a new community center building downtown.

We sat in for the third week of Yale bingo on January 20. The two of us spent a grand total of $29, had three hours of fun, ate delicioius loose-meat sandwiches and more for supper, and enjoyed seeing a lot of friends from around the Yale area. No, we didn't win in bingo, but it was fun trying.

Yale Mayor Steve Stanton was the ''caller'' for the bingo game, so I asked him if you have to go to training to run a good bingo game.

''Well, almost,'' he said. ''There's a lot to learn, that's for sure.''

A $1 MILLION DAY FOR OUR TRAIL

Cooper, January 14, 2008 -- Now in mid-winter, it may look pretty quiet, even eerie, out on the Raccoon River Valley Trail, as these recent photos along it show. The paved trail runs 56 miles from Jefferson on the north, through Greene, Guthrie and Dallas Counties before connecting into the Des Moines metro trails. But the RRVT had its own ''Super Tuesday'' last week, with more than $1 million grants for it being announced on the same day. For the details, you can go to the full story by clicking here.


Looking south, near the trailhead in Panora, just south of Iowa Highway 44.


A guardrail seems to point the way as the trail passes through tiny Herndon, in northern Guthrie County.


Looking north toward the small town of Cooper, in southern Greene County.

In short form, the new grants mean than a new 33-mile-long ''North Loop'' will be added to the RRVT, making it one of the longest paved recreational trails in the U.S. Construction will begin during 2008, and may be completed during 2009. Meanwhile, the number of trail users is expected to begin climbing immediately from the estimated 100,000 per year now. All that is expected to trigger new interest by investors to build businesses catering to the trail users and new trailside homes, too. It's going to be a great new era of outdoor recreation in west central Iowa! -- CHO

BEST PIE & BEST MALTS ANYWHERE

Shenandoah, December 11, 2007 -- As many of you know, I do a radio chat on Friday mornings at 9:35 a.m. with Chuck Morris and Don Hansen, co-hosts on the aptly-named ''Chuck & Don Show'' on station KMA in my hometown here. You can dial it in at 960 on the AM dial, or on the Internet site www.kma960.com. So one Friday morning in the fall, I was talking about how I'd just been back to Shenandoah for a visit on a Saturday, and it'd been such a great day because I'd been able to have two of my favorite food items, available only there in my hometown -- a piece of Mary Peterson's lemon coconut pie at The Sanctuary restaurant and a chocolate malt at the soda fountain in George Jay Drug Company. I went on to tell how if you are a Shenandoahan, you can be a long way from home, maybe even on the other side of the world, and you'll think about Mary's pie or the Jay malts, and it's like a hook is set in some special spot in your brain. The next time you are anywhere close to Shenandoah, you find yourself making a beeline to The Sanctuary and then Jay's soda fountain. I don't know how much a piece of the lemon coconut pie or the Jay malt costs, and actually, I don't even care. I will pay whatever it is.


Chuck Offenburger holds a picture-perfect lemon coconut pie made by Mary Peterson at The Sanctuary in Chuck's hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa.

The Sanctuary's owner Lucy Clark had the KMA staff lift my comments about the pie from the recording made of the ''Chuck & Don Show,'' and she now buys on-air ads that have me doing the testimonial. I'm telling you, there's not another product I'd be any prouder to be a spokesperson for than Mary Peterson's lemon coconut pie! As you can now hear me saying on the air, it is the best pie I've had in 60 years of pie eating. This pie and Jay's malts are genuine tourist attractions for Shenandoah, or should be. Get yourself there and try them for yourself, and I will wager that you will return again and again for more. The reason this comes to mind now is that I was back in Shenandoah this past Saturday for the 58th annual Wassail Bowl, a grand Christmas gathering of the men in the area. I had ordered up a whole lemon coconut pie from Clark at The Sanctuary, and picked it up to-go after my holiday event, since the roads were icing up and I wanted to start my drive back to Simple Serenity Farm. I began thinking about how, if I were unable to make it home, I'd be well-fixed if I had to barter my way into some shelter along the way! But I made it to the farm just fine, and am now in extremely good graces with my wife Carla Offenburger and with a neighbor Doug Lawton, with whom I shared some of the the lemon coconut pie Saturday night.


Carla Offenburger and our pal Doug Lawton prepare to dig into slices of the lemon coconut pie. The top crust is a perfectly-browned layer of coconut, covering an inside that is almost like a firm lemon pudding with coconut mixed into it.

It's wonderful just stopping in at The Sanctuary. Clark bought the building, which was once a Christian Science Church, has enlarged it twice and yet has preserved the traditional lines and stained glass. She now operates as fine a dining spot as you could find in Omaha or Des Moines, with gourmet coffees and teas, excellent sandwiches, fine entrees and killer desserts -- some almost as good as Mary Peterson's lemon coconut pie. Clark has now started a series of occasional dinners, prepared fresh in The Sanctuary's kitchen by local people who have cooking expertise and want to share it with the public. The dinners have been real hits. City Attorney Bob Norris was the guest chef Saturday night, and invited me to stay on for his meal, which sounded like it was going to be delightful. But with icy roads ahead of me -- and with Mary's lemon coconut pie in my hands -- home sounded too good. So I will have to return for a Sanctuary dinner on another trip. -- CHO

SOME ADVICE FOR HILLARY CLINTON

Perry, Nov. 26, 2007 -- A half-dozen thoughts occurred to me after witnessing a presidential campaign stop here Sunday by Senator Hillary Clinton, the New York Democrat and former first lady.

First, I was sitting there among the crowd of 500 at Perry High School thinking about how, of all the leaders in this race in both parties, the Clinton campaign seems by far the most impressive, best organized and probably best funded. But then I read reporter Abby Simons’ story in Monday’s Des Moines Register and see that Clinton was an hour late to her next stop after Perry – in the town of Nevada 65 miles to the east. She apologized to the crowd there, “saying she lost track of time in Perry,” Simons reported. How can that happen?

Second, Hillary Clinton seems the most conservative among the Democratic front runners, which might be a problem for her in the Iowa Caucuses, and possibly in some primaries, but would make her more electable in the general election. When she talks about fiscal responsibility in government, border security measures “even to building barriers,” her support of much more generous programs for veterans – I had to remind myself that I was listening to a Democrat.


Senator Hillary Clinton brought her Democratic presidential campaign to the high school commons in our neighboring town of Perry on Sunday, November 25. About 500 filled the room, which was set up with huge American flags on three sides of the stage.

Third, I think her Secret Service protectors are doing a nice job of making her as accessible to the public as she is. When she spent 20 or 30 minutes after her Perry presentation shaking hands and chitchatting with the crowd, the Secret Service agents were right behind her, and watching every move in the crowd, just as they need to be. But I sure didn’t see any rough treatment or shakedowns. In fact, I saw a couple of the agents smile once or twice.

Fourth, and this may seem odd to say, but I think the biggest factors working against Clinton in her bid to become the U.S. first female president are her age, her experience and how familiar nearly every American is with her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. They are 60 and 61, which is not really old, of course. There are a lot of cool people around who are 60-something. But Senator Clinton’s most serious challenger among the Democratic candidates, Senator Barack Obama, 46, makes a compelling argument that this is a good time for a generational change in American politics. As David Yepsen reported in his Sunday Des Moines Register column: “Obama’s uptick appears to result from a growing number of Iowa Democrats who are opting for a candidate offering a ‘new direction and new ideas.’ Some 55 percent seek that in a candidate, up from 49 percent in July. Only 33 percent prefer a candidate with strength and experience, down from 39 percent in July. Obama wins the new-direction voters; Clinton the strength-and-experience ones.” All that said, if I were advising Senator Clinton, I’d tell her that it is indeed time for her to be trotting out a family member in support of her candidacy. I’m not talking about the former president, I’m talking about their 27-year-old daughter Chelsea Clinton, who works in financial services in New York City. While Hillary Clinton has a real advantage connecting with women of middle age and above, her daughter could connect her mom with America’s young voters, female and male. Chelsea has made only one or two public appearances for her mother’s campaign so far, and has not spoken publicly for her. I think a lot of younger voters – and some of us older ones, too – would love hearing what she has to say.


Senator Clinton is shown here chatting with Gary Overla, chairperson of the social studies department at Perry High School. That is Carla Offenburger, next in line to meet her.

Fifth, I do believe Clinton is the first presidential candidate I have heard from either party who did not ever refer to her audience as “guys” or “you guys,” when there are almost always more women in the audiences than men. We are so tired of hearing that, and so tired of hearing lame excuses about the candidates intending to be “non-gender specific” when they use it, that this is almost reason enough to caucus for Clinton. We don’t think you can get much more gender specific than “guys.” Hurrah for Clinton for avoiding it.

Sixth, and finally here, just five weeks before the caucuses, where in the heck are my Republican candidates? I haven’t seen a Republican presidential candidate in Greene County for at least two months. Maybe that’s because we’re close enough to super-conservative western Iowa that we are being taken for granted. But I think Republican leaders should be aware – there are mass defections among GOP regulars this fall. Somebody better be out here soon wooing people back home. -- CHO

THE FIRST SNOW OF THIS WINTER

Cooper, Nov. 22, 2007 -- We set a weather record in Iowa in October, the first time since record keeping began that month had been completely snowless across the state. And it was beginning to look like we might have a snowless November, too. But it began snowing here in west central Iowa at mid-morning Wednesday, November 21, and gave us a good dusting by mid-afternoon.


The farmhouse after the first snowfall of this winter, on November 21, 2007.

And so we awaken today, on Thanksgiving, and one of the things we can be thankful for is that Iowa looks just about like it's supposed to look this time of year -- with a little snow cover. It's cold, too, with a dawn temperature of 27 degrees and a predicted high of 35. We will now file our request for the rest of this winter of 2007 and 2008: Days just about this cold, one good paralyzing blizzard that will stop everything for two or three days at some point when we are all too damned busy, and three or four pretty snows of four to six inches. Give us that, O Lord, and we will be very happy Iowans. But on further reflection, whatever you give us, O Lord, we'll be happy with it. Life is good. -- CHO

STORM LAKE'S BEAUTIFUL ''RED SEA''

Storm Lake, Nov. 14, '07 -- One of the most striking symbols for a town in Iowa has become even neater looking this fall, with the native grasses having reached maturity around Storm Lake's gateway lighthouse. The 65-foot-tall lighthouse was completed in 2001 at the intersection of U.S. Highway 71 and Iowa Highway 7 on the east edge of the town of 10,000 in northwest Iowa. The gateway area is a a triangular-shaped piece of land that includes about four acres, fitting like a wedge between the highways and a railroad line. To make the site even more attractive, Storm Lakers moved in load after load of field stones around the base of the lighthouse, creating the look of a rugged shoreline. Then they planted the native grasses that, at different times of each year, will look like a sea of green, or faded-blue or red, waving in the wind around the lighthouse. And the site is lighted at night, too.


The native grasses have now reached maturity around Storm Lake's distinctive lighthouse gateway to the city. This time of year, the lighthouse seems to be surrounded by a kind of Red Sea!

Our Storm Lake friend Dick Hakes, who was president of the Chamber of Commerce about the time the lighthouse project was conceived, spearheaded what became a $100,000-plus project mostly paid for with private donations, in-kind contributions and ''discounts from friendly contractors,'' Hakes said in a note this week. In addition, there is a $30,000 endowment fund to cover maintenance in future years. Hakes was at the site one early morning this week and ''took this photo of the native grasses -- little bluestem -- around the lighthouse, which look terrific this fall with a rich red/rust color. After about six years, our native grasses are beginning to take shape. Besides this fine stand of little bluestem, we have successfully planted buffalo grass, sideoats gramma and native wildflowers. Native grasses take a lot of patience, but they eventually prove to be pretty hardy, especially in the rocky soil we have to deal with in this particular tract of land which was once roadbed.'' The land had belonged to the Connell family of Storm Lake, which donated it to the City of Storm Lake for creation of a gateway to the community. The city government then deeded it to the Chamber of Commerce when it undertook the project. It is a very effective welcoming symbol. Frequently when you drive by it, you'll see visitors pulled on to the roads' shoulders, taking photos of the lighthouse and the ''sea'' around it. -- CHO

FR. HEMANN'S COOL MUSIC MINISTRY

Jefferson, Oct., 2007 -- We have been watching and listening to the musical and ministerial career of Father David Hemann develop in northwest Iowa over the past two decades, and he has now reached a level where people around the nation are indeed coming his way. The 48-year-old Hemann was in Jefferson Sunday evening, October 21, to do 90 minutes of music and meditation with about 150 people who turned out for a Faith Festival of our Greene County Catholic churches. A good number of people of other faiths were also in the audience at the parish center of St. Joseph Catholic Church. Maybe most remarkable, the crowd included all ages and he seemed to captivate everybody in the hall -- adults and kids alike.


Father David Hemann, a rising star in Catholic music from northwest Iowa, is shown here performing the evening of October 21 in the parish hall of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Jefferson.

He came with good news, having just returned from the 2007 “Unity Awards” national competition of the United Catholic Music & Video Association in Phoenix, where his new song “Walk on Water” was named “Praise & Worship Song of the Year.” That competition is the Catholic equivalent of the well-known “Dove” awards for Protestant musicians.

Hemann is now pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Ida Grove and Our Lady of Good Counsel parish in Holstein. He has recorded five CDs of original music in recent years, performing on guitar, drums and vocals. His latest CD, “Gathered Wisdom,” includes the award-winning song and others that he says reflect the lessons he’s learned in his 22 years in the priesthood.


Father Hemann signs a CD for Aubrey Heupel, 5, of Jefferson while her father Dave Heupel watches. Father Hemann conducted the marriage of Dave and Kristen Heupel, both of whom are teachers in the Jefferson-Scranton Community Schools.

“I come from a devout Catholic and intensely musical family in Fort Dodge,” Hemann said. “One of the things I’ve learned in 22 years as a priest is that with talk, you can reach people’s minds, but if you use music, too, you can touch their hearts.”

He said writing and performing his music is also his own favorite form of prayer. “This is what I do when I have my own prayer time – I sing,” he told the crowd Sunday evening. “I don’t write these songs to entertain people, although I’m glad they do. I write them to praise the Lord.”

He is a graduate of St. Edmond Catholic High School in Fort Dodge, Loras College in Dubuque and seminary in Rome, and he played a wide variety of music on his way to the priesthood. That included playing three years with a touring rock ’n’ roll band before he started college. “That band was named ‘Ramblin’,” he said, “kind of like my homilies now.”


The crowd for Father Hemann's performance included a number of people from other churches as well as Catholics. Shown with him after his concert are Jefferson's United Methodist pastors Rev. Bill and Rev. Sheri Daylong.

His musical style ranges widely – folk, Irish, monastic, a touch of rock and even classical. For his next CD, he is planning “to put the Psalms of David to classical guitar music, backed by harp and cello.” Plus, he’s got a gift of gab that makes his concerts as fun as they are spiritual.

He has often used his musical ability in his pastoral assignments, which besides Ida Grove and Holstein, have included parishes in Carroll, Storm Lake, Boone, Sioux City, Hospers, Sanborn and Hartley. And he has performed in concerts all across the Sioux City Diocese and beyond.

You can learn more about Father Hemann, and order his CDs, on the Internet site www.fatherdavid.net.


Father Hemann signs another CD, this one for St. Joseph parish member Jean Fountain.

WINDSHIELD SCRAPING TIME AGAIN

Cooper, October 11, 2007 -- As we move on through this beautiful autumn, let the record (and this photo) show that on this morning, windshield scraping was required for the first time this season.


Thursday, October 11, brought us the first necessary windshield scraping as our weather begins to change.

That also means the annual debate has started in our house -- just when can we turn on the heat? Carla Offenburger always argues that we should be able to make it until November without using the furnace. I don't like being chilly, and I don't think we've ever made it to November without turning on the heat. When the overnight temperatures began dipping into the 30s this week, it was indeed chilly in the early mornings and evenings. But the truth is, we had our air conditioning on this past weekend, and there surely is some rule that you can't start your furnace in the same week you have used your air conditioner. So we cleaned out the fire place, brought in some logs and have started burning fires in the evening, and that makes autumn all the more enjoyable. -- CHO

COOPER'S FIRST TEAM IN DECADES!

Cooper, October 3, 2007 -- Every town ought to have a team of its own to cheer for, you know? And here in Cooper (pop. 30), we haven't had a local line-up for decades. Well, now we do. Some of the younger crowd that has been attending our annual Cooper Proms were recently putting together a mixed volleyball roster to play in the Jefferson Volleyball League. One of them, Matt Schutt, is an Honorary Mayor of Cooper, for all the ideas and work he has contributed to help make the Cooper Proms successful. He asked if the Committee for a Super Cooper might want to sponsor this volleyball team, which has adapted the nickname ''Cooper Prom Crashers.'' We said yes in a flash, and we also provided our stylish Cooper T-shirts as team uniforms. The teams play on Sunday nights at the Greene County Community Center in Jefferson, with the season extending through the winter.


The ''Cooper Prom Crashers,'' playing this fall and winter in the Jefferson Volleyball League, are sponsored by the Committee for a Super Cooper. Team members are (front, from left) Amy Van Der Meer, Shanlyn Doll, Amy Doran, Adam Doll, (and in back) Kyle Kinne, Kyle Hansen, Liz Hailey and J. Matthew Schutt.

One of these Sunday nights, we intend to rally the Super Cooper Committee and others from the town to attend our team's game -- maybe even tailgate outside the community center in Jefferson before and after the match. What can Schutt tell us about our team? ''Amy Van Der Meer is the coach/manager,'' he reports. ''Since she is pregnant, she plays a limited amount on the floor, but she is always there to cheer us on.'' So, are the Cooper Prom Crashers any good? ''Our team plays with alot of spirit and camaraderie,'' Schutt continued. ''We are certainly in the top half of the standings. We'll see how we play as the season goes along.'' -- CHO

WHO KNEW? ''CORN''-LESS HUSKERS!

Lincoln, Nebraska, October 2, 2007 -- Going to a University of Nebraska home football game for the first time in more than 35 years is a jaw-dropping experience. Thanks to our good friends Joe and Cindy Connolly, of Council Bluffs, my wife Carla and I were among the 84,703 in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln on Saturday, watching the Nebraska Huskers come from behind and beat the Iowa State Cyclones 35-17. It was a great day to stroll the picturesque campus, which is located on the northwest corner of the business district in Nebraska's capital city. We had a pre-game meal of ''Runza'' sandwiches -- the ground beef in a pastry shell that seems to be the soul food of the state. We took our seats on the club level, which is the upper deck, of the renovated west side of the stadium and had a great time as the pageantry and football game unfolded below and around us. The ardent Nebraska fans were part of the fun. Honestly, we did not run into a single jerk -- and we were obviously not fans of the home team since we were among the very few people in the stadium not wearing red.

CHRISTIE VILSACK @ SAM'S BARBER SHOP

Audubon, September 18, 2007 -- We wish we could've been here, but we were out of state when former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack made a business trip here on Wednesday, September 12, to visit our ''sample precinct,'' Sam's Barber Shop in this southwest Iowa town.

She was doing her business, that is, not getting a haircut. These days Vilsack's business is promoting the presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, the New York Democrat.

Vilsack, who for three years was a regular columnist for us here at Offenburger.com, knew from reading recent stories from Sam's Barber Shop that owner Sam Kauffman and his wife Lois, both Democrats, are so far uncommitted in the presidential race.

So when she was making a western Iowa swing, she called the Kauffmans and asked if she could meet them and make her pitch for Clinton.


The lobbyists' section at Sam's Barber Shop in Audubon on a recent day included (left to right) former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, a key supporter in the state of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign; Lois Kauffman, who is wife of the barber and First Lady of Audubon, since he's the mayor, and longtime Audubon County Democratic activist Dorothy Kerkhoff. (Photos by Kathleen Parris)


Rev. Wayne Gubbels, pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Church in Audubon, was getting his hair cut by Sam The Barber Kaufffman on the day when Christie Vilsack stopped in the barber shop seeking the support of Sam and Lois Kauffman for the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton.


Sam and Lois Kauffman (left and center) with Christie Vilsack in the Audubon barber shop.

About a dozen people gathered in the shop, for about an hour of chitchat and Vilsack's enthusiastic talk on why they all should vote for her candidate.

''She gave a stirring appeal, I'll tell you that,'' said Sam The Barber.

But did she swing him over?

''Well, I'm still uncommitted for now,'' he said a few days later. ''It's just too early for me to make a decision. Frankly, I could go with any of the first four or five Democrats in the race.''

Both Christie Vilsack and her husband, former Governor Tom Vilsack, are campaigning enthusiastically across the state for Clinton. -- CHO

REHABILITATING BARACK OBAMA

Guthrie Center, September 5, 2007 -- One of our jobs as Iowans, we know, is that God has appointed us to groom, sometimes rehabilitate and sometimes eliminate candidates for the U.S. presidency, and those candidates are thick as our grasshoppers right now. Barack Obama, the 46-year-old U.S. Senator from Illinois who is seeking the Democratic nomination, brought his campaign to our neighboring town of Guthrie Center on September 4. I'd estimate that a crowd of more than 300 turned out to listen to him speak and then answer questions for an hour, after an earlier stop in Waukee and a later one in Carroll. It was a quintessential Iowa campaign event here, the crowd sitting in lawn chairs or school chairs in the shade of big trees along one side of the high school's football practice field, the pep band and cheerleaders welcoming the candidate, cornfields rising behind him. And it was a good time to assess how Obama is doing.


Guthrie Center Schools Superintendent Steve Smith introducing U.S. Senator Barack Obama to the crowd in Guthrie Center Tuesday evening.


Obama spoke from a trailer, with the crowd in lawn chairs and school chairs on the practice football field at Guthrie Center High School.


Obama mixes with the crowd after his speech in Guthrie Center, visiting here with Guthrie High School student Dylan Dinkla, who told the presidential candidate he plans to go into physical therapy. That's Carla Offenburger, in brown, on the left of the candidate. She said she told Obama she appreciated his calm manner on the campaign trail, ''that he's talking to us instead of yelling at us all the time.'' (This photo by Luann Waldo, of the Bayard News Gazette and Scranton Journal.)

Carla Offenburger, our house Democrat, is officially undecided in this race, with the choices she mentions most often being U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Obama.

She says she appreciates Obama ''putting aside division and rancor,'' to use his own words in his speech here. ''He's not yelling at us all the time,'' Carla says, making it even plainer. Clinton seems to scream more, especially if she is in front of a big crowd, which she often is, especially if her husband former President Bill Clinton is tagging along. Another top contender, former U.S. Senator John Edwards, of North Carolina, still often seems angry to us when he speaks, and that's a turn-off, too.

A few other things are also very appealing about Obama. Most importantly, his young age and his race would send a great message to the world that this country has heeded his call ''to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.'' I believe the world would embrace him, in dramatic contrast to what has happened in the presidency of George W. Bush.

His positions and rationale against the war, for universal healthcare, for student-centered primary and secondary education, for increased accessibility to college education, and for energy independence -- they're all good. His kiss-up to organized labor isn't for me, but that's probably the Republican in me reacting to the traditional Democratic pandering.

A really good thing about Obama -- you might not think it as important as the other things we've mentioned here but on the other hand it just might be -- is that he has apparently quit smoking cigarettes during this campaign. That's great.

But in Guthrie Center, we saw a glaring shortcoming in him -- the next step he must take in his personal rehabilitation. He just has to stop calling girls and women ''guys.'' Three times during his hour-long appearance here, he did it. He referred to the all-female Guthrie Center High School cheerleaders as ''you guys'' in thanking them for a welcoming cheer. He called two middle-aged women, chums from girlhood who had a serious question about healthcare, ''you guys.'' He used ''guys'' again when he was shaking hands with a group of women when he was mixing with the crowd after he spoke and took questions.

I was relieved that Carla Offenburger didn't stick her finger in his eye over this, because she is the more ardent of the two of us on this issue, and she indeed got close enough, and he does have Secret Service protection, you know.

O.K., yes, we Offenburgers certainly know that ''everybody does it,'' this using ''guys'' and ''you guys'' when talking to girls and women. Many protest that they are using it as ''a term of endearment'' and in a ''gender-neutral way.''

People, let's be clear: ''Guys'' are guys.'' Do you ever use ''gals'' as a term of endearment or in a gender-neutral way to address boys or men?

It's especially wrong to use ''guys'' when you are talking to girls and women. It is demeaning toward them. Especially if you are a presidential candidate. Especially if you are a presidential candidate who has a wife and two young daughters. It makes people wonder whether you really are ready for prime time. -- CHO

POGGENSEE'S VIEW LUNAR ECLIPSE

Ida Grove, Aug. 28, 2007 -- We had a lunar eclipse in the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday. We remember thinking about it, as we were drifting off to sleep on a full-moon Monday night -- it was so bright outside at midnight we thought we could probably take a non-flash photo out there. We fell back to sleep, but here in Ida Grove, photographer Don Poggensee was just getting up. Poggensee is not one to miss something as rare as a lunar eclipse. He filed his photo report a few hours later, and the photos follow here. The eclipse, he write, ''started at 3:56 a.m. and continued until about 5 a.m. The moon turned to a red color as the earth blocked the sunlight hitting the moon. Neat to see once again.''








For those interested in photography, Poggensee sends along the following explanation of how he did it. ''On shooting the moon, remember that the moon has no light of its own, as the light we see from it is reflected sunlight,'' he wrote. ''You can normally just meter the light and shoot. With the full moon, it is very bright and I usually under-expose two stops of light. As the Earth blocks the sunlight with an eclipse, and the moon is very dark, you need additional light, so you need to over-expose it, maybe by the same two stops of light. These images were shot with a Canon 600-mm lens on a full-sensor digital Canon 5-D body. With a digital camera, you can look at each exposure, and add or subtract light to get the proper exposure.'' -- CHO

A BIG STEP FORWARD ON OUR TRAIL

Panora, August 20, 2007 -- The five-mile section of the Raccoon River Valley Trail from just north of Linden into the heart of Panora was officially re-opened Saturday, August 18, with a brand new concrete surface. A crowd of more than 30 people turned out for the ribbon-cutting, and 20 or more of them then celebrated with a bike ride to Linden and back led by the local bike club, the Raccoon Valley Riders.

''Getting this trail resurfaced is an important step for our lifestyle and our economy in Guthrie County,'' said Joe Hanner, director of the Guthrie County Conservation Board, told the crowd. ''What's made it possible is great partnerships.''

The new surface is at about the midpoint of the 56-mile, 18-year-old trail that runs from Jefferson on the north to the Des Moines metro area on the southeast, where it connects into the capital city's extensive trail system.


Joe Hanner, director of the Guthrie County Conservation Board, speaks at the re-opening of the Raccoon River Valley Trail between Panora and Linden on Saturday, August 18, after the concrete resurfacing project was completed. Behind him are Luann Waldo of the Bayard-Bagley News Gazette and Scott Gonzales of the Guthrie County Vedette in Panora and the Guthrie Center Times.

The $407,977 resurfacing project was completed earlier this week by the paving company Knife River Midwest LLC, of Decorah in northeast Iowa, and then Hanner and his conservation board staff re-installed benches and signage before the Saturday re-opening. The work had required the trail to be closed since early July.

Of that amount, $175,000 came from a State of Iowa Recreational Trails Grant administered by the Iowa Department of Transportation, and Hanner said it finally was secured after several years of unsuccessful applications. State officials have been reluctant to award grants for trail maintenance or resurfacing, because there is still so much demand for development of new trails around the state.

''What finally made the difference, I think, was the local partnerships we were able to form,'' he said. ''First, the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors came up with a special appropriation of $100,000 for this project, and that was a huge step by them, an amazing step.''

The conservation board then tapped the ''REAP'' funds all conservation boards receive from the state, a reserve fund and its affiliated Prairie Woodland Conservation Foundation for about $125,000 in funding. Panora's local Raccoon River Valley Trail Committee successfully solicited more than $40,000 in donations from individuals and businesses in Guthrie County, and the Guthrie County Community Foundation also awarded a substantial grant for the project. In addition, many Guthrie Countians joined with the officers and board of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association in talking to state officials about the need for the resurfacing project. Their message was that on a per capita basis, Guthrie County has probably made a bigger commitment to the maintenance and resurfacing of their portion of the RRVT than any other counties in the state have made on their own trails.


Part of the crowd listening at the ceremony in Panora celebrating completion of five miles of resurfacing on the Raccoon River Valley Trail.

''I'm sure that the local support we had was a big factor in us finally getting the state trails grant,'' Hanner said. ''It showed there was lots of local interest and support, and that means a lot when the DOT is making its decisions on trail funding.''

When it came time Saturday for the ceremonial cutting of a red ribbon strung across the trail in Panora, Hanner handed a scissors to Jeff Bump, a member of the Guthrie County Conservation Board, to do the honors. Others invited forward to take part were Karen Hawley of the Prairie Woodland Conservation Foundation; Orville Terry of Panora's local RRVT Committee; Guthrie County Engineer Kris Katzman, who did all the engineering on the resurfacing, and Chuck Offenburger, of Cooper, secretary of the RRVT Association. Hanner also thanked Panora Mayor Steve Baker for the City of Panora support of the project.

The ceremony was held adjacent to the trailside P.J.'s Drive-In restaurant, which is owned by Paul Wendl, a major trail supporter since its opening in 1989. Wendl provided free ice cream to all present.


Bicyclists try out the new surface in a ride from Panora to Linden, following the reopening of that section of the Raccoon River Valley Trail. The local bike club, the Raccoon Valley Riders, led the cyclists on the cruise.

Hanner closed the ceremony reminding everybody that as big an accomplishment as the resurfacing of the five miles of the RRVT south of Panora has been, fundraising is just now starting to resurface the five miles going north from Panora to Yale. That section is now the oldest section of asphalt on the whole trail and is in poor condition.

He noted that Panora-to-Yale section of trail will be an important one, as it will connect to the new ''North Loop'' of the RRVT. That will run east from Herndon, which is located north of Yale on the current RRVT, on through the communities of Jamaica and Dawson enroute to Perry. It will then go southeast through Minburn and Dallas Center before reconnecting with the RRVT on the northwest corner of Waukee. The right-of-way that will become the ''North Loop'' is being purchased from the Union Pacific Railroad by the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, and negotiations are expected to be completed this late summer or early fall. Mike Wallace, director of the Conservation Board in Dallas County, where most of that loop will be located, said work on it will begin as soon as the purchase is finalized. It could take two years to complete the hard-surfacing of that loop, depending on funding.

''So, we're not done,'' Hanner said. ''That's the reality of trail projects. You never, ever get totally done with trail projects.''
-- CHO

WE ALL GOT BUZZED IN RURAL IOWA

Cooper, August 20, 2007 -- We can look back on the past couple of weeks of this August as a time when nearly all of us who live in the Iowa countryside got buzzed. Tiny aphids have threatened the soybean crop, so farmers and commercial growers had aerial sprayers out treating many of the fields.


Spray planes have been at war in Iowa the last two weeks with tiny aphids which have attacked the soybean fields. Photographer Don Poggensee saw this plane working on fields in Ida County. Hot temperatures and light winds have made for good spraying conditions.


Of course, to do effective spraying, the pilots have to fly their planes at what seem like frightenly low levels. And when we on the ground find ourselves with our hearts in our stomachs just watching their aerial derring-do, what must it be like for them up there? -- CHO

CRUCIAL WEEK FOR JOHN EDWARDS

Jefferson, Aug. 14, 2007 -- It seems almost preposterous to say this, but this very week -- which is four or five months before the Iowa Political Caucuses and a year and two months before the presidential election of 2008 -- could be a crucial one in the political life of John Edwards. The 54-year-old Edwards is a very recognizable figure across America after his race in 2004. But he is also remembered as one of the candidates who were walloped in that year's Democratic presidential primaries by Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts, who became the nominee. The Democratic team of Kerry and Edwards then suffered a close and disappointing loss to President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

MY TOP JOB EVER IN JOURNALISM

Adair, July 22, 2007 -- It occurred to me Saturday afternoon that the position I was holding down here was the highest one I've ever held in journalism. I was the umpire, the only one, let's call it umpire-in-chief, in the annual softball game between the newsroom teams from the Des Moines Register and the Omaha World-Herald. Squaring off in front of me were some of the most influential journalists in the Midwest -- reporters, editors, columnists, photogaphers, designers and others. And for 90 minutes, they had to heed my every call, ''strike,'' ''ball,'' ''out'' and ''safe.'' Omaha won this co-ed game that is called the ''Wild West Shoot Out,'' 10-8 in 11 innings, which was two more innings than any of us expected. Before the game started, I noticed that the World-Herald seemed to have a younger roster, and I mentioned that to Jerry Perkins, the farm editor of the Register who, at 59, was the oldest player on the field. ''Yeah,'' Perkins said, ''but cunning and experience count for something, don't they?'' I thought about that again right after Perkins' first at-bat, when he slammed a line drive down the third baseline for a clean hit, but caught his toe as he started to run to first and sprawled in the base path, tearing skin off both knees. Always the gamer, he pulled himself up and limped on to first base. And two innings later, he made a diving catch of a line drive at third base, scrambled to the bag, and doubled-off a runner who had started toward home plate, having assumed Perkins would never catch the ball. Meanwhile, World-Herald readers will not be surprised that the newspaper's new feature columnist Robert Nelson, is just as opinionated when he's sitting in a dugout as he is in his columns. I should also note that the Omaha team showed up in brown T-shirts that I thought looked like what UPS drivers might wear on casual Fridays. Perkins, cunning as ever, had a better description: ''They look like Hitler Youth out there.'' The taunting is all good natured, though, and this annual game provides an opportunity for the staffs of the two major newspapers in the two states to get to know each other. The games have been held intermittently over the past 25 years or more, and at different times were held in Anita, Avoca and Atlantic. The governors of the respective states were the starting pitchers the first time the game was held, Bob Ray for the Register and Charlie Thone for the World-Herald. The mayors of Omaha and Des Moines pitched against each other in another year, and so did the head men's basketball coaches from Drake and Creighton Universities. The Lions Club in Adair has offered to give the game a good home in more recent years, and they've done a nice job of providing a concession stand, groomed diamond and other amenities. Proceeds from the concessions are used to upgrade the facilities of the Adair Boys & Girls Club. On Saturday, the concession stand did a tremendous business because the game was played as part of the Jesse James & Chuckwagon Days local celebration. A sand volleyball tournament was being held adjacent to the softball game, and there was a good crowd drifting back and forth and watching both competitions. It was a fine time in journalism. -- CHO

JAMAICA'S QUASQUICENTENNIAL

Jamaica, July 16, 2007 -- This little town of 237 people in west central Iowa got a major infusion of fun during its Quasquicentennial celebration last weekend from its namesake nation in the Caribbean Sea. Tamara Christie, who represents the island of Jamaica's Tourist Board in the Midwest of the U.S., attended as a representative of her country -- and came with gifts. She brought enough T-shirts for everybody in the town of Jamaica, with the island's new tourism slogan: ''Once you go, you know.'' And she also brought enough Jamaican coffee to make it and serve it free to all the early arrivals to the celebration on Saturday morning. There is only a slight connection between the names of the Caribbean island and the small town in Iowa. ''Our town of Jamaica was originally named 'Van Ness,' according to the story we've always heard here,'' said Tommie Jo Scheuermann, owner and operator of ToJo's of Jamaica restaurant and bar. ''Early on, our mayor supposedly didn't like the name 'Van Ness,' and so he took out a world map, blindfolded himself and said he would throw a dart at the map. He said, 'Wherever this dart lands, that's what we'll name this town,' and it landed on the island of Jamaica. I swear, that's what we've always heard.'' The name Van Ness, by the way, became the name of a main east-west street in the town, and that is still the street's name. So anyway, the various plays on the Jamaican connection were a terrific addition to a big line-up of Quasquicentennial events that included a huge Saturday parade, a performance in the afternoon by the legendary ''Farmall Promenade'' dancing tractors from Nemaha in northwest Iowa, and a big street dance Saturday night. Everybody's favorite parade entry? It was undoubtedly Paul Messerschmidt, ''the Gooseman'' from Modale in western Iowa, and his trained geese waddling along the entire route. Additional details are in the photo captions below.


Here are two real Jamaicans at the Quasquicentennial celebration of Jamaica, Iowa, on Saturday, July 14, 2007. At left is Tamara Christie, a native of the island nation of Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea, who now represents the Jamaica Tourist Board in the Midwest. At right is Caleb Meinecke, 10, of Jamaica, Iowa. He's wearing a new T-shirt with the island of Jamaica's slogan, ''Once you go, you know.'' Christie gave these T-shirts to all 237 residents of Iowa's Jamaica. She also served free Jamaican coffee and Iowa pastries to the crowd Saturday morning. ''Tourism is very good in Jamaica now,'' said Christie, who offices in Kansas City and spent two days in the Iowa town. ''There are lots of new, big hotels and major resorts opening, and we have vastly improved our roads and other infrastructure.'' She noted the island, which has a population ''of about four million,'' attracts ''300 to 500 people from Iowa per month.''


The most popular entry in the Jamaica Quasquicentennial parade was Paul Messerschmidt, of Modale, Iowa, and his trained geese wearing patriotic costumes. Messerschmidt, who is known now as ''the Gooseman,'' was with the geese at birth and hand-raised them. As a result, he said, ''they are imprinted,'' meaning they think of him as their father, and will follow him wherever he leads them. In Jamaica, they walked the whole parade route of about three-fourths of a mile, had a good drink of water afterward, then waddled together to a park to meet the kids.

BRIDGE TO BICYCLING'S FUTURE

Council Bluffs, July 12, 2007 -- Our bicycling friends Joe and Cindy Connolly said Tuesday, July 20, was ''an important day in Council Bluffs cycling'' when the first steel beams went up on a $22 million bridge for cyclists and pedestrians over the Missouri River, between their hometown and Omaha. They sent along three photos, one of the first steel work on the Iowa shore, the next of work on one of the towering pylons in the river that will support the bridge and the third one an artist's conception of what the bridge will look like when it is completed in late summer 2008. The bridge rises gradually from Council Bluffs, makes a couple of gentle bends as it reaches a height of more than 100 feet above the water, then will spiral down to the shoreline on the east edge of downtown Omaha. Its total length is to be 2,221 feet, and the two main pylons supporting it above the river will stretch to a height of 225 feet. You can read an earlier story about the bridge here in ''Our Iowa News Digest'' by scrolling back to the date of August 28, 2006, and there are additional photos there. But see the new photos below here.


The first steel beams went up July 10 for the bike/pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and Omaha. This initial steelwork is happening on the Iowa side of the river. (Photo by Joe & Cindy Connolly)


Work has also started on one of the new bridge's major pylons in the Missouri River, this one being built about 50 yards off the Iowa shore. In this photo taken on July 10, the pylon is about one-third of its final height. (Photo by Joe & Cindy Connolly)


Here is an artist's depiction of what the completed bike/pedestrian bridge will look like if viewed from the north looking down-river, with Council Bluffs on the left and Omaha on the right. Officials are hoping for completion in late summer 2008.
--

A BICYCLE RIDE IN SOME BIG HEAT

Perry, July 9, 2007 -- The City of Perry, its parks & rec department and other partners hosted the ninth annual ''Hiawatha Classic'' bicycle ride on Saturday, July 7, in challenging conditions for cyclists. Temperatures were in the 90s by midday and there was a stiff wind from the south-southwest. But still, about 75 tried the 40-mile ride which looped south from Perry, then northwest to Yale, northeast to Dawson and Rippey, then back into Perry. The ride raises money for new trails in Perry and the area. One of those will be the new 33-mile-long ''north loop'' of the currently 56-mile Raccoon River Valley Trail. That will connect Perry to Minburn, Dallas Center and the RRVT at Waukee to the southeast, and the loop will connect Perry to Dawson, Jamaica and the RRVT at Herndon to the west. The east-west portion of that loop has long been informally referred to as the ''Hiawatha Trail,'' from the old zephyrs called ''Hiawatha'' that the Milwaukee Road railroad used to operate on that stretch of railbed. Perry City Administrator Butch Niebuhr told the cyclists on Saturday that the acquisition of the north loop's right-of-way from the Union Pacific Railroad should be completed by this September. Work on the new trail is expected to start soon after the transaction is finalized. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation is negotiating to buy the right-of-way, and is expected eventually to sell or transfer ownership to the Dallas County Conservation Board. So, eventually, there will be a 72-mile loop on the Raccoon River Valley Trail, with total mileage of 89. Needless to say, it's an exciting and promising time for trail users and for communities along the RRVT. Two photos from Saturday's ''Hiawatha Classic'' follow here.


Now that's how to start a bicycle ride! Chuck Scheib is shown here lighting the fuse of his cannon to start the 9th annual ''Hiawatha Classic'' bike ride, which was held Saturday, July 7, in Perry. People refer to Scheib and his gun as ''the Dawson Artillery,'' since he formerly lived in the town of Dawson before moving to Perry in recent years. He puts some gun powder in the barrel, tamps it full of shredded newspaper, touches the fuse with his cigar and ka-BOOM! ''I use it to start the 'BRR' ride during the winter here in Perry, the Hiawatha Classic ride during the summer and for other special events when somebody wants a cannon shot,'' he said. ''And sometimes I just fire it when I feel like it.''

YALE'S QUASQUICENTENNIAL

Yale, July 6, 2007 -- Thousands of people shoehorned themselves into this west central Iowa town of 287 on July 3 and 4 for a celebration that included not only Yale's traditional 4th of July blast but also its Quasquicentennial. The big news -- the 117-year-old Yale hotel was wearing a new coat of primer paint, demonstrating to visitors that the much-anticipated renovation is underway. There was also an open house at the 75-year-old round gym, so alumni and visitors could see the progress being made on the renovation of that little classic. There was a huge parade on the morning of the 4th. And that evening, the fireworks display had ''three times more fireworks than we've ever had before,'' said Mayor Steve Stanton. And it looked like he was not exaggerating when the sky filled with color, roars and crackles for just over 25 minutes. Our group has learned a secret about the Yale fireworks that most Yale residents probably don't know. The fireworks are lighted at the ballpark on the west edge of the town, and that's where most of the people congregate. But the town is only a half-mile wide and long, and it's pancake flat around Yale, so you can see the fireworks from miles away. However, we've learned that if we sit four blocks east, in the general area of downtown, we can hear the fireworks twice. The sound of them quickly sweeps east across town from the park, bounces off the huge concrete grain elevator silos on the east edge of town, and then sweeps back west. It's delightful! In the photos below, you will see some of the fun during Yale's celebration.


Steve and Patty Stanton, the mayor and first lady of the town of Yale, are shown here ready to ride in the Quasquicentennial parade in a 1954 Cadillac convertible driven by Ray Middleton.


The old Yale hotel, under renovation now, is shown here wearing its new coat of white primer paint that owner Sarah Brewster and her parents Ron and Joyce Brewster got done before the celebration. ''The people of Yale have been so supportive of us on this project, we wanted to get the hotel looking a little nicer in time for the celebration,'' Sarah Brewster said. ''We wanted to show them that we're making progress.''


The color guard from the Raccoon River Riders saddle club.


Tina Lair, 8, of the Yale Saddle Club, had striking costuming for both her horse and herself.


The American Legion ''Corn Kings'' band from the town of Jamaica is an organization more than 50 years old -- and still having fun playing from the roof of their colorful jalopy.


Jason Kirtley, of Yale, shows off a 3-year-old ''hypo'' boa constrictor he carried in the parade. He operates Raccoon River Reptiles in Yale, selling snakes and other reptiles via the Internet.


Beth Rasmussen, of Jefferson, is shown here helping her family's display of eight John Deere tractors started on the Yale parade route. The eight tractors are stair-stepped in size, down to the three immediately in front of Beth -- a pedal toy tractor, a 1/16th scale model and a 1/64th scale matchbox-sized tractor -- all Deeres! They're all linked by specially made hitches so they can be pulled by the lead tractor, a 1949 ''B'' that''s been in the family since it was new.


At the front end of the chain of John Deere tractors is Marvin Rasmussen, of Jefferson. He is shown here with daughter Miriam Rasmussen, who just graduated from high school and helps get the tractors to parades and link them up with the hitches. ''You see a lot of antique tractors in parades, and that's neat,'' Marvin said, ''but I wanted something a little different. So I started collecting the different sizes and this summer have started putting them together.'' Note his T-shirt.


Brothers William and Marcus Valentine, 9 and 7, rode the float of the Committee for a Super Cooper and lobbed candy to kids along the parade route.


As an extra little salute to our neighboring town of Yale, the Committee for a Super Cooper included a Yale University banner on our Cooper float. It has the last line of one of the university's famous anthems.


Piloting the Cooper community float in the Yale parade were young Claire Teusch and Carla Offenburger, who is president of the Committee for a Super Cooper.


A ''Garden Tractor Pull'' attracted competitors of all ages, like little Devin Bode, age 5, of Altoona, shown here driving his ''Orange Peeler.'' He is a third generation tractor puller. In the background is Yale's old round gym.

WE PINCH-HITTERS ON WHO RADIO

Des Moines, July 2, 2007 -- Jan Mickelson, the conservative host of the ''Mickelson in the Morning'' radio talkshow on station WHO in Des Moines, is on vacation this week. He puts out so much gas that it is taking seven of us to replace him. The show airs from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at 1040 on the AM dial, and is also available on the Internet at www.whoradio.com.

Leading off among the pinch-hitters today, July 2, were the ''WHO Radio Wise Guys,'' the tech-savvy Dan Adams, Ross Peterson and Brian Gongol who host a Saturday afternoon chat show on WHO on information technology topics.

The guest hosts for the rest of this week:

Tuesday, July 3 -- David Yepsen, the influential political columnist for the Des Moines Register.

Wednesday, July 4 -- U.S. Congressman Steve King, the conservative Republican from Kiron in western Iowa.

Thursday, July 5 -- Uh, me, Chuck Offenburger. I'll have several guests, including in the 10 o'clock hour, Gary and Janet Thompson, of Ames. As many of you know, I am finishing up the biography of Thompson, one of Iowa's greatest sports heroes and for 34 years a commentator on telecasts of college basketball. Fifty years ago this summer, Thompson was saluted after completing his playing career at Iowa State as an All American in both basketball and baseball. He recently has been named to Iowa State's ''All-Century Basketball Team,'' picked in conjunction with the upcoming 100th season of men's basketball at the university, and he has also just been named one of the 150 most notable alumni of ISU, a group recognized as ISU starts its Sesquicentennial celebration. We'll be telling some great stories about Thompson's life as a Roland Rocket, Iowa State Cyclone, broadcaster and successful Ames businessman. And you'll be able to phone us with your questions.

Friday, July 6 -- Ed Fallon, a good liberal Democrat from Des Moines who previously served in the Iowa Legislature and was an unsuccessful candidate for governor last year.

It should be a fun week of listening. -- CHO

CHURDAN'S QUASQUICENTENNIAL

Churdan, July 2, 2007 -- This town of 418 has always seemed to be an especially fun spot in Greene County. And it was especially so over this past weekend, June 30-July 1, when it celebrated its Quasquicentennial in perfect weather. More than 400 people attended an ice cream social Friday night. More than 500 came through the Public Library to view a display of wedding dresses from over the decades. More than 700 attended the all-school reunion banquet Saturday night. The big parade Saturday morning must've had 2,000 or more along the streets. The ''Farmall Promenade'' dancing tractors from Nemaha had a huge crowd Saturday afternoon. There was some unanticipated fun, or nervousness, when the unearthing of the Centennial time capsule didn't go as planned -- they couldn't find it! Eventually they did, as is explained in the photo captions below, and it contained a historical mementos, freshly-minted 1982 coins, and jars of corn and soybeans from back then. Now, check the photos below for more of the fun.


It's amazing how memories fade over 25 years, especially on such a matter as ''just where did we bury the Centennial time capsule?'' and ''was it right under the marker, or to one side of it?'' When our neighboring town of Churdan celebrated its Quasquicentennial June 29-July 1, it took more than five hours of digging on Friday evening and then Saturday afternoon to find the capsule with mementos that had been buried in 1982. People consulted photos published in old newspapers at the time of the burial. They asked old timers what they could recall. And they dug in a half-dozen spots in an area the size of a free throw lane on a basketball court. Finally, it was found about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, just before the all-school reunion was beginning. It turned out it was buried right where it was first thought to be, just deeper than the workers had gone on their first attempt there. Our town of Cooper had gone through the same frantic mystery in 2006 when we spent hours trying to find our Centennial time capsule. It, too, was a little deeper than anybody had guessed it would be.


One of the most fun entries in Churdan's big Quasquicentennial parade was a pick-up truck full of Fitzpatricks, thanking the community for being their home for so many generations. The clan is currently headed by Ruth Fitzpatrick, who still lives on the home farm two miles south of Churdan. There she and her late husband Richard raised 11 children.


Paul Fitzpatrick, 40, is the youngest of the 11 Fitzpatrick children, and he's shown here with his wife Val beside a sign on the side of their extended family's ''float.'' Paul and Val live in Carroll, Iowa.


The Committee for a Super Cooper had its community float in the Churdan parade. Shown with it here are Super Cooper members (back) Lynda Holtz, Beni Wardikun, Doug Lawton and Harold Nash, and (front) Marj Peckumn, Barbara Nash and Chuck Offenburger. The theme of the float is ''Who knew...?'' that little Cooper has all the businesses, organizations and events listed on the signs.


Marj Peckumn, of the Super Cooper group, wore sandwich boards congratulating Churdan on its 125th, and walked alongside the Cooper float. The group also threw candy to kids and a dozen or more special ''Cooper, Iowa'' T-shirts to adults. --

A MAN AND HIS FINE HOT ROD

Jefferson, June 25, 2007 -- Jerry Deluhery, who lives here, turns a lot of heads this time of year when he gets out his 1923 Ford ''T Bucket'' hot rod, as he did recently for the Quasquicentennial parade in the nearby town of Bagley. The bright red body, the open passenger section, the open engine and all the chrome captured our attention at first. But then, as the second photo here shows, there's one detail that is especially fun!


Jerry Deluhery, of Jefferson, is shown here ready for the Bagley Quasquicentennial parade in his 1923 ''T-bucket'' hot rod coupe.


Check this close-up view of the chrome radiator cap ornament on Deluhery's hot rod. ''I'm real proud of that ornament,'' he said. ''I made it myself.'' --

SPENCER CHURCH'S SUMMER SIGN

Spencer, June 12, 2007 -- Photographer Don Poggensee was traveling through Spencer in northwest Iowa the other day when a sign at Grace United Methodist Church there caught his attention.


Sonshine at the Methodist Church in Spencer.

Good advice for the summer season, we thought. -- CHO

PUTTING COACHES IN THEIR PLACES

Cooper, May 29, 2007 -- Hurrah for Troy Dannen, the executive director of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, and the IGHSAU board! Last week they produced the best sports news of recent times in Iowa when they ruled that high school girls' basketball coaches will no longer be allowed to stand up throughout their ball games, shouting directions, ranting and raving. Too many high school coaches, modeling themselves of course after the college and professional coaches they see on television, have become terrible about this. It reached an intolerable level in Iowa girls' basketball during the state tournament in March, when Des Moines Roosevelt's Tig Johnson and Spirit Lake's B.J. Mayer exhibited coaching behavior that should have resulted in both being suspended, if not fired. They may both be nice guys -- indeed some people say that Johnson is shy and soft-spoken off the court -- but on the sidelines both appeared to be tyrannical, pathetic and maybe even abusive. In his monthly column for May on the IGHSAU's site on the Internet, Dannen sounded this alarm: ''The sideline concerns are not limited to comments or actions toward officials. The treatment of players, both verbally and physically, by several of the coaches in this year’s tournament causes us great concern. The Athletic Union doesn’t have authority to discipline a coach for the manner in which he/she treats students. That authority lies solely with the administration of the school that employs the coach. Coaching is solely about education. At no time is education about berating and intimidating. The trend of some coaches to grab players, swear at them and personally berate them in game situations will be addressed promptly with school administrators, and also used as an example for what coaching is not about when we hold our annual June licensure workshop for new coaches.'' So the IGHSAU board invoked a new ''seatbelt rule,'' as they're calling it, that basketball coaches must be seated during the game action, and their behavior when they are standing during timeouts is going to be monitored more closely. Like we said, hurrah! Fans of high school sports in Iowa know that about 20 years ago, the Iowa High School Athletic Association, which sanctions boys' sports, imposed the same rule on their basketball coaches. It had become a problem much earlier in boys' sports than it did in girls' sports. The boys' basketball coaches all refer to it, still to this day, as ''the Saggau rule'' because its leading advocate was Bernie Saggau, then the executive director of the IHSAA. And the boys' coaches have hated the Saggau rule. They want to be up directing and controlling the game, just like they see the big time college and pro coaches doing. But the reason ''the Saggau rule'' and the IGHSAU's new ''seatbelt rule'' are so good is that they are big steps toward taking these games away from the adults and giving them back to the kids. I believe that most of a good high school coach's work -- like 90 percent of it -- should be happening during practice sessions, not during games. On game night, that coach should be enjoying the play as much as the spectators do. But how many coaches today, especially those who are stomping around on the sidelines, appear to be enjoying any of what's happening? They generally appear to be so consumed by anger, gloating and/or self-pity that, deep down, they can't be having a good time. Their young athletes, of course, pick up on thoe antics and start mimmicking them. So, it was a gutty, necessary step that Dannen and the IGHSAU board took, confronting the problem. Now, can we suggest a next step? This would be back in the bailiwick of the IHSAA, involving their sport of football. Let's outlaw the practice of coaches sending in plays from the sideline, or signaling plays and formations to their players on the field. Let's give high school football back to the high school kids. Let the quarterbacks call their own game on offense, and let the defensive captains call the formations when they are on the field. Coaches are so important in the lives of our kids. But again, I think they should be doing most of their coaching, counseling and mentoring during practices, and then letting the kids play the games. It will be more fun for all of us -- the players, fans and even the coaches. -- CHO

E. WAYNE COOLEY'S SHOWMANSHIP

Des Moines, May 29, 2007 -- Des Moines will have a new professional basketball team next season, one playing in the National Basketball Association's ''Development League,'' which is the NBA's equivalent of good minor league baseball. The Des Moines team, which is not yet named, will play its home games in the new Wells Fargo Arena, which can seat 16,110 for basketball. That's a lot of seats to try to fill, of course. Officials of the team recently came up with a neat idea to help draw crowds -- schedule top Iowa high school basketball teams to play a game before the pro game, with one ticket for both games. At a recent press conference, Jerry Crawford, the prominent Des Moines attorney who is co-founder of the team and one of its investors, announced that the idea has the backing and pledged participation of both the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union and the Iowa High School Athletic Association. So sometimes the first game of the doubleheader will feature girls' teams, sometimes boys' teams. The high school match-ups will generally be between teams from across the state that ordinarily don't play each other, from the small schools as well as the big schools. It's a really good idea, actually, one that will add huge measures of interest and fun to the D-League team's home games. And it will let the Iowa kids have a game experience in Wells Fargo, which they otherwise don't get unless their teams make the state tournament. So, anyway, when Crawford and the others featured at the press conference took questions from the media, one of the reporters asked, ''So, where did this idea come from?'' We loved Crawford's answer. ''This idea started 50 years ago with E. Wayne Cooley,'' he said, mentioning the man who ran the IGHSAU for 49 years before his retirement in the fall of 2002. Cooley turned the girls' state basketball tournaments into entertainment extravaganzas, featuring stage bands, singers, drill teams, dancers and more. His thought: Feature the whole high school experience, not just basketball, and the more kids you put down there on that big floor, the more parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents are buying tickets to sit up there in the arena seats. Added Crawford: ''Both our Girls Union and the IHSAA have done great jobs in involving their whole schools in their events. The more people, the better.'' It works in Class A basketball in Iowa, and it works in the NBA, too! -- CHO

KEILLOR'S IOWA STATE FAIR RAVE

Cooper, May 29, 2007 -- We just came across an amazing tribute to the Iowa State Fair from Garrison Keillor, the host of the long-running ''A Prairie Home Companion'' on public radio. You may remember that Keillor played the Iowa fair last summer, and one of his fans ''Eli H.'' of Omaha recalled that in a recent ''Post to the Host'' on the radio show's site on the Internet www.prairiehome.org. Keillor's response to Eli began this way: ''The Iowa State Fair was perfection itself and it was fun to walk around and see it. I suddenly felt disloyal to Minnesota but Iowa's struck me as nearly perfect.'' I immediately alerted the marketing people at the Iowa State Fair, suggesting Keillor's quote is one we should see on billboards all over the state. They were interested, for sure. Meanwhile, for you Internet browsers, that Prairie Home site is a very good one. If you just can't get enough of Keillor on his weekly radio shows, then you can read a good deal of his work on the site, including correspondence between him and his listeners, and a fine-reading column he writes nearly weekly. He calls it ''The Old Scout'' and you have to look hard to find it, deep down the right side of the home page. It's well worth your search. -- CHO

A BALL GAME FOR MOTHER'S DAY?

Des Moines, May 14 -- There are moments in life so good that you indeed need to pinch yourself to make sure they are real. That's how it was for me Sunday afternoon -- Mother's Day. My mother-in-law Sue Burt had told the family that what she really wanted on the special day was for as many of us as possible to go to an Iowa Cubs baseball game with her. So we did, of course! We saw a delightful slugfest, with the I-Cubs winning 17-7 over the Sacramento River Cats. Ma Burt, as we call her, is a very loyal baseball fan, buying sesason tickets for the I-Cubs, who are the AAA minor league affiliate of Major League Baseball's Chicago Cubs. Her daughers in Des Moines, Chris Woods and Tammie Amsbaugh, also have season tickets, so they all do a lot of baseball. And you loyal readers may remember that Sue Burt, over a five year period, attended games at every one of the major league ball parks around the nation.


Veteran baseball fan Sue Burt, of Des Moines, asked us in the family for a Mother's Day gift of attending the Iowa Cubs' baseball game with her Sunday afternoon, May 13, at Principal Park. Note the scorecard, which she almost always keeps during ball games.

My wife Carla and I are also fans, especially of the Chicago Cubs, but we don't get to Principal Park in Des Moines as much as we'd like for I-Cubs games. But we sure did on Mother's Day. What a special place the stadium is, at the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers. When you look beyond the centerfield wall, you have to be impressed with the view of the Iowa State Capitol and its gold domes. When you look just to the northwest of the stadium, there is the impressive Des Moines skyline.


This view is from rightfield to leftfield at Principal Park, with the downtown Des Moines skyline in the distance.

Plus, there are so many neat touches inside the stadium that it's worth a walk before, during or after a game just to see them all. Brand new are the elevated bleachers in right centerfield, where you can volunteer to help work the manually-operated inning-by-inning scoreboard. To the side of the bleachers is a new fountain, which was a huge hit with the kids in the heat of Sunday afternoon. And of course, that fountain will tie right into the new Principal Riverwalk, when it is completed along both banks of the Des Moines River through the downtown area. Meanwhile, down in the ''tunnel'' under the grandstand, there is one of those self-contained, climb-around playgrounds that you sometimes see now in public parks, except this one is much bigger than most. It has tube slides, swings, rope-climbs, mini-ladders and more fun fixtures on which kids can play-away a whole lot of idle energy.


A new fountain on the edge of the rightfield bleachers proved a big hit with kids at the game, which was played on a warm and windy afternoon.

But I think my favorite little feature is that on the scoreboard, the teams are not listed by name, or by ''Visitors'' and ''Home.'' Rather, they are listed as ''Out-of-Towners'' and ''Local Boys.'' There are probably a lot of young professional baseball players today who come into the stadium, see that and think it's about as corny as things can get. They're right. But it's also a nice tie to the deep roots of the grand old game, to times when there was indeed deep pride in the local ball club.


Sue Burt and one daughter Carla Offenburger are shown at the entrance to the new bleachers, which are elevated above the wall in right and centerfield, below the big electronic scoreboard.

You do wonder how the I-Cubs might be affected by this summer's gasoline prices soaring above $3 per gallon. But two thoughts on that from our Sunday afternoon at the ball park: One, a whole lot of people rode bicycles to this game, in a special promotion, and actually that is easy to do for day games, since Principal Park has great rec trails leading right to it. Two, while gasoline is indeed expensive now, if my calculations are correct, beer at the stadium is about four times as expensive. Now, for my conclusions here: 1) I'm glad I ride a bicycle. 2) I'm really glad that I don't drink beer, and not just because of the cost. 3) My mother-in-law is cooler than your mother-in-law, unless you are either John Amsbaugh or Tony Woods. -- CHO

ANOTHER UNINVITED GUEST HERE

Cooper, May 14, 2007 -- Three years of country living have taught us that you just never know what you are going to see meandering across your patch of prairie. Friday lunchtime, it was a furry rodent scampering over the front lawn, stopping every 15 feet or so, sitting up about 15 to 18 inches tall, then scampering some more. Its furry tail was wagging. The farm cats didn't give it a second look. Lassie the deaf collie that doesn't see so well, either, was napping. So we grabbed the camera, took a couple of photos out the front picture window and e-mailed them to our primary source for all things wild and natural, Dan Towers, our Greene County Conservation director.


We at first did not know what this animal was, as it meandered across our front yard at lunch time. But it was clear, it was as curious about our place as we were about it.


''It's a woodchuck, also called a groundhog,'' Towers reported back. ''They're strictly vegetarians and harmless. I think they're neat animals and like having them around. They give the Jack Russell Terriers something to spar with. Their downside is they like to burrow under buildings, and sometimes cause foundation problems.'' Oh. Towers may like having these around, but I am not taking this as good news. I've noticed a burrow in the barn, and I recall the Gettler brothers, when they were doing the construction work on our farmhouse, said they saw a woodchuck running out of the barn. I also recall hearing on public radio once that woodchucks sometimes live in the same burrows for several generations, which may raise a legitimate question about just who the uninvited guest is here. -- CHO

ANOTHER ''POMEROY SATURDAY''

Pomeroy, May 9, 2007 -- This northwest Iowa town of 700 people is turning itself into a haven of artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, food & coffee lovers and good-natured loafers, and they have now started coordinating special activities on the second Saturdays of each month. Leonard Olson, who has become nationally known for the kaleidoscopes he is making in Pomeroy, is one of the organizers, and he gives us this preview of the next ''Second Saturday'' here.

Please join us in Pomeroy this Saturday, May 12. To repeat what we have at the Kaleidoscope Factory: ''Tie-Dye Roger'' is going to be here. It's a different format this year. Just like always, he'll be leading tie-dye workshops. This year, instead of paying him, you donate to the Calhoun County Foundation instead. The CCF recently awarded over $51,000 in grants for projects such as playground equipment in Farnhamville, computer monitors in the Lake City Library and a tox-alert system for the EMS building in Lohrville. Roger says, ''Bring your own T-shirt or bandana or other small item to dye. It needs to be 100 percent cotton to work best, and pre-washed to remove factory stuff like stain resistors. I will supply dye, rubberbands, gloves and fun.''

From 9 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturday, the Public Library will be hosting Jerod Ulicki. He's a very talented classical guitarist from Fort Dodge and was my guest artist in December of 2005.

The Hungry Horse Gallery will have a display of vintage schoolbooks. At Antiques and More out on Iowa Highway 4, Elsie will have a display of a 1950s wedding dress and accessories. Also plan to visit Abbejas Glass Art with their stained glass and etched stone and glass, along with painted rural scenes on glass. Liz Meyer's Americana Folk Art Studio will also be open. The Historical Museum has its new roof, and they'll be having an open house with cookies and drinks to thank everyone for their support.

While you're at the Hungry Horse, take a peek in back and check out the progress on ''The College of Leonard.'' I'm shooting for an opening date in June, with Regina Smith teaching flameworked beads as the first class series. More on that to come.

Hope to see you this weekend. -- Leonard Olson

THE WELL-DRESSED BICYCLIST

Cooper, May 9, 2007 -- Oh, how good it feels to get back on our bicycles and take late afternoon and evening rides on our Raccoon River Valley Trail, a 56-mile-long hard-surfaced rec trail here in west central Iowa. This is the 18th season for the trail, which keeps getting better all the time, with additional amenities being added in towns along the way. RRVT users this season will begin seeing the first of our new specially-designed signs that will welcome them to communities, give mileage distances and more. In addition, the RRVT Association has just started offering a handsome line of special trail users' apparel, with the RRVT logos. You can read more, and order the clothing items online, by going to the Internet site www.raccoonrivervalleytrail.org. Meantime, get on your bikes! -- CHO

YES, THAT'S A CROCK, FOR SURE

Churdan, May 7, 2007 -- This town of 418 people is celebrating its Quasquicentennial June 29-July 1, and a fun part of it is that one of our favorite Greene County characters, Lawrence Geisler, is costuming up and doing portrayals of the person the town is named after, Joseph Churdan. He was an Englishman who came to the U.S. when he was 27 years old in 1851. He bought land in this area, saw the population start growing with the arrival of early settlers and then the railroad, was the first postmaster, died in 1908 at age 84 and is buried in the local cemetery. Geisler is a real talent who had a long career as an English teacher at Marshalltown High School, and came back to his hometown of Churdan for retirement. He always has a good story to share. For example, I've thought his recitation of the poem ''Casey at the Bat,'' which I have heard him do, should be an annual observation of professional baseball's opening day, to be delivered in the courthouse rotunda in Jefferson. So anyway, Geisler does a wonderful job portraying Churdan. He points out, however, that the pioneer actually pronounced his last name ''SHUR-den,'' not ''Chur-DAN,'' as everyone calls the town today. He blames that on railroad conductors who would call out the name of the town as the trains were approaching: ''Chur-DAAAAAANNNN!'' So, in the middle of Geisler's portrayal of the historic character, when he tells the story about the confusion over the name, he pauses, looks up at the audience and says, ''Isn't that a crock to have a town named after you, and then the people mispronounce it for the next 125 years?'' -- CHO

YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE THIS DOG

Cooper, May 7, 2007 -- Our collie Lassie, who landed here at our farm as a stray two years ago, is old and her teeth are worn. She's also deaf, does not see too well, has a knot on her forehead (although it is not cancerous) and suffers from arthritis in her hips. But honestly, we have rarely seen an animal that seems to value life more than Lassie does, so we have done our best to keep her going. She responds with amazing loyalty. I mean, the ol' girl makes her rounds on the perimeter of our property twice a day, ever on guard. But we noticed recently (don't ask how) that she now has tapeworms, so my wife Carla called Jefferson Veterinary Clinic and asked what we should do. They said, not surprisingly, that they'd recommend tapeworm medicine, and we could pick it up. When I stopped by the clinic to do so, it gave me a bit of a pause when I saw that the two pills, which Lassie was to take together, would cost $27. But then I thought of Ol' Faithful out there walking our perimeter, twice a day, no matter the weather, and agreed to the cost. However, I did ask Dr. Mark Peters how long the pills would be good for, in terms of eliminating the tapewords. ''Until she eats her next rabbit carcass,'' the doc said. I laughed, took the medicine and that evening hid the pills in Lassie's dogfood. She gobbled them right down. So the next afternoon, I walked out front to stretch in the infrequent sunshine we've had around here lately. There to greet me was Lassie -- with a half-eaten hen pheasant in her mouth.


The day after we gave our old collie Lassie $27 worth of tapeworm medicine, which our veterinarian Dr. Mark Peters had said would be good ''until she eats her next rabbit carcass,'' the dog meandered up to us with a hen pheasant in her mouth. We think in this photo she looks like she is feeling a little guilty about it.

I couldn't help but laugh. I called Carla at work and told her. She told me to take the pheasant away from Lassie, and I responded that since I make a living using my fingers and hands to type, there's no way I was going to try to take a half-eaten pheasant away from a large collie, even an old impaired collie. Mother Nature can take her course. After all, there are worse things than tapeworms. I can't say exactly what things would be worse, right at this moment, but I'm sure there are some. -- CHO

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY!

Cooper, April 26, 2007 -- Iowa farmers got a great start on corn planting, April 18-21, with some reports holding that 10 percent of this year's total crop was put in the ground. But on Sunday, April 22, it started raining, and it rained four consecutive days -- with more than six inches falling in our area around Cooper in west central Iowa. The result? There were a lot of planted fields that looked like this one, late on April 25 when this photo was taken.


That is not a lake, it's a planted cornfield! More than six inches of rain in four days swamped many farm fields in southern Greene County.

The wet conditions prompted a lot of farmers to start talking about 1993, when it started raining in mid-April and never seemed to stop until fall. Iowa made global news then for the flooding that then-Governor Terry Branstad called ''the worst natural disaster in state history.'' But there is much more hope now. The weather forecast for coming days is excellent, promising real, sustained spring weather! Besides, the equipment and technology the farmers use now is much bigger and better than it was 14 years ago. When the farmers are forced into a ''do-over,'' they can do it over in a hurry!


On the south edge of Jefferson, the North Raccoon River was far out of its banks. On the right side of the photo, you can see Iowa Highway 4 heading north into town. (Photo by Carla Offenburger) --

PLANTING TIME IN IOWA

Cooper, April 23, 2007 -- This is a great time of year to take a drive across rural Iowa. In the planting season, just as in the harvest season, it is amazing how much activity you see in the countryside and how much difference there can be in one area from another. It was on Wednesday, April 18, when I heard the WHO radio farm broadcasters Ken Root and Mark Pearson asking for farmers who were starting their corn planting to phone their midday show with progress reports. Until that moment, I had not noticed many farmers in the fields yet. But it seemed like that very afternoon, they were all getting out there!


Corn planting time arrived in west central Iowa last week. Shown here early on Sunday, April 22, Tom Peckumn cultivates a 120-acre field owned by George Henning across the road from Simple Serenity Farm, where we Offenburgers live. The handsome terraced field, which was fertilized late last week with a mix of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, will soon be planted to corn.


It's thrilling to see how quickly the landscape changes from the gray of winter's stubble to the deep brown and black of soil that has been cultivated and planted. Even better is the smell when you are driving past a field of just-broken soil. When you live in rural Iowa, as we do now, just as you're turning off the light and falling asleep at night, you can hear neighbors' tractors as they work on into the wee hours. First corn, then soybeans, and soon the dark fields will show the vibrant green shoots of the new crop. We spectators almost take it for granted when, in reality, it is almost miraculous how it all happens. -- CHO

OUR HOLY WEEK TRADITION

Boone, April 6, 2007 -- For a 15th consecutive year, a group of us met at the Y-Camp northwest of here on Wednesday of Holy Week. Some may remember that the Y-Camp has always boasted that it is ''the closest place to heaven on earth,'' meaning it's an especially good place to visit in this week before Easter. As always, we ate lunch, caught up on each other's lives, had a 45-minute period of spiritual readings and reflections, then wound up by singing the old hymn ''This Is My Father's World.''


The crowd that gathered for lunch at the Y-Camp northwest of Boone on Wednesday of Holy Week this year.

We also listened to Stan Moffitt play ''Reveille and ''Taps'' on his official Boy Scout bugle, just like they've played at summertime Y-Camp sessions here for more than 85 years.


Stan Moffitt, of Boone, on his new bugle, which he purchased on E-Bay recently for $67. It's an ''official'' Boy Scouts of America bugle, more than 50 years old. ''I love that thing,'' said Moffitt.

Given unseasonably cold temperatures, in the upper 20s, and strong winds, only five of us made the climb of Chapel Point to complete our tradition.

AN EAGLE SCOUT'S TRAIL PROJECT

Yale, March 13, 2007 -- Last year when leaders of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association began calling for more amenties in the communities along the trail, one person who stepped up is 14-year-old Logan Laughery, who lives near Yale and thought some trail-related development would make a good Eagle Scout project.

His leaders in Boy Scout Troop 153 agreed, so did City of Yale leaders and now young Laughery is pulling together a plan to convert the pit toilets at the RRVT trailhead in his hometown to permanent flush toilets, with running water and electrical service in them, too.

“I wanted to do something to help the bike trail,” Laughery said. “I started out thinking about possibly re-doing a nature trail in Springbrook State Park (west of Yale), or making mileage markers for the Raccoon River Valley Trail. But then when I heard the trail association wanted to get permanent restrooms along the trail in all the towns, I thought that would be good for the trail,” and good for Yale, too.

As he has worked with city officials and Yale Tiling company’s Dale Louk on the construction and plumbing plans, Laughery has also launched a $4,000 fundraising campaign to cover the estimated costs.

A key part of that is a pancake breakfast on Sunday, March 25, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Yale Community Center. Laughery and the other scouts and leaders in Troop 153 will be doing the flapjacks and table service. There will be a free-will offering for the pancakes, with all proceeds going to the restrooms project.


Logan Laughery, 14, who lives near Yale, has undertaken an Eagle Scout project on the Raccoon River Valley Trail in his hometown. His project will help convert the pit-toilet restrooms at the Yale trailhead so they have permanent flush toilets, while also adding running water and electricity to the building. Laughery is putting on a fundraiser pancake breakfast Sunday, March 25, in the Yale Community Center.


During the breakfast, RRVT Association board members will have the new display booth set up in the community center, and explain the projects and ideas that are being considered all up and down the 56-mile hard-surfaced trail in west central Iowa.

“Now that spring weather has started and we’re starting another trail season, we hope some RRVT users will bike or drive into Yale and have pancakes to help Logan’s project,” said Carla Offenburger, of Cooper, president of the RRVT Association.

Yale Mayor Steve Stanton, who has become an ardent trail booster, said Laughery “is a young man doing a great job on this project. He’s very well-organized on this. He’s got the support of our City Council and he’s got the support of the whole community.”

The town of 287 has come to believe it is well positioned to be a favorite stopping point for trail users in the years to come. That optimism is based on the total renovation of the 116-year-old Yale hotel that is underway now by new owner Sarah Brewster, and the City’s renovation and restoration of the round Yale gym for use as a venue for live theater, concerts and other gatherings.

“At our last City Council meeting, we had a discussion on how we’re going to help Yale become as supportive and friendly as possible to users of the RRVT,” said Mayor Stanton. “We want this to be an inviting place for them.”

He said when the town celebrates its Quasquicentennial during the annual 4th of July celebration this summer, “we’re going to be getting special invitations out for trail users to come to Yale and have fun at the celebration, and we hope to have some special events and attractions for them.”

Laughery said his target date for having the trailhead restrooms project completed is the 4th of July celebration.

As part of his fundraising campaign, he has applied for a $1,000 grant from the Guthrie County Community foundation. He volunteered at another pancake breakfast earlier this month sponsored by the Cass Pioneers 4-H Club, and the 4-H’ers decided to donate $250 of their profits to Laughery’s project. And the City Council voted to cover the costs of the
“perc test” necessary for installing a waste disposal system. Laughery said he would be organizing his mates in Troop 153 “to do some of the physical work, including cleaning up the restroom building after the construction and clean-up the park there, too.”

A freshman at Panorama High School in nearby Panora, Laughery is a football player, wrestler and golfer. He has been involved in Scouting for 10 years, starting as a Cub Scout in second grade. He and other boys of about the same age were involved in starting up Boy Scout Troop 153 when they were in fifth grade. He has two merit badges left – for “family life” and “citizenship in the nation” while he also works on his Eagle award.

He is the son of Carol and Mark Laughery, who live west of Yale, near Springbrook State Park. His mother is a dietician providing services at both the Guthrie County and Greene County hospitals, and his father is a lab director at Broadlawns Polk County Medical Center in Des Moines and he is also the adult leader of Troop 153. The Laugherys also have a younger son Ethan, 10, and daughter Cameron, 7.

“I think it’s great that we’ve got the bike trail coming through Yale,” Logan Laughery said. “I’ve been riding it since I was five or six years old. My grandparents Bob and Charlotte Schmidt live in Jefferson, and they both ride on the trail. I probably ride it myself 15 times a summer. Our Boy Scout troop has gone out and ridden together from Yale to Jefferson. During football season, I know we’ve had players from here in Yale and from Linden, down south of Panora, that have ridden their bicycles on the trail to practice every day at the high school. I like the scenic part of it, and besides, it’s just fun being out there on a bike.”

Donations for Laughery’s Eagle Scout project can be mailed to him in care of the City Hall, 230 Main Street, Yale, Iowa 50277. -- CHO

BLIZZARD, THEN ECLIPSE -- WOW!

Ida Grove, March 4, 2007 -- Most of us in Iowa were probably so exhausted from battling a blizzard which raged for 48 hours March 1-3, that we missed the full lunar eclipse that occurred on the evening of Saturday, March 3. But you can bet that photographer Don Poggensee, of Ida Grove in northwest Iowa, didn''t miss it! Here is his report to go along with the photos below: ''The moon came up about 6:20 p.m. or so, and I was just to the southeast of our hospital on a gravel road, looking back to the east.'' He noted that during an eclipse, as the Earth''s shadow moves across the Moon, the Moon''s color seems to change from its normal white to a reddish tint and then back again. The reddish tint is sunlight being refracted by the Earth''s atmosphere, bending the normal color spectrum, then playing on the Moon and its dust particles, then reflecting back toward us. He said the heavy snowcover all around him and the cold temperatures made this an especially memorable eclipse. ''Three years ago we had the same type of eclipse, but this one with the very cold clean air was special,'' he said. He noted that in taking photos of the Moon during such events, you need to remember that ''the light we see is is reflected sunlight. To photograph it, you have to use a little under-exposure to get the light right.'' Poggensee added that as he was watching and shooting, he noticed ''a fox came out and was playing in the snow across the field from me. Yes, you forget the cold when God displays his handiwork.''







-- CHO

BEST IOWA BUSINESS SLOGANS

Hamburg, March 7, 2007 -- This past Tuesday early afternoon, I was getting ready to do my weekly spot on the ''Chuck & Don Show'' on KMA radio in my hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa. Actually, I was at home on the farm near Cooper in west central Iowa, listening in via the Internet, waiting for my on-air conversation with show hosts Chuck Morris and Don Hansen. I always enjoy listening to KMA, even the commercials, as I hear names of businesses that have been around longer than I have, as well as new ones. So anyway, I found myself listening to an ad for Benefiel Truck Repair & Towing from the town of Hamburg in the very corner of Iowa. The ad was talking about their reliable, affordable towing services. And then it ended with a line which was so good that I am now officially adding it to my list of Iowa's Best Business Slogans: ''We don't want an arm and a leg -- just all your tows!'' Incidentally, for the other slogans on my list, click into ''Our Iowa Store'' at the top left of our home page, and watch them spell out across the page in front of you. -- CHO

''SECOND SATURDAYS'' IN POMEROY

Pomeroy, March 6, 2007 -- This northwest Iowa town of 700 people is turning itself into a haven of artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, food & coffee lovers and good-natured loafers, and they have now started coordinating special activities on the second Saturdays of each month. Leonard Olson, who has become nationally known for the kaleidoscopes he is making in Pomeroy, is one of the organizers, and he gives us this preview of the next ''Second Saturday'' here:

Saturday March 10th is shaping up to be another outstanding Second Saturday in Pomeroy. First, a little about my guest artist: Agra Vinaude was born in Cesis, Latvia, in 1977 and attended the Riga Teacher Training and Education Management Academy in Riga, Latvia, majoring in Elementary Education and Psychology. She came to the United States in August 2003 as an ''au pair'' and has been a full time student at Iowa Central Community College since 2005, majoring in fine arts. Her primary interests are photography and painting, and she would like to attend graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and obtain a masters degree in Art Therapy.

''My artwork expresses my feelings and beliefs about human beings and their inner and outer world,'' Agra says. ''I use the human body or parts of it to show my emotions and create visual and mental harmony. The closed figures in my paintings and photographs are representing my introverted personality and patience. The color, on the other hand, shows my interaction with other people and the outer world. The work in black and white blocks out the outer opinions and shows my feminine dreams, needs and passion.''

It will be an international artists weekend in Pomeroy as two Iowa Central art students from Hong Kong will be at Abbejas Stained Glass.

Also on Saturday, Lois Voss will be showing her collection of Coca Cola memorabilia at the Public Library from 8 a.m. to 12 noon. The Historical Society will be putting on a spaghetti dinner at the community building. Elsie Moore will be showcasing Victorian mourning jewelry and attire at Antiques & More. Liz Meyer's Americana Folk Art Studio will be debuting ''Keeper of the Light'' candles created by ''A Cheerful Giver.''

''Pomeroy Unplugged,'' the exceedingly popular open acoustic bluegrass jam, will be held once again in the ''Gnome Home'' (back room of the Kaleidoscope Factory). The homemade washtub bass will be available again for anyone who wants to try their hand at thumping! Bring your spoons! Bring your dulcimers! Bring your autoharps! Most of all, bring yourself!

Pomeroy is becoming a happening place, especially on these Second Saturdays.
-- CHO

CAN AN IOWAN BE PRESIDENT?

Cooper, February 26, 2007 -- We were sad when former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack ended his campaign for the U.S. presidency this past Friday -- before it had really even gotten started. It's all about money, he said in his withdrawal announcement. He couldn't raise enough of it. His character, his leadership ability, his experience, his positions on issues, his willingness to work hard in a campaign of ''retail'' politics -- none of that mattered. He just couldn't raise enough money. Why? Because he is from a small state in the Midwest, because he is not a ''rock star'' and because there are other ''rock stars'' in the race. What makes us especially sad about all this is that, try as we might, we can't really imagine a future scenario in which anybody from Iowa can ever be nominated and then elected president of the United States. Are we wrong? Could it somehow still happen for some Iowan? How? We don't see a way right now. -- CHO

COPING WITH A GENUINE BLIZZARD

Cresco, February 25, 2007 -- Our friend Jeff Ryan, who farms with his brother Roger Ryan and father Tom Ryan near Cresco in northeast Iowa, says the weekend blizzard was one of the most ferocious he can recall. ''I still haven't heard an official total on snowfall, but I would guess we're around 15 to 18 inches since Friday night,'' Jeff said Sunday night. ''The 30 to 40 miles per hour winds never really let up, so the drifts are mighty healthy. Plus, it rained before it snowed, so now there's about an inch of ice underneath the whole mess. It makes for very special traction when trying to move snow. It also makes for very tough conditions with the tractor-mounted snowblower when it can't break through the crust of ice. We may have to move most of this stuff with the skid loader. I have one picture of a gate at the feedlot, taken Saturday. The pipes on the gate are about 2.25 inches in diameter, so you can see how much ice was hanging on the east side of the gate. It was all we could do to swing it open yesterday to feed the cows.''


In the top photo, you see the drifted results on the Ryan farm near Cresco, where 15 to 18 inches of snow fell in a two day period, with the wind also blowing from 30 to 40 miles per hour throughout the storm. Before the heavy snow, there was ice, and you can see how heavily it coated the 2.25-inch pipes that are part of a gate.


Jeff said that ''our power came back on at 8:30 Sunday morning. That was good, because our generator gave out at 8:20.'' It started snowing again Sunday afternoon, as the Ryans were starting chores, and Jeff said the forecast was for ''some freezing rain and another two to four inches of snow by tomorrow.'' In a postscript, he added, ''Hope all is well in the tropical part of the state.'' -- CHO

''CHUCK & CHUCK & DON'' ON RADIO

Shenandoah, Iowa, February 5, 2007 -- It's good for both my heart and soul, what I'm now doing in the early afternoon every Tuesday. Chuck Morris and Don Hansen, co-hosts of the ''Chuck & Don Show'' from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on radio KMA in my hometown of Shenandoah, have invited me to become a Tuesday regular with them. I come on about 1:30 p.m., and we chat about topics in the news, or I tell a few stories from my years of covering Iowa, or we reflect about some of the people there in my ol' stomping grounds in southwest Iowa. We started this back in early December, and have done it every Tuesday since, including those when I was recently in London and Cape Town.


Chuck Morris (left) and Don Hansen, co-hosts of KMA radio's ''Chuck & Don Show'' which airs 1 to 2 p.m. on weekdays at 960 on the AM dial, or on the Internet at www.kmakkbz.com. When Chuck Offenburger joins them about 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons, it becomes the ''Chuck & Chuck & Don Show.'' (KMA radio photo)

Normally I'll be doing the show via phone from our Simple Serenity Farm near Cooper in west central Iowa. But I hope to come ''home'' to Shenandoah and join Chuck & Don in the KMA studio occasionally. And when better weather returns, I'll invite them to come do their show live from the farm, too.

Hansen has been with KMA since he was a Shenandoah High School student in 1971. He also serves as station manager. Morris was at KMA 14 years through the 1980s and early '90s, went elsewhere for nine years and then re-joined the radio statff in 2003. Among his other duties is joining Dean Adkins weekday mornings for the ''Chuck & Dean Show.''

Hansen and Morris launched the ''Chuck & Don Show'' 20 years ago, when Morris was in his first life at KMA, and then started doing it again early this winter. They feature chats with newsmakers and intriguing characters as close as Shenandoah and as far away as the coasts.

It's a great kick for anybody who has grown up in Shenandoah to have even a small spot on KMA. The station, which is the home ship for the May Broadcasting Co. properties, has been doing quality radio for more than 80 years, serving the corners of four states. In this era of canned, syndicated radio, KMA continues to devote most of its broadcast day to shows, newscasts and sportscasts by its own staff.

KMA and its sister station KKBZ-FM both stream their broadcasts on the Internet. So if you are close by, you can pick up KMA at 960 on the AM radio dial. Or if you are anywhere else in the world, you can go to the stations' Internet site www.kmakkbz.com and then click on ''KMA'' and then ''Listen Live.'' -- CHO

''SEVEN PROPHETS'' IN GREENE CO.

Jefferson, Jan. 30, 2007 -- Rev. Bill Brunner is a Catholic priest who served all over the U.S. but is retired now here in his ol' hometown of Jefferson. He subs for Rev. Don Ries, pastor of our St. Joseph Catholic Church, when Father Ries takes off on his occasional snow skiing trips, as he did recently. So anyway, in his homily at mass last Sunday, Father Brunner mentioned that the scriptural readings of the day were about prophecy and prophets. He said many of us can experience being ''a prophet,'' like when we say just the right thing at just the right time, and something positive happens as a result. He said even things can be prophets, in a way. ''I said the early mass today at St. Brigid over in Grand Junction,'' he said, ''and when I was driving back to Jefferson, I looked out north of town and I saw those seven, huge, new wind turbines going up on the farms out there on the ridge. Those things are like seven prophets standing out there because their presence is telling us of huge changes coming to Greene County. Wind energy and the bio-fuels are front page stuff nearly every day. So much is happening! And it looks really good for Greene County and for our towns. You farmers might wind up making a little money yet!'' The Seven Prophets! A great name for the new wind turbines! -- CHO

A REAL EAGLE SHOW ON OUR RIVER

Cooper, January 30, 2007 -- For big snows at Simple Serenity Farm, we hire our neighbor Craig Flack to come over with his big John Deere tractor to clear our driveway. After the first major snow of this winter, on January 20, Flack didn't get to us until a day later than would be normal. ''That snow was just too good for snowmobiling, and we haven't had much of that the last couple of winters, so my boys and I were out doing that all of yesterday,'' he said. ''We got on the North Raccoon River, west of Jefferson close to U.S. Highway 30, and then went all the way south and east to Squirrel Hollow Park, then back,'' a round-trip of about 12 miles. ''I couldn't believe how many eagles we saw -- maybe 12 to 15 bald eagles,'' he continued. ''But we also saw what I think must have been a golden eagle -- the biggest bird I've ever seen,'' holding his hand just below his waist to show how tall he thought the bird stood. ''There had been some ice fishermen out there catching carp and just leaving them, so I had my boys gather up a bunch of the fish and put them out on a sandbar,'' Flack continued. ''We hid behind some brush and just watched. Several of the eagles were kind of skittish and just kept circling up over our heads. But the big one came down, landed on the sandbar, walked around like he owned the place and ate a whole bunch of carp.'' A winter spectacular! Way too many of us around here drive across the North Raccoon River bridges several times a day, without ever giving a thought to what a natural wonderland the stream and its greenbelt really are. -- CHO

THE ''TURKEY'' SHARED THE HONOR

Ft. Atkinson, Jan. 30, 2007 -- Word reaches us from northeast Iowa that Todd Schmitt, who was named our ''Turkey of the Year'' at Turkey Valley High School near here this past Thanksgiving, kept his word that he would celebrate by hosting a turkey dinner for his gang of friends from school. His parents Paul and Bette Schmitt sent along several photos from the January 12 event.

OUR NEW ''DRAIN WATCHPERSON''

Jefferson, Jan. 15, 2007 -- We now have a new position in Greene County's government -- ''part-time drain watchperson.'' The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 last week to hire Duane Larson at $15 per hour for this new position. Two board members said they regard it as a temporary position, one they created to take advantage of Larson's considerable expertise in drainage matters in the rural parts of the county. Larson is a 78-year-old former member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in last November's election. The four members of the board who voted to hire him for the new position -- chairperson Guy Richardson and members Mary Jane Fields, John Muir and Terry Adams -- all served with Larson on the board. The one member of the board who voted against hiring him for the new position is Jerry Roberts, the new member who narrowly beat Larson in the election. New Drain Watchperson Larson is a farmer who lives near us, south of Cooper. A few of our other neighbors around here question whether he really is an expert on drainage. But, then, there are always lots of different opinions about drainage in the Iowa countryside. And, of course, there are always lots of different opinions about politics in the Iowa countryside. My opinion, which I shared in a letter to the Board of Supervisors and then in a few comments to them before they voted last week, has been that Larson is too old, grouchy and conservative to continue serving in county government. In the last year alone, he voted against a tax abatement package for a new ethanol plant; voted against a reasonable pay raise for the members of the Board of Supervisors, and in one of his last acts as a supervisor, spoke against a new streetscape project for the county seat town of Jefferson when it was being discussed at a meeting of a regional development group of which he was then a Greene County representative. In the interests of full disclosure, my wife Carla Offenburger has been co-chairperson of the committee that has developed that streetscape plan, and both of us think it's something that Jefferson and Greene County really need to make happen. However, my concerns about Larson pre-dated the streetscape matter. That is why last fall I talked Roberts into running against Larson, helped him get enough qualifying signatures to get on the ballot, contributed to his campaign and talked to a number of people about voting for him. I have no personal animosity for Larson. Indeed, as I told the supervisors last week, I wish I could get along with him better because he is as colorful a character as he is a cantankerous one. But as far as Larson serving another term on the Board of Supervisors, or representing Greene County, it was time for him to move on. And now he is. Well, come to think of it, maybe it would be more accurate now to say he is moving over instead of moving on: Part-time drain watchperson, $15 per hour. The grand irony here is that this seems exactly the kind of thing that, if Larson were still on the Board of Supervisors, he would have surely voted against. He should decline the job. -- CHO

WELCOMED BY A SNIFFING DOG

Cooper, January 15, 2007 -- Sadly, friends, we live in a world that has gone nuts over security. With good cause, we quickly remind ourselves. But nevertheless, people all over the world have decided that we need such things as razor wire on top of walls around schools in South Africa, we need nasty spiked obstructions around Buckingham Palace, we need to spend billions of dollars building a wall or fence along the U.S. border with Mexico, we need gated communities, double locks on doors, alarm systems in our cars, and dozens of security officers working at every airport. It is all essential, we remind ourselves again. But when we flew back into the U.S. from our recent trip to South Africa and landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, we saw something that seemed to us to cross the line. Indeed, for one of the rare times in my life, I felt embarrassed to be an American. All of us passengers coming off a flight from London -- for which we of course had been properly screened, scanned and scolded -- were directed through Customs, Immigration and baggage transfer at O'Hare. All that seemed O.K. to me, as it happens whenever you travel into another nation. However, here came a uniformed Homeland Security Administration officer with a beagle dog on a leash. A PA announcement, and then the officer herself, told us passengers we were being checked to make sure we were not bringing any fruit into the U.S. from another country, in compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. So the officer, who was actually kind of cheery, was guiding the beagle dog around, telling it to jump up and sniff us, and to sniff any bags or purses we were carrying. You know, at first it didn't bother me all that much, because the officer spoke the same language I do, she was pleasant and the beagle dog was even kind of cute. But when I looked around and saw the reaction of people who were from other nations and other cultures, I became as alarmed as they all seemed to be, espeecially those whom I would guess were from Middle Eastern countries. I'm sure what was on their minds were the photos of American soldiers and dogs in Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo. They were seeing a uniform, hearing an officer whom they might not have been able to understand, and seeing her encourage a dog to jump up and sniff them. They looked frightened. And I really felt like apologizing. America is better than what we saw there. -- CHO

NICE PERSPECTIVE ON CHRISTMAS

Des Moines, December 25, 2006 -- We ran into our longtime acquaintance Dan Miller, executive director and general manager of Iowa Public Television, at a holiday reception here on a recent evening. ''Merry Christmas, Dan,'' we said, adding a rhetorical question, ''How are you doing?'' We really didn't expect an answer to that, but Miller gave us one that was an instant reminder of just how wonderful most Christmases are, if we have things in proper perspective. ''Well, I'm 55 years old, I have a 7-year-old daughter and it's Christmastime,'' said Miller. ''That about says it all, doesn't it?'' -- CHO

A '' WASSAIL BOWL'' HAND-OFF

Shenandoah, Dec. 12, 2006 -- We will remember the 57th annual ''Wassail Bowl Stag,'' held Saturday, December 9, here in my hometown of 5,600 people in southwest Iowa, as a benchmark for this event that is one of the longest-running Christmas traditions in the state. In 1950, a group of young businessmen wanted to get together on a Saturday before the holidays to share a few drinks, warm feelings and then have lunch together. They called their group ''The Twelve O'Clock High Luncheon Club.'' It grew from a gathering of two dozen to a full-scale banquet that at one time was drawing 300 or more men from across the area. The numbers have declined in recent years, but the spirit is just as grand. And the 2006 Wassail Bowl turned a corner in the event's long history. For the first time, none of the original Wassailers attended. Three of them are still alive -- Gage Parker, now of Lincoln, Nebraska; Ben Brown of Des Moines, and Ridgeway Hutcheson, who still lives in Shenandoah. All are now in their 80s. They will be glad to know that the tradition that they helped start so long ago even grew a little bit this year. Roland Pulley, who is ''Appointments Director'' for the current organizing committee, reported attendance at 146, up 20 from a year ago. Everybody pays at least $25, which more than covers the costs of a big dinner of turkey, ham, beef and all the trimmings, as well as two drinks. If you drink more, you buy your own, and you do so with caution. Why? One of the rules of the Wassail Bowl is ''Consumption of alcoholic beverages in moderation will be tolerated,'' and a couple of prominent men from the area were forever booted off the invitation list after they fell across that line of moderation. The event has also done some good beyond all the good feelings that are exchanged. Whatever income exceeds costs each year is donated to the school nurse in Shenandoah, to be used at her or his discretion to cover dental work, eyeglasses and other help for needy children in the community. That amount over the years has totaled more than $80,000 and has helped more than 4,250 kids. The Wassail Bowl has changed a lot in its 57 years. As one of the founding members, the late Bob Tyson, once told me, ''Over the years, I notice we eat a lot more and drink a lot less.'' And yet, there is still a little high-spirited fun, too. Like in 2005, when a quartet of younger men organized themselves on the spot and broke out singing ''The Wassailing Song,'' which starts ''Here We Come a-Wassailing, among the leaves so green...'' That's about as far as they could go with the actual words, so then they carried on with ''fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!'' Last Saturday, they came back as a sextet, one that even had songsheets and had practiced ahead of time! They included insurance broker Brian Steinkuehler, industrial manager Don Mullison, public opinion statistician Loche Williams, farmer Pete Wenstrand, lumber salesman Rick Dodd and plumber Bill Ditmars. They were actually pretty good. And that left some in their audience amazed. ''Those guys are way too organized for me now,'' said attorney Gary Gee, who'd been in the quartet last year but opted out of the singing this year. ''I'm all about being spontaneous.'' Meanwhile, as the men toasted the season together at the American Legion Country Club, the women of the area were gathered for their own annual event, ''The Tannenbaum Tea,'' at the Elks Club. None of us men have ever been able to figure out just what the women do out there, as all that they will say afterward is that they get along fine without us. But most all of us involved, at both the Wassail Bowl and Tannenbaum Tea, do believe that the holidays are always a little brighter and better after that Saturday each year when these neat traditions are renewed in Shenandoah. -- CHO

LESSONS & CAROLS & SHHHH!

Indianola, December 11, 2006 -- Let me say right up top here that I bring expectations that are very high, maybe too high, to Simpson College’s annual “Festival of Lessons & Carols.” Over the 16 consecutive years that I have now attended the event, the hour of soaring music and deeply meaningful readings of the Christmas story in the candle light in Smith Chapel have come to be just about the best moments of the holiday season for me. I don’t want anybody messing them up, you know? And let me also say right here that the musical performances in this year’s festival, which was done twice for full audiences Sunday afternoon, were stunningly good. Among a dozen or so great musical selections, there were three classical pieces that I had never heard before and which were just breathtaking – Robert DeCormier’s “The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy,” Orlando di Lasso’s “Resonet in laudibus” and Eric Whitacre’s “Lux arumque.” And the musical highlight of the whole service was probably the “Glory, Glory, Glory” arrangement by the renowned Moses Hogan, with Simpson student Roland Hawkins ever so engaging on the solos. It was a fast race to our hearts between Hawkins’ singing and his smile. In other fine moments, you could’ve heard a pin drop in the chapel when Robert Larsen, the Simpson music icon, directed his Madrigal Singers in two numbers. Director Jay Nugent’s brass ensemble was terrific, as was the playing of organist Sarah Garner. The College Choir and the Women’s Chorale are being directed this academic year by visiting professor Jeff Buettner, who is pinch-hitting while Simpson’s choral director Tim McMillin is working on his doctorate at Michigan State University. No knock on McMillin by any means, but Buettner has the Women’s Chorale singing the best I’ve ever heard them. And the College Choir’s singing was also tremendous, demonstrating that at music, it is one of the three or four best collegiate choirs in the state. But the choir startled me in its behavior between numbers. I’ve not seen as much whispering, laughing, yawning, slouching and chins-propped-on-hands since the last time I tried to teach journalism to an 8 a.m. class on Thursday mornings, which were always the mornings-after the big nights-out on the campus where I was working. Of course, the choir was singing and sitting in the altar area of Smith Chapel, so about half the audience was looking right at them. We were there for the second performance of the afternoon, so perhaps some boredom with the program had set in upon them, although their actual singing didn’t reflect that. While it hardly seems appropriate for a ragamuffin from journalism to be teaching anything to a fine college choir like Simpson’s, let me remind them what surely must be in the opening lesson of Mixed Chorus 101: As long as you have the red & gold robe on and are in view of the audience, you are performing, even when you are not singing. -- CHO

THE BIG NEWS IN SCRANTON, IA.

Scranton, December 11, 2006 -- The Scranton Journal is the weekly newspaper that serves the town of Scranton (pop. 604) and Greene County in west central Iowa. The top-of-page-one news in last week's Journal came from the City Council meeting. Here is the headline, three columns wide, that tells the story: ''Scranton Council Mulls Housing, Library and Shuffle Board Court.'' We like living neighbors to a town with issues like those. -- CHO

HEY, BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE!

Spencer, December 7, 2006 -- One of our favorite state legislators, Senator David Johnson, a Republican from Ocheyedan in extreme northwest Iowa, said it was mighty cold when he went about his dairy farming routine early this December morning. ''It's 2 below zero here,'' Johnson reported at mid-morning. ''Here's what the announcer on Spencer farm radio said this morning: 'Can you say you have been to Mississippi when you've been to TwoBelow?' ''
-- CHO

WHY IOWANS ARE LIKE WE ARE

Cooper, Iowa, November 30, 2006 -- Let's see. On Tuesday, it was 60 degrees, we had big south winds, thunderstorms and two inches of rain. On Wednesday, we had a high of 25, big northwest winds and we were supposed to get some snow and possibly ice. On Thursday, it turns out we missed the snow and ice, and instead we got a wake-up temperature of 11 degrees with a windchill of -6. Life is good in Iowa! -- CHO

A TURKEY THAT SURVIVED THE DAY!

Cooper, Iowa, November 27, 2006 -- Our neighbor James Valentine called midday on Thanksgiving and said he, his wife Sara and their boys just couldn't go through with it. They'd been feeding two turkeys, one a hen and one a tom, to get them ready for the holiday feast. But they knew one of the birds would provide more than enough meat for their family for days to come, so why end life for both turkeys? Thus, the tom -- appropriately named ''Tom'' by the Valentines -- was ''pardoned'' by the family.

COOL SHOES FOR A COOL GUY

Council Bluffs, November 14, 2006 -- Our friends Joe and Cindy Connolly of Council Bluffs recently celebrated their 28th wedding anniversary, and Joe reports that ''in all the time I've known Cindy, this is the most surprised I have ever been with a gift from her.'' Joe, an executive at Mutual of Omaha, is now sporting a fine-looking pair of black & white saddle shoes, which Cindy ordered from Muffy's, the Oregon firm that is the nation's No. 1 seller of the classic shoes.


Our pal Joe Connolly, of Council Bluffs, sporting his brand new pair of the highly fashionable black & white saddle shoes, heading out on a dinner date with his daughter Andrea Connolly.

Joe wore his new shoes publicly for the first time at the annual fund-raising gala of Children's Hospital in Omaha. ''Cindy was away with her mother and sisters, so our daughter Andrea filled in as my date,'' Joe reported. ''Since the theme was 'Be a Kid...Again,' I chose that night to premier the saddle shoes. I received many compliments. I can't wait to see if everyone will be wearing them!'' To read more about Muffy's in Oregon and the 100th anniversary of the saddle shoe, click here. -- CHO

''MY FAIR LADY (AND MOUSE)''

Jefferson, Nov. 6, 2006 -- It is ''school play'' time in Iowa's high schools right now, and our Jefferson-Scranton High School's production of that favorite old musical ''My Fair Lady'' over this past weekend was just tremendous.

And that was despite having an unexpected and unwanted ''drop-in'' on stage in the Sunday afternoon finale performance.

But before we explain that, let's get to the review of the show: Katie Rasmussen, as the flower girl-turned-princess Eliza Doolittle, and James Healy, as snooty British phoneticist Professor Henry Higgins, gave show-stopping vocal performances, very polished acting and almost natural stage presence -- and both are only juniors.

Keep in mind that when you are doing this show, your cast not only must master a huge volume of dialogue and music, they've also got to learn British accents, and our kids did it jolly well. You can bet they are going to be having fun with those accents the rest of this school year.

Of course, any ''My Fair Lady'' performance must have someone fun in the role of the romping rascal Alfie Doolittle, the father of Eliza, and they found the right one here in John Michael Sawhill. He is a 6 ft. 2 in., 233-pound tackle and linebacker on our undefeated Rams football team -- and the big boy can also sing and dance.

There were a bunch of other stellar performances from the 45-member cast, but one that must be mentioned is Katie Jensen as Professor Higgins' all-knowing, sharp-tongued, quintessential British mum. She was perfect.

The show was presented by the Jefferson-Scranton High vocal music department, with vocal instructor Dave Heupel directing the music and high school principal Karen Younie directing the drama.

It was obvious in Sunday afternoon's performance that they had convinced their students that no matter what happens during a performance, you stay cool, stay ''in character'' and keep the show moving.

I say that because during the well-known ''Rain in Spain'' number in the first act, suddenly something seemed to drop to the stage from the riggings above. Not all of us in the audience could make out what it was, beyond a blur dropping. However, those sitting at the left front of the auditorium started laughing, because they could see the drop-in was a mouse!

At intermission, they were telling the rest of us that the poor mouse hit the stage, staggered a second, then scurried under some of the furniture on stage.

Director Younie said later that ''the students on stage didn't see the mouse when it dropped and ran, and they couldn't figure out why the audience was laughing until we got to the intermission break, and then somebody told them. They were all talking about it.''

So on they went into the second act, and at a serious point in the story set in the wee hours of the morning, Professor Higgins was ranting and raving with his housekeeper Mrs. Pearce, played very well by Ashley Sievers. The professor's friend Col. Pickering, played by Grant Walker, and Eliza Doolittle were also on stage.

So when the professor's rant was at its hottest, suddenly out came the mouse again! It ran toward the left front of the stage, turned around and ran toward the back -- in full view of the audience and actors.

Healy, as the professor, didn't miss a tick. He interrupted his carrying-on to yell a totally unscripted line, still with the British accent, ''Mrs. Pearce, my God, do we have a rodent problem?'' Then the two of them gave momentary chase to the mouse, trying to kick it backstage. Where it wound up, who knows?

Everyone broke up, except Healy, who carried on with his scripted lines telling everyone to get on to bed, then adding, ''and don't be worrying about mice!''

It was one of those stage moments that everyone around here will be talking about for decades to come! -- CHO

R.I.P. FOR A GRAND CHARACTER

Paton, Nov. 6, 2006 -- An ol' pal of ours Mary Batcheller died November 1 at the age of 88, and we buried her on Saturday in the cemetery on the edge of Paton, the Greene County town where she lived nearly all of her adult life. We came to know Mary in the summer of 1995 when she signed on to be a support vehicle driver during our Iowa 150 Bike Ride/A Sesquicentennial Expedition, a 100-day bicycle ride across the U.S. that was a promotion for the following year's celebration of 150 years of Iowa statehood. Her son Jay Batcheller was one of the bike riders on that expedition. We were starting that ride in Long Beach, California, the city which was settled by so many former Iowans that it became known as ''Iowa by the Sea.'' We were all in Long Beach a day or two before we started the ride, and Mary was telling me she'd grown up right around the corner in that area of southern California and had graduated from high school there. She went on to tell me how she'd met a young man from Paton, Iowa, out there during World War II. In 1946, she married him, Archie Junior ''Jay'' Batcheller. They settled back in Paton, where he operated a service station and car repair. By 1955 they already had four kids and Mary was expecting again. That's when the young husband was killed in a car wreck. After Mary told me that story, I never looked at her quite the same again. She not only raised those five kids by herself, she also took a job in the Greene County Engineer's office for 17 years, then was elected County Recorder and served 12 years in that position before retiring. She also became an outstanding bowler. Rev. Don Ries, pastor of St. Brigid Catholic Church in Grand Junction, where Mary was a member, noted that among the photos and memorabilia the family had on display at the funeral was a gold bowling ball. ''It reminded me that when Mary was in her later years and was slowing down, I'd go visit her,'' Father Ries said. ''She got to where she was having a hard time moving around, and it seemed like she could hardly make it from one room to the other. But then she'd tell me she was driving over to Ames that afternoon for her regular bowling league!'' She was also a good golfer and bridge player. And she was as jolly an Irishwoman as you could ever hope to meet, so much so that when I found out she'd made a trip to Ireland and had kissed the Blarney Stone there, I said it must've been like a re-loading for that stone. She lived a brief time at the end of her life with her son Jay in the Des Moines area. Two weeks ago, the whole Batcheller family had been together for a festive reunion and family photo. And now Mary is gone. I would call her a saint of a woman, especially for raising her family under the circumstances she did, except that I don't think saints are supposed to have as much fun as Mary did in life. She was one, grand, inspirational character, that's for sure. -- CHO

PHOTOGRAPHER'S HOMETOWN SHOW

Rippey, October 30, 2006 -- Ray Andrews, nearing 80, has over the past 35 years become an award-winning photographer in the Des Moines area, doing both commercial and fine arts work, generally in black & white. His photos have won major prizes at the Iowa State Fair and in other shows, and they have been featured in prominent galleries. He continues to do one-on-one photography instruction with students, and he reports that his schedule is always filled. But he had never brought his photo work back to his hometown of Rippey, here in Greene County, until Saturday morning, when he did a two-hour show at the Rippey Public Library. There was an overflow crowd of more than 50 people in the community room at the rear of the library.


Award-winning photographer Ray Andrews, of Des Moines, brought a show of his best black & white work to his small hometown of Rippey, Iowa, on Saturday morning, October 28, and his show and chat packed the Public Library. One of his photos (above) shows the Des Moines River flowing over an old dam. Below that, you see Andrews today, and as a Rippey High School graduate in 1945 -- his class photo was one of the many class photos on the wall in the library's community room. Below, he visits with Chris Wilbeck (left) of Rippey and Nicole Friess Schilling of Jefferson.


Andrews talked about taking his first photos with ''an old box camera'' when he was 12 in Rippey. He then forgot about photography through his high school years, and never did much of it through most of his working career as a U.S. Mail carrier in Des Moines. It was well into midlife when he began shooting again, and he became a real photographic artist with his still lifes and landscapes shot across the U.S. and around the world. He talked his way through a couple dozen of his favorite photos, telling the stories associated with his pictures, describing his techniques and answering questions. One thing especially fun was that as Andrews talked to the crowd, right behind him on the wall of the community room was the composite photo of his Rippey High School graduating class of 1945. Young Raymond Andrews was pictured there in the corner. When someone in the audience asked him if his class was among those in composite photos on the wall, he said, ''Oh yeah, the Class of '45 photo is right here,'' as he pointed to it. ''And I'm the one with all the hair right down in this corner.'' It proved again -- there's always something or someone around our ol' hometowns that keeps us honest about the way we were. -- CHO

TWO PRIESTS AT A NOTRE DAME GAME

Jefferson, October 30, 2006 -- Rev. Don Ries, pastor of our St. Joseph Catholic Church here, opened mass on Sunday with a quick report back from his adventure last weekend.
He and a former Jefferson priest, Rev. Roger Linnan, now at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in the northwest Iowa town of Merrill, had an opportunity to go to the October 21 football game in South Bend, Indiana, where the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame were hosting the Bruins of UCLA. ''I thought Father Linnan might need a chaperone, so that's why I went,'' Father Ries told us. ''We ended up with tickets right in the middle of the student section, so there we were, two priests sitting among 8,000 Notre Dame students.'' He said they talked only briefly with the students around them, as the game was so riveting. Since neither priest was wearing his pastoral collar, the men's work never came up. ''You may remember that Notre Dame had fallen behind in that game, but came roaring back and, in the final seconds, scored on a 45-yard pass to win the game,'' Father Ries continued. ''You can imagine how much cheering was going around us.'' He said he was sitting next to four first-year women students. ''I didn't have an opportunity to talk to them about their spiritual lives,'' he said with a grin, ''but when the game ended the dramatic way it did, the young woman right next to me turned to me and screamed, 'There is a God!' So I guess we can say it was kind of a spiritual experience for her.'' Right there at a Notre Dame football game! -- CHO

NEW HONORS FOR A FINE IOWAN

Des Moines, Oct. 30, 2006 -- When I travel into Des Moines for meetings that are happening on the east side of downtown, or on the State Capitol complex, I've lately been taking an unusual route to avoid all the construction happening on Interstate 235 through the heart of the city. Instead, I go east on I-80 & 35 on the north side of the metro area, south down Second Avenue, then east on University Avenue across the Des Moines River, then south from Iowa Lutheran Medical Center, and then down along the river on the recently renamed ''Robert D. Ray Drive.'' One reason I enjoy that is because I've always thought so highly of former Governor Ray, who headed the state from 1968 to '72. And now there's a new honor for him nearing completion there along Robert D. Ray Drive, on the east bank of the river. It is the new ''Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens,'' being constructed straight across the river from the new Wells Fargo Arena.


The Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens are under construction in downtown Des Moines, just east across the Des Moines River from the new Wells Fargo Arena.

The gardens, with the attention-grabbing structure shown above, will honor Ray for the bold Iowa re-settlement effort he ordered and headed for Southeast Asians who were refugees in the 1970s, after the fall of Vietnam in '75. The Ray campaign had churches, civic organizations and communities across the state opening their arms and hearts to accept 2,700 Tai Dam, Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, Cambodians and others. It was the grandest example of humanitarian assistance in this state in my lifetime. The new Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens will be a fitting and lasting tribute to Ray's vision, courage and persistence. -- CHO

HUGE HARVEST, HUGE FACILITIES

Rippey, October 30, 2006 -- As we drove toward our neighboring town of Rippey in southeastern Greene County Saturday morning, we were impressed again at how quickly all the farm fields have been harvested. Then right in front of us was a huge testament to Iowa's bounty -- the concrete silos and giant grain bins at the Heartland Co-operative grain elevator.


One measure of just how big the harvest is in Iowa is to look at just how large our grain storage facilities are, like these in the Greene County town of Rippey. Notice the size of the vehicles on the ground at the base of the bins. And if you look close, you can see an American flag that flies above the grain chute running from a concrete silo to the huge bin across Greene County Road E57.

In fact, the towering grain-holding structures have now been built on both sides of Greene County Road E57, with a grain conveyor built into a catwalk that spans the road. All that's plenty of impressive, but you realize the size of it all even more by looking at the American flag that is flying from that catwalk high above. -- CHO

BEALL'S REAL POLITICAL DEAL

Cooper, October 16, 2006 -- In this age when most politics seems to be played over the airwaves with an emphasis on nastiness and distortion, it is so refreshing to find a candidate who is going direct to the people, having fun and staying positive. And so it was Sunday afternoon, October 15, when State Senator Daryl Beall brought his ''Bus for Us'' campaign here. ''I'm not running against anybody,'' said Beall, an incumbent and Democrat from Fort Dodge who is seeking a second term in the Iowa Legislature. ''I do have an opponent, and I'm not taking him lightly, but I'm running for my own re-election. I'm talking about my own record and asking you to re-hire me on November 7.''


State Senator Daryl Beall brought his political barnstorming bus tour to Cooper on Sunday, October 15. In the photos across the top, left to right, Senator Jack Hatch of Des Moines visits with Miriam Rasmussen of Jefferson; Board of Supervisors candidate Jerry Roberts and his wife Hollie of Jefferson hear Carla Offenburger of Cooper apparently giving politics a twist, and Beth Rasmussen of Jefferson visits with JoAnn Beall, wife of the senator, from Fort Dodge. The center photo shows Daryl Beall on point in his brief remarks. In the photo below left, Robbie Cox (left) of Cooper visits with Beall, Senator Bob Dvorsky of Coralville and Ron Parker, who heads the Iowa Senate Democratic Caucus. Below right, Senator Beall poses with supporter Adrienne Smith of Jefferson before he boarded the ''Bus for Us'' that was heading on to Grand Junction.

We're not accustomed to having our town (pop. 30) being a stop on a political barnstorming tour, and we appreciate Beall remembering us on the day he launched his five-day escapade, with Sunday stops in six Greene County communities. The bus tour continues through Thursday, and will take him to every town in his senatorial district. Here in Cooper, he had two veteran Senate Democrats with him, Senators Bob Dvorsky of Coralville and Jack Hatch, of Des Moines, as well as Greene County Board of Supervisors candidate Jerry Roberts, also a Democrat. I told them we hadn't had that much political muscle in Cooper at the same time since the Cooper Centennial in 1981 when the governor, U.S. senator and county sheriff all showed up at the same time. Here Sunday, it was perhaps unusual to have a Republican like me serving as emcee for this rally of Democrats at our Cooper Community Building, but on the other hand, if you're not willing to be bi-partisan in state and local politics, you and your interests will be losers. For the tour, Beall has borrowed a party bus that Senator Tom Rielly uses for Iowa Hawkeye football games, but masterful politician that Beall is, he also had flags from Iowa State, Drake and the University of Northern Iowa all decorating the bus when it rolled into town. There was a lot of laughter during the 40-minute stop in Cooper, where 25 people gathered, but there were some substantial questions and answers, too. It all seemed so real, and so American. Actually, it seemed like politics from an earlier time. And you know what? That felt good. -- CHO

MAKING CHURDAN LOOK DANDY

Churdan, October 9, 2006 -- Julie Towers often looks out the windows of her First State Salon in a former bank building in this west central Iowa town, and sees things she thinks could look just a little better. But she doesn't just think about it -- she takes action. Over the last couple of years, she has done touch-up painting on several of the buildings in the business district, even ones that are now vacant. Her work has now started to cross the line between touch-up painting and real art, as you will see in the photos below here.


The town of Churdan, pop. 418 in northern Greene County, is getting itself spruced up for next summer's Quasquicentennial celebration. They've found a pretty nifty way to make an empty storefront look nice!


That building, on the north side of the main street, was once a movie theater, Towers said. It is owned now by trucker Gary Thede, who uses the rear of it as a work shop where he does repairs on his vehicles. ''Last fall, I asked him if I could paint the front of his building, and he told me to go right ahead,'' Towers said. ''He had already had the front paneling on it painted a light solid color, just to make it look a little better. A high school class had been thinking about doing a mural there, but that didn't happen.'' Towers had seen an old wooden door with an intriguing design, discarded in a junk pile around the area, and it inspired an idea for the Thede building. She had her husband Tim Towers retrieve the door, straighten it up and then Julie painted it. ''Late in the summer, Tim used long screws and put that door on the front of the building, and then I painted the windows,'' she said. ''I'm really not that great of a painter, when it comes to anything with an artistic touch, but hopefully it looks a little better than it did.'' She said she has just found a matching set of light fixtures she and Tim once had on the exterior of their own home, and they're going to put those on the sides of the door on the old storefront, and possibly add a bench to one side, too. She said when she started her uptown painting project, ''I bought most of the paint myself,'' she said. ''But as time has gone on, several of the building owners have paid for the paint, and the Lions Club gave me a donation, too. We get a lot of comments from people that they appreciate having the buildings look nice.'' Indeed, they give a visitor a nice feeling about the whole town. -- CHO

HEAVY READING IN LITTLE FERTILE?

Fertile, October 9, 2006 -- We are wondering, after seeing signs posted in the north Iowa town of Fertile (pop. 360) just what kind of heavy reading must be going on there?

TALK ABOUT AN ECLECTIC ART SHOW!

Cooper, October 2, 2006 -- Over the two years we have lived here, I have adopted a rule that if the Greene County Arts Council sponsors an event or program, I'm there. Greene County must have more good working artists than any other rural Iowa county. Our artists are all ages, and those who have day jobs span the occupational range. Their artwork has such variety -- from painting to sculpture, poetry, jewelry making, weaving, drama, calligraphy, musical performance, photography, dance, wood carving and more. They are also unafraid of getting out there on the cutting edge, as I will tell you about in a minute here. Most of the arts council's activities happen at the restored Jefferson Depot in our county seat town. But they have also had individual member artists do shows in the public libraries in the county's other towns. They occasionally move musical performances to the Greene County Historical Museum in Jefferson. And on Sunday, October 1, they brought their first Fall Festival to the Cooper Community Building in our little town of 30 people. It was too lightly attended -- perhaps 150 came through the doors if you count the musical performers -- but as an event, this was another huge success. There were 10 artists who once again showed a grand variety of work, all of it very impressive in its interpretation and presentation.

WATCHING THE SEASONS CHANGE

Cooper, October 2, 2006 -- It seems even more fun and dramatic to watch the seasons change now that we live in the country than when we used to live in town. Of course, you have the obvious color change in the crops, then they're being taken out and then they're gone! You see farmers break out the insulated coveralls for the first time. You start seeing stocking hats in the mornings. You see the different ways the late afternoon sun plays on the landscape now, compared to what it was like in the summer. Somehow the flowers seem even more vibrant in their color. But nothing marks the transition toward cold weather more dramatically than the first frost. At Simple Serenity Farm, that came this year early on Wednesday, September 20.


For the record, the first frost at Simple Serenity Farm in west central Iowa arrived early on the morning of Wednesday, September 20, and it forced Carla Offenburger to scrape her car's windows before she left for work. The frost also accented the edges of the flowers, but didn't set-in hard enough to be a kllling frost.


We know it won't be long before the flowers wither and die, the pheasants get frantic and the first snow starts to fly. This up-closes-and-personal view of the changing seasons is something they don't really talk to you about when you are considering a country home -- but they should. -- CHO

''COTTON-EYED JOE'' FOREVER!

Cedar Rapids, September 19, 2006 -- We were amazed recently when we attended the wedding and reception here of my nephew Adam Walsh, 26, and his bride Jill. There were a lot of young people from Cedar Rapids at the reception, since both the bride and groom have grown up here. It was all very nice. But what amazed us was that as the disk jockey was playing a wide variety of music for the wedding dance, the song that the young people -- most of them city kids -- seemed to go craziest for was ''Cotton-Eyed Joe.'' That song pre-dates the Civil War! But it is so lively, and so fun, that it keeps finding new life with new groups recording it. The young Cedar Rapidians were arm-in-arm, high-stepping and clogging on the dance floor while ''Cotton-Eyed Joe'' played. Two of my other nephews, Adam's brothers Tim Walsh, 31, of Las Vegas, and Toby Walsh, 28, of Cedar Rapids, were dancing it together! When I mentioned to their mother Chris Walsh, my sister, that I was surprised the young crowd would like that old song so well, she said, ''At every wedding I have been at recently, they play that song and all the young kids go crazy! If it helps, I did hear someone yell, 'Come on, let's go country!' I think they believe it is a new song, made just for them! Of course, they do!'' Wow, were they ever having a good time. And it appeared a few of them were going to be cotton-mouthed joes the next morning.
-- CHO

ONE PERSON'S JUNK IS...

Cooper, September 18, 2006 -- I don't know whether I should be astonished, as I really am, or just embarrassed. Two years ago, when we moved to Simple Serenity Farm, among the things we found discarded here was a grass mowing machine. I think you would call it a ''triple bottom mower,'' as it has three sections which fold out flat to make a mower about eight to 10 feet wide. The actual mowers are rotary and mechanical. The machine was designed so when it was pulled behind a small tractor, it would cut a wide swath. Well, the thing was missing one wheel when we saw it. The actual mowers all seemed locked up and unworkable. Weeds were growing over it. Now, two years later, comes our Mr. Fix-It friend, Kevin Wilbeck, who lives on a farmstead near us. Wilbeck was helping Carla Offenburger do some work at Simple Serenity Farm when he noticed the old mower, not atop our junk pile -- you know, the one that we are going to have hauled away just any time now. (But you can't see it from the road, so there is not as much urgency to taking action on it.)


Kevin Wilbeck with his ''new'' mower is now cutting wide swaths in his farm home's yard. (Photo by Chris Wilbeck)

Saturday morning, September 16, Wilbeck came over, claimed the old unworkable mower, took it back to his farmstead, worked four hours on it, and now has a fine mower. ''It works great!'' he told his wife Chris Wilbeck after his first test run with it. ''It mows in one pass what used to take me four!'' Just how are some people able to do things like that? -- CHO

BIG BRIDGE, MAJOR ATTRACTION

Council Bluffs, August 28, 2006 -- It likely will become one of the major attractions for bicyclists from all over the world – something that everyone who bikes will want to ride across. Construction is to start this fall on pedestrian/bicycle bridge over the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and downtown Omaha on the western Iowa border. Members of the Chamber of Commerce in Council Bluffs were told at their quarterly meeting last week that the 2,221-foot-long bridge will be suspended from towers stretching up to 225 feet high, north of the Interstate Highway 480 bridge, according to stories in the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. It is a $22 million project, with at least $19 million of that being federal funding.


Construction will start soon on the spectacular, $22 million pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and Omaha. Here is one of the artist's conceptions of the bridge, as well as a photo of our Council Bluffs friend Cindy Connolly with another view of the design. The designs were featured at a meeting last week of the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce. (Photos by Joe Connolly)


The idea for the bridge, the newspaper said, dates to a 1994 suggestion from former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, of Nebraska, that people in the two cities should be doing more in commercial and recreational development along the Missouri River. A subsequent study by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers revealed that most people thought access to the river was very limited between Omaha and Council Bluffs. That inspired ideas ranging from “water taxis, a gondola and a pedestrian bridge,” the Nonpareil said. After Senator Kerrey secured the $19 million in federal funding for the bridge, its initial estimates ran to $44 million. That has been scaled back in the last two years. Now final environmental and structural testing of the design plans is being completed, and APAC-KANSAS, Inc., has been retained to build the bridge. Approach work is to start in coming days, with work on the pilings in the river beginning this fall. Both cities have plans for parks and commercial developments on their sides of the bridge, which is to be finished and opened by late 2008. -- CHO

THE CREEP OF FALL COLOR

Cooper, August 22, 2006 -- On a quick trip to the Post Office in our west central Iowa town this morning, we noticed for the first time that our neighbors' soybeans fields have some fall color creeping across them. Things will start happening fast, our friend Chris Henning told us. ''A month from now, the beans will all be out of the fields,'' she said. It was a little startling just thinking about that. -- CHO

OUR AIR CONDITIONING RECORD

Cooper, July 13, 2006 -- This is amazing to me: It is just after 12 noon on July 13, and we have still not used our air conditioning this year at Simple Serenity Farm. Was it in late May that we had two or three days when the temperatures crowded 90, and we were tempted? But those were windy days at the farm, and it did not seem uncomfortably hot here then. However, now, with the humidity getting thicker and triple digits predicted for temperatures this weekend, we could be caving in at any moment. But in the 32 years that I've had central air conditioning in my homes, I have never gone this long into the season without turning it on, and that seems important enough to tell somebody about it. Part of the reason we have not used it so far is choice. Carla and I don't like going in and out of air conditioning, and it's so pretty outdoors this time of year, it's hard staying indoors. (My bicycle keeps calling me.) Another part of the reason may be that I did not have air conditioning at home when I grew up, so I've always gotten along fairly well in heat. Of course, the biggest reason we've been able to go this long without using our air conditioning at the farm is that we have pretty good shade around the house, and there seems to be a nice, steady little breeze that continually wafts through the place. Oh, there is probably another reason we haven't turned it on, especially these last couple of days -- stubbornness. When you've gone to July 13 without turning on the air conditioning, you start wondering if you can make it one more hour, one more day and, gosh, could this be the year that...? UPDATE: We finally turned on the air conditioning at 6 p.m. on July 14, when the breeze quit blowing, the humidity soared and it became clear it would be one uncomfortably hot weekend. And on this Saturday morning, July 15, are we ever glad we caved in when we did! -- CHO

ODDEST COMBO OF BIRTHDAY GIFTS EVER?

Cooper, July 13, 2006 -- My 59th birthday was this week, and despite celebrating it with a fine group of friends the other night, it did give me pause. After all, this is the age at which my dad died, way back in 1961. Hopefully, all the bicycling over the years, as well as quitting smoking and drinking, will pay off with more time for me. Life is good. And seems to continue getting better all the time, or maybe it's that it just keeps getting more interesting. An illustration is the odd combination of gifts that Carla gave me for my birthday. They may be the most peculiar selection of gifts ever given to one person on one occasion: Burn barrels, opera tickets and a fresh peach pie. Now, in order: You city folks will never understand the importance of having a good burn barrel around a country home like ours here at Simple Serenity Farm. You live with all those sissy rules against burning so that you don't wind up suffocating each other, as close together as you live. Out here in the wide open spaces, we can still burn our trash, or much of it. We do recycle newspapers, plastic products, glass and tin, hauling it to the county seat town of Jefferson for placement in the proper dumpsters at the collection point. But there is just a lot of crap you need to burn, you know? And, in our two years here, we've discovered that the old burn barrels left by previous residents were crumbling in rust. So Carla had our neighbors Doug and Karen Lawton, who farm northeast of us, scout around for solid new steel burn barrels. Doug said he discovered two good candidates ''in a hog shed I'm getting ready to tear down.'' About that time, his cousin Randy Graven stopped by, ''and he's good with a torch,'' Doug said. So Randy fired up the welding torch and cut the tops of the barrels, dropping those tops down on to the bottoms of the barrels for an extra thick burning surface. Then he also cut the niftiest little air vint in the lower wall of each barrel. Doug estimates these barrels may be ''30 to 40 years old'' but their life as burn barrels is just beginning. And I couldn't be more grateful. Now, on to the opera tickets. The Des Moines Metro Opera, which has won recognition as one of the best regional opera companies in the world, is winding down its 2006 season, with final performances scheduled this Sunday, July 16. John Michael Moore, about 25, the young guy from Milford in northwest Iowa who could become the greatest singer the state ever produced, is in a starring role in Mozart's ''The Magic Flute.'' Since I have written often about Moore on his way up, I did not want to miss him performing in professional opera this close to home. But I diddled around ordering tickets until the last minute, and wound up paying $74 apiece for two -- and I mean I was begging by then becauses it's a sell-out. ''Your birthday present,'' Carla said when I told her the price, ''with the burn barrels.'' And that wasn't even all. Carla contacted Sharon Stalder, the best pie baker in the world who happens to live here in Greene County, and ordered up my favorite: Fresh peach. So, life is indeed good, and this 59th birthday is one I will never forget. -- CHO

BIG OL' CATFISH IN IOWA

Jamaica, July 13, 2006 -- The e-mail last weekend from our friend Carolyn Kienast, who lives on a farm just north of our neighboring town of Jamaica here in west central Iowa, said she had ''solved my dilemma about what to serve for supper!'' It came with this digital photo of two ''big ol' catfish'' she'd just caught in the Kienasts' pond. The lunkers, each over seven pounds, measured 24 and 25 inches long.


Carolyn Kienast and her two lunker catfish.

''I hooked 'em, but had to get help from Jeff to pull 'em in to shore,'' Carolyn reported. We told her we wouldn't have known what to do if fish that big grabbed our lines. It did occur to us that it's a real confirmation that summertime is here in Iowa when fisherpersons start landing big catfish like Carolyn did. ''They make such good eating,'' she said, and this description will likely make you want to go wet a line yourself: ''We cut the filets into bite-sized chunks, batter them, deep fat fry them in vegetable oil and bacon grease, and throw a little salt and lemon on them. Or, sometimes we use a dry rub of cinnamon, lemon pepper and garlic salt, then deep fat fry them. Since catfish is an oily fish, the deep fat frying removes the oil. O.K., I have to stop, I am drooling into my morning coffee and it's hours 'til suppertime!'' We know the feeling. -- CHO

A GRAND ENTRY INTO OMAHA

Council Bluffs, June 8, 2006 -- We have told you before that our friends Joe and Cindy Connolly are now enjoying a new home on the top of one of the western-most bluffs of this west Iowa border city. From the deck of their house on Parkwild Drive, 300 feet above the Missouri River bottomland below, they can watch storm systems form, lightning, rainbows, sudden snowstorms. It has been so pretty lately that they've been eating their evening meal and breakfasts out on that deck. ''I usually have the camera on hand for sunset views, wildlife and other photo situations we can see from out there,'' said Joe. Tuesday evening, they knew President George W. Bush was due to arrive at Omaha's Eppley Airfield about 6:30 p.m. And suddenly, there was Air Force One, right in front of them and what seemed eye-level, with downtown Omaha in the background, on a gentle glide toward the airport.


Air Force One, carrying President George W. Bush, is shown descending for a landing in Omaha on Tuesday. (Photo by Joe Connolly)

''So in the middle of our dinner we saw it coming and we shot a few pictures,'' Joe said. ''The skies were very still yesterday, because all air traffic was restricted for a half-hour either side of Air Force One's arrival.'' He sent along this stunningly good photo. -- CHO

HE DEFINED ''NEW YORKER'' FOR US

Cooper, June 5, 2006 -- We joined in the heartbreak that so many Iowans felt at the death May 27 of Rob Borsellino, the Des Moines Register columnist who died at age 56 after suffering a year with ALS, or ''Lou Gehrig's disease,'' as it is known. We read every word of the tributes that the Register published in the week before his memorial services on June 3. Rob and I were on the Register staff together from 1993, when he came aboard as an editor, until 1998, when I quit as a columnist. I was always closer to his wife Rekha Basu, who had joined the paper in 1991 and with whom I shared a cubicle at one end of the editorial writers' department. Rob would often come back to visit Rekha, and never without some kind of critical commentary on whatever I happened to be wearing. My clothes would usually be something typically Iowan, and he of course was such a typical New Yorker, at least in my Iowa mind. In fact, Rob defined ''New Yorker'' for many of us, and we came to like him anyway. He and Rekha, the daughter of a government official in India, represented part of what the Des Moines Register always has done very well at, in building its news and opinion staffs. The newspaper has always had a big stable of Iowa natives, and that's good because we'd know the territory. But the staff would generally also include at least a few very bright, very different people who were not native Iowans. They would be lured by the Register's traditionally strong reputation for quality journalism. The mix and sometimes clash of the perspectives and philosophies -- that of the Iowans vs. that the out-of-staters -- has always been part of what made the Register a great newspaper. Of course, some of the out-of-staters stayed for their whole careers and were as Iowan as the rest of us. Others stayed a few years and moved on. We all thought that was what was happening with Borsellino, Basu and their two sons in 2000, when they resigned to take newspaper jobs in southern Florida. I remember being part of a panel of columnists, with the two of them, on the Iowa Public Television ''Iowa Press'' show as they were preparing to move. We were to discuss column writing, springing from the fact that Borsellino and Basu were going to give up their Register columns. The other panelists spoke before I did and wished Borsellino and Basu fond farewells. When it came my turn, I said, ''Heck, I came here tonight to still try to talk them out of leaving!'' They left, all right, but Iowans remember the good news just a year later when the Register announced Borsellino and Basu were returning! They said they had just flat missed life in Iowa, and of course that cemented a whole new fondness among Iowans for this brash New Yorker and the often-exotic-seeming Indian. They liked us! They genuinely liked us! It then became a new deal for many Register readers, regarding the Borsellino and Basu columns. I mean, there probably aren't 10 percent of Iowans, or 25 percent of Register readers, who agreed with the positions Borsellino and Basu would stake out in their columns. You talk about your unreconstructed, knee-jerk liberals. Borsellino and Basu have been just that. But with the two of them, as far as Iowans were concerned, a great rule of small town living came to apply, and that rule is this: You can be as eccentric, different, even downright weird as you want to be in Iowa -- as long as you don't try to hide it! Borsellino and Basu never tried to hide it. Well, at least they didn't once they came back from Florida. From 1998 to 2000, the first couple of years Borsellino was doing his column, a time when Basu had been doing her column for a half-dozen years, my recollection is that neither of them ever really wrote about being the spouse of the other. I thought that was so odd, and many Register readers out in the state were surprised when they'd ask me about Borsellino and Basu and I'd tell them they were married. In fact, I told both of the columnists back then that they should be more open about that, because Iowans would relate better to them. They indeed did become much more open about their marriage and family once they were back from Florida, often even needling each other in their columns. It was great reading, too. After all, this has been one of the most interesting families in the whole state. I had dreams -- told the two of them this, too -- that eventually they'd lead tours for Register readers to ''Rob Borsellino's New York City'' and ''Rekha Basu's India,'' telling them that Iowans would pack the trips. But now we've lost Rob. We hope Rekha stays in her Register position and stays in Iowa. She simply has to know now -- more than ever before -- how much support for her and her boys there is across this state. We still may not agree with much she writes, but we want her to keep writing it in our newspaper! -- CHO

A CLASSIC SMALL TOWN BALLPARK

Rippey, May 29, 2006 -- We got the high school baseball season underway Friday night by watching our JSPC Rams (our team is shared by Jefferson-Scranton and Paton-Churdan High Schools) beat the East Greene Hawks 8-3 in a good ball game here that was closer than the score indicates. It was not only fun to see the high school lads in action again, but we also got to watch a game in what must be one of Iowa's classic small town ballparks.


The beautiful little ballpark in Rippey, in southeast Greene County, is a place you've just got to see a game. Note the vintage covered grandstand and the grain bin out back. In the photo below, you see the view of the action from the grandstand, with the Rippey grain elevators towering above the trees beyond centerfield.


Walt Anderson Field, built and dedicated in 1939, is named after a banker and major supporter of baseball in the town of Rippey (pop. 319). ''Walt died two or three years ago,'' said Velda DeMoss, president of the Friends Of Rippey community club and the news correspondent for the town. ''He was always 'Mr. Baseball' around here. He had played well into his adult years and, in fact, I think he lost an eye when he got hit in the face with a ball. He was always the one who organized the fund drives to support the teams and keep the field nice.'' The ballpark has a small covered grandstand built with 2-by-4 framing, with all wood painted green. Out back is a grain drying bin, which would look great if it had a load of ear corn in it. When you sit in the grandstand, the seats are elevated sufficiently so the head of the person in front of you is never blocking your view. And that view extends beyond centerfield to a tree-lined neighborhood, with the town's two grain elevators towering a couple of blocks to the northeast. In 1949, Anderson presumably was involved in a fundraising campaign that produced sufficient money to make the Rippey ballpark the first one in Greene County to have lights allowing night baseball. In those years, Rippey always had a ''town team'' that played semi-pro baseball, with a few paid players from college teams and some outstanding older players also hired. They'd play along with local men, some continuing their basesball careers into their late 40s and early 50s. The ''Rippey Merchants'' became one of Iowa's top semi-pro teams in the 1950s, and the ''Rippey Demons'' also had success. The ''town teams'' are long-gone now, at least around Greene County, but Walt Anderson Field continues as the home of the East Greene Hawks, whose school draws students from the towns of Grand Junction and Dana in addition to Rippey. Local baseball enthusiasts continue to take excellent care of the ballpark, having just installed $60,000 worth of new lights and poles. ''Great little ballpark, isn't it?'' said Kevin Paulsen, our JSPC assistant coach, who was raised in the area. ''Other than the new lights, I don't think it's changed a bit for as long as I can remember it.'' -- CHO

A HUGE PIECE OF NEW ART

Des Moines, May 29, 2006 -- The Iowa Hall of Pride here is now showcasing a remarkable and huge new piece of stained glass art by Mark and Jeanne Bogenrief. ''An Iowa Legacy'' is a 12-by-23-foot window that may be the biggest piece of stained glass in the state. It portrays all of the sports and activities of the high school experience. That is also the mission of the Hall of Pride itself. That $12.5 million, 26,000-square-foot facility is owned by the Iowa High School Athletic Association. It is located along with Wells Fargo Arena and Hy-Vee Hall as parts of the Iowa Events Center along the west bank of the Des Moines River on the north edge of the business district in the capital city. The Hall of Pride opened in February, 2005, after more than nine years of planning, fundraising and construction. The Bogenriefs, who have become nationally known in the last five years for their stained glass creations, are both former high school athletes in Iowa -- Jeanne an outstanding basketball player at Hinton and Mark a so-so football player at LeMars Gehlen Catholic. They now have their home, main studio and gallery in the former high school building in Sutherland in northwest Iowa, with a production center and gallery for ''blown glass'' pieces in nearby Spencer.


The new stained glass window, by renowned stained glass artists Mark and Jeanne Bogenrief, is 'thought to be the largest piece of stained glass in the state of Iowa,' according to officials of the Iowa Hall of Pride. Staff member Caleb Jay stands in front of the artwork so that you can realize just how big it is.

Two years ago, it was announced that the Bogenriefs would do two stained glass windows for the Hall of Pride, both about the size of the one now in place. The second, which is in sketch form and has been tentatively titled ''Iowa Values,'' shows a landscape of the countryside with a city located over the hill. Whether it is ever completed will depend on fundraising, officials of the Hall of Pride said. The two pieces were earlier announced as a $1 million project. For this first one, which was installed May 17, the IHSAA paid $100,000 for its share of the cost. The Bogenriefs said a Sutherland bank and O'Brien County economic development officials underwrote loans to allow the artists to go ahead and complete it. Fundraising is underway now to pay off those loans, and then, hopefully, to allow completion of the second piece. The first stained glass is now mounted in a south window of the Hall of Pride, so that during business hours, it has eye-popping brilliance from the sun streaming through its bright colors. Lights are to be positioned so the stained glass can also be fully appreciated at night, too. It is the latest of several major pieces of art in the Hall of Pride, including life-sized bronze statues of Iowa high school sports greats Nile Kinnick, Gary Thompson, Clyde Duncan and Dan Gable, and a life-sized wax figure of legendary pianist Roger Williams, who was an average high school athlete when he was growing up in Des Moines. The artwork and other memorabilia are just part of the draw for the Hall of Pride, which features more than 30 hours of well-done video interviews of notable Iowans reflecting on their high school experiences and their careers; two theaters with fast-paced video documentaries about life in Iowa; interactive games; computer-based information centers on every high school in the state (including many that no longer exist), and multi-media biographical exhibits on 26 of the state's most famous citizens. You can learn more about it on the Internet site www.iowahallofpride.com. -- CHO

THE DAY THE MUSIC STARTED UP AGAIN

Des Moines, May 8, 2006 -- There is a terrific rock 'n' roll music story building in Iowa right now. Richie Lee Luckenbill, a sophomore at Des Moines North High School, is developing a real following across the state performing as ''Richie Lee & the Fabulous '50s.'' Growing up listening to the 1950s and early '60s rock 'n' roll that his parents loved, the kid worked up a contest-winning impersonation of Buddy Holly by the time he was seven years old.

DUNCAN: ''THANK GOD I COULD RUN''

Des Moines, May 8, 2006 -- Clyde Duncan, the head men's and women's track coach at Texas Southern University in Houston, came home to Des Moines one night last week. Duncan was the main attraction at the 30th annual All-Class Reunion at Des Moines North High School, where he graduated in 1964. The next afternoon, he was guest of honor at the Iowa Hall of Pride, where for the first time he got to see the life-size bronze sculpture of him that is now on display there. It's an excellent piece done by sculptor Rick Stewart, of Newton. Duncan is portrayed in it as a high school senior, running in full stride for the Polar Bears of North High. ''He was the greatest sprinter ever in Iowa,'' said Bernie Saggau, the retired executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association.

ONE OF THE FINEST SPOTS IN IOWA

Boone, April 17, 2006 -- A few weeks ago, there was an item here in Our Iowa News Digest that told you how a parking lot in suburban Ankeny is surely the worst spot in all of Iowa. You can scroll back in the Archives and find it. Well, today some balance. Last week, we Offenburgers joined our friends Chuck and Ellen Corwin, of Des Moines, for our 14th annual Holy Week climb of Chapel Point at the Y-Camp northwest of Boone. It was a perfect day -- warm, sunny, birds singing, trees budding, wildflowers sprouting. They have long called the Y-Camp ''the closest place to heaven on earth,'' and it certainly seemed like that on our day there this spring. Chapel Point is 300 feet above the camp itself along the Des Moines River. The kids and adults who have been using the Y-Camp since 1919 have almost all made the climb for special services, or just to find space and time for personal reflection. Camp director Dave Sherry hosted us again, and we were joined by Vernon Delpesce, the president & CEO of the YMCA of Greater Des Moines; Jackie Matt, the YMCA director of development, and Stan Moffitt, of Boone, who has been hanging out at the Y-Camp since he was a kid in Boone and is one of the Y-Camp board members now. ''One of my joys today,'' said Moffitt, as we all began reflecting on the blessings in our lives, ''is that here I am, 72 years old, and I can still climb up here and enjoy a day like this one.'' Moffitt added to the fun by bringing along his trumpet, which he came across recently after having it packed away for 30 years or more. He recalled how Y-Camps have always had somebody play ''Reveille'' and ''Taps'' on trumpet, so he brought along his horn and serenaded us atop Chapel Point. ''I was amazed I could still hit the high note,'' he said. I swear I heard a mallard answer him, too.


We Offenburgers once again joined our friends Chuck and Ellen Corwin, of Des Moines, for our Holy Week tradition of meeting at the Y-Camp northwest of Boone for a climb up Chapel Point, for meditation and conversation there. Among those who joined us this year was Stan Moffitt, of Boone, who got his trumpet out for the first time in decades and played a few bars of ''Reveille'' and all of ''Taps'' there on the ridgetop above the Des Moines River.

Some of you loyal readers know the background of this Holy Week tradition of ours. In the spring of 1993, a luncheon conversation Chuck Corwin and I were involved in in Des Moines somehow turned to ''most spiritual places we've ever been.'' There were several answers around the table that interested me, but none more than Corwin's. He said when he was a Y-Camper in his youth, riding the old Inter-Urban train back and forth between Des Moines and the camp, he thought he had had a profound spiritual experience atop Chapel Point. I had never been up there. That conversation happened to take place during Holy Week, and a day or two later, I had to drive to northwest Iowa for a column for the Des Moines Register. When I was driving back home, I thought again about Corwin's description of Chapel Point, so I drove into the Y-Camp, looked around a moment and then made the climb up the long wooden steps myself. As I recall, I used a cell phone to call Corwin from up there, making him guess where I was. We've been making the trip every Holy Week since then, always joined now by our wives Carla and Ellen as well as other friends who let us know they want to join us. It has been especially fun a couple of the years, when we had Ray Pugh come along with us. Pugh, the retired Drake University professor, directed the summer Y-Camp for decades. When we've gotten him up there on Chapel Point the stories just flow out of him. Hopefully, we can all do that again next year, for what would be our 15th Holy Week climb. This ''closest place to heaven on earth'' is also surely one of the finest spots in Iowa. -- CHO

NO CHAW IN CAMPUS BUILDINGS, PLEASE

Creston, April 17, 2006 -- A couple hundred of us were on the campus of Southwestern Community College here last week for a conference on economic development and community building in small towns. It was intriguing to see this sign on the wall above the urinals in the men's restroom: ''No Chewing Tobacco Allowed in Any College Building. Please refer to p. 52 of the Student Handbook.'' I asked the females in the audience to report back on whether there was a similar sign in their restroom. (There was not.) I mentioned being intrigued, saying the sign seemed like something you might have seen on a college campus in the 1930s or '40s, but not in this modern era. However, we all know the reality of too many young people chewing today. And we hope that fewer of them are smoking cigarettes. ''Actually, what I thought was more intriguing about the sign,'' said my pal Chris Nolte, Chamber of Commerce and economic developoment director in Winterset, ''is that it sort of assumes the kids are carrying that Student Handbook around in their back pocket or book bag.'' -- CHO

JESUS DID NOT WEAR SADDLE SHOES

Jefferson, April 17, 2006 -- It gives you pause when they ask you to portray Jesus Christ, especially on Good Friday. But I had that experience when Sherry Johnson called upon me to help out with the enactment in a choral reading of John's account of the ''Passion'' for the noontime service at Saint Joseph Catholic Church here. About 18 of us took part, including some ''plants'' in the congregation who, at the appropriate times in the story, startled all sitting near them by jumping to their feet, thrusting fists into the air and shouting things like, ''Crucify him! Crucify him!'' Afterward, we all gave credit to Johnson, a loyal member of the Saint Joseph choir and a doer of many goods in our church and community. Her idea to do the ''Passion'' as a choral reading -- no singing but with dramatic flair in the readings and minimalist acting -- did bring the story alive. We were not costumed as the characters we played. Johnson told us just to wear normal street clothes, ''but not jeans.'' She didn't actually ban black & white saddle shoes, but in a rare decision by me, I decided to wear brown penny loafers instead. -- CHO

A GOOD SIGN FOR LITTLE COOPER

Cooper, April 11, 2006 -- For about eight years, the Raccoon River Valley Trail has passed right through the heart of our town of Cooper, on its 56-mile route between Jefferson and the Des Moines metro area. But we've never had a sign on the trail that tells the cyclists, walkers and runners that this little community of 30 people is, in fact, Cooper. Many have pedaled over to Larry Dean Monthei's Welding & Machine shop and asked him just where they were. Oh, there's a sign on the U.S. Post Office a block east, and Cooper directional signs out on Iowa Highway 4 a mile to the west. But there's been no ''Cooper'' sign right on the trail. That fact, along with the beginning of another tourist season here in Cooper, persuaded us to take action last week. Now, a group of us who are working on enhancements along the Raccoon River Valley Trail already have new, well-designed signs bidded out for the full length of the trail. But we won't have finances to order and install them for a time. So we decided to do something temporary. Our pal Kevin Wilbeck, who lives south of nearby Rippey and is a member of our RRVT group, volunteered his time and talent to put together a sign that we installed Saturday afternoon, April 8, just before the big crowd began arriving for our Cooper Prom.


Kevin Wilbeck shows off the temporary sign he painted for the Raccoon River Valley Trail in our town of Cooper. He installed it with help from Doug Lawton and Mike Henning, just before the big crowd started rolling into town for the Cooper Prom on April 8.

The sign is positioned trailside, but also right along Greene County Road E57,the main route through town, and can be read by motorists approaching from both directions. Kevin and his wife Chris Wilbeck, by the way, are sort of ''Cooper Groupies.'' When our Committee for a Super Cooper conducted a fundraiser last fall for our various community improvement projects, the Wilbecks said that instead of making a cash donation, they wanted to donate 20 hours of volunteer service. We've wrung so much time out of them already that we think we may now owe them! -- CHO

BARN QUILT FOR A MAGAZINE COVER

Cooper, March 27, 2006 -- We have been telling you, over past 10 months, about the ''Greene County Barn Quilts'' project here and in both Sac and Grundy Counties in Iowa, too. Well, a week ago, the 12th barn quilt went up here in Greene County, and it might become the most popular one yet. The kids and leaders of the Greenbrier 4-H Club made it a club project to build, paint and hang one on the barn of Jerry Christman on County Road P14 southwest of Cooper.


The Greenbrier 4-H Club, which serves the kids of our rural area, joined the ''Barn Quilts of Greene County'' project recently when they built, painted and hung this beautiful barn quilt on the barn of farmer Jerry Christman. Note the ''4-H'' pattern. It is now one of 12 barn quilts already on display around the county, with another 12 to 15 likely to be hung during 2006. In the group photo just before the 4-H barn quilt was raised are (left to right) leader Randy Hedges, members Curtis Sandage, Stanton Safley, Kate Sandage, Kami Badger, Macy Mears, Andrew Schnebly, Brandon Schmidt and project coordinator Jo Anne Schnebly. Others who helped were Monica Eslick, Evan Schroeder, Kelly Read and club leader Linda Hedges. (Photos courtesy of Greenbrier 4-H Club.)


We are betting you will be seeing this 4-H barn quilt on the cover of some magazine in the months to come. Meanwhile, if you want to read more about the Greene County Barn Quilts and see photos of them, click here. -- CHO

SUNRISE OVER THE MAPLE RIVER

Ida Grove, March 27, 2006 -- Photographer Don Poggensee, who supplies so many beautiful photos for us here at Offenburger.com, e-mailed us last week that Wednesday, March 22, brought an ''out-of-this-world sunrise'' over the Maple River near his hometown of Ida Grove. ''We had fog comming up from the river, frost-covered trees, snow and ice in the river,'' he wrote. ''What was a photographer to do, but to share what he saw with the world? Enjoy.'' And he sent along this photo.


There was frost on the trees and steam rising from the Maple River when Don Poggensee shot this photo at sunrise one day last week.

So we got back to him and asked whether he had just happened upon this stirring scene, or whether he had anticipated it and got out there early to photograph it. ''Any time the weather is different, I am out with the camera,'' he answered. ''I keep a close watch on the weather and knew that we would have frost on the trees and also that with the clearing overnight sky, we would have a great sunrise. The fog was an added bonus. It all lasted for only a few minutes, and I shot several pictures. All the years when I was young on the farm, I was up early milking the cows, so I have a habit of being up early. Now, I still get out early and am thankful for those old habits. Of course, my camera is always with me.''
-- CHO

THE WORST SPOT IN IOWA?

Ankeny, February 28, 2006 -- I have often told readers about my picks for ''the best spots in Iowa.'' They would include, as No. 1, New Melleray Abbey, the Trappist monastery 12 miles southwest of Dubuque. Oh, it's so serene, so beautiful. But there is also Preparation Canyon near Moorhead in western Iowa's Loess Hills. And the Mississippi River view from the park on Mount Hosmer in Lansing in northeast Iowa. And a few spots on the Iowa Great Lakes Trail along East Okoboji Lake. And several other fine places around the state. I repeat all of the above just for balance here, because I also want to report that the other day, I think I found the worst spot in Iowa. At least I am going to regard it that way, until one of you convinces me there is some other place more horrid. This awful spot is the 2300 block of S.E. Delaware Avenue in Ankeny, the suburb along Interstate Highway 35, just north of Des Moines. My wife Carla and I had to run an errand out in that direction, and we decided to pull into a B-Bops drive-thru hamburger stand there for sandwiches. I suddenly realized that at 12 noon on a Saturday, we were surrounded by thousands of cars, zooming around on hundreds of acres of concrete. Directly in front of us, as we pulled away from B-Bops was a big box store, Home Depot. West, south and north of us were more big box stores, with lots of smaller boutique-looking places and restaurants among them. It is modern America at its worst, a carbon copy of shopping developments in hundreds of cities all over the U.S. No soul at all in this place. I nearly broke out in hives. I couldn't get out of there quick enough. There was only one slightly redeeming feature -- the cheeseburger from B-Bops was good. Otherwise, I'm sure I was in the worst spot in Iowa. Please tell me there is not one worse. Please. -- CHO

EVER AMAZED AT NILE KINNICK

Des Moines, February 28, 2006 -- In this era of super-sized athletes, it is almost shocking to realize how small some former stars like Nile Kinnick were. Kinnick, a native of Adel, was 5 ft. 8 in. tall and weighed 170 pounds when he won the 1939 Heisman Trophy for his football play with the Iowa Hawkeyes. In a new life-size statue of him that was unveiled last week at the Iowa Hall of Pride here, he is attired in slacks and an ''I'' lettersweater, carrying a couple of books in one hand and a football in the other. You can walk right up next to the statue, to compare yourself in size to the legendary Kinnick -- and that will probably become a new favorite thing for people to do when they visit the capital city. Nearby, the ol' Roland Rocket and Iowa State Cyclone Gary Thompson, a basketball star in the 1950s, is portrayed in his Iowa State uniform in a statue showing him at his full college size of about 5 ft. 10 in. Thompson actually looks big, compared to Kinnick.

LIVE THEATER IS TRANSFORMING

Jefferson, Feb. 28, 2006 -- I'll tell you, the deeper we all dig ourselves into our world of television, videos, computer wizardry and all the rest, the more refreshing a night of live theater becomes. The Community Players of Greene County last weekend staged the musical ''Guys and Dolls,'' and it was just fantastic. It's an ambitious production for a community theater group, of course. The cast of 40 did more than two dozen song and dance numbers played by a seven-member live band. It's hard to imagine more people putting more time into any other activity in the community that they were not being paid to do! You wonder how the director, Karen Younie, the busy principal at Jefferson-Scranton High School, could have possibly found the time. And how did music director Carson Griffith and choreographer Sheilah McGregor Pound take our everyday friends and neighbors and turn them into the singin' and dancin' machines they became? There must be tremendous satisfaction for those who perform -- whether for the first time or the 10th or 20th time -- and become part of a production that so pleases an audience. People were astonished at how good ''Guys and Dolls'' was. And I swear, live theater has a way of working magic on people. Dick St. Clair is a 50-something farm neighbor of ours who often seems like such an irascible old coot when you run into him around our Cooper neighborhood. But he got on that stage as one of the gamblers, Benny Southstreet, and he was transformed. The guy has a great voice, he was dancing it up with the liveliest of the young hoofers, he was delivering his lines with just the right humor and manner, and he obviously was having a ball. Has anybody ever seen him happier? At several points, St. Clair was featured in duet song and dance numbers with Larry Dowd, who was in the hilarious role of ''Nicely-Nicely Johnson'' and who, in real life, has dated St. Clair's ex-wife, Joan St. Clair, who is much nicer than either of the two men and who was also in the cast. So it goes in community theater! Dowd, incidentally, gave the show a professional-quality high point with his solo on ''Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat.'' But female leads Melodie Knight and Paula Griffin and male leads Derrik Bauer and Matt Glawe were all exceptional, too. Their young ages promise fine musical productions here for years to come. The bottom line of this mini-review? Bravo! We won't miss a show that this troupe does. In fact, we wish there could be monthly productions. What a valuable part of life in Greene County they all are! -- CHO

OUR POLITICS IS CHEATING US

Cooper, February 27, 2006 -- Is anybody else feeling cheated by what has happened in Iowa politics in the last week or two? Here we were, getting all lined up for one of the great races ever for governor, made possible because two-term Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, is apparently running for other offices now, and leading Republican Doug Gross, a Des Moines lawyer and key staffer to two former governors, decided to take a pass for family reasons. So we had a wide-open race among Democrats and Republicans for governor, and it promised to be not only very interesting, but also highly entertaining for those of us who enjoy politics. But more than three months before the primary election is here, we have candidates folding their campaigns, joining former opponents on their tickets and seemingly trying to end the race before it's really even a race. Patty Judge, the Democrat who is currently Secretary of Agriculture, gave up and signed on as the lieutenant governor candidate with Chet Culver, the current Secretary of State who is a Democrat running for governor. At least they'll still have opposition from other Democrats for governor -- from my choice Mike Blouin, the former Congressman and former director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, from State Representative Ed Fallon, and a couple of other lesser-known candidates. On the Republican side, there apparently will now be no primary at all in the governor's race. Bob Vander Plaats, a Sioux City non-profit manager and former educator and coach, last week gave up his own campaign and signed on as the lieutenant governor candidate with his former rival Jim Nussle, the Congressman from northeast Iowa. What's driving the early consolidations of these campaigns? Money, mostly. And that is sad. A whole lot can happen in three months. A candidate who early-on looks like a real golden boy and a shoe-in, can implode before the primary even gets here. Or then fall apart in the general election campaign because he didn't get the kinks of his campaign worked out in a meaningful primary. But if the leading candidates can get things all tidied up ahead of time, then that leaves them more money for TV advertising next September and October. And we all know what that means, don't we? -- CHO

A NAME FOR THOSE MACHINES

Cooper, February 21, 2006 -- The state is in an uproar over so called ''TouchPlay'' machines that have recently been installed in convenience stores, restaurants, bars and other public places -- though no church lobbies that we've heard of. There have been 5,000 of the machines installed, and about that many more are on order, although the governor has stopped their installation to allow time for discussion and possible new legislation. The state's lottery director says they're lottery machines, not slot machines, and legislators approved them earlier. Everybody else says they look like slot machines, they sound like slot machines, they gather crowds like slot machines -- they're probably slot machines. And those wouldn't be allowed under current state law. Meanwhile, my friend Jerry Kelley, who is mayor of Indianola and executive director of Iowans for a Better Future, says he's heard a new name for the machines: ''Slotteries.'' -- CHO

FEELING LIKE A SHRIMP

Jefferson, February 9, 2006 -- I'm still amazed from watching last Friday night's high school basketball game here between arch-rivals Carroll High's Tigers and our Jefferson-Scranton Rams. Even with All-Stater Greg Schulz on the sidelines with a sprained ankle, the Tigers were too much for the Rams, 59-44. Most remarkable to watch, I thought, was the silky smooth play of Carroll's 7-foot senior Steve Gute, who scored 14 points in a support role offensively to teammate Kyle Semprini, who had 20. But a 7-footer who is reasonably well coordinated can dominate nearly every phase of a high school basketball game, and Gute does -- affecting every shot that opponents take, commanding vast space when it's time to rebound. I couldn't recall whether I've seen other 7-foot high school players in Iowa through the years, so I asked Bud Legg, the information specialist at the Iowa High School Athletic Association. ''As for other 7-0 Iowa preps, we have had very few,'' Legg said. ''Mount Vernon had Bryce Husak, a legit 7-0, in 2003. And various articles and stat books had Raef LaFrentz, of Monona MFL/Mar-Mac in 1994, and Kevin Kunnert, of Dubuque Wahlert in 1969, listed at 7-0. Rare air for sure! Besides Gute this year, I am not sure how tall they are listing Jordan Egleseder of Marquette Catholic, in Bellevue, who is a UNI recruit, but he was listed as a 6-10 sophomore at the state tournament in 2004.'' Indeed, most listings I can find have Egleseder at 7-0 this season. These tall young fellows are probably still getting used to old guys like me walking up to them, just to see how tall they really are. -- CHO

WRESTLERS IN A ''THROWBACK''

Van Horne, February 8, 2006 -- Jim Magdefrau, editor of the South Benton Star-Press in Blairstown in east central Iowa, tells us about a particularly interesting high school wrestling match in his ''South Grapes'' column this week. The item in Magdefrau's column: ''Last Thursday it was a trip back in time at Benton Community High School. Noting a throwback retro night, the wrestlers from Benton dressed in singlets from the 1970s, the cheerleaders had uniforms from the same era, and the coaches were styling with polyester, wearing big ties and leisure suits. When the team took the mat, the sound system played 'Convoy.' I saw the singlets. They looked familiar. The suits looked funny, but those were the clothes that Coach Jerry Eckenrod and his assistants wore for real back in those days. We know the spirit is still there. Now the clothes are, as well.'' -- CHO

WEIRD STATUES & SCULPTURES IN IOWA

Bayard, Feb. 9, 2006 -- A piece of yard art in this west central Iowa town has passers-by doing a double-take.


Photographer Don Poggensee, of ida Grove, found this ''digging dog'' in Bayard, Iowa. You might call it a real work of arf.

It's another installment in our new series of photographs we hope you readers will help us continue: ''Weird statues & sculptures in Iowa.'' You can e-mail us photos of the ones that cath your eye, at chuck@Offenburger.com -- CHO

CAN IT KEEP BEING JANUARY?

Cooper, January 31, 2006 -- This month has been the warmest January since 1933, the weather observers have told us. And let's hear it for that! Three times this month, we have been out riding our bicycles on our Raccoon River Valley Trail. Last week, some of our farm friends started field work, ''knocking down cornstalks,'' as they called it. That means they were plowing the stubble, I think, and some were also putting down some anhydrous ammonia. Fieldwork in January! Meanwhile, the North Raccoon River is flowing without any ice in it. And one recent late afternoon, we saw thousands of geese flying north in formations. Our Greene County Conservationist Dan Towers said the geese were probably local commuters and not long-distance travelers. But such unseasonal weather does make you wonder what is going on here, doesn't it? And how badly are we going to pay for this in March? -- CHO

AMAZING D.M. REGISTER SITUATION

Cooper, January 31, 2006 -- Suddenly it struck me the other morning that there is something very, very different now about the Des Moines Register, the newspaper that knew me when. Carolyn Washburn recently came on board as the newspaper's new editor in chief. She joined Mary Stier, who has been publisher for five or six years. Carol Hunter joined the paper last year as editor of the editorial pages. I see on the newspaper's listing of officers that Laura Hollingsworth is now the general manager, Susan Genalo is vice-president of finance, Susan Patterson Plank is vice-president of online operations, Julie Peers is controller, Joyce Ray is vice-president for human resources. Women now hold a majority of the top positions at Iowa's largest newspaper, including what I would say are the top three positions. What may be most amazing about it is that this brief mention here, as far as I know, is the first time any commentator around the state has noted it. And that is a good sign. -- CHO

WHY HE'S SUCH A GOOD WRITER

Cooper, January 24, 2006 -- Michael Gartner, the newspaper editor turned baseball executive in Des Moines, went to Iowa State University in Ames last week to deliver a speech about editorial writing, based on his excellent new book, ''Outrage, Passion and Uncommon Sense: U.S. History Through the Editorial Pages.'' We enjoyed the coverage of his speech by Tess Hannapel, of the Iowa State Daily student newspaper. At one point, he talked about how an editorial writer should come to the job. ''A good editorial writer has to be outraged by the time he gets to work, but be filled with energy,'' she quoted Gartner as saying. ''I read The Wall Street Journal editorials for rage and listened to WOI (public radio) for energy, so by the timeI got to work I was pissed off, but happy.'' -- CHO

WEIRD STATUES & SCULPTURES IN IOWA

Schleswig, January 16, 2006 -- Don Poggensee, the photographer whose work so graces our Internet site Offenburger.com was meandering the area around his western Iowa hometown of Ida Grove on Sunday. It was a rare January day, with temperatures soaring to near 60, as Poggensee drove just south of a neighboring town, Schleswig. There he found ''an individual that shed all of its clothes, except a scarf, because of the weather,'' and took this picture.

Weird Iowa statues/sculptures: A ''dinosaur'' near Schleswig in western Iowa.

We got a good grin out of it, and then began thinking that, like this dinosaur, there are some really unusual -- some might say weird -- statues and sculptures around Iowa. Often these are oddities that we get so accustomed to looking at that we don't really appreciate their weirdness, until we step back and see them as a visitor might, full of wonder about the stories behind them. So we hereby announce a reader-participation contest here to gather photos of Iowa's weird statues and sculptures. Snap some digital photos of them as you travel and send them along to me here at chuck@Offenburger.com. We'll share them with you all here in Our Iowa News Digest as we gather them. -- CHO

OUR WESTERN WEATHER WATCHERS

Council Bluffs, January 9, 2006 -- Our friends Joe and Cindy Connolly have built a new home here on Parkwild Drive on top of a bluff north of downtown. It gives a stunning view over the west end of the city, the Missouri River and the skyline of neighboring Omaha. Their home is 300 feet above the flatland below, and as a result, the Connollys can watch weather systems form and come right at them. Imagine the lightning shows during thunderstorms, and the rainbows afterward. But they'll be lucky if they ever see something as gorgeous as the sunset that happened on Saturday, January 7. They preserved it in this photograph we are sharing with you here.


Here's looking at you, Omaha, at sunset on Saturday, January 7.

It had been a day of sunny skies with temperatures jumping to near 50 in the heartland and making us all dare think of spring. Of course, there were snow flurries 24 hours later, but it was grand while it lasted! -- CHO

PERFECT MOMENTS OF CHRISTMAS

Indianola, December 12, 2005 -- For 15 Christmases, we Offenburgers have not missed attending ''A Festival of Lessons & Carols'' at Simpson College here, and we were back for it again on Sunday. In a tradition that stretches to the early 1970s, Simpson presents Lessons & Carols in candlelit Smith Chapel. Readers of the lessons, which are pulled from the biblical account of the birth of Christ, always include a line-up of members of the college community, ranging from the president to students to professors to custodians to basketball coaches. Between the readings, Simpson's College Choir, Women's Chorale, Madrigal Singers, Brass Ensemble and organist Carl Gravander present the music of the season in ways that only Simpson could. There are always moments during this service when all our normal inner churning seems to just stop. Our minds and hearts seem wide open to all the beauty around us. Perfect moments of Christmas, I call them. For two years, a highlight was our young friend John Moore, a student from Milford in northwest Iowa, soloing on ''O Holy Night.'' Moore is now singing professional opera in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and I thought Simpson could not possibly come up with another singer to rival his performances on that song. But they did just that on Sunday, when senior Thomas Gunther, of Muscatine, did a stunning solo on it with just a pleasing hint of vibrato in his crystal clear voice. We were also pleased to see the prominent role that Carl Rowles, a freshman from our Jefferson-Scranton High School, played in the festival -- on trumpet with the Brass Ensemble, singing in the College Choir and on keyboard accompaniment of the Women's Chorale. Young Rowles is one of the Honorary Mayors of our town of Cooper, after he performed with the Celebration Iowa Singers & Jazz Band on our Super Cooper Day last summer. Lessons & Carols at Simpson has become so popular that the college performs it twice on a Sunday before Christmas, at 2 in the afternoon and then again at the traditional starting time of 5. Traditionalists that Carla and I are, we have stuck to the performances at the later time, and one reason is that we enjoy the look of the campus decorated with holiday wreaths, banners and lights when we are walking out of Smith Chapel in the darkness. The festival every year leaves me grateful for all the little things I have learned about Iowa in all my years roaming it, especially those annual events that I now know just aren't to be missed. -- CHO

WASSAILING FOR A 56TH YEAR

Shenandoah, December 12, 2005 -- About 100 men in my old hometown here in southwest Iowa gathered on Saturday at the American Legion Country Club for the 56th annual ''Wassail Bowl Stag,'' one of the longest-running Christmas social traditions I know about in the state. The noon event on a Saturday before Christmas is coordinated by a committee called ''The Twelve O'Clock High Luncheon Club.'' That began in 1950 when a group of young businessmen wanted to get together for a Saturday lunch and a few drinks before the holidays. To be discreet about the alcohol, in those pre-liquor-by-the-drink years in Iowa, they rented a local hotel's meeting room, had the hotel's chef fix the meal and brought in the booze. The first few of the events got a little rowdy, so some rules were set, the most enduring of which has been, ''The consumption of alcoholic bevereages in moderation will be tolerated,'' a line that has been printed right on the invitations. Subsequently, a couple of transgressors on that rule found out the Luncheon Club was serious -- those who got drunk were never invited back again. The organizers also decided to give the event a bit more nobility than just being a good time, and decided to start donating any proceeds to the local school nurse, to be used as she or he saw fit to take care of the needs of children in financial need. More than $71,500 has now been donated to the ''Underprivileged Children's Fund'' over the years, with assistance provided to more than 3,600 kids. In its heyday, the Wassail Bowl Stag would draw 300 or more men for a lot of holiday best wishes, warm conversation, a big meal and a few drinks. Three of the originators survive -- retired businessman Gage Parker, now of Lincoln, Nebraska; retired lawyer and estate tax specialist Ben Brown, of Des Moines, and retired newspaperman Ridgeway Hutcheson, who still lives in Shenandoah. Parker and Brown both attended the event again this year, Brown in the company of his son and grandson. Notable about this year's gathering, a men's quartet formed suddenly among accountant Dave Lashier, attorney Gary Gee, insurance rep Brian Steinkuehler and industrial manager Don Mullison. They sang their way through ''The Wassail Song,'' which starts ''Here We Come a-Wassailing, among the leaves so green...'' They sang the words they could remember and then coasted along with ''fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!'' They promised to be even better on it next year. Local women, as best as anyone can recall, have never challenged the ''stag'' status of the event. Instead, about 30 years ago the women began having their own all-female event, the ''Tannenbaum Tea'' which packs the local Elks Club, at the same time and on the same day as the Wassail Bowl. I've always thought Shenandoah sort of glows the whole rest of that day. -- CHO

PRIESTLY PRAYER ON THE GO

Jefferson, Dec. 5, 2005 -- We in the adult choir at St. Joseph Catholic Church at mid-afternoon Sunday were getting in our last few minutes of rehearsal for our 4 p.m. Advent reflection ''Find Us Ready, Lord!'' Suddenly, we noticed our pastor, Father Don Ries, pacing quickly about the church. He was wearing his casual ''civies,'' meaning a pair of slacks and a sweater, instead of his priestly garb, since he was not directly involved with the Advent service. He would just watch it from the pews with the others who came. However, 30 minutes before performance time, here he was, briskly pacing around the interior of the church. Was he checking something out? Was he counting something? He went across the front of the church, then west on the side aisle, across the back of the church, looping the Holy Water font, then striding east up the center aisle, back across the front of the church, and around he went again. He had done two laps like that before it finally occurred to us what he was really doing -- his daily walk, indoors, since it was snowy and very cold outdoors. But he was doing something else, too -- praying the Rosary as he walked for exercise, fingering the beads as he passed them through his right hand. How many laps of St. Joe's interior are required to say the full Rosary? ''Oh, I can't really tell you,'' Father Ries said. ''I just do my walks according to how much time I have available, and then pray as I go.'' He called it quits before our performance started, taking a seat in a back pew. I was impressed, both by my choirmates and the readers in our Advent reflection -- but also by our priest! -- CHO

HOT STOVE LEAGUE BASEBALL STARTS

Jefferson, Dec. 5, 2005 -- The Greene County Historical Society had its last meeting of the year on Friday, and as snow swirled outside the windows of the restaurant at the Raccoon Bend Golf Club, county baseball authority Ron Toliver talked about 80 of us through the development of the grand ol' game hereabouts. A retired teacher in the Paton-Churdan Schools, Toliver has researched local baseball as a hobby. The game first appeared in the county in the 1860s, he said. As was the case across most of the state, the troops who came home from the Civil War brought the game with them. By 1875, most towns had their own teams, which would include men of all ages. The best pitchers would play wherever the money or the whiskey was better, Toliver said. He chronicled one 1870s-era game in which Jefferson beat Ogden 177-76, with Jefferson ''batting around'' seven times in one inning and scoring 66 runs then. He said the town of Paton was the county's real baseball town until World War II, then Churdan and especially Rippey became more prominent in the sport. ''Why?'' Toliver asked rhetorically. ''Churdan and Rippey built lighted fields then.'' In the later 1930s, at least three teams in the county hired a 15-year-old whiz from Van Meter, an Iowa town about 40 miles southeast of us, to pitch for them -- Bob Feller, who went on to a Hall-of-Fame career with the Cleveland Indians. Toliver, by searching old scorebooks people have found in their attics and elsewhere, has established that Feller pitched at least four games in Greene County, one of them in our town of Cooper, which especially caught our attention. Town baseball games often had full-blown community picnics happening around the ball field while the games were being played. ''The atmosphere was really pretty wholesome,'' he said, or at least it was wholesome until the whiskey and beer drinking might start after the game. The town of Churdan, for example, for a time banned Sunday baseball. Toliver said that did not stop the local men from playing. ''They'd just go out west of town and play with the Catholics in Cedar Township,'' he said. A number of Greene County natives have signed professional baseball contracts through the decades, but Toliver said as far as he has been able to determine, only one ever reached the major leagues. That was Nate Teut, a big strong left-handed pitcher, who starred in the early 1990s at Paton-Churdan High and then at Iowa State University. He was drafted in 1997, spent five seasons playing up through the minor leagues and, in the spring of 2002, pitched in two games for the Florida Marlins. Appropriately, Toliver, our county baseball historian, was in the stands in Milwaukee for one of those games in which Teut was on the mound. Toliver said he thinks Teut, who is now 29 years old, ''might still be playing somewhere in one of the independent pro leagues.'' But wait, you're thinking, after reading all this. There was a program on baseball in early December? You bet. It served like a good opening day for the Hot Stove League, and now we have the game's long, wonderful, winter season of talk ahead of us. -- CHO

THE HOLIDAYS IN THE HOMETOWN

Shenandoah, November 28, 2005 -- We appreciate receiving electronic updates about activities in our old hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa. The updates are the work of the Shenandoah Chamber & Industry Association. They probably underestimate what a tug their bulletins can have on the hearts of us old alumni. Like this one, about the ''Night the Lights Come On'' event scheduled for Saturday, December 3: ''Shenandoah Chamber & Industry Association will bring the holidays to life with the 2005 theme 'Old Fashioned Christmas.' On December 3 at 4:30 p.m., a Dickens style group of a cappella strolling carolers called 'Holiday Friends' (members of Opera Omaha) will begin caroling along Sheridan Avenue in lavish costumes. Their band of elves and Santa will join them to turn on the lights downtown at 5:30 p.m. at the Flatiron Plaza. This years lighting will be especially breathtaking with the lighting of the 70-foot cedar tree next to City Hall, a tradition of days-gone-by in Shenandoah.'' To old Shenandoahans scattered far and wide, it sounds almost perfect! -- CHO

THE WAY IT IS IN WAUCOMA

Waucoma, November 28, 2005 -- We were charmed by the new town sign we saw as we drove through the northeast Iowa town of Waucoma (pop. 299) one day last week. ''Waucoma,'' the sign says, ''just a few short streets where old friends meet.'' We were there last summer on our bicycles, when 10,000 of us on the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) pedaled through town. In fact, it seemed like we were all there at once that day. Every time our travels have brought us through Waucoma the past 25 years or so, we've looked longingly at the old, two-story brick Hotel Waucoma which sits both on the main drag and on the bank of the beautiful Little Turkey River. It appears to be used today like an apartment building, but it also looks like it could be a real gem of a get-away. We tried to talk a couple of affluent RAGBRAI riders into buying it last summer and doing a full renovation to make it operate again as a small hotel. We sure wish somebody would. -- CHO

THE ROOT RIVER TRAIL'S STORY

Panora, November 15, 2005 -- The 60-mile Root River State Trail system in southeast Minnesota has helped make tourism a $25 million per year industry for rural Fillmore County there. And one night last week, a crowd of us here had a real look at how that's happened. Julie Kiehne, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in Lanesboro, Minnesota, was the guest speaker for the annual Chamber and economic development banquet in Panora, one of the towns on west central Iowa's 56-mile Raccoon River Valley Trail. ''Lanesboro is a town of 788 people, but on a busy weekend, we double or triple our population,'' said Kiehne, who has been the Chamber executive for five years in the hub city on the Root River Trail. Her Chamber's Visitors Center, which is trailside, has 10,000 people stop in annually for information. They printed and distributed 20,000 copies of a slick new promotional magazine this year, and are planning to do 35,000 next year. But ''the real key'' to getting information out, Kiehne said, has been the Chamber's site on the Internet www.lanesboro.com, which had 3.3 million visitors in 2004. The Lanesboro Chamber, which has an annual budget of $100,000, spends $45,000 of it on marketing and promotion. That $45,000 comes from a three percent additional sales tax on visitor lodging in Lanesboro, and by state law, that three percent must be used for marketing. The Chamber also receives $25,000 in member dues, and the other $30,000 comes from grant writing that Kiehne does and special events the organization sponsors. She said that Fillmore County sales tax statistics for 2003, the most recent year for which they were available, showed more than $4 million was spent for lodging in the county and $11.2 million for food and drink services. So are all these people coming to the area just to ride bikes on the Root River Trail? No, she said, ''it's the variety of experiences we offer for the visitors that keeps them coming back.'' That includes canoeing, kayaking and tubing on the beautiful Root River itself; a real variety of home-owned restaurants; excellent small hotels and B&Bs, also all home-owned, that offer a variety of accommodations and prices; a lively art scene including a cool gallery owned by a local non-profit group that shows and sells regional and local artists, and a professional theater that operates 11 months a year with two or more productions each week so you can see different plays on consecutive evenings. ''There is a real interdependence among all our attractions,'' Kiehne said. ''We do see that natural resources, historic preservation, the arts, recreation and tourism all go hand in hand.'' For example, surveys have shown that for every $1 visitors spend on theater tickets, they spend $6 elsewhere in the community, she said. All of this has developed since 1985 when the first segment of the new trail opened. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources built and maintains the entire asphalt-surfaced trail, most of which is constructed on the former rail bed of the Milwaukee Railroad. It abandoned its tracks about the same time the farm crisis was erupting, and most of Lanesboro's business district was boarded up in the early 1980s. Ditto for most of the other small towns in Fillmore County. It's amazing to see how far its come in 20 years. One measure: Lanesboro now has 40 different overnight establishments offering 175 rooms. Another measure: An old brick schoolhouse on top of the hill in town had sat empty for 15 years; it is now being converted into 12 condos, the least expensive of which is more than $95,000, and three-fourths of the units have already been sold. Outside Magazine in August of 2004 named Lanesoboro one of its ''20 Best Dream Towns in America to live and play.'' And dozens of people from across the U.S. have moved into the area with their families to start businesses catering to the tourists. ''It was a huge investment by our state to build this trail,'' Kiehne said, ''but in our area, it's come back many-fold.'' All of us in her Panora audience who are advocates for our Raccoon River Valley Trail were practically salivating. And we were thrilled to hear her say, after she had a quick look around our trail in the Panora area, ''You have some real possibilities here.'' -- CHO

AN UNEASY TIME IN OUR TOWN

Jefferson, November 7, 2005 -- It is a breathtaking experience to get up on Sunday morning, grab the Des Moines Register and see a big headline on page one: ''Residents fear plant is eating away town.'' Especially when it's your town. We have read with alarm as the story has been building this fall in our Greene County seat town of Jefferson, pop. 4,600. A new ''SoyChlor'' plant owned by West Central Cooperative, which is one of this area's best employers and most cutting-edge companies, uses soybeans to make a livestock feed supplement. Part of the process uses hazardous materials, such as hydrochloric acid. Well, soon after the plant went into production early this year, business and residential neighbors began complaining about their cars' paint corroding, concrete discoloring and unusual coughs and lapses of energy. Several attempts have reportedly been made to correct emissions problems at the plant. But the complaints from neighbors in the north end of town continued to grow and intensify. Ten days ago, about 150 of them filed suit against West Central, with their attorney saying their goal is to ''shut the plant down.'' One neighbor who became concerned and started watching things closely around the plant, taking photos and recording her observations is Bonnie Burkhardt. We now hear she's being admiringly called ''Bonnie Brockovich,'' after the heroine in the movie ''Erin Brockovich'' in the year 2000, based on the true story of a single mother who rallied a small town to force a major industry to quit polluting the water. State environmental and health officials are now expected to become heavily involved in the SoyChlor investigation here. Long, serious, expensive litigation is almost a certainty. In many ways, this case will be a real test of how far we want to go with high-tech agriculture, just as there are more and more questions being asked now about the large-scale hog confinement operations. As Des Moines Register agribusiness reporter Anne Fitzgerald wrote at the top of her excellent story in the Sunday paper: ''A prescription for a healthy rural economy has made people in this western Iowa town sick, workers and residents say.'' That situation has to be corrected, of course. But I have real faith that West Central is the farthest thing from being an unscrupulous or uncaring industrial polluter. Nevertheless, it is indeed an uneasy time in our town. -- CHO

AN AMAZING INVESTMENT CAMPAIGN

Wall Lake, November 7, 2005 -- The Des Moines Register's Philip Brasher, who writes from the newspaper's bureau in Washington, D.C., caught our attention with his story today on the growth of ''biodiesel'' fuel production across Iowa. New plants are being proposed and built at several locations across the state. One will be near the west central Iowa town of Wall Lake, and catch Brasher's account of how quickly the money was raised: ''Despite the risks, investors are eager to get on board. Earlier this year, nearly 700 people, many of them local farmers, pledged $22 million within 11 days toward building a 30-million-gallon plant at Wall Lake, Ia. The equity drive was so popular it had to be canceled two weeks early, disappointing some would-be investors willing to plunk down the minimum $20,000.'' It was stunning to see such proof of the wealth that is around us in rural Iowa.
-- CHO

TIME FOR FARM FOLKS TO FESS UP

Cooper, November 7, 2005 -- It is once again time for us farm folks to confess our dirty little secret to you city folks. This is something nobody told us Offenburgers before we moved to Simple Serenity Farm in 2004. It is a joy that is so treasured in the countryside that nobody talks about it, for fear city folks would try to take it away from us, or screw it up some other way. But we are so delighted with it that, blabber mouths that we are, we just cannot keep it confidential. So here it is: When you live on a farmstead, you do not have to rake leaves! They blow away! And I swear, it's true. -- CHO

A BIN-BUSTER INDEED

Cresco, November 7, 2005 -- The e-mail we received late last week from our pal Jeff Ryan, who farms near Cresco in northeast Iowa, says it all about the magnitude of the harvest in most of Iowa. ''We finished up combining this morning,'' he wrote on November 4. ''I have never hauled so much corn to town in one fall in my life! While I was running the combine the other day, the yield monitor was consistently running between 220 and 245 bushels per acre with occasional spikes into the 260s. We made 450 of the round bales last week and only had to drive 247 feet to make a 72-inch diameter bale. Every 92 seconds, I'd get one made, wrapped with mesh and kicked out before I'd be ready to do another one. It seemed like it was going slow, but there'd be a pile of them all over the field by the time I was done.'' Jeff and his brother Roger Ryan are partners in ''Two Guys Farming, Inc.,'' with help from their father Tom Ryan and others. Their motto, which they have on their farm caps and their business cards, is: ''Feeding the world...because Mayo Clinic was already doing brain surgery.'' -- CHO

LOVE THE COLLEGE FIGHT SONGS!

Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 3, 2005 -- After years of moaning about how scoreboard and other sports shows on radio have dropped the playing of college fight songs, we finally have had some success. In an October 13, 2005, column here, we told you how WHO radio's legendary Jim Zabel was recently introducing the play-by-play broadcaster of the Indiana Hoosiers, to talk about an upcoming game against the Iowa Hawkeyes. Zabel broke out in song, and he warbled through the whole Indiana U. fight song! That was on the Sunday evening ''Two Guys Named Jim'' show that Zabel co-anchors with former Iowa State football coach Jim Walden. We called Zabel a few days later, complimented him on the unexpected song and learned that he knows and can sing the fight songs of all the Big 10 Conference schools, except for relative newcomer Penn State's. He has always been nuts for such college anthems, he said, and not just those of the Big 10 schools. Well, Zabel had such a big reaction to that column that now he is playing recorded versions of college fight songs, not only during ''Two Guys Named Jim,'' which airs 6 to 8 p.m. on Sunday evenings, but also on the ''WHO Radio Sound Off'' show that he co-hosts on Saturdays after Iowa Hawkeye football games. How sweet the sounds! You can listen along from almost anywhere in the U.S. on the 50,000-watt WHO, which is 1040 on the AM dial. -- CHO

HARVEST PHOTOS YOU MUST SEE

Carroll, October 24, 2005 -- Our pal Jeff Storjohann, staff photographer at the Carroll Daily Times Herald in west central Iowa, has one of the best eyes we've ever seen, especially when it comes to high school sports and scenes of rural life. We're constantly amazed by Storjohann's work, but these two harvest photos that he sent us last week are so good, they deserve to be wall-sized art in some gallery or office or home.


Jeff Storjohann, photographer with the Carroll Daily Times Herald, is one of Iowa's top news and sports photographers. And you can see from these recent harvest photos he shared with us, he's captured a couple of scenes so beautifully that they're as much art as they are photographs. In the silhouette at sunset, farmers Jim Schoenherr and Dan Walker are shown harvesting soybeans in a field south of Glidden, Iowa, in late September. In the other photo, taken northwest of Arcadia, Iowa, Storjohann shows us how dust from the grain harvest and from gravel roads will drift into low-lying areas of the countryside, just as fog sometimes does.

He tells us he began his professional career in 1987 at the Postville Herald in northeast Iowa, and about a year later moved west to shoot for Carroll Today. In 1993, he joined the Daily Times Herald, and he has been enchanting the newspaper's audience ever since. Reflecting on the impact of changing technology on photography, Storjohann recalls he started his career ''shooting Tri-X film'' and soon switched ''to Kodak's new T-Max film. The first Friday night football game using T-Max was really impressive. The 'grain' structure of the film was very small and you could do pretty good enlargements. At the time, that was important because the low light levels at high school fields forced the use of shorter lenses that were quite fast -- f1.2 and f1.4.'' He said he has ''always shot Canon bodies and lenses, and I did not switch to digital until 2002-'03, with the introduction of the EOS 1D series. That camera was pretty revolutionary. It was the first really good SLR-based digital, and today's equipment is about 500 percent improved over the EOS 1D. In fact, the Associated Press switched from Nikon to Canon, but who knows what kind of politics that involved?'' He said he enjoys shooting ''almost any kind'' of subjects, but ''sports and ag are favorites. I really like shooting in unique lighting situations. The sunset photo here is typical -- just an ordinary scene but the light is what makes the difference. It falls into the photojournalists' motto: 'Shoot tight, focus right and pray for good light.' How true!'' You can e-mail him at j.storjohann@carrollspaper.com. -- CHO

OUR ''COOPERMARKET'' WAS SUPER

Cooper, October 18, 2005 -- Cities and bigger towns have supermarkets, we told you recently. In our little town of Cooper, pop.30, we had a ''Coopermarket'' on Saturday, October 15, and it was a real success. Carla Offenburger of the sponsoring Committee for a Super Cooper reports that the group made about $650 in fees from vendors and with sales of our delicious cinnamon rolls, harvest lunch and the best pies ever put on one table. We had a dozen vendors offering everything from handmade wood furnishings, homemade rugs, beautifully knitted and crocheted baby blankets, original jewelry, Halloween decorations and goodies, gorgeous photos and note cards of Greene County scenes, antiques, painted pumpkins, collectibles and baked goods from the Cooper United Methodist Church's women's group.


The first-ever ''Coopermarket'' sale of crafts and collectibles was a real success in the Cooper Community Building in the small town in west central Iowa. Shown here are Carla Offenburger at the door to the market, vendor Robert Porter of nearby Bagley offering fine handmade wood products, another vendor Darrel Stephan of Jefferson selling very popular homemade throw rugs, and Marj Peckumn of Cooper showing one of the small pumpkins she painted by hand and sold.

Most of the vendors did well enough in sales to our crowd of perhaps 300 that they were wanting to reserve spaces if we have another Coopermarket a year from now, and we probably will. The proceeds enabled the Super Cooper Committee to go ahead and finalize the specs for a total renovation of the kitchen area in the Cooper Community Building. It's the 50-year-old gymnasium, cafeteria area and music room left over from the years when the small community had its own school. It is now owned by the Franklin Township Board of Trustees, with the Super Cooper Committee helping ensure the building's future by renting it to groups for a variety of events from dances to basketball tournaments, having our own fundraising events in it and organizing its renovations. There were two other real benefits from the first Coopermarket. One was feeling again that wonderful sense of ''community'' that is so evident when a whole bunch of us from around Franklin Township are involved together in events like this. The other was new appreciation for the talents of our people when we saw their obvious skills in art, needlework, woodworking, decorating, cooking, baking and more. -- CHO

SEARCHING FOR JUST THE RIGHT WORDS

Ames, October 16, 2005 -- The Iowa State Cyclones had just suffered a heartbreaking 27-24 overtime loss on Saturday to the Missouri Tigers at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Missouri. John Walters, the play-by-play broadcaster on the Cyclone Radio Network was telling his listeners that he could barely fathom how disappointed and upset the Iowa State players must be at that moment, having given their all in a valiant come-from-behind effort, only to lose. As he introduced one of the network's color commentators, Ben Bruns, who was a great Cyclone lineman from 196-2000, Walters said, ''Ben, I hope you can do a better job than I've been able to, of putting into words how frustrated the Cyclones must be.'' There was a momentary pause, then Bruns said slowly, ''Well, John, those guys just,'' pause, ''played their nuts off.'' I doubt that was the phrase Walters had been searching for himself. -- CHO

A 116-0 HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAME!

Melcher-Dallas, Oct. 15, 2005 -- Melcher-Dallas set a single game eight-player team scoring mark with a 116-0 pasting of Seymour, in a game played in these twin towns 50 miles southeast of Des Moines. Willy Westberry tied a single game touchdown mark. The Saints were up 76-0 after one quarter and 110-0 at intermission. The point total, which is the highest since 1921, eclipses the 105 Walnut scored last fall against Villisca and is the fourth highest total in the IHSAA archives, which is led by Denison’s 131-6 drubbing of Woodbine, Oct. 21, 1921. Westberry scored 10 touchdowns, seven of them on nine rushing attempts, two more on punt returns and one on a pass reception. -- Bud Legg, Iowa High School Athletic Association

A GREAT SPOT ON IOWA'S TRAILS

Council Bluffs, October 3, 2005 -- Surely one of the most memorable spots on a recreational trail in Iowa is a stretch on top of a levee here, along our side of the Missouri River. Downtown Omaha is just west across the river. Council Bluffs' beautiful Dodge Park Golf Course, with its Riverside Grille, is trailside. The Bluffs casinos are just downriver. We rode there Saturday while participating in the first annual, 27-mile ''One Lap of the Bluffs'' bike ride, with our cycling pals Joe and Cindy Connolly, who live here. The event was sponsored by the Christy Creme restaurant, which is operated by former Council Bluffs mayor Dave Christiansen and his family. Of course, an ice cream stand is always a great spot to start and finish a bike ride. We pedaled the first half of the ride with the city's current mayor Tom Hanafan, now in his 18th year in office. He was struggling along on a mountain bike ''that I get out on about once a year,'' he said. We helped him by airing up his back tire, raising his seat and, after one abrupt stop, getting his shoestring out of his bike's chain sprocket. Even if he is not such an avid cyclist, Mayor Hanafan and the city's parks and recreation director Ron Hopp, who was also riding, have overseen the development of an excellent trails network in the city over the past half-dozen years. You can now ride about 25 miles on paved trails in Council Bluffs, including through the gorgeous campus of the Iowa School for the Deaf and right to the impressive campus of Iowa Western Community College. You can also ride on trails to the southeast corner of town, where the Wabash Trace Nature Trail, a crushed-rock path, begins its 63-mile route to the Iowa-Missouri border. More trails within the city are being planned, to create new loops in more neighborhoods. Their basic strategy is to try to connect as many of the city parks by trails as possible. Meanwhile, recreation advocates in both Council Bluffs and Omaha continue to think about a project that could become one of the top cycling destinations in the U.S. -- a bridge for pedestrians, joggers, skaters and cyclists that would span the Missouri River and link the trails systems in the two cities. The proposed location is just north of the Interstate 480 bridge that connects downtown Omaha and the western reaches of Council Bluffs. The initial concept had the pedestrian bridge rising from the levee in the Bluffs, then making two gentle curves as it headed toward Omaha. The bridge surface was to be suspended from two huge futuristic-looking towers rising from the river. On the Omaha side, it was to spiral down on to the riverbank. There were going to be amphitheaters and picnic areas on both ends of the bridge. When the first construction bids came in a year or so ago, they were double what had been the projected cost of about $24 million. A re-design and additional funding possibilities have been under consideration ever since. But little has been heard about the project in recent months. My counsel to the good folks of Council Bluffs and Omaha would be this: Across the U.S., there are about a half-dozen of those top cycling destinations I mentioned earlier, places where everybody who does much bicycling wants to ride eventually. Those would include the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the ''Going to the Sun Highway'' in Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, the Root River State Trail in southeast Minnesota, RAGBRAI in Iowa, the Natchez Trace going from Tennessee to Mississippi, maybe the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The new trail bridge across the Missouri River, if it's built at least somewhat as strikingly as the initial concept called for, could become another one of those national attractions. -- CHO

A BASEBALL DREAM FULFILLED

Des Moines, September 29, 2005 -- Sue Burt, the 70-year-old matriarch of our family, has her whole clan green with envy. With one big, eight-day-driving swing to the East Coast, she has just fulfilled her dream of seeing a game in all 30 major league baseball parks. The last two on her list were the new PNC Park in Pittsburgh and the old RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., the latter now the home of the new Washington Nationals. She left home in Des Moines in mid-September with her daughter Tammie Amsbaugh. They added a couple of extra games to their itinerary, just because they were along the way. So they saw the Cardinals vs. the Cubs in Wrigley Field in Chicago, then the Reds vs. the Pirates in Pittsburgh, the Giants vs. the Nationals in Washington, D.C., and on the way home caught the Phillies vs. the Reds in Cincinnati. They enjoyed a four-day stay outside the nation's capital with granddaughter Carrie Amsbaugh Shippy and her husband Scott. Sue Burt had been in three major league ball parks earlier in her life, but in 1999 began developing an interest in seeing all the other ones. You can read a Guest Column she wrote last year about her baseball travels by clicking here www.offenburger.com/guestpaper.asp?link=20040802. What is Burt's next hobby going to be? ''I'm just going to enjoy this one for a while,'' she said. ''I'll keep going to ball games when the opportunity comes up, and I'll go to most of the Iowa Cubs games in Des Moines and watch other ones on TV. I really do like baseball.'' -- CHO

A BUSINESS THAT CHANGED A TOWN

Storm Lake, September 27, 2005 -- Abner Bell's Coffeehouse, which inspired our 2003 search for Iowa's best coffeehouses, is pouring its last lattes, mochas and espressos Thursday morning, September 29, and then being transformed into a new branch bank in this northwest Iowa community of 10,000. Owners Mark and Lynn Redenbaugh have sold their building to Heritage Bank, of nearby Alta, which is now going to begin operations in Storm Lake. The Redenbaughs will leave the coffeehouse business knowing that their Abner Bell's -- which they opened in late 1998 and named after one of the first settlers in Buena Vista County -- indeed changed life in this town on the lakeshore. Mark, who graduated from Storm Lake High School in 1979, had settled in California where he was a firefighter. But after he and Lynn, a native Californian, met, married and began their family, they decided Mark's ol' hometown in Iowa would be a better place to raise kids. So they moved to Storm Lake, with an idea to start the kind of gourmet coffeehouse that was already wildly popular in California. ''Everybody told us a coffeehouse here would never last a year,'' Mark said. ''But we built a really good business. This is kind of a bittersweet time now, because it's been my heart and soul for seven years.'' They taught the public the value of espresso-based coffee drinks and the allure of the coffeehouse atmosphere. They offered unusual baked goods and lunches -- made by loyal employee Karen Grieme -- that you couldn't find elsewhere. A group of current and former businessmen have made Abner Bell's their daily lunch spot, eating and then drinking coffee during card games of four-point pitch. The business and professional crowd kept the place busy in the daytime, and students from Buena Vista University and the area high schools kept it busy in the evenings. It was the first business in Storm Lake to offer customers free high-speed wireless Internet service. The Redenbaughs also offered occasional live music, poetry readings, tarot card readings, book signings and more. Dick and Joan Hakes decided they no longer had room for their baby grand piano at their home, so Mark let the Hakeses move it into the coffeehouse, and Dick and others would often sit down and play a little when they stopped in for java. Classes from BVU would occasionally meet in Abner Bell's. It also became the preferred site for committee meetings and political gatherings. Presidential candidates, gubernatorial candidates, legislative candidates -- Republicans and Democrats -- they all made their way to the charming little 75-year-old brick building across the street south from the BV County Courthouse. Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson said she couldn't be near Storm Lake without stopping in for a cup at Abner Bell's. Governor Tom Vilsack was once talking to a crowd in the coffeehouse when young Thomas Higgins, a student at St. Mary's Catholic elementary school, told him the school's bus was cold and its tires didn't look safe. The governor reached in his pocket, pulled out $100 and said it'd be the first contribution for repairs to the bus. A jar was passed and several hundred dollars was collected before the governor's visit ended. And I'll never forget 10-year-old Kieran Cullen, in the middle of a mini-concert with his twin brother Tom on their flute-like recorders, playing Beethoven's ''Ode to Joy'' by snorting into his recorder which he'd stuck up his nose! How's that for cutting-edge music at Abner Bell's! As we hung out there in our years on the faculty and staff at BVU, we began to notice lots of other gourmet coffeehouses opening around Iowa. So Mark Redenbaugh and I went out on a search for the best of them, first asking readers of this Internet site for their nominations. I wound up traveling 2,848 miles to sample 44 coffeehouses in 27 Iowa communities. Abner Bell's ranked fifth in the state, a tremendous honor for a Storm Lake business, and it was indeed that good -- or better. You can find the stories about that whole coffeehouse caper here in the Archives of ''Chuck Offenburger's columns'' in April and May of 2003. The success of Abner Bell's inspired John and Karen Keenan three years ago to open a rival ''Grand Central Coffee Station'' four blocks to the west in the business district, and both places have done very well. But as time went on, Mark Redenbaugh got interested in other projects and in selling real estate. Lynn Redenbaugh also works as coordinator of the after-school program for the Storm Lake Schools. When the opportunity to sell their coffeehouse to the Heritage Bank for a good price, the Redenbaughs decided it was time to deal. Mark Redenbaugh says he understands that the bank may continue to sell gourmet coffee in the rear of the building, once it builds teller stations and offices into the front of the building. But it's unlikely the feel will ever be quite the same again. Abner Bell's has been a wonderful place, a real attraction for Storm Lake. -- CHO

SMALL SCHOOL FOOTBALL, A BIG DRAW?

Shenandoah, Sept. 26, 2005 -- Bob Mobley was a pretty good high school football player growing up here in the 1960s, and now as a high school principal in Wichita Falls, Texas, he's around some great high school football in that state. ''In Texas, most of our larger schools' games are played in 15,000 seat stadiums with Astroturf fields,'' Mobley said. He is at Wichita Falls High School, which with 1,554 students is one of several high schools in the city of 100,000. He said when his school's Coyotes play, he supervises ''nine administrators and 11 or 12 police officers'' who oversee the games because ''we have to keep a tight rein on security.'' Mobley, 58, whose whole career as an educator has been in Texas, said ''that's really the only high school football my own kids and grandkids have known.'' This past weekend, Mobley returned to his hometown (pop. 5,500) for the 40-year reunion of his Shenandoah High School Class of 1965. Traveling with him and his wife Cindy were their daughter Jennifer, her husband Mark Moser and their children Katie, 9, and Michael, 4, all of whom came along especially to see Bob's mother, Mae Mobley. On Friday night, Bob had hoped to take them to a SHS football game, ''so they could see kind of how I played -- on real grass, the small town, all that.'' But the hometown Mustangs were on the road, playing in Greenfield, more than an hour away. So instead, Bob took his son-in-law and two grandkids five miles up the way to Essex (pop. 880), where the Essex High School Trojans were hosting the Nishna Valley Blackhawks -- in an 8-man football game! What did the contingent of Texas football fans think? ''My grandkids and son-in-law were wide-eyed over the whole experience,'' Mobley said. ''They couldn't believe how close the fans were to the field, and how a lot of them walked along the sidelines to watch as the ball moved up and down the field. They couldn't believe how close the concession stand was. They couldn't believe that Essex had six cheerleaders instead of 16 or more, like we do back home. When the band went out at halftime, my granddaughter was asking where the rest of them were. But they could sense that this was a big event for the whole town, and we all thought that was really neat.'' It was a great football game, with Essex, which is rated in the Top 10 in Iowa's 8-man game, taking a 20-16 victory. A few years back, when Iowa's smaller schools resurrected the 8-man game because they were having trouble finding enough players for 11-man football, I don't think anybody talked about the 8-man game becoming a tourist attraction for the state. But you know what? It may well turn into one! -- CHO

THE CURRENT STUDENTS MEET THE LEGENDS

Waterloo, Sept. 19, 2005 -- I would have gladly paid a good price for a ticket to go to an event held one night last week at Waterloo West High School -- had I only known it was happening. At any rate, Jeff Frost, the athletic director at the school, should take a bow for a program he put together. Seeking to inspire the current students at West High to perform at higher levels in all their activities, he brought back some of the school's all-time best athletes. They gathered last Thursday in the school auditorium for a program called ''The Wahawk Legends Return.'' Among those who spoke to the Wahawks of today and the other current students were Molly Goodenbour, MVP of the NCAA women's basketball tournament for Stanford in 1992; former national high school player of the year in the later '90s, Nina Smith; Olympic Gold Medalist wrestler in 1972 and later coach of so many national champions at the University of Iowa, Dan Gable; his old coach at West High Bob Siddens; the current athletic director at the U of I, Bob Bowlsby; 1950s football star Don Perkins who went on to stardom for the Dallas Cowboys in the '60s, and Forry Smith, also an NFL football player who has gone on to success as a Hollywood actor and writer. The West High Air Force JROTC unit presented the flag, the outstanding West High Choir sang the National Anthem, the choir came back later to perform the Alma Mater, then the pep band and dance team led the crowd in the West High Fight Song. Jim Sullivan, a sportswriter for the Waterloo Courier, reported that current West High AD Frost told the crowd ''the big goal is to provide some inspiration and motivation. Hopefully, we can jump-start the West legacy and put us back where we belong -- at the top.'' It may have worked. Current athlete Heather Holler told reporter Sullivan that she ''was talking with some of my friends'' as the program wound up, and ''we felt like we wanted to go out and play right now.'' I don't know which is more commendable -- the current athletic director thinking of putting on such a program, or all those former Wahawk stars coming back to their alma mater to talk to the students of today. What an event! -- CHO

ONE FINE POLITICAL MOMENT

Somers, September 19, 2005 -- Former U.S. Vice-President Henry A. Wallace showed up on a recent evening at a ''Fun on the Farm'' political rally for Iowa Senator Daryl Beall, a Fort Dodge Democrat seeking re-election in 2006 to his seat in the Iowa Legislature. Wallace, named by the Des Moines Register as the most influential Iowan of the 20th century, did not come to the rally himself. After all, he's been dead since 1965. But veteran Des Moines actor Tom Milligan is so convincing when he plays Wallace that it is easy to drift into imagining that you are hearing from ''the American Dreamer'' himself. That is what both admirers and detractors came to call Wallace, who was vice-president from 1941-'45 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Earlier, he played a key role in the development and marketing of hybrid corn, revolutionizing agriculture. Wallace, quite simply, was one of the most brilliant persons who ever lived. Former U.S. Senator John Culver and former Des Moines Register reporter John Hyde have collaborated on a book about Wallace, and Des Moines playwright Cynthia Mercati turned it into a stage play, starring Milligan. He was just excellent when he appeared at the rally for Senator Beall. Part of it, undoubtedly, was that a crowd of about 150 had gathered in the yard of an Iowa Century Farm owned by Greg and Trish Moore, near this small town west of Fort Dodge. The stage was their driveway, the backdrop was their 100-year-old barn with a massive combine parked next to it. There could not have been a much more appropriate setting to hear from Henry A. Wallace. When it came time for him to appear, Milligan calmly walked into the middle of the crowd from the rear, wearing a floppy hat and work clothes and carrying a bowl of strawberries. Munching an occasional berry, he launched into a riveting 45-minute monologue that pretty well told the story of Wallace's life, sketched his politics and philosophies, and painted a word picture of what life in a place like Iowa should really be like. It was spellbinding, inspiring and even challenging -- about how we can all do better in our public service. It made me want to learn more about our legendary Iowan Henry A. Wallace, for sure, and it certainly made me want to see Milligan do the whole stage play sometime soon. -- CHO

HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL AT ITS WILDEST!

Aurelia, Sept. 17, 2005 -- Aurelia defeated Elk Horn-Kimballton in an amazing eight-player game, 52-49 Friday night (September 16) in northwest Iowa. The Bulldogs (3-0) trailed Elk Horn-Kimballton, 43-12 with 2:40 remaining in the third quarter, and they then scored 24 unanswered points in 26 seconds! After the Danes scored to make it 43-12, Jacob Bruce returned the kick-off 75 yards for a score and the Dogs made the ensuing two point conversion. Aurelia then recovered the on-side kick, and Jared Bruce hooked up with Jacob Bruce for a 36-yard TD followed by another two point conversion. Aurelia then kicked off and on the following first play from scrimmage, Elk Horn-Kimballton lost the ball on a fumble. Jared and Jacob Bruce worked their aerial magic again for 30 yards and a two point conversion followed. In the fourth quarter Aurelia scored 16 more points (running the total to 40 unanswered) before the Danes scored with 18 seconds remaining. The Bruce combo accounted for 372 yards of Aurelia’s 424 rushing and passing yards. Jared, a sophomore, rushed six times for 75 yards and a score, and completed 7 of 12 passes for 152 yards and four touchdowns – all to junior brother Jacob who had five catches for 145. The TD aerials were 25, 36, 30 and 24 yards.
-- Bud Legg, Iowa High School Athletic Association

THE GOOD LIFE IN RURAL IOWA

Rippey, September 12, 2005 -- After several years in Chicago, Iowa natives Chris Wilbeck and her husband Kevin moved to a farmstead southeast of the town of Rippey in west central Iowa. She shares the store here of a recent memorable day on the farm. Just when I start missing city life, country life pulls me back in. That was the case on September 2, when the Carroll County Wagon Train rolled past on the gravel road right in front of our farmhouse! We estimate about 75 horses went past. They were on their way to Rockwell City, a three-day trot.


These two young pals Clint Dennhardt and Jake Wilbeck, of the west central Iowa town of Rippey, sat in the front yard of Jake's farm home recently and were fascinated by the Carroll County Wagon Train passing on the gravel road out front. The riders were on one of their occasional outings, traveling this day from the town of Dawson to a farm near Jefferson.

I regrettably had to postpone a few important meetings, but this once in a lifetime event could not be ignored. We had to stop and smell the horses. To those whose meetings I postponed, thanks for understanding. In the photo, my son Jacob watching the wagon train roll by. He is the little redhead sitting in the foreground -- with an airplane toy, of course. Hope all is well in the city, while we country folk are kicking up some dust. -- Chris Wilbeck

THE REAL DEAL IN USED CARS

Jefferson, September 6, 2005 -- They've been fair-dealing in used cars for 40 years at Jack's Auto Sales on Iowa Highway 4 here. And current owner Mike Harbaugh and his wife Gail must have gotten just a little weary of all these intricate, special and in some cases tricky enticements that the larger car dealers seem to be offering of late. Recently, the Harbaughs used one of those changeable signs, which they have out front of their place, to make this announcement: ''No employees, no discounts, just me & my wife and good used cars.'' -- CHO

SPECIAL ASSISTANCE TO THEIR NAMESAKES

Cooper, Sept. 6, 2005 -- There is no shortage of opportunities to help the individuals, communities and even states that have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But there are two really nice projects happening from here in Iowa that we've heard about. One has the people of Indianola, located just south of Des Moines, adopting the townsfolk in their namesake town of Indianola, Mississippi, and sending money and supplies. And the good folks of Calhoun County in northwest Iowa are pitching in to help their counterparts in Calhoun County, Mississippi. While on the subject of the hurricane relief, doesn't it make us all feel good when we see former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton working together to head up this effort, as well as the earlier one after the Tsunami hit South Asia? Their work together and resulting friendship is inspiring. -- CHO

NO FINER PLACE TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL KID

Boone, Sept. 3, 2005 -- While the official tally is not yet available, the Iowa High School Athletic Association fully expects that participation numbers for all athletics to be “up” again this year. Football is the highest participation sport in Iowa with over 21,000 involved a year ago. That figure works out that one out of every 4.2 boys in grades 9-12 is out for football. When you add the participants in all fall boys and girls’ sports, school colors will be worn by over 46,000 students. Add those students in marching bands and the cheer squads, and over 44 percent of all high school students are engaged in a school program this fall.
-- Bud Legg of the IHSAA

THE PERFECT DAYS OF LATE SUMMER

Cooper, August 30, 2005 -- It is clear all around us, we are starting into what is Iowa's real season of glory. It's unimaginable that there is any place as pretty as this in autumn. Already, gold is creeping across the soybean fields and up the cornstalks. High school and college football are upon us. The monarch butterflies, with wingspans of about three inches, and the pelicans, with wing spans of up to nine feet, are winging their way through Iowa now on their long trips South. Where has summer gone? Oh, we don't care. These brilliant warm days and cool, so-sleepable nights make any reluctance about the changing seasons go away. We see our farm neighbors getting out their grain augers, pulling some maintenance, getting ready for when they'll be dumping grain from wagons into the augers to lift the beans and corn up into the bins, silos and cribs. Their crop looks to us to be a guaranteed binbuster. We hear rooster pheasants, defiant in their openness now before hunting sesason, crowing. We see their babies, almost grown-up after a summer of nurturing, trying their wings. In a month or so, the pheasants' inclination to be out and about as much as they are now will be especially foolish. This morning, we even heard the jolly call of a whipporwill -- the first time we've heard one around Simple Serenity Farm. Ah yes, we're starting into a great season in a great place. -- CHO

THE DRAWING POWER OF QUILTS

Jefferson, August 30, 2005 -- Meandering through the first-ever ''Heart of the Lincoln Highway Quilt Show'' that drew big crowds here over last weekend, it suddenly became clear why quilts are so popular. Most of them are really colorful works of art, you know? Plus, quilting combines so many things that reach into our hearts -- handcrafting, our personal heritage, a connection between the generations, a sense of community when groups get involved in quilting parties, and more. Our neighbor Shannon Funcke, who co-chaired the quilt show with Ruth Ann Roberts, reports there were 628 people from all over Iowa and five other states who paid the $5 admission price, a bargain to view about 300 quilts that filled two buildings downtown. There were another 70 volunteers working, pushing the crowd to about 700. Many also took the driving tour to see Greene County's new ''Barn Quilts,'' the subject of a story on the left side of the home page of this Internet site. ''I would say we did pretty darned good for the first year,'' Funcke said. The show was a benefit for the Greene County Medical Center Foundation, and was sponsored and organized by the Cross County Quilters and volunteers from the medical center. You can still ''see'' this quilt show on a CD being produced with photos of all the quilts that were entered, plus pictures of some historic quilts at the Greene County Historical Museum. Those CDs are $12.50 and can be ordered from Funcke at huklbry@netins.net. -- CHO

DAVID YEPSEN'S BUMPER CROP OF TOMATOES

Jefferson, Aug. 22, 2005 -- When we were walking out of mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church here on Sunday, waving at us from her front steps across the street was Marj Yepsen. ''The farmer is out back,'' she said. ''You might want to check in on him.'' Sure enough, there in what must be one of the lushest tomato patches in Greene County was Marj's son David Yepsen, chief political columnist for the Des Moines Register and our former colleague at the newspaper. He and his dad Arlon Yepsen said they were having trouble keeping up with all the tomatoes David's garden is producing. The plants are well-staked and caged, and they towered above our heads. ''I planted too many of them this year,'' said David, who drives up from Des Moines frequently to weed his garden and visit his folks. ''But then, you can't really have too many homegrown tomatoes, you know? We'll just make more salsa. There's an old song that has a line that 'there's only two things money can't buy -- true love and homegrown tomatoes,' and I believe it.'' On Sunday, he was wearing baggy bluejeans, a dark knit shirt, an Iowa Farm Bureau ballcap and he was sweatin' up a storm. Funny that his dad didn't seem to be suffering the heat as much as David was. But David was able to show us a real variety of tomatoes, including some exotic heirloom ones. Some of the latter are called ''winsall'' tomatoes, which Jim Autry, the writer who is married to Iowa Lieutenant Governor Sally Pederson, brought up from his native Mississippi and has shared with Yepsen. And now we Offenburgers have a couple of those ''winsalls'' that we can enjoy eating, as well as squeezing seeds out of to freeze for planting next year, here at Simple Serenity Farm. -- CHO

A POLITICIAN'S STORY WE WANT TO HEAR

Fort Dodge, August 22, 2005 -- Iowa Senator Daryl Beall, a Democrat from Fort Dodge whose district includes the greater Cooper area, has a constituent newsletter that is published regularly in newspapers in his district and is distributed on the Internet, too. Well, last week's Beall report noted that he had been asked by Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack to come to the Iowa State Fair to help out in her ongoing literacy work. He said he was asked to write an original story, then tell it to an audience of young people at the fair. Beall, a former teacher and newspaperman, said in his newsletter that he very much enjoyed doing that. And that was it! He didn't give us a clue what his original story is about! So we asked, probably his only constituent to do so. And here is his response: '''Tadpole Tails.' They live on the Raccoon River. To be continued...'' We can't wait to hear the rest of it. -- CHO

MY GOD! BABE'S RESTAURANT IS GONE!

Des Moines, August 22, 2005 -- We were shocked when we drove up Sixth Avenue in downtown Des Moines in the late afternoon Friday. There where Babe's Restaurant had stood for 65 years was a pile of rubble, with a bulldozer parked triumphantly on top of it. We were so startled that we drove around the block, to make sure what we'd seen. Our pal Alphonse ''Babe'' Bisignano, who built the place into the most famous bar and eaterie in Iowa, died earlier this year -- and thank goodness he isn't around to see what's happened. Not that it's any surprise, really. Babe's had been closed for years, sitting spookily dark and locked up, especially when you can remember all the fun that happened there for more than a half century. It was the informal headquarters of all the WACs who trained at Fort Des Moines during World War II. It was where piano great Roger Williams played his first professional gigs. It was where pizza was first served in Iowa. Political campaigns were launched and buried at Babe's. Everyone who was anyone in sports showed up there at one time or another. We hear it will be replaced by a parking ramp. But there needs to be a statue there -- of you know whom -- or at least a plaque. Des Moines and Iowa will never be the same. Babe's is gone! -- CHO

MORE FUN OBITUARIES

Sheldon, Iowa, August 19, 2005 -- Jeff Grant is the editor of one of Iowa's best newspapers, The N'West Iowa REVIEW based here and serving six counties. Grant noticed our earlier item in Our Iowa News Digest about the obituary of one Jack Frost that was published recently in the Des Moines Register. ''Chuck, your piece on obits reminded me of a couple I edited recently for The REVIEW. Last week, there was one for LeRoy Bunkers, 87, of Remsen, who died Aug. 4. His obituary noted: 'After retirement, he enjoyed fishing, pinochle, woodworking, gardening and sharpening saws and scissors.' But I think the most memorable was James 'Jim' Snip, 83, of Archer who died July 20 of this year. His obit noted: 'He will be remembered for his horseradish.' I think I can safely say, throughout the history of obituaries published in newspapers around the world, that line has never appeared in another.'' And, oh, don't we all wish we could try his horseradish! -- CHO

MINNESOTA'S VERY BUSY ROOT RIVER TRAIL

Panora, Iowa, August 16, 2005 -- When people ask us what can be done to increase usage of Iowa's recreational trails, like the Raccoon River Valley Trail near us in west central Iowa, we always tell them to go check out the Root River State Trail in southeast Minnesota. That 60-mile trail has become the economic engine driving a $25 million per year tourism industry in Fillmore County there. Vickie Ditsworth, of Panora, who is an ally on enhancements of our Raccoon River Valley Trail, is just back from a trip to the Minnesota trail, and gives us this quick report: ''My husband and I rode the Root River Trail last week, and we really enjoyed the experience of that area. When we called to reserve a camping spot (around the trail's hub town of Lanesboro, Minnesota), they were all booked up on weekends through Labor Day. So we biked and explored and drove to Rochester to stay. It was fine. I got some good ideas for the RRVT. It is all you said it would be and more. You do have to be there, and I am sure we just scratched the surface.'' -- CHO

IOWA'S BIGGEST & BEST PARADE?

Des Moines, August 12, 2005 -- Year in, year out, the Iowa State Fair parade must be the biggest that happens here in Iowa. We watched this year's on Wednesday night, and it lasted two hours and 15 minutes! It had something for everybody. I especially liked it, of course, because my pal Bernie Saggau, the recently-retired executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the subject of a new book I've written, served as grand marshal. But it was also fun to see the great Valley High School Marchmasters band from West Des Moines, and other high school bands coming from as far away as Cedar Falls, Mount Pleasant and Mediapolis. It was also neat to see the colleges and universities taking part, even though most are not yet in session. Maybe most fun, Rob Denson, who is president of Des Moines Area Community College, personally drove a gorgeous semi-trailer truck that the college uses in its transportation instruction. Iowa State University sent one of its experimental alcohol-powered sports cars. Kirkwood Community College of Cedar Rapids sent a squad of students, who are Civil War re-enactors, uniformed as Union solders and riding beautiful horses with military precision. There were kids, there were dogs, there were two longhorn steers in an open livestock trailer. But does anyone out there agree with me that this State Fair parade really needs to have a few pigs in it? And there should also be an effort made to have the biggest piece of farm machinery that can fit between the curbs of Grand Avenue. The crowd sure loves the fair parade. My wild guess is there were 25,000 or more people lining both sides of Grand from the State Capitol to the west side of downtown. We watched it with 10-year-old Marina, a girl my wife Carla is mentoring, and I told Marina she should make it her personal goal -- indeed every Iowa kid should -- to be in this parade before high school graduation. Be in a band. Be on a float. Carry a banner. Whatever. Every Iowa kid should be in the Iowa State Fair parade at least once. -- CHO

THE MOST FUN OBITUARY EVER

Cooper, August 12, 2005 -- Carla and I are not sure it is a healthy sign, but we have become great fans of reading the obituaries -- especially in the Des Moines Register the last year or so. Iowa's largest newspaper changed its policy on ''obits'' so that now, if you're an Iowan, or probably more accurately, a central Iowan, your death will get six or seven lines of agate type -- at no charge to your kin. But the paper welcomes you to buy space and publish obits as long as you want them, saying almost anything you want said. And that has what made reading the obits become more fun than ever. People are listing ''Snuggles'' and ''Tippie'' and other pets among their survivors. They are telling little known facts about themselves. They have professed their religious faiths in ways the newspaper probably would have never allowed earlier. Well, the bar has been raised to a height I am not sure any of the rest of us can ever hope to equal with our own obits. A man I never knew, Jack Allison Frost, 73, of Ankeny, died Saturday, August 6. On Wednesday, August 10, his obit ran as a 3-column ad, five inches deep. There in the left corner was a photo of a happy looking man wearing bibbed overalls and a white T-shirt. The headline was priceless: ''Jack Frost melts in a heat wave!'' The obit told us that Frost was a carpenter, married for 53 years, father of five grown children and more. It noted that, ''He walked six miles, six days a week at Cotton Wood Park, where he was known as 'Mr. Bibs.' He loved watching documentaries, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and the news... He was not shy by any means and never knew a stranger. He enjoyed talking and was a good listener... Some called him stubborn or bullheaded; he called in 'set in his ways.' He enjoyed his retirement years and often said, 'It doesn't get any better than this.' His favorite saying was, 'The first 100 years are the toughest!' '' You know, I read all that and said to myself, ''Damn I wish I had known Jack Frost!'' And then I realized that is a wonderful legacy to have, if your life story is impacting even strangers that way. ''Jack Frost melts in a heat wave!'' I will never forget that. -- CHO

HOW ''GRAMPA RAGBRAI'' ENJOYED THE RIDE

Cooper, August 11, 2005 -- Our pal John Karras reports in, after arriving back at his home in Dillon, Colorado, that he had a great time on the recently-completed RAGBRAI XXIII, which most people know is the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. What some of you readers away from Iowa might not know is that Karras, as a copy editor and eventually a columnist at the Des Moines newspaper, was the co-founder of the big bike ride in 1973. He came to be known among the riders as ''Grampa RAGBRAI.'' He finally retired from co-hosting it about the turn of the century. All those years, he wrote daily stories about the ride and overnighted with his cycling wife Ann Karras in motel rooms the Register provided. But now, at 75 years old, John finds he's enjoying RAGBRAI more than ever, and he's doing it much differently than he did before his retirement from the event's leadership. This late July, he again made the whole week's ride across the state, but he camped outdoors with ''Team Skunk,'' one of Iowa's larger cycling societies, based in Ames and Des Moines and named for being founded along the Skunk River. Here is Karras' report on his experience: ''I had a great time camping with the Skunks and having, for the first time in 33 years, no responsibility to anyone or for anything except getting my ass from one town to another and having at least two beers with the gang before putting up my tent. I plan to do it again and again until I get it right.''
-- CHO

A SOFTBALL THRILLER IN ADAIR

Adair, August 8, 2005 -- We're a little surprised we have not yet seen headlines about this in the Des Moines Register's sports section. On Saturday afternoon, Register executive sports editor Bryce Miller did a belly-flop slide across home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning with the winning run in the Register news staff's 13-12 victory in coed softball over their counterparts from the Omaha World-Herald. There was no throw to the plate, or close play there, mind you. But Miller did the belly-flop anyway to put a weird kind of exclamation point on the win. This softball fracas between teams from the rival newsrooms goes back 25 years. But in the ''modern series'' going back four years in the town of Adair, which is located about midway between the cities, the tally is now even at two victories apiece. The World-Herald always seems to have more home run hitters, and they did again this year, building a 10-1 lead. But then the Register troops began cobbling together cheap hits, took advantage of some World-Herald errors afield, and forged a 12-12 tie going into the ninth and final inning. The first two Register batters were quick outs in the ninth. Then Miller got a hit, feature writer Mary Challender got another one, then copy editor/designer Tim Cochran singled in Miller for the game-winning RBI. ''Three two-out hits,'' Miller said afterward. ''Why can't the Cubs do that?'' Covered with dirt and starting to ache, he was nevertheless smiling even bigger than Adair's sappy water tower, which was looming beyond the rightfield fence. Your correspondent had a good vantage point for this report -- as umpire behind home plate. -- CHO

A FAMILY REUNION YEARLY SINCE 1918

Cooper, August 8, 2005 -- There were 73 members of the extended Lawton family in reunion here on Sunday. Dot Lawton got our attention during the service at the Cooper United Methodist Church, when she raised a ''joy'' because ''we're having another Lawton Reunion, and it's been held on the first Sunday of August every year since 1918, and sporadically before that.'' That makes you feel good even if you don't know the family! We do know them, and our friends Doug and Karen Lawton hosted the reunion at the Lawton farm a mile northeast of Cooper. The family is now in its sixth generation in this area. Doug's great-great-grandfather Peter Lawton got the American branch of the family started when he immigrated from England, via Canada, in about 1862. At this year's reunion, the crowd ranged in age from 18 months to those infants' great-great-aunt in her 90s, so the long lineage of Lawtons was quite evident. -- CHO

''CEMETERY TOURS'' ARE HITS!

Murray, August 8, 2005 -- About 140 people paid $5 each and took the ''Memories of the Past'' cemetery tour in this south central Iowa town on Saturday, August 6. The Murray High School class of 1955, in town for its 50-year reunion, sponsored the tour, which had people playing the roles of pioneers in the community while standing next to those pioneers' graves. ''Great comments from the people,'' said Jerry Wetzel, who played John W. Agans, one of the founders of girls' high school basketball in the state. (See my ''Out in Greene County, Iowa'' column of August 7, 2005, for the Agans' story.) ''They want us to do another one next year,'' Wetzel continued. ''There were some real good stories told about the pioneers, as there would be on any cemetery tour in Iowa.'' All proceeds are being given to the Murray Community School Foundation. -- CHO

ANYONE FOR TENNIS? PLEASE?

Storm Lake, August 1, 2005 -- We wince in telling you that the college we especially follow, Buena Vista University here, is looking for a new men's and women's tennis coach. Mike Inman was hired last January for the positions. His men's team in the spring went 0-18, and Inman resigned. Athletic director Jan Travis now tells the Storm Lake Times, she has launched ''a nationwide search'' for a new tennis coach, hopefully in time for the women's team's season this fall. And it would seem this might indeed require a nationwide search to find someone to lead the struggling Beaver netters. -- CHO

TWO SMALL TOWNS WHOOP IT UP

Cooper, August 1, 2005 -- We note that two small towns in our general area have upcoming celebrations. The Carroll Daily Times Herald recently reported that little Gray (pop. 82) has a float appearing in the parades in other towns this summer, promoting Gary's Quasquicentennial in 2006. The float shows a pioneer woman doing her laundry, with signs on the side of the float saying, ''Gray, Iowa -- We Ain't Washed Up Yet.'' Meanwhile, the Jefferson Bee & Herald tells us that the town of Ralston (pop. 98), on the border of Greene and Carroll Counties, is celebrating its Centennial this Saturday, August 6, with a full day of activities highlighted by a 1 p.m. parade. Of special note about Ralston's celebration is that the town's 100th anniversary of incorporation was actually in the year 2000. So why wasn't the Centennial then? With no public explanation of that yet, we're betting they forgot it. Life in Ralston is much busier than you might guess, as the town is headquarters for West Central Cooperative, one of the most advanced grain collection, processing and soy diesel fuel-making operations in the world. Meanwhile, we in Cooper (pop. 30) are now ''going to school'' on these neighboring towns and their celebrations, because we celebrate our Quasquicentennial in 2006. -- CHO

BEST HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL STATE TOURNAMENT ANYWHERE

Des Moines, Aug. 1, 2005 -- Wow, the atmosphere around Iowa's high school state baseball tournament on championship Saturday was just tremendous. I was there for the afternoon games and thought several times what a thrill that had to be for those high school kids to play on the field at Principal Park, with the State Capitol looming out beyond centerfield, and the skyline of downtown Des Moines beyond third base and leftfield. But it was even more than that. In the late morning, I meandered through the Des Moines Farmers Market, and there were lots of fans from Kee High of Lansing, Granville Spalding Catholic, Wilton and Carroll Kuemper Catholic there, too. Then when I got back to Principal Park, many others were tailgating in the parking lots. It's a whole new era for high school baseball in Iowa, with all four classes of the state tournament playing in Des Moines. In recent years, it had been split, with two classes playing state games at the beautiful stadium in Carroll and two others playing on the excellent high school field in Marshalltown. Both communities did outstanding jobs hosting the state tournaments, but still, neither could compete with the atmosphere around the stadium in the capital city on Saturday. And obviously the fans responded, judging from the week-long record attendance of 33,699 -- breaking the old week-long record by 11,500! The championships were won by Kee High, Wilton, Sioux City Heelan and West Des Moines Valley. As I watched, I couldn't help but think how far the high school game has come since 40 years ago when the Shenandoah High School Mustangs took me along as their catcher on a great run in the tournament that summer of '65. We won the sectional, the district and substate. We reached the point where only four teams were left in contention. But those final two games in state competition were played in different towns. (Jack Mustapha and Boone High no-hit us in Creston.) And the state title game was played, where? Williamsburg? Sheesh, we've come a long ways! Iowa is the only state in the nation that plays its high school baseball in the summertime, and it can also now boast of having the finest state tournament in the U.S.
-- CHO

BATTLING THE RACCOONS FOR THE SWEET CORN

Milton, July 18, 2005 -- Our friend Alan Henderson, who farms near this southeast Iowa town, has long delighted us with tales of his attempts to keep raccoons out of his sweet corn patch. Once he wired up a radio to a car battery, set it out in the sweet corn and said the music would keep the raccoons away all night long. What music? ''I dial in a heavy metal station from up in Ottumwa,'' he said. ''Not even raccoons like heavy metal music.'' This summer, he has a new plan. ''I am putting our raccoons in the 'CRP' program,'' he told us last weekend. Huh? The Conservation Reserve Program for idled crop ground? ''Oh, no,'' Henderson said. ''This CRP is our new 'Coon Relocation Program.' I am live-trapping the coons, then hauling them several miles away and turning them loose. Hopefully, it's far enough away that they won't find their way back to our sweet corn.'' -- CHO

BEST TIME OF THE IOWA SUMMER STARTS NOW

Jefferson, July 11, 2005 -- In a question in the June 22 edition of our poll ''THE CONTINUOUS IOWA CAUCUS'' here at Offenburger.com, we asked you what the best thing was about summer in Iowa. The overwhelming choice: Fresh tomatoes and sweet corn from the garden. Well, hurrah! Over the weekend, we heard the first sighting of a good, red tomato on the vines in these parts, from Gerald Deal, who runs an orchard and vegetable garden just west of Jefferson. And the ''Sweet Corn For Sale'' signs popped up for the first time this season, too. Life is always good in Iowa, and now it's about to get even better. -- CHO

A BEAUTY BUT IT'S ONE RUGGED GOLF COURSE

Ames, July 11, 2005 -- We spent part of the weekend following our pal Gary Thompson and other top amateur golfers from around the state playing in the 2005 Iowa Masters tournament on the Veenker Memorial Golf Course, just north of the Iowa State University campus here. We forget, from one visit to the next to Veenker, just how beautiful the course is. It was developed in 1938 as a WPA project by Iowa State's athletic director and football coach George Veenker. It originally had two holes to the south, beginning about where the ISU Armory is, and thus it was tied more directly to the campus. But those holes were lopped off when the City of Ames built North 13th Street through the course, and additional holes were added on its north and east sides. Oh, it's got some history -- lots of history. One of my favorite vignettes, which I had forgotten if I ever knew: Golf great Arnold Palmer, playing in 1949 for Wake Forest College from North Carolina, was medalist of the NCAA Golf Championships played that year on Veenker. It was a tough course then, and still is now, that really challenges even the best players. ''Every shot makes you nervous,'' said Thompson, 70, who was playing in the senior division of the Iowa Masters. But the course is a real treasure for the university and the state. Thompson, who was a basketball and baseball All-American at Iowa State in the 1950s, is a tremendous golfer for his age. After we watched him hit a long straight iron shot out of a fairway, his playing partner Dr. Bob Neimann of Webster City said, ''You've got to be a good, strong athlete to hit a ball as long and hard as Gary does at 70 years old. I guess that's what you get when you play basketball until you're 60 years old, like he did. You stay in remarkable shape.'' -- CHO

SAYS A LOT ABOUT A TOWN WHEN THIS HAPPENS

Jefferson, July 6, 2005 -- The Greene County Arts Council has a new show of local artists' work on display in the Jefferson Depot, through August. One of the volunteers inadvertently left the depot door unlocked one recent evening. Nothing was taken. In fact, an extra piece of art had been entered by the next morning. Seems one artist missed his deadline to have his work delivered, came late, found the door unlocked and put his piece in its place! -- CHO

5,000 MILES, A MILLION SMILES

Cooper, May 30, 2005 -- It was 10 years ago this weekend, when 308 of us pedaled out of Long Beach, California, on the ''Iowa 150 Bike Ride/A Sesquicentennial Expedition.'' It was a 100-day promotion of Iowa's celebration of 150 years of statehood, which would happen the next year, and we were inviting people from coast to coast to come visit our home state during 1996. We rode our bicycles 100 days, across 15 states, over four mountain ranges and, after 5,048 total miles, pedaled up to the front steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Labor Day. It was the grandest adventure of most of our lives. Now, 10 years later, 34 of our old troupe from 1995 have just started a reunion ride. They pedaled out of New Orleans Sunday morning on a 39-day ride up the full length of the Mississippi River, and are scheduled to reach the headwaters in Itasca State Park in Minnesota on July 1. Some of then will ride on north to the U.S.-Canadian border, arriving there on July 3. We Offenburgers are AWOL from this ride, but we will check in with the group while they are on the road and share details with you all. For the riders, we wish ''Godspeed and tailwinds.'' Meanwhile, all of us who were together on bikes in that wonderful summer of 1995 will have great fun the next three months, checking our old route books, seeing where we were a decade ago, reliving a terrific time in our lives. The longest lesson of the ''Iowa 150''? Every American should ride a bicycle across the country. -- CHO

A STORY WE HOPE JIM NUSSLE TELLS

Cooper, May 30, 2005 -- We note that U.S. Congressman Jim Nussle is going to be traveling Iowa in the next week to announce his candidacy for governor. Nussle, a 44-year-old lawyer from Manchester in northeast Iowa, is a Republican who has served in Congress since 1990. In his visits with Iowa's voters, we hope he tells a story he once shared with us, a story that every Iowa young person should hear. It goes back to about 1980, in his student years at Luther College in Decorah, where he was more interested in a rock 'n' roll band he was playing in than in politics. But he was taking a poli sci course, and one day the prof told the class that Tom Tauke, a bright young candidate for Congress, was making a campaign stop in Decorah that evening, and the students might want to attend just to see what a political candidate is like. So Nussle showed up at the announced meeting place downtown, and he was the only person who did! Nevertheless, candidate Tauke sat and visited with young Nussle for more than an hour. ''It changed my life,'' Nussle said years later. He volunteered in the Tauke campaign in '80, helped him win election, served on Congressman Tauke's staff in 1982, joined Governor Terry Branstad's staff in 1985 and was then well on his way in his own political career. It is a wonderful story about how accessible opportunities for leadership are in a small state like Iowa. -- CHO

GOOD VIBRATIONS INDEED AT OKOBOJI

Arnolds Park, May 30, 2005 -- It seems almost idyllic just thinking about it. Officials of the Arnolds Park amusement park at the Iowa Great Lakes in northwest Iowa have announced that the legendary Beach Boys will perform on the shoreline of Lake Okoboji on Saturday, July 23. The actual venue is the ''Green Space'' on one end of the park, with Okoboji's beautiful blue waters right there. Tickets are $50 or $34, with more information available at www.arnoldspark.com. The Beach Boys at 'Boji! It will be like a throwback to the late 1950s and '60s when major rock 'n' roll acts all found their ways to the Roof Garden their in the amusement park. We predict a huge turnout for a concert that will become a favorite part of lakes lore. -- CHO

LOVE THOSE NAMES OF POPULAR BANDS

Des Moines, May 27, 2005 -- We have always been connoisseurs of the names of rock, blues and country bands. We were reminded about that when Sarah Oltrogge of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs circulated news about what sounds like a terrific event ''Blues Before Sunset,'' which will now be happening Fridays from 5 to 7 p.m. on the southwest terrace of the State Historical Building here. Among the blues bands performing in upcoming weeks will be ''Fat Tuesday & The Greasefire Horns,'' ''Backstage Boogie Band,'' ''Steve George and the Other Brothers Band,'' ''Hot Tamale and the Red Hots'' and ''Van and the Movers.'' All nicely named, to be sure. They prompted us to think back to the years when ''Harvey & the Hayshakers'' were playing around Shenandoah, and over in Corning, Jesse ''Red'' Cross was the lead guitar player and singer in ''Red Cross & the Band-Aids.'' And, yes, we'd enjoy hearing about your favorite-named Iowa bands, too.
-- CHO

OH, SITH! IOWA IS BONKERS OVER NEW FLICK

Cooper, May 23, 2005 -- Few movies can capture the imagination of Iowans young and old, and George Lucas’s film series “Star Wars” has done just that. “Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith,” Lucas’s latest and alleged final installment of the series, continues the “Star Wars” tradition of helping people get in touch with both sides of “the force.” It’s also reminded us of the trite sayings we haven’t heard for a while. This episode is the direct prequel to the ones released in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and it introduces one of the most infamous characters of film history, Darth Vader. Record crowds have turned out to see the transformation of Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker into the evil Vader, and many are touting this film as better than the originals. Your reviewer here has seen all six “Star Wars” movies, and this latest one is indeed the best yet. -- JJS

THE LEGISLATURE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

Des Moines, May 23, 2005 -- The Iowa Legislature adjourned late Friday night, and with a flurry of action in the final days, produced a remarkably progressive record. However, one thing upset us: Details of the final state budget were actually hammered out in nine hours of closed-door secret negotiations between the leaders of the House and Senate and the governor. Then they were confirmed by votes of both houses. Secret proceedings about the state's budget? Huh? Actually, Iowa's state legislators ''are not covered by the same open meeting laws as city and school board meetings,'' the Des Moines Register's Tim Higgins reported. We were shocked and embarrassed that we did not know that. So we wrote to Kathleen Richardson, executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, who was quoted in the story, to ask if the Register's report was correct. ''The legislature is not covered by the open meetings law, by definition,'' she responded. ''It never wrote itself into the law, and while several legislators over the past few years have introduced bills that would require the legislature to comply with the law, those bills have never gone anywhere. What openness they have up there is voluntary -- and always seems to fold in the crunch. After I talked to the Register reporter yesterday, I wished I would have pointed out just what you say: That the city council in What Cheer has to follow the law, but the legislature doesn't, and what kind of message does that send?'' We're stunned at this. -- CHO

A BITING NEWS COMMENTARY, TO BE SURE

Carroll, May 19, 2005 -- Art Neu, of Carroll, former lieutenant governor and member of Iowa's Board of Regents, is an Iowan with a solid grasp of the state's strengths and weaknesses. He has recently been appointed by the Regents to head a committee to expand the broadcast reach of Iowa's public radio stations that are based at the universities, with affiliates around the state, including in Carroll. He also wants to beef up the stations' newscasts, which are now being networked. ''The way it could turn out is, whereas the Des Moines Register used to cover the state and no longer does, Iowa Public Radio could be the media that actually blanketed the state, so we would once again have something that covers the entire state,'' Neu told his hometown Carroll Daily Times Herald. The paper also quoted him parenthetically saying that public radio stations could become ''a gathering place of ideas and news for the entire state, a role Neu said the Register once embraced but has long since forfeited.'' Ouch! -- CHO

TALK ABOUT PECULIAR: THE BOMB POP

LeMars, May 16, 2005 -- The Sioux City Journal told us in its Sunday edition that the 50th anniversary of the frozen, flavored-ice treat the ''Bomb Pop'' is being celebrated this year. You remember it -- red, white & blue and shaped like a, well, like a real bomb, frozen on a wooden stick. The treat originated in the bomb-conscious years after World War II, in which the U.S. deployed the atom bomb, and in that era when many other nations were racing to develop mega-bombs of their own. When you think about it, the Bomb Pop sends an odd message to our kids today, doesn't it? It is now made by Wells Dairy, the LeMars-based company that uses the ''Blue Bunny'' name for its luscious ice cream products. -- CHO

BUY YOUR TICKET & SAY WHAT YOU WANT

Des Moines, Iowa, May 6, 2005 -- Principal Park, the home of the Iowa Cubs professional baseball team here, must be the only stadium in America that has posted in its concourse a large sign with the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. That is because the team is owned by Michael Gartner, who had a long career as a news executive at the Wall Street Journal, Des Moines Register, NBC-TV News and the Ames Daily Tribune. He explains he spent so much time fighting for freedom of the press, and other First Amendment freedoms, that he thinks citizens should have frequent reminders about it. -- CHO

WE ARE SO OUT OF IT

Des Moines, May 4, 2005 -- The Des Moines Register yesterday had a banner headline across the top of the front page that said, ''Green Day coming to D.M.'' We were clueless. The story explained that ''Green Day'' is a three-man rock 'n' roll band that is going to play the new Wells Fargo Arena on Sept. 17. Hmmm, a rock group we've never heard of, playing a concert four months from now, top-of-page-one news treatment. Further proof, we suppose, that we are getting older. -- CHO

WE PASSIONATE REPUBLICANS

Jefferson, May 2, 2005 -- Our State Rep. David Tjepkes, a Republican from nearby Gowrie, told us here at Saturday's ''Pizza & Politics'' luncheon about last week's yelling and shoving match between Representatives Jamie Van Fossen of Davenport and Paul Wilderdyke of Woodbine just outside the House chambers in the State Capitol in Des Moines. ''I read David Yepsen's political columns in the Des Moines Register, faithfully,'' said Tjepkes. ''I recall him saying recently that we Republicans don't seem to have much passion. And yet the fight was between two Republicans! I'm going to point that out to Yepsen.'' -- CHO

SANDALS THAT SELL THEMSELVES

Milford, May 2, 2005 -- Emil Richter, partner in the popular Three Sons clothing store in this town at the Iowa Great Lakes, always takes time to visit. As we sat and had a nice chat one day last week, a young man came into the store, went directly to the shoe department, browsed the shelves and boxes, found himself a pair of wildly-colored flip-flop sandals that seem to be all the rage now, tried them on, brought them to the sales counter and patiently waited for Richter to come check him out. After the sale was rung up, and the young man was starting to leave with his purchase, Richter wryly said to him, ''Now I hope we didn't high-pressure you too much while you were looking for those.'' -- CHO

HE KNOWS THE STORY ON LEWIS & CLARK

Des Moines, May 2, 2005 -- Don Avenson, Iowa's former Speaker of the House of Representatives and also a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, is a history buff. Oh, is he ever! When Dayton Duncan, a native of Indianola, Iowa, who has become one of the leading authorities on the Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1803-1806, spoke here recently, Avenson was all ears. ''I've really gotten into the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial,'' he said. ''I've read 57 books on it in two years, and there are more I want to read. When my son asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him more Lewis & Clark books, he said, 'Dad, isn't that a little excessive?' I said, 'Son, some might call it scholarship.' '' -- CHO

WEST BEND'S CRUISING ON THAT INFO HIGHWAY

West Bend, May 2, 2005 -- Our pal Tim Gallagher, a columnist for the Sioux City Journal, was in the northwest Iowa town of West Bend recently and finished his day by ''heading downtown to The Villager, a fantastic old-time ice cream and soda fountain,'' he says. ''I started visiting with folks there about West Bend and a guy in his 80s piped up, saying 'Our city's web site has a listing of 93 active businesses here! Not bad for a city of 830 people!' '' Gallagher was delighted. ''How sweet it was to hear an old man talk up the Internet in a rural Iowa community of less than 1,000 people,'' he said. ''My, how far we have come!'' -- CHO

BEST NEWS IN GREENE COUNTY

Churdan, May 2, 2005 -- The first gourmet coffeehouse in this whole west central Iowa county is set to open ''within days,'' owner Renee McLaughlin reports. She is a professional photographer who has a studio in Ames, but she wanted to develop a business that could eventually keep her closer to home in Churdan, pop. 418, where she lives with her husband Bill, a teacher, and their young family. Word is spreading about ''Tuesdays,'' as they'll call their coffeehouse, which occupies an old brick building they're beautifully renovating on the prime corner of the small business district. ''It'll have the look of an Irish pub,'' Renee said, as she gave us a sneak peek. People from as far away as Cooper, 20 miles south in the other end of the county, are saying they may be daily commuters to Tuesdays. -- CHO

TAKE HIM OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Des Moines, May 2, 2005 -- On the wall of the first floor of Terrace Hill, the Governor's mansion here, there hangs as a trophy the head of a large moose. Presumably, it was bagged decades ago by a member of the Hubbell family, which owned the elegant home before the state bought it. Fitting for the season, the moose is now wearing an Iowa Cubs baseball cap. -- CHO

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