Ron the Yarnspinner

  The Last Supper: After the Table Was Cleared     “ Where are we going?” “Don’t know. Just follow him”. “Look, he just went into that house. Let’s go in.” “Isn’t that where Mark lives?” “I think so.” Like Jake and Elroy (The Blues Brothers). Apostles Peter and John were on a mission from God. They were advance scouts sent out by Jesus. Walking briskly through  the winding and crowded  streets of Jerusalem they had an important job: locating a particular house in a city with no house numbers and only a few distinct street names. Someone giving directions in Jerusalem might say: “Follow the road toward the Temple, pass the baker’s market, and take the lane near the olive press.” Peter and John were told to search for a man carrying a water jar and to follow him into the first house. In the culture of the time, women normally carried water jars, while men often transported water in animal-skin bags. So, a man carrying a clay water jar would have ...

Farfel     N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestlé's makes the very best... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _     If you grew up in the 50’s, there’s a good chance that you know the messing letters   Television was still in its diapers. Families would gather around their black-and-white sets. Most broadcasts were live and wide-eyed viewers were anxious to be entertained. The timing was perfect for Jimmy to shine. With his charming ventriloquism and comedy acts, he brought joy and laughter into countless American homes. Growing up in Chicago’s Rogers Park's mixed ethnic (German, Irish, Swedish and Jewish)   neighborhood allowed Jimmy to develop a rich, multifaceted view of the world, providing the skills and understanding to interact with others and “work” an audience. Jimmy’s entertainment style, his humor and performance manner were shaped too by the broader comedic trends of influential performers of his era, many of whom were Jewish. This influenced not only his humor and per...

                                                                 Fatal Attraction   Studies reveal an uncomfortable truth: humans are among the smelliest creatures on earth — and your scent can prove deadly.   The pungent odor rising from adult human skin is unusual in the animal kingdom. Unlike most mammals, we emit scent from nearly every inch of our bodies. Add to that the billions of microorganisms living on our skin, each busily metabolizing sweat and skin compounds into airborne chemicals, and you have a remarkably complex bouquet.   That distinctive human odor turns out to be a beacon for mosquitoes — arguably the deadliest animals on the planet. Scientists are still sorting out precisely which elements of human sweat make us so irresistible, but one thing is clear: our scent sets us apart f...

  The Boogeyman     The room is dark. It’s the middle of the night, and beneath the blanket, completely hidden from the world, a five-year-old girl lies still in her bed. She’s alone—or at least, she’s supposed to be. But in her mind, something else lingers. Her fear grows slowly, too big for her small body to hold. It   presses in quietly from every direction, like the air before a storm: thick, waiting, impossible to breathe. Moonlight slips through the curtains, soft and silver, turning her dolls and furniture into strange, shifting shapes. The once-familiar room seems strange. It’s a place of shadows and blurred edges. She pulls the blanket over her head and sits up, curling beneath it like a hidden creature. In the dark, the blanket becomes a tent, a shroud, a ghost. Maybe—just maybe—it will be enough to frighten him away: the Boogeyman. It starts with the fear of the unknown - that unsettling feeling when darkness hides the details, and the mind scram...

  Bad Luck in Disguise Two traveling angels, Raphael and Uriel,  knocked on the door of the home  of a wealthy couple and asked if they could stay the night. These well-to-so folks had a big house with several vacant bedrooms but refused the angels' request.  "But there's a storm coming......"  pleaded Uriel, the younger of two travelers.  “Alright, you can sleep in the  basement if you want tonight only,” came a reply. “Just  don’t think  we are going to give you anything to eat.” The basement  had a hard concrete floor, and it was drafty and unheated.  Searching for something to lie upon, the older Angel, Raphael, moved some crates and saw there was a large hole in one of the basement walls: he decided to repair it. Before lying down on the hard cold floor,  Uriel asked the Raphael, “Why did you do that? These people were not exactly hospitable.” His senior partner replied, “Things are not always what they appear to be ...

  In Tune With Life   H e never spoke of it as reinventing himself. He simply found another way to be useful and earn a living.     Pat stood at the door. My mild-mannered hunting dog (Rusty) barked incessantly on the other side. Pat offered Rusty a rawhide treat after he walked in and the two immediately became friends. “It’s amazing what a little food would do,” was Pat’s remark. Pat was an “old pro” when it came to visiting homes where man’s best friend was in residence and shedding his coat and hat, and dropping his backpack, he went to work. I have known Pat for at least a decade, and I consider him more a friend than a tradesman. Today he had time just to talk. Pat, self-employed, told me he had been in business for forty-eight years. In the early days, he might have made six or even seven stops a day, but the work could be tiring so his average now is three per day. “Have you met any famous people” I asked. “Oh yes, many, ” came Pat’s reply.”  Do you have...