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James C. Schaap

James Calvin Schaap is a retired English prof who has been something of a writer for most of the last 40 years. His latest work, a novel, Looking for Dawn, set in reservation country, is the story of two young women joined by their parents' mutual brokenness and, finally, a machine-shed sacrament of reconciliation. He writes and narrates a weekly essay on regional history for KWIT, public radio, Sioux City, Iowa. He and his wife Barbara live on the northern edge of Alton, Iowa, the Sgt. Floyd River a hundred yards or so from their back door. They have a cat--rather, he has them.

An American Story

On Saturday, January 2, 1847, a young Senecan named Ha-sa-no-an-da, or Ely Parker, then just 18 years old, visited the…
February 21, 2014

Gifts

  I don't use the word feeble very frequently, and my guess is that few of us do. If we use the…
February 3, 2014

Testimony

Conventicle is an odd old word, but kind of fun actually, a word which suggests, by its composition, what it is--a…
January 23, 2014

The Christian Reformed mission at Zuni pueblo, New Mexico, in the 1920s   “Depression times made return to Zuni unlikely,”…
January 10, 2014

Authenticity

It’s age.  Why not tell it like it is? I wouldn’t be ornery if I were 24 or even 48. …
December 27, 2013

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…
December 13, 2013

The Book Thief

   Our fascination with the Holocaust seems unending, in part because nothing in the world's recent past offers us such…
November 29, 2013

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…
October 31, 2013

Columbus Day

Alexander B. Upshaw, the son of a Crow warrior of some renown among his people, was one of many young…
October 18, 2013