The Yarn Spinner

  The Christian Folk Healers of Poland   Help Wanted Szeptucha Will Train (Pronounced: Shep-too-hah)   Jan’s friend waited in the cold outside   with no idea what was going on inside. He had helped Jan to the door, step by step. Jan could barely walk. The two men had driven through the long winter darkness to a woman’s hut   in Podlasie near the Belarussian border. One was a driver, the other – Jan - a man suffering from debilitating sciatica, and desperate for relief. No doctors   nor pain killers could help Jan. The szeptucha was his last hope. Forty-five minutes later, Jan came out, pale   - almost ghost white -but walking effortlessly. All he said upon getting back into the car was, “Expletive, let’s go.” Riding back, Jan tried to process what had occurred and to explain the inexplicable. Inside the house was a woman who was blind, and bed bound. She told him to sit in a chair next to her   bed. She did not ask any questions ...

  So That’s Why They Wanted Those Dollar Bills   When I accepted an offer for a new job as an executive in a small but growing suburban community bank, the bank president commented on the suit I was wearing. It was summer and I chose to wear a medium grey three-piece suit for the interview. (I knew the president well; we worked together previously at another institution.) “I like your suit,” he told me, “But we are very conservative here. The men wear dark colored suits.” “Not a problem.  I said. "The suit I am wearing is in keeping with the dress code for the First National Bank (a global institution) where I work now, but I will abide by your standards for attire.” This was in 1991. Well, I got the job, and about a year later, I noticed that the president, a brilliant man, and savvy lender, who was also quite eccentric, began wearing Looney Tunes Daffy Duck cartoon ties. My grey suit came out of the closet and nothing more was ever said about it. Bankers in genera...

                                                        Lost Trains of Thought More Christmas Stories              Many people have a Christmas story, maybe several but perhaps one stands out, mentally buried for a time in an avalanche of calendar pages of years gone by. It is a particular story or, like one of my own, it is just a simple recollection like walking in the early evening to my grandmother’s house to shovel her snow and watching as the Christmas wreath with the red light slowly became visible in the second-floor window. Ducking inside afterwards for a cup of hot chocolate (she insisted) and conversation was time well spent, and I miss her very much . This is typical of Christmas stories because they often have elements of both happiness and melancholy.  So does my friend Sue’s. Happin...