In Which I Begin to Slowly Recover

The Convalescent
1904
Willard Leroy Metcalf

Dear Readers,
Wow! I had no idea it would take me four weeks after surgery to get to the point of being able to think well enough to get back to my computer.

A heartfelt thank you to all for your kind comments and thoughts. 

The surgery went well. It is the aftermath that has been a struggle. Reaction to anesthesia and pain medication knocked me down! My days have been a constant ding-ding of alarms reminding me to take a pill, eat, use ice, hydrate, nap, do exercises, take another pill, and prepare for the physical therapist's visits. 

There is no rest in the rest home!

Unfortunately, I have not been up to even the gentle challenge of reading. Yeah. Things have been that bad. But, I do feel the brain fuzz beginning to clear and wanted to let you know that I was recovering, albeit, slowly.

I was trying to think of a book that would parallel my situation and recalled Adventures in Solitude by David Grayson in which he muses on many subjects while recovering from an illness. I wrote about it and two of his other books on April 23, 2013. Who would have thought that five years later I would be in need of the comfort and companionship of a fellow convalescent.

In the meantime, until I can get my reading legs under me, you can read about that book here: Adventures in Solitude

Two for the New Year

Ray Stannard Baker
AKA David Grayson

I am on the verge of finishing three books-in-progress before the year's end: Cross Creek by Majorie Kinnan Rawlings; What's the Worst That Could Happen? (ninth in the Dortmunder series) by Donald Westlake; and The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith, the latest in his No. One Ladies' Detective Agency series. 

I am hoping to start with a clean slate as I just bought The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin and One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. 

I recently watched an interview with Ms. Goodwin from 
C-SPAN's Q & A program archives which introduced me to her
latest book. (You can watch it here.) What caught my attention was the fact that one of the journalists featured in the book is Ray Stannard Baker who wrote for McClure's magazine, the muckraking monthly, along with Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946) is better known to me as David Grayson, the name he used when he wrote a series of books that have found their way onto my bookshelves through discovery at used book stores. These include Adventures in Solitude (1932), Adventures in Friendship (1910), and Adventures in Contentment (1907). I wrote about Mr. Baker/Grayson and these books here.

The Bully Pulpit is a huge, 900-plus page book and Mr. Bryson's One Summer runs over 500 pages. I am making quite a commitment here with these two books and one I hope I can keep. If I read just four pages a day, I will be finished with both by the end of 2014.

Adventures in Solitude by David Grayson

Books by David Grayson
pseudonym of
Ray Stannard Baker
1870-1946

Ray Stannard Baker was an American author and crusading journalist who was born in Michigan in 1870. He, along with Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, wrote for the muckraking magazine, McClure's, and then the three of them, according to Wikipedia, went on to establish The American Magazine in 1906. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of President Woodrow Wilson in 1940.  Stannard died in Massachusetts in 1946.

I came to know Stannard through a series of books he wrote under the pen name of David Grayson. The first book I found many years ago and is entitled Adventures in Solitude (1932). In a series of essays he reflects how he spent time during his long confinement in hospital. He muses on the starlings chattering outside his window, the joys of receiving long, rambling letters, and the philosophies of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (as he eventually had much time for reading). 

He writes:
After a time the Tyrant of that place (he refers here to the head nurse at the hospital) decreed that I might have Books - not too many, I was warned, but Books. I think I had never been so long before in my life without a book or books within reach of my outstretched hand. I am one of those who loves to carry a little book in his pocket, and there is always a book or so on the stand at the head of my bed at night, or by the couch where I so easily sit down to read by day. It was a great moment for me, then, when I could look forward to having a favourite book in my hand.

This is such a simple, quiet book that when I came across a second by him, Adventures in Friendship (1910), I snapped it up. Here, Grayson (or Stannard) explores the kindnesses and quirks of his rural neighbors. And in a third, Adventures in Contentment (1907), he regales the reader with tales of his life on his farm.

I love books like this. Reflections on life in an earlier time. Grayson has a lovely, easy style. He covers so many personalities, possibilities, and practices in such a gentle manner that I am happy to be swept away to an era so unlike our own.