Essay Collections

• Daily Notebook: Captured thoughts about a little bit of everything as it floats through my head. 

• Essay Archive: Over two years' worth of columns, including some from Chimes, the Paper, and WBBL.com, and others otherwise unpublished.

• Chimes 2000-01: A school year's worth of football, presidents, and other American indulgences 

• Living in the Hope of Heaven: My book about the social impact of the biblical picture of heaven - how heaven should affect our daily lives.

• The America Series: Snapshots from this citizen's scrapbook, including mega-metaphors for American life, the mall and McDonald's.

• September 11, 2001
 - Being in Chicago after the attacks
 - Det. Free Press op-ed:War looms an uncertain task
 - Chimes op-ed: Dual identies, different destinies:  being American and Christian at at time like this
 - September 11, 2001

• Why 2K matters: (Answer - not Y2K matters.) Sure, the millennium is largely symbolic -- we are, after all, roughly 2005 years removed from the birth of Christ --but we've played by the skewed rules by centuries, so why stop now? It's a useful time to zoom out on history. What is immediately evident is how much everything has intensified exponentially over the last century alone -- technology, population, egalitarianism.  It all seems to be leading up to something, doesn't it? (Hint: not necessarily) I explored these themes in a turn-of-the-millennium series of essays:
 - Millennium as anti-climax
 - End near? Maybe not
 - Year 2000 packs historical punch
 - The more things change...

• Love of the Game: When I embarked on freelancing for the weekly The Paper I wanted to transcend the dollar signs and crime blotters and look for the purity that's left in sports.

• Summer of 97: Looking back at the championship moments in sports from the summer of 1997. 

Individual Projects

• Sports As Religious Ritual: How are sporting events like cultural rituals? What are the problems with mixing sports and religion?

• Frank Deford Introduction: Calvin College January Series, 2001.

• Philosophy of Sportscasting: As I see it, there can be a method to this madness.

• Calvin Championship: My Chimes cover story about the Calvin Knights' 2000 national title.

• Sportsline sells out: Last spring I submitted an essay I wrote for Chimes about CBS SportsLine's surprising flee from ethics to Spark Online, an e-zine about the Internet and society.

• Road rage?: I co-wrote this cover story for the newsweekly the Paper looking at the impact of the West Michigan Grand Prix on local businesses.

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