“You guys are really good with him,” said the ER nurse.
* * * * * * *
The knock came at the back door as I was finishing my first cup of coffee. It was a neighbor two doors down.
“Jim, Ray’s fallen, and I need help to get him up,” he said, somewhat breathless from the quick walk over to our house.
Ray’s another neighbor, and an old family friend. He and Martha Sr shared a birthday, though he was five years older. This makes him 97. He’s been on his own for a while now, his wife having passed (he cared for her up until the final months of her life – she had Alzheimer’s) and his family long since scattered. But he was doing fine – spry, mental faculties still very sharp, and he would always consult with me on how my tomatoes were doing, offering his vastly greater experience what I should do for this or that minor problem. My wife and I, and the other neighbors, all kept an eye on him, and his family would call him a couple of times a day to keep track of how he was doing. Which is exactly what he wanted – he was adamant that he could continue to be on his own, in the house where he’d lived for 60 years.
I didn’t wait. I quickly headed out the door and across the yard, pulling out my mobile and calling my wife as I did so.
* * * * * * *
For some months now, I have been #4.
#4 on Ray’s speed-dial, that is. We set it up some time back, and tested it fairly regularly. Because though Ray was doing really well, recently he’d started having some problems with his balance. Reluctantly, he had started using a cane, then a walker. But he kept his phone with him at all times, because if something happened and he lost his balance, he wanted to have the ability to call me if he needed help getting back up or was injured.
And after his needing to call me a couple of times in the last month, I had taken to being more careful to make sure I always had my phone with me, that it was on. Recently I found myself checking it frequently, to make sure I hadn’t accidentally muted it, in case Ray called and I missed it.
This was a familiar feeling, an ingrained response. It was like always making sure I had the monitor with me while I was taking care of Martha Sr.
* * * * * * *
“Martha, I’m going over to Ray’s. He’s fallen in his bedroom, may be hurt.” Our other neighbor, the one who came to get me, has a heart condition. If I needed to move Ray or anything, I needed my wife.
“I’ll be right there.”
I went in the back door, through the house to the bedroom. Ray was there. He’d fallen, had hit his head on the corner of a small table. There was blood, but not a lot, and it was dried. He had been there a while, possibly overnight. He was conscious, and recognized me. “Oh, good, Jim – help me up.”
I quickly checked him over, asked him some questions about whether he hurt anywhere. But his answers were somewhat confused – moreso than usual. Whether from the blow to his head, or as a result of something else, I couldn’t tell.
“Help me up, Jim.”
Sorry, Ray, not this time.
My wife got there, she knelt down and did the same quick assessment I did. She looked at me, and knew what I was thinking. I handed her my phone. “Call an ambulance.”
She left the room and did so. I stayed with Ray, holding his hand. He was insistent that he didn’t need an ambulance, but he was otherwise not making sense about what had happened or how long he had been down.
There comes a point in time in dealing with someone who is in this condition when you have to make the decision as to whether you are willing to ruin your relationship with them in order to make sure they get the proper care. This is what keeps many family members from taking away the car keys of a parent, or getting them into a nursing home. For me, it was an easy choice in this case. I liked and respected Ray, valued his friendship, but he needed professional medical care.
* * * * * * *
Martha rode in the ambulance with Ray. I came home, changed clothes, grabbed something to eat, then went to the hospital. We stayed with him there in the ER through the rest of the day, along with his nephew that lives here in town. They did tests, CAT scans, all the usual things. This and that doctor came in, consulted, did their best to communicate with him. We helped, talking with him loudly until I went back to his house and got his hearing aid, but mostly we were just there to be friendly faces.
Ray stabilized, and his confusion cleared up, but there were reasons why they wanted to keep him there for observation.
This was not news Ray wanted to hear. It took a lot of convincing that it needed to be done before he finally relented. We stayed with him until they got him settled into his own room.
It is never easy to be in an ER for a long time. Late afternoon, while they were doing something with him which required a bit of privacy, Martha and I were standing outside the room, next to the nurses’ station. We were both tired, and no doubt looked it. The nurse there at the desk looked up at us. “You guys are really good with him.”
We nodded. “We’ve got a lot of experience – we cared for my wife’s mother – Alzheimer’s – until she died last year. Ray’s an old friend.”
“You guys are really good with him,” she repeated, “that experience shows.”
* * * * * * *
Jim Downey
Post Script: one of Ray’s daughters got into town last night. She had planned on coming in for Thanksgiving, anyway, and they were going to spend some time looking to find a good assisted care facility for him while she was here. Ray had come to the conclusion that the time had come to take this step. It was just bad timing that this accident happened when it did.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Civil Rights, Constitution, Guns, RKBA
Cross posted from the BBTI blog.
More “it’s all about ME ME ME !!!” . . .
Had a nice interview with Doc Wesson on the Gun Nation Podcast, runs about 45 minutes in the first section of a great two-part show. We talk about a lot of different aspects of the Ballistics By The Inch project, and related topics. The whole show is definitely worth listening to, but the bit with me starts at about the 15:00 mark in part one, if you want to skip over that bit.
No, seriously, if you get a chance, put The Gun Nation into your queue of good things to listen to. In the interview I give some hints about future tests we want to conduct, and Doc manages to tease out of me some of my own conclusions about carry ammo I haven’t previously discussed.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to dKos, but thought some here may find it interesting. JD)
One of the guiding principles of my life, and my politics, is that education makes a difference. Not just to give people the tools they need to succeed in life, but to also help improve our society through the reduction of fear. Because all too often, fear springs from ignorance. It can be ignorance of science. Or ignorance of other cultures. Or ignorance of sexuality. Or ignorance of firearms, which is my topic for today.
For years I have tried to tell other gun owners and 2nd Amendment supporters that the single most effective thing they could do to insure continued support for the 2nd Amendment is to take new people shooting. And preferably, to take someone who is liberal/progressive. Don’t talk politics. Don’t argue over this or that candidate. Just take people out to the range, and give them a safe and relaxed introduction to shooting.
It’s easier for me, because my liberal and progressive friends know that I am on their side. I don’t have a macho attitude, I’m intelligent and well educated, I understand quite well that things are complex and simple solutions are suspect. In other words, I’m about like every Kossack who isn’t a troll.
When introducing someone new to shooting, I will first go over the safety issues. Explain the four rules of firearm handling (this without even opening the gun cases yet.) Take out and hand around eye protection (unless they are already wearing glasses with safety lenses. Take out and hand around hearing protection (I prefer the newer electronic type which allows for full normal hearing, but shuts off with loud noises. I keep a couple extra pairs of these in my range bag so they can always hear me talking to them.) Then we will discuss the particular range where we’re shooting, and any additional safety issues which pertain to it (actually, I’m lucky in that I have private land where I can go which has an ideal set-up for short-range shooting).
Only then will I take out the first gun, carefully explain how the “four rules” apply specifically to it. Then I will set it aside, locked open, no ammo in sight. I will do the same thing with each of the usually 6-8 guns I bring along, explaining what they are and how they function, how the “rules” apply specifically to handling them.
Then we’ll start. I always prefer to start with just a .22 rifle. If someone has done shooting at camp or in school, chances are that they were using a .22 rifle of some sort. I go over once again how the “four rules” apply. How the gun operates. How to hold it. How to aim (though accuracy isn’t important at this stage – just gaining a safe familiarity with guns is all I want to accomplish.) Only after we’ve been over all of this do I break out the ammunition – and then just one round. I’ll go over how to load the gun, once again how to operate it, and how to hold it. After answering any questions, and checking that everyone has their eye and hearing protection in place, then I will fire the gun, demonstrating the recoil and report from it. With a .22, neither is really noticeable, and it provides a good introduction to the whole idea of shooting.
If anyone has any questions at this point, I’ll answer them. Then I’ll make safe the rifle, hand it to the first student (I prefer to only teach one or two people a trip – three max.) Make sure they understand how to hold it, how it operates. Then I will get out one more round of ammunition, and either help them load the gun, or load it for them. When they are ready, and comfortable, I walk them through the process of aiming and firing the gun, just gently squeezing the trigger. When it goes off, there is almost invariably a bit of a squeal of joy or laughter from the shooter. And that is one of the best sounds in the whole world.
Sounds tedious? It isn’t really. I just do it in a very thorough and slow manner, taking my time. Because to the person who has never handled or shot a gun before, it can be very scary. Showing that guns can be safely handled, and even fun, is worth a bit of time.
We’ll shoot the .22 rifle a few more times. I’ll let the student gain some level of comfort in loading and shooting the gun on their own, even allowing them to load two or three rounds into the magazine, so that they can shoot it multiple times without stopping to reload.
Then we’ll move on. We’ll go from the .22 rifle to a .22 revolver, then a .22 semi-automatic, each time going over all the steps outlined above, always ALWAYS stressing the four rules of gun safety and how they apply to each firearm. It depends on how much time we have (I usually like to allot about three hours – that’s long enough to tire out most people new to shooting), and what guns I’ve brought, but we’ll progress from smaller caliber guns to larger ones, as the student wants. I usually have up to a .44 magnum – a large frame gun that is actually quite comfortable to shoot with “special” loads in it. But it hasn’t always been so – you can go with whatever you have. After we’ve gone through all the guns once, I give my friend a chance to go back and shoot anything that they want, once again going over the handling of that specific gun for safety.
When we’re done, I will pack up everything securely, as I answer questions. It isn’t often that anyone “gets hooked” on shooting sports – it does happen, and I always tell them that if they want to go shooting again, I will be happy to provide everything. But that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to show that guns, while potentially dangerous, can be handled safely and sanely. To de-mystify them, turn them from an object to be feared to a tool which is understood. Once that happens, my liberal friends may or may not change their mind about the 2nd Amendment – but at least they will now be more informed of the issues involved. And over time, I have found that most of the people I have taught have become much more willing to see the matter from my perspective.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, TED, tech
Ah, yes, the first step into an integrated “expert” technology such as I envisioned for CoD:
Fascinating. And just about right on time.
Jim Downey
(Via BB.)
Filed under: Art, Ballistics, Guns, Humor, Marketing, Podcast, Promotion, RKBA, SCA
Had an interview last night, about the Ballistics By The Inch project, with the fellow who does the “Gun Nation” podcasts that are quite popular. Sent this humorous bit to a friend about it last night after it was over:
Funny bit to share from the interview this evening…
So, it was for a podcast this guy does about gun stuff. It’s a good podcast. The guy is a bit of a nerd, materials science researcher involved in working on the next generation of ballistic cloth (Kevlar, et cetera), but he does his show for a general audience. Anyway, he *loves* our project, and has been a bit nuts about wanting to do an interview for about six months, but one thing and another always kept getting in the way. But it finally worked out that we both had the free time to do it, at the same time.
We get to do the interview, about 45 minutes by phone (Skype, actually), of which he’ll probably use 20-30 minutes for his show. Goes well. Get done, and we’re just chatting a bit about the whole project, et cetera. He asks whether we’ve gotten information about it up on Wikipedia yet, and I say that I hadn’t gotten around to it. He misunderstands, thinks I don’t really appreciate Wikipedia’s power to help spread the word. I say, “well, I do – a couple of years ago someone put up a Wiki entry on me because of something else I did – I just need to update it, and get other links on there about the BBTI project.”
“Oh, what other thing?”
“Well, about 8 years ago I did this odd conceptual art project, called Paint the Moon.”
Pause.
“Paint the Moon??”
It was my turn to misunderstand. But I’m used to having to explain about that project, so I start. “Um, yeah, see . . .”
“That was YOU????”
“Well, yeah.”
“Oh my God, I’m in the presence of greatness.”
No kidding, that’s what he actually said. Evidently made the guy’s night to find out that his favorite geeky gun science project also involved the nut behind his favorite crazy artistic project…
Nerds. Go figure.
* * * * * * *
My friend was amused, sent me an email about it this morning. In responding, I said this:
My wife and I both thought it pretty funny. I need to decide whether I can write it up for the blog without sounding like a self-aggrandizing ass. Though it’s not like worrying about that has stopped me in the past . . .
And I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple of hours.
Now, one of the things about blogging, and in using this blog like I do, it that it is for promotion. So there’s a certain amount of self-aggrandizement that goes with the territory.
But the truth of the matter is that for the most part, I find myself bewildered by attention. Yeah, sure, I long ago learned (in the SCA, as a matter of fact) how to cultivate a ‘public persona’ which I could use in that regard – a simulacrum, as it were, who could do the public speaking, the interviews, that sort of thing. It gives me the psychological distance necessary to handle the attention, deflect it without letting it crawl inside my head.
And that’s mostly what you see when I post stuff like this to the blog (or elsewhere). Because while I understand the need for people to have heroes, or leaders, or favorite artists/authors, et cetera, I always find myself completely bewildered to be in such a role. From my perspective, I’m just doing stuff anyone could do, and am only very lucky to have it noticed.
And now *that* sounds like another bit of self-aggrandizement.
Jeez – there’s no winning. Ah, well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Marketing, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
On July 12, 2008, I noted this:
Huh. It finally happened, a week after I turned 50. Over 10,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams.
That was after having the .pdf of the novel available for approximately 19 months. Well, in the subsequent 17 months, there have been *another* 10,000 downloads of the novel. Yup, we just broke 20,000 total downloads. And all of that basically due to word of mouth.
It’s a pretty cool feeling, actually. And made even better by the fact that earlier this week I sent off the revised manuscript to a publisher, after working on it for the last three months (as also noted here on the blog). It’ll be a matter of a few weeks before the publisher and his in-house readers have a chance to review the book and make their decision about whether to publish it, but the preliminary response has been positive. You can now find the .pdf of the revised manuscript on the CoD homepage, if you would like to give that a try.
But regardless whether this particular publisher decides to go with it, I take a great deal of satisfaction knowing that some 20,000 people have at least downloaded the book. Something is happening there. And the best thing that an author can hope for is that people read his work. Yeah, fame and fortune would have some nice aspects, but *being read* is much more important. At least to me.
That this happens just before the BBTI project crosses 1,500,000 hits – in less than a year – is just gravy.
Cool.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Ballistics, Guns, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Just posted this over to the BBTI blog:
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here – there really isn’t much to say, day to day. But checking the numbers, I thought I would post a brief update which may be of interest.
October had over 140,000 hits to the BBTI site, which puts our total to date to 1,477,315. At present trends (we get between 4 and 5 thousand hits a day), we should cross 1.5 million sometime in the next week – less than one year since our initial launch! That’s pretty cool.
One of the more recent referrers that I found to be amusing was this one: http://feulibre.forumactif.com/ But we have had links from sites in Russian, Korean, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Portugese, Chinese, . . . you get the idea. Ballistics By The Inch is a decidedly global resource. Which I also think is pretty cool.
And update info for Communion of Dreams: October had over 875 downloads of the novel, putting the total downloads to date to something in excess of 19,500. Even better news – this morning I will finish up editing work on the novel which a publisher requested, and we should get a supplemental .pdf posted to the site with that manuscript in the next couple of days. With a little luck, the publisher will like the revisions, and before the end of the year I’ll have a deal to conventionally publish the book. Keep you fingers crossed for me.
Happy November, everyone!
Jim Downey
PS: I have now finished the editing – having eliminated 23,620 words in total from the manuscript. We’ll get a .pdf of the revised version posted to the CoD site later today.
