Blog – Pending
The Hanseatic League (8/20/2025) It’s a stretch to think of my grandfathers as being in league with Europe’s Hanseatic cities. They were both people of the land — one a farmer to the core and the other a land reclaimer. But they stem from people who lived close to the Hanseatic sea routes or their connecting waterways, in an… …
Keep in the Castle (8/20/2025) Build walls to keep out the bad and you have a small garden of Eden — ‘paradeisos’, literally, an enclosed park. Castles and their compounds, cities with walls and even humble homes are meant to be places of peace and well being, protecting us from threatening forces. They are not aggressive by nature (though they… …
The Wilderness that Was (8/20/2025) I like to imagine what it was like then — my neighbourhood, or ravine-riven Toronto, or the Sarnia savannah. It would be nice, just once, to hike through old woods from the lake shore to the escarpment or High Park to Forest Hill, or along the beach from Centennial to Bright’s Grove, and see nothing… …
Nikolaikirche (8/20/2025) St. Nicholas Church prayer meetings in the 1980s became a sanctuary for dissatisfaction with communism, culminating in the Monday demonstrations that began September 4, 1989. These quickly grew in size and caught on in other cities as well. …
Father Feito (8/20/2025) It is indisputable that I have north Netherlands Catholic roots. I can trace many family lines back to the sixteenth century (almost all in the same neck of the woods), and thus, by extrapolation, to undocumented ancestors in the fifteenth century. It’s safe to say then that my people, and their culture, were largely Reformed… …
Patriarchy (8/20/2025) Patriarchy has been a problem, not because it’s some grand conspiracy, but because of a lack of good will. …
The Age of Aquarius (8/20/2025) I was just thirteen at the ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’. This infectious song still seems to permeate western culture with its moon-struck optimism and idealism. …