All Posts By

James C. Schaap

Blog

Where is thy sting?

In another day and another time, the buildings crowded on the block made all kinds of sense. The school’s own precious history makes clear that

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Blog

The Algona Nativity

The first one was twelve feet wide, still quite a production because Jesus, Mary, and the babe were mud-sculptured, then baked, then painstakingly painted. Back

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Blog

This Gizmo

It was my idea to bring in an expert. For a couple of years in the 90s, I was chair of a board that ran

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Blog

The Purple Church

It’s purple. Well these days, some twenty hot years of Dakota sun later, St. Charles Church looks a bit pink; but originally it was purple.

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Blog

The Pastor’s Guns

Religious visions were everywhere in the years preceding the Civil War. Boom towns out west here may have been hell holes for a time, but

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Blog

The Story of Academy

Out in the middle of nowhere, the old white frame building is all that remains of a heart-felt dream that, as an answer to prayer,

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