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James C. Schaap

St. Lucy’s

Today, in Sweden, a traditionally Lutheran country, most of the populace, I’m told, will go Christmas-crazy, having fallen in love a few centuries ago with

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The Book Thief

   Our fascination with the Holocaust seems unending, in part because nothing in the world’s recent past offers us such perfectly sculpted heroes and villians.

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Edward Curtis and Brother Andrew

Somewhere around the turn of the century, Andrew Vander Wagon, who was never an officially licensed pastor but became one anyway, determined to build a

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Love at super speed

Every so often Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac features some sweet nostalgia, sure to make almost anyone regret his or her no more being a kid.  Often it’s all

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Columbus Day

Alexander B. Upshaw, the son of a Crow warrior of some renown among his people, was one of many young Native Americans sent off to

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The Death of Crickets

Here, as elsewhere in nature, it’s really all about sex.  Their raspy lascivious retching, I’m told, comes in four different songs, slightly different takes on

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 It arrived in the mail, a gift from my wife’s cousin, who found it while sifting through their aunt’s keepsakes–a bulletin from the First Christian

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Team Bowling

  So I’m talking to this guy not long ago, a guy I’d just met, and he’s talking about the area, about who lives here

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