IOWA CITY — Gavin Brown faces Lauren Clapp, a Velcro paddle in his right hand. “Do it the highest as you can!” he shouts. Lauren, a sophomore at Regina High School, tosses a ball high in the air. Gavin holds the paddle out, laughing when the ball sticks to it. “My turn,” the 8-year-old cries. [...]

IOWA CITY – On a day a bicyclist beat a car and a bus in a race between Coralville and Iowa City, a national organization said Iowa City has become more bicycle friendly. The League of American Bicyclists announced Monday that Iowa City’s Bicycle Friendly Communities status had been upgraded from bronze to silver. It’s [...]

It is the park that shall not be named – only because it doesn’t have one. The City of North Liberty recently broke ground on a new 40-acres community park on the west side of town, near North Bend Elementary School. The park has an address – 1565 St. Andrews Drive. Now it needs a [...]

  Beneath the din of soccer leagues and digital screens, have-tos and must-haves, Bernadette Noll quietly proposes 75 simple ways to slow down, connect and create more joy in her new book, “Slow Family Living” (Perigree; slowfamilyliving.com). The idea came to her after she and a psychologist friend in Austin, Texas, Carrie Contey, presented a [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, a national campaign and the largest one-day food drive, delivered thousands of pounds of food Saturday to the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program. The donated food items will help feed one in four kids throughout the program’s seven-county area who go hungry at least once [...]

We know them by their red kettles and their thrift stores, but both around the world and right here in Cedar Rapids, The Salvation Army does so much more. Every Salvation Army location has the same mission, which has been the same since the organization’s inception. In short, it is “to preach the gospel of [...]

  While we all should honor our mothers every day of the year, Sunday marks the official day for showering moms with love and appreciation. Flowers, cards, brunch and phone calls are the obvious ways for grateful husbands and children to say thank you. Here are several other ways to get Mom out and about [...]

DECORAH – Down in a valley, between majestic limestone bluffs and the rolling hills of northeast Iowa, the sound of music slowly dissolves from traffic whizzing by to the drone of a fly layered over a babbling brook, a bevy of birds, a band of frogs and a choir of insects. They join their voices [...]

The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance hopes to increase foot traffic downtown by offering no-cost, short-term leases for pop-up stores. The program will focus on potential storefronts in the core downtown, Czech Village and New Bohemia. The Metro Economic Alliance is seeking potential retailers and building owners to submit applications to be part of this [...]

ARLINGTON – Around 400 people from several area schools attended a Civil War walk-through hosted by Starmont High School’s communication class on the football practice field Wednesday. Communications instructor, Sheryl Nelson, said this is the first year the course has been offered at Starmont, and the idea for a Civil War walk-through came from one [...]