Filed under: Guns, Music, N. Am. Welsh Choir, New Zealand, Society, Travel
Looking out the window of our hotel room, clouds of steam rose from the various hot thermal springs and mud pools near the hotel and then drifted through the trees.
* * * * * * * *
Sunday morning we had some free time, with a number of different options open to us. I decided to have a nice walk in the redwoods of the Whakarewarewa forest. A little over a century ago there was an effort to see whether redwoods would grow well in this part of the North Island. They did OK, but not as well as some other species, so the effort was mostly abandoned, leaving a nice sized grove (about 15 acres) of coastal redwoods. What’s a little odd, is that they also have a mix of tree ferns. But it made for a very nice walk of about an hour.
* * * * * * *
I got back to the hotel to find that Martha had gone into town to do a bit of shopping. We didn’t have anything going on until that afternoon’s concert. I decided to try calling another contact I had concerning the shooting sports, a man named Don Perry. Don was a driving force behind the local shooting club, and one of the major players in bringing the 2013 Australasian IPSCAA pistol championships to Rotorua.
Don answered his phone, had been hoping that I would call. “Where you at?”
“At the Holiday Inn. Tell me where to go, and I’ll get a taxi out to the club.”
“Don’t be absurd. That’d cost you a small fortune. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I think he was two minutes late. I didn’t mind.
* * * * * * *
Again, I’m going to write about this more completely for Guns.com, but let me say that what Don and the other members of his club are trying to do in preparation for the 2013 IPSC event is nothing short of stunning. Seriously, they’re hard at work to take a decent-sized shooting range and turn it into probably the largest and most varied range in the world. It’s huge – everything from a score of short (25 meter) and medium (50 meter) shooting bays to a 180 and a 200 meter rifle range, and about a dozen different long-range (50 to 100 meter) bays where different tactical scenarios can be set up which competitors will have to move through. And all of these – all of them – have to have side and back berms which are 5 meters (16 feet) high, in some places almost twice that. Here’s a shot of a large CAT in the distance building one of the tall berms:
* * * * * * *
I spent about an hour tromping around the range with Don. In addition to the impressive scope of what they’re building, the site is situated in a gorgeous and mostly remote valley, which makes building the range and getting the necessary permits much easier, since it doesn’t present any kind of problem for neighboring houses or suchlike. If they can pull it all together, they will have a world class facility in one of the most beautiful locations imaginable.
When we were done, Don gave me a lift back to the hotel.
* * * * * * *
Martha and I had a bite of lunch before it was time for the choir to go to their pre-performance rehearsal. Our friend ML and I were the designated “sales team” for the choir, handling CD sales, handing out the programs for each concert, et cetera. We went along to help get things set up.
Good thing we did, too – there was a fair amount of set-up necessary at the church (St. Lukes), and the choir accompanist had forgotten something back at the hotel. ML popped out to get that, I took care of getting the display table ready and hanging a Welsh flag in the front window of the church. Handy that I had my little emergency kit with me, with 30′ of Spiderwire in it.
* * * * * * *
Since the choir was performing in a church, it was against the law to charge admission, even though the proceeds were going to help with rebuilding damage from the Christchurch earthquake. But they have this handy Maori term which is commonly used in New Zealand: Koha. The closest English is ‘donation’ or ‘gift’, but there’s more to it than that – it contains an element of respect. You show more respect, and gain more respect, by making a nicer gift/donation. So the little basket we set up had a note on it which simply said “Admission by Koha.”
Given that the local Welsh heritage society had been the ones to organize the venue for the choir, much of the audience were of Welsh settler stock, and they appreciated the choir coming. Donations were generous. And once the performance was done, more than a few people stopped by the basket to increase their Koha.
Because yeah, it was a great performance. The church was quite full, the acoustics good, the audience enthusiastic listeners and participants whenever they were offered the opportunity to join in (plus some times when they decided to join in anyway). ML and I sold a fair number of CDs, and a good time was had by all.
* * * * * * *
When the performance and chatting with the audience was all done, we loaded back on the bus. It stopped in the downtown area to drop off those who wanted to get something to eat there, but Martha and I decided to just grab something from the Bar Menu at the hotel. ML joined us, and we had a good meal, relaxing over drinks in the large lobby area. It was a good ending to a busy day.
Jim Downey
After a bracing shower (there was still no hot water at the hotel) Martha and I went downstairs for breakfast.
It was touch crazy. Crowded, hectic, clusters of people swarming around the two buffets – one hot, one cold. But the food was plentiful, and good, and typical of what we found at all our hotels, so I’ll describe it here.
The hot buffet included bacon (this time American style, other times occasionally British), scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms, hot tomato halves, baked beans, and breakfast sausages. These last looked a little like the British counterparts, which are nasty, pasty things – but they turned out to be chicken sausages with a a fair amount of spice and flavor. There was also pancakes, rice, miso soup.
The cold buffet had different cereals, cold cuts of meat and cheese, yogurt, and plenty of sliced/chopped fruit. There was also a selection of different breads (and a toaster) as well as various rolls and pastries. And different juices – including kiwi fruit juice. (What we call kiwis the Kiwis call “kiwi fruit” – which makes sense and saves on confusion.)
We dove into the buzzing clouds, got our food, and escaped to the quiet of a table on the periphery.
* * * * * * *
We heard back from our bank. They had removed the block on our debit cards, said that we should have notified them that we were going to be traveling to New Zealand, which they consider a “fraud haven”. Who knew?
Anyway, we had access to our money.
* * * * * * *
Martha had a rehearsal that morning. ML and I went to the Auckland Domain, where the Auckland War Memorial Museum is located. It was wonderful. But don’t take my word for it: explore their site, and see what I mean. We spent the whole morning there, catching a taxi back to our hotel just as the choir practice ended.
* * * * * * *
I had made arrangements to meet some people involved in the shooting sports in New Zealand, for a series of articles for Guns.com. The first of these was in an outer suburb of Auckland. My contact had told me to catch the 1:30 ferry to Half Moon Bay, where she would meet us.
So I asked Helen (our guide) where we’d go to catch said ferry. At first she just looked at me in shock. “Half Moon Bay? Why would you want to go there? It’s nothing but a suburb. There’s nothing there.”
Of course, after explaining that we were meeting some people there, she was happy to provide full information. The ferry docked just down the hill from our hotel. Martha and I made it in plenty of time, and enjoyed the 40 minute trip up the coast.
* * * * * * *
I won’t go into a lot of detail about what we learned about the shooting sports – that’ll be covered in the articles on Guns.com, which I will link here once they’re published – but I would like to share some observations from that afternoon and evening.
I mentioned in the first entry about this trip that I had expected New Zealand to be more like the UK than it actually is. Getting together with some locals was a quick way to find out how much the Kiwis are more like folks in the US. Specifically, how they’re more like most Midwesterners I’ve known. It’s always dangerous to make a generalization based on just a limited pool of experience, but this perception held true through our whole trip.
We were met at the dock by Debbie and her husband Andy. They’re in their 40s, solidly middle class. They have a nice suburban home on a cul-de-sac like you’d find just about anywhere in the States, though the yard is perhaps a bit smaller than we’re used to. She teaches their equivalent of High School, he has a factory job and runs a small side-line business doing gunsmithing. Two cars, no kids, a couple of friendly cats.
They showed us around, Andy taking some pride with his shop (clearly a working space, not just for show – and a decent selection of milling tools and other equipment I wouldn’t mind having). He opened his safe, we talked guns, they got things ready to go out to their shooting club. It was, to be honest, exactly the sort of conversation I could have had with about half the people I know here in the US.
We loaded up the car, drove out to the club, some 20 minutes further out of town.
* * * * * * *
I’m not one for ‘formal’ shooting ranges. I prefer the very informal shooting I can do on my own, or with my wife or a friend, on our property south of Columbia. I said this to Debs and Andy. They said they wished they could do the same, but this is one way that shooting sports differs between the US and NZ – any kind of pistol shooting (and most long gun shooting which isn’t hunting) has to be done at a government licensed club.
That said, their club, while meeting all the required safety and environmental regulations, wasn’t like some spotless formal facility I’ve seen in Europe. It was a little ramshackle in a very friendly and inviting way. Non-intimidating.
So were the other people we met there. Most of them were busy getting things set up for hosting a competition the next day. Again, they were just middle-class folks, doing the necessary volunteer work on their time off, so that everyone in the club could enjoy shooting that weekend.
After they introduced us and shown us the place, we went to one of the shooting areas so they could check some tweaks to one of their competition guns. Martha and I got hearing protection from a box available for visitors, Debs and Andy put their own on out of their range bags. A magazine or two of ammo satisfied them that the minor gunsmithing work was good, then they offered to let me shoot one of their guns. It was no big deal.
I felt right at home.
* * * * * * *
We went back to their place, chatted while Andy grilled some steaks and brats as we sat out on their patio. Another friend of theirs, Chris, who was originally from South Africa, joined us. He’d lived in the US for a while, where he had gone through apprenticeship as a gunsmith. He’d moved to NZ a few years back, and was as friendly and out-going as Andy and Debs.
Dinner was good, as was the company and discussion. We didn’t have anything alcoholic to drink, since after dinner they took us over to another shooting club for a .22 rifle meet.
* * * * * * *
This was a little more formal, both in terms of the facility and in how the club operates. The facility is actually government owned (local government), and rented out to several different shooting clubs which use it on different nights of the week. Because of this, they have a specific set of procedures that they go over as club business and safety protocols, but it wasn’t anything more onerous than what you’d find at most formal ranges here in the US.
Again, the others we met there were friendly and welcoming. We weren’t the only ‘newcomers’ there that evening, and I had the feeling that they were very used to having visitors and helping them get involved in shooting. At several junctures different people asked if I wanted to shoot any of the club’s .22s.
After about 90 minutes, we headed back to Debbie & Andy’s place.
* * * * * * *
They got all the guns and gear put away. We sat and had some dessert, chatted a while longer. Andy showed us some funny videos he’d seen online – stuff which I have since seen referenced by others here in the US.
Then, since they had a competition to run the next day, and we had an early departure and then a full day of travel, they drove us back to our hotel. It was about 10:00 when they dropped us off, wishing us well on the rest of our tour. I felt like I had made new friends who I’d never see again.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
As a side-line, I’m a writer for Guns.com. Mostly what are called ‘features’ but are actually akin to a newspaper column, plus some reviews and other things now and again. I generally write about one piece a week. It’s fun, they let me write about just anything I want, and I like the discipline of sitting down to write a column of a specific length and focus as I did when I was writing about the arts for my local paper. It doesn’t pay much, but for the approximately 20,000 words I’ve written for them this year, I’ve made over a thousand dollars. And I’m told by my editor that I’m considered one of the best and most popular writers for the site, but that could just be blowing smoke. Regardless, I know that thousands of people see almost everything I write there, and the direct feedback I get is very positive. I consider the hour or two I put into writing each article to be time well spent.
So far this month we haven’t sold any copies of Her Final Year. Last month we sold 11. All told, we’ve sold about 30. That’s about 10% of what we need to sell just to break even on out-of-pocket expenses.
I’m honestly surprised by this. Oh, I know that it takes time for word to get around, that times are tight for people. Et cetera. But by about this point in time, my novel had been downloaded over 2,000 times (currently the total is well over 30,000 downloads). And that launched with less of a promotional effort than we put behind HFY, without the supporting structures of social media and forums dedicated to care-giving.
Granted, Communion of Dreams is free. But it is also just an e-book. You can’t (yet) get a paperback copy of it to keep, or to give as a gift. And while I think that it is well written, Her Final Year is a much better and more powerful book.
This isn’t meant to be a “woe is me, please buy my book” plea. Rather, it is just an observation on what is valued by our culture. Writing about firearms is. I get paid for that, and know that it is well received. Writing fiction is. Word of my novel spread widely, and it remains popular (some 636 people downloaded it last month.) Even writing about the arts was valued – my newspaper columns generated a little income, and were once again fairly popular.
Writing about care-giving? Not so much, it seems. I wonder why that is.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted from the HFY blog.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Connections, Guns, Hospice, Politics, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Science, Society
Interesting observation: last week I set up two Twitter accounts, one for “HFYJim” to support the care-giving book, the other for “BBTIJim” for my gun-nut stuff. Since then I’ve been learning the ropes about the Twitter culture, getting established, figuring out who to ‘follow’ and gaining a few followers myself. As of this morning, both accounts had about the same number of followers (about a score).
Now, in any sort of social media like this, you’re going to get some amount of SPAM. It’s always interesting to see where, and how it manifests. Just recently, the new Her Final Year blog has started to get some comments which seem OK though generic on the surface but which are actually links to this or that scam website. That tells me that the blog has now started to show up in search engines enough to be something of a target. No big deal, it goes with the territory.
But in the world of Twitter, spam seems to manifest as bogus followers. Not sure why this would be beneficial, but that could just be because I have my computer set up to filter out all the advertising, flash, and pop-up crap from websites. Anyway, of the two accounts I set up at the same time on Twitter, guess which one had attracted a handful of bogus followers who were ostensibly attractive young women with links to ‘pictures’ in their profiles?
It wasn’t the gun-nut one.
Nope. It was the care-giving one. The one tied to AARP, a variety of different Alzheimer’s and hospice organizations, and which I selected to use to follow different news outlets and science bloggers, many of which have significant left-wing political overtones. Not the one tied to a number of firearms-related sites and bloggers, some of which also have a decidedly right-wing political stance.
Curious, that. Now, this is just a snapshot, and it may be that I’ll see the same thing happen with my BBTIJim profile as time goes on. But I thought it was interesting.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Well, I think we’re about ready to launch Her Final Year. Preliminary feedback on the website has all been very good – seems that the site works for a variety of different platforms and browsers. The book is still working its way through the Amazon system, is available on our e-commerce site as well as through the Kindle Store but not yet in Amazon’s general titles – though I expect that will change sometime today. The first shipment of paperbacks should arrive sometime today or tomorrow, and they can then be sent to those who helped us along the way as a thank-you. We’ve started to contact media outlets, and I already know that the newspaper I used to write for is planning on doing a piece about the book. And I’ve started to work up an article for guns.com about “Alzheimer’s & firearms.” Announcements are being made to send to friends and colleagues. In short, we’re almost ready.
It feels like those last moments waiting for a thrill ride, where the announcement comes over the loudspeaker reminding you to keep your hands and feet inside the car. The adrenaline surges, your hair stands on end, and a stupid half-fearful smile tries to form on your lips. In a moment, it will all start, and only then will you find out whether the ride was worth the cost of admission.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the HFY blog.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Gardening, Guns, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing
So, as my last couple of posts have indicated, almost my entire focus has been on . . . well, a lot of things, to be honest. The first part of May was the marathon BBTI testing, then there was another weekend of that in June. And a major push to get the garden in and secure from the deer and other critters. Weekly articles for Guns.com. Even a bit of conservation work here and there. But yeah, the vast majority of time and energy has gone into working on Her Final Year, the care-giving memoir.
So, almost all of my attention has been turned inwards. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it does show up in how things have been going for the two projects I tend to track: downloads of Communion of Dreams, and hits to the BBTI site.
I must admit, part of what’s happened with Communion of Dreams has been due to frustration with the publisher who had been wanting to publish the book. After all the work I put into multiple revisions, he went silent on me in the middle of sorting out the minor contract issues. Not a “we’ve reconsidered” or anything, in fact the last thing I had heard was a confirmation that they were committed to doing the book. But for six months now I haven’t had a response to my emails. I’ve pretty much just given up on it, poured my attention into the other projects. And that has been reflected in declining downloads – just 231 in May and 181 in June.
BBTI is a different matter, since my excitement over that hasn’t changed. We did get a bunch of excellent data during the last two test sequences, and plenty of people are eagerly waiting to see that – and we’re eager to provide it. But I haven’t done any real ‘support’ of the site, and so monthly hits have dropped off there to 279,656 in May and 256,179 in June.
But soon, soon I’ll turn my attention back to these things. First a revamp of the BBTI site to include the new data sets and freshen it up a bit. Then with CoD, we’ll see what happens – if Her Final Year launches successfully, it may mean that I’m able to attract a different publisher. Or, having gone the route of self-publishing once, I may just decide to do the same with the novel. Like I said, we’ll see.
As noted last week, we *are* closing in on being done with Her Final Year. I think it will be a very polished & professional product, much more so than most self-published books. Certainly, the amount of work which has gone into it has been massive. We’ll probably have the book(s) ready here in a couple of days, and then may have the supporting website ready for a test drive this next week – I’ll keep you posted.
Cheers to one and all . . .
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
I think they did a good job with the photos they chose to go with my text:
One of my earliest memories is of shooting with my dad. I was about five or six. We were out at a relative’s place in the country. Plinkin’ cans with .22s. Then my dad let me shoot his service revolver for the first time, helping me hold up the Smith & Wesson Model 10 he had been issued by his department. Yeah, he was a cop.
Happy Father’s Day, everyone.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Guns, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
No, this isn’t a “Find Jimbo!” puzzle. Just a reference point for those who wonder about my sparse posting here.
Sent this in a friend a bit ago, in an email exchange:
Have a good weekend,
Yeah, thanks. The latest round of unexpected storms cleared out early enough for me to get in a walk after my PT. Now a shower, and then lock in for a prolonged session of looking for typos and formatting errors on HFY. Following that, due diligence with Amazon’s print-on-demand system so I understand what tweaks we need to make for that formatting.
In other words, the book is coming together pretty quickly, and we’re in the final stages of that. Got the necessary LLC bank account opened this week, next week I’ll set up the stuff with Amazon and Paypal. Tomorrow Alix, I, and John (the co-author) have a Skype session and we’ll probably outline the website design – the FB, LJ, and Twitter accounts will all follow suit, once that is up. We should be able to test drive the whole thing a few days before our scheduled July 1 ‘launch’, but that arbitrary deadline can be moved easily enough if we need to do so.
It’s fun doing this, I admit. Nice to be using a lot of different skills I’ve acquired. Regardless of how the book does, at least I have that.
And then there’s the book conservation & binding backlog, getting articles to guns.com, and general life stuff.
It’s good to be busy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Gardening, Guns, Publishing, Science Fiction
Sorry I haven’t been posting much. It’s been a long and busy week. Had bookbinding and gardening stuff to do, as well as getting a couple of things written and sent to guns.com. But the most important and time-consuming task has been working on Her Final Year. As I noted on my Facebook page:
97,982. That’s how many words are in the main care-giving book. And it’s now closely edited and all formatted. Whew.
The last couple of chapters are especially emotional and hard to read, even now three and a half years later. But it’s done.
And now I need to wrap up another article (this is a fun one, on guns in Science Fiction) and then get on the road for another weekend of BBTI testing.
Jim Downey
About a month ago, I wrote about the delightful crazy man who made a machete-shooting slingshot. Well, he’s now got a Gatling-gun style slingshot which is brilliant:
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 