It seems that I am destined, at every turn, to bump up against Rudolph Steiner these days.

It all started on my last visit to Yankee. I was updating the biographies of the editors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and noticed a reference to The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir, a book by Jud Hale.

I asked around about the book, and within minutes I had a copy in hand, generously autographed by Jud. I’m now halfway through the book — Jud is in his teens — and it is a fascinating tale of how a Yankee family got the Steiner religion and reinvented their lives to follow.

The next week I was in Copenhagen in a bar with Olle and Luisa and they’re telling me about a new apartment they’re purchasing and how they need to switch banks because their current bank — somehow, it seems, a “Rudolph Steiner bank” — won’t do.

The next week I was in Berlin in an Italian restaurant with Stefan and he’s telling me how he went to a vaguely Steiner-inspired school in Austria as a youth (I can’t recall whether it was more Steiner than Steiner or Steiner lite).

And so here I am back at Yankee for another visit and having a conversation with one of the editors about how her daughter has been thriving in a Waldorf School.

To top it off, it turns out that Steiner was born in Donji Kraljevec in Croatia, which is less than two hours from where my Rukavina ancestors eventually settled after leaving the interior of the country.