One of my earliest memories of food preservation involves helping get peaches ready for canning. (That was before we had our home freezer, and I still prefer canned peaches to frozen ones in spite of...

Macbride Pointe (currently 26 homes) wants to hook onto Solon’s water to resolve its arsenic issue – illegally discharging its treated water into Lake Macbride. The developers knew about this problem...

Raising a family is no easy task, but it shouldn’t bankrupt you. As both a parent and grandparent, I’ve seen how much harder it is for Iowa families to afford housing, groceries, and especially child...

When Kim Reynolds gave her big annual speech at the beginning of the year, she told Iowans that “the condition of our state is strong” and that “childcare has been a longstanding priority for my...

Until I was about ten years old, nearly every birthday and Christmas brought at least one coloring book, paper dolls to cut out or other “activity” book. One rather short-lived version consisted...

Like many of you, I understand what it feels like to lead in a world that rarely slows down. The demands of daily operations (urgent emails, packed calendars, and the constant pull of the immediate)...

I knew that some of my friends spent part of the summer vacation at camp – whatever that was. They stayed for, sometimes, two weeks or more and had 'classes' in crafts, sports, outdoor cooking and...

My hometown of Knoxville had a lovely swimming pool, built by the Works Progress Administration sometime during the 1930's. The project included a separate wading pool for small children and a shaded...

July 16, 1936, was the hottest day on record in Iowa and the day I became a middle child. It was a mere three months past m second birthday and I was blissfully unaware of what has become known as the...

On hot afternoons, long before television and air conditioned homes, we'd dig out the left-over school supplies and play “School” on the shady screened-in front porch. The list of required school...

My dad had a pretty sizable sweet tooth and that meant dessert with every meal – including breakfast. This was probably because, when he was a kid, the family ran a small grocery store and he and his...

The saga of the City of Solon and the development of a new Jordan Creek Church site seems to be never ending. The recent “clarification” by this publication (6/26) and the accompanying quotes of...