Media Notes
This page offers some Media Notes, and the links below are to newly written works by Henry de Jong that have not been published or posted, along with some Breakout ideas. These are made available here for exchange with publishers and editors. They may not be used without conversation or
Breakouts
Here I endeavour to set down ideas as kernels with the aim of growing and testing them over time. These nubs are sketched here for exchange and conversation with publishers and editors. They may be freely shared as links with other potentially interested publishers, editors and advisors.
The Age of Aquarius
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. Freedom, peace, innovation, equality, rights and justice are the bi-words of a boom that refuses to go bust.
Patriarchy
Every human heart is riven by sin — in every class, gender and race. Patriarchy has been a problem, not because it’s some grand conspiracy, but because of a lack of good will. And good will seems in increasingly short supply in today’s hostile, intersectional struggles. What we need is
Father Feito
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.
Nikolaikirche
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.
The Wilderness that Was
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
Vennekerk ’23
We often fail to appreciate the formative influences that churches may have on youths (beset instead by negatives). But my parents (and their families) spoke fondly of the church where they worshiped, attended catechism classes and where my father played organ. And they spoke often of their love for Dominee
Keep in the Castle
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
The Hanseatic League
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