I am working with Dr. Eric Sherman, coauthor of Pathways to Pain Relief, to make a new wiki page about the
Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (see pages 26-28 of
Mindbody Prescription or
click this link for a description) . Thinking I was calling a customer service number, I eventually found myself inadvertently calling the number of Dr. Rahe's personal phone number. When my call was sent to voice mail, I bashfully hung up, feeling a bit guilty for disturbing the famous researcher on independence day.
.... and then my phone rang. A woman was on the other end, asking if I had called. It was Dr. Rahe's wife! She gracefully explained that Dr. Rahe was out playing a July 4 game of golf, but that he'd be happy to answer my question when he got back. I explained that I just had a couple of questions about the products on his web site, and she said that he would be happy to answer them.
So I got a chance to speak with Dr. Rahe for maybe 15 minutes.

I was able to tell him a little bit about our nonprofit and ask about his recent work. I purchased his newest book,
Paths to Health and Resilience, which looks like a simple and easy to read review of the research he has done since working on his famous stress scale.
I really like gentle, thoughtful, kind and wise old doctors. They inspire me. It is inspiring how he has devoted his life's work to the science of the mind-body connect and to helping people manage stress. The fact that he took 15 minutes to talk to me on a holiday makes the world just seem that much of a better place, if only ever so slightly.
Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rahe published their first paper on the stress scale in 1967. After that, Dr. Rahe worked for 20 years as a research psychiatrist for the US navy. He went on to teach psychiatry at the University of Nevada. After retiring from his teaching job, for the last 15 years, he has been working at Veteran's Affairs. Presumably, he has been helping veterans deal with stress from their years of service to our nation. I'm inspired that even at his age, he is still helping people, writing quality material and even putting up web sites.
Being reminded that the world is full of wonderful and inspiring people and having the opportunity to speak with one of them.... a little bit of happiness...
PS
If you are interested in Dr. Rahe's book, Paths to Healing and Resilience, it's available on his website,
www.drrahe.com (under products) and from Amazon. It looks like a relatively short, easy read that offers a systematic review of how to see where one's stress is coming from. The following is Dr. Rahe's bio from when he received the Hans Selye award from the American Institute of Stress. Hans Selye is one of the fathers of Stress Science.
http://www.stress.org/richard-h-rahe-m-d/
PPS
Dr. Rahe includes a gallery of photos of japanese gardens on his web site. I suspect he took them himself. I'll close with a couple of them in keeping with the theme of this thread. You can see the entire collection
by clicking here.