When I opened the eastern drapes this morning I became a delighted observer of a phenomenon that happens only a few days a year.  The sky was cloudless, the wind was calm, the sun’s rays were still low, the snow reflection was blinding, and there were no degrees on the thermometer: the official Grand Rapids temperature was 0.0.  Those weather factors create the effect of turning the moisture in the air into dust-sized crystals that tumble, turn, and twist in the sunshine in such sparkling splendor that nearly all who see it are virtually unanimous in their choice of metaphor: dancing diamonds.

It’s one of those days, however, that you’re glad to be mostly an indoors observer.

And it is one of those days that virtually compels you to your reading chair (Friday being my “day off”).  I could not resist the compulsion, and picked up the David Grayson book I’ve been reading month by month.  It is titled The Countryman’s Year, published by Doubleday in 1936.  Its chapters are the twelve months of the year.  I finished “December” around Christmas time, and started “January” last night—finishing the month this morning.  “David Grayson” is the pen name chosen by Ray Stannard Baker for books he wrote about the simple agrarian life.  He was a successful journalist who eventually settled down on a gentleman’s farm in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his unmarried sister. He makes many references to his desk, where he composed dozens of articles and many books—a couple of which earned him a Pulitzer Prize: a multi-volume biography of Woodrow Wilson.  His Grayson books, however, are no doubt what allowed him to be a gentleman farmer and not have to farm for a living.  The books he sold by 1936 totalled 750,000—an amazing number for the Depression era.

I’m thinking that the WOC community might enjoy some of his “January” thoughts, his chapters being mostly composed of journal-type snippets.  You will note from many of these what the writer of Ecclesiastes concluded: “there is nothing new under the sun.”

[Written at the end of the Great Depression] Consider, after losses of goods of money—am I not the same man I was yesterday?  Have I not the same friends, the same passion of interest, as for nature, books, or music?  Have I not still my thoughts, my occupation?  Have I not my dear family?

One of the things that irritates me extremely—in short, makes me angry [me too!]—is the insulting disregard, common in this country, of natural beauty.  Piles of old tin cans and rubbish dumped in a beautiful roadside brook—I know of such a case—motorcars left to rust in open meadows—fine trees needlessly hacked to make way for eyesore telephone poles—all billboards whatsoever!—these things are evidence of our lack of civilization.

Sorrow is often the price we pay for love: it is worth it.

Blessed that man who has a citadel in his own soul: a place where, having fought, he may retire in peace.

Not long ago I ran across an excellent addition to the litany proposed by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (1930) which ought also to be adopted in this country:  “From all destroyers of natural beauty in this parish and everywhere: from all polluters of earth, air, and water: from all makers of visible abominations: from jerry-builders [builders using inferior workmanship to build inferior structures], disfiguring advertisements, road hogs, and spreaders of litter: from the villainies of the rapacious and the incompetencies of the stupid; from the carelessness of individuals and somnolence of Local Authorities: from all foul smells, noises, and sights—good Lord deliver us!”

Observation without sympathy never leads to comprehension—oftener to apprehension.

Tenderness of understanding is often wanting in men of intellectual power.  They are without pity, and without pity the world is iron and frost.

The new magic words now sweeping the world are “control,” “management.”  We are taking or trying to take vast new domains of human life out of the realm of accident and chance.  Birth is to be controlled, money managed, industry planned, production regulated.  I sat today for a long time listening: I heard no one say anything about self-control.

You can find some of Grayson’s (Baker’s) books online here.

See you outdoors!

Dean