About Me

 

Most people have a favorite teacher.

 

I did too—along with one who wasn’t.

 

When I was sixteen, taking a fine arts and literature class, our teacher assigned us to write a short story. I dove in headfirst, doing my best to capture the distinctive style of a writer I greatly admired: Rod Serling.

 

When I got the assignment back, the teacher had nearly used up all the red ink in his pen commenting on my work. That was discouraging enough, but the worst was yet to come.

 

During the next class, he handed photocopies of my story—with my name removed—to everyone in the class. For fifty minutes, my writing became an object lesson in what not to do. It was held up to ridicule as an example of poor writing.

 

The experience stung deeply. I didn't regain my confidence until college, where I began earning “A”s in my writing courses. One well-respected professor of law even told me, quite freely, that my writing was equivalent to that of a first-year law student.

 

My career, however, was spent writing business correspondence, memoranda, investigative reports, and corporate policies. Retirement opened an entirely different creative door.

 

I discovered storytelling.

 

And this time, there was no red ink to stop me.

 

Those experiences taught me something I didn't fully appreciate until decades later: words matter. They can discourage, but they can also inspire, educate, entertain, preserve memories, and connect people across generations.

 

When the paychecks stopped, I began writing as a pastime and challenged myself to write one hundred stories.

 

“One hundred,” I declared. “That's my goal before God calls me home.”

 

“But who will read them?” my wife asked.

 

An entirely reasonable question.

 

(She asks those a lot.)

 

I soon discovered that getting unsolicited articles published in newspapers and magazines was no easy task. The competition was fierce and opportunities were few. Still, persistence paid off. About ten of my stories eventually found their way into print, including one in a national magazine that rarely accepted unsolicited submissions.

 

Then, somewhere in the miasma of retirement—stumbling through a pathway littered with Medicare claims, doctor's appointments, health care POAs, and the assorted bric-a-brac of becoming a seasoned citizen—I kicked around another idea:

 

Why not a blog?

 

And so, for an almost-octogenarian who still remembered feeding punch cards into an IBM mainframe, who had only recently experienced his first MRI, and who had somehow risen from the ashes of that disastrous high school fine arts class, Ron the Yarnspinner was born.

 

But  the time came for a little housekeeping.

 

I think of it this way: Every couple of years, my mother would rearrange the living room furniture. I never knew why, but apparently there is a theory that rearranging a room provides a low-risk psychological reset. You get something new without spending any money.

Stories Worth Spinning is a little like that.

 Think of it as Ron the Yarnspinner, Version 2.0.

 

The refreshed website is my way of continuing to share overlooked history, remarkable people, forgotten inventions, curious traditions, and the unexpected tales hiding in plain sight.

 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll stay awhile, discover something you didn't know before, and find a story worth sharing.

 

Welcome.

 

  

 Ron the Yarnspinner