All Posts By

James C. Schaap

That searing stemwinder

  Our lindens are just about the tallest trees in town, I swear.  And there he was, high up top, singing his heart out, that

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Take it from Mother Teresa

“. . .to the great God, nothing is little. . .” You know?–I really ought to imprint that line on a t-shirt: “to the great

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Of Gods and Men

  “The 150 evangelical leaders who met behind closed doors on January 14 to anoint a Republican candidate for President were wise not to have

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Fear and trembling

The hardest work I ever did was a three-week stint–that’s all–with a road crew cutting sod and laying it down along the new interstate highway,

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Endorsement

Case closed.  I’m an Iowan, once upon a time a Republican, and I am at this moment endorsing a candidate.  (Now please stop calling.)  I’d

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Redeeming the dance

A half a century ago, I was a kid in a Sunday school class taught by a man who’d taught those classes longer, maybe, than

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This old house

My wife, who’s now retired and therefore been home more often these days than she’s been in the 25 years we’ve lived in this old house,

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My last dance with Ms. Emily

Professor Helen Vendler says that Emily Dickinson changed the first word of the fourth line the poem “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” from “sleep” to

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