Jeff
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The Parade to the Future
Tech criticism is seductive. Pessimism often is. The appeal of it has to do, I think, with the way these critics (people like Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman, Albert Borgmann, and others) name the dis-ease we all feel. Yet, as Alan Jacobs comments, even if the tech critics were right, “So what?” Here are some suggestions…
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Dante and My Wife’s Family
I’ve been slowly working through Dante’s Divine Comedy. This 14th-century Italian poem has been on my reading list for a long time. Little did I realize that, in its 725-year-old pages, I would encounter some of my wife’s ancestors…
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How Does God Speak Through Scripture?
How does God speak? Not just “what does God say,” but “in what manner does God say what God says?” Does God sound like some of the preachers I’ve heard? You know those shouty, scary ones? Does God sound like my own voice? Is God only speaking in the red letters? And, besides, how could God…
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Sailor, Barber, Insurance Salesman
One of the less bleak oral histories that has been told many times in my family is that of the truly unique New Brunswicker, Henry Havelock Bissett (1865-1941). His daughter, Rhea, was my great-grandmother, whom I met as a baby and toddler — one of the few people I have met who was born in…
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Specificity and Difference
I’ve been “doing family history” for about fifteen years now. As I’ve written previously, I got into this hobby midway through my PhD studies, when I’d read about as much nineteenth-century British Romantic writing and French theory as I could handle and was desperate for a change of scenery.
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Groovy like a Drive-In Movie
Recently, one of my friends informed our group chat that he had discovered something very cool: his house had been constructed on the site of one of Edmonton’s many, drive-in theatres. So cool! I needed to find out more…
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Murdered Under Trust
I have a new research quest that I am pursuing. There is an old family story that my Papa Henderson, my mom’s dad, had Spanish roots. I have yet to find proof of this. Still, the pursuit of one objective, however difficult, can give rise to unexpected discoveries.
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Leaving Facebook
Finally, after actually months of planning to do it, I deleted my Facebook account. For whatever reason, I was dragging my feet. I didn’t want to figure out the process for downloading photos and videos. I felt wistful about the interactions I’d had with old classmates. I wondered how I would be able to promote…
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“Alone Against the North” by Adam Shoalts
I first heard about Adam Shoalts — Canada’s Indiana Jones, as one journalist dubbed him — from my wife’s uncle. I was preparing a series of talks for a children’s camp that would all be structured around “adventure.” The angle I was developing was that life with Jesus was the greatest adventure of all, but…
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Loyalists in the Family
One of the aspects of my family history that is not as familiar for me is my New Brunswick heritage. We have a handful of stories in our family about it. My great-grandfather David Thomson was, of course, the man who made New Brunswick sing. My grandmother, David’s daughter Ruth, babysat that famous New Brunswicker, the…
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