Our EMS agency has three full-time “Advanced Life Support” medics to run on calls with the ambulance crews, which are usually staffed by “regular” EMTs. That gives us a primary, a secondary (calls often come after long waits of nothing, and then we get two …or three), and room for the third to have a day off now and then. On Friday, Kit and I ran a call that ended up taking three hours — and we weren’t even involved in the transport part! I can’t say what took so long, but sometimes it happens that way.
Giving Back
Planning for the Rest of Your Life
A friend who is a career military man is retiring soon. He’s still pretty young, so he asked for some advice on what to do next; he sees that I’m pretty successful, and he wants to be successful too, in the next phase of his life.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
It was Labor Day in the U.S. on Monday, and I was laboring. Not just to get the Premium edition out, but I put it together sitting at the Labor Day rodeo here in Ridgway, Colorado.
There’s No Such Thing as Writer’s Block
A friend of mine asked me for some advice last week. He’s preparing to leave the military, and thought writing might be his next career. Did I have any pearls of wisdom?
I gave him two main pieces of advice. The second one: he must understand that there’s no such thing as “writer’s block.”
Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami
A few thoughts about today’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The video coming out of there is horrific. There will surely be many thousands of casualties.
Cathy in Florida
There were two accidentally related emails in my morning download that I’d like to tell you about. To truly appreciate what happened, though, there’s a bit of backstory. In September 2007, I ran the following reader letter in True.
Ability Meets Need
I watched the news reports last Wednesday from Platte Canyon High School in the small mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, with a bit of dread. (It was nothing like Columbine: some drifter took hostages, and killed one of them — a 16-year-old girl he didn’t know. He then shot himself.)
EMS Stories: a New Series
While This is True is a “weird news” publication, — its bigger mission is “Thought-Provoking Entertainment” — social commentary, or an exploration of The Human Condition. While True is my full-time job, I also volunteer as an on-call first-responder medic in my community. These are some of my stories from real medical emergencies.
Looking Back at 9/11
So here it is, 9/11 — the first time I’ve published a True newsletter on that date since the fateful events in 2001.
Psychic Pay Increase
I often say that the “psychic pay” I get for doing this job is as good, or sometimes better, than the paycheck. Maybe you’ll see what I mean when you read this letter from reader Byron in Colorado — and my comments below it:
Small Town Life
The new place I live in isn’t super rural, per se — we’re 20 minutes from a town big enough to have a Home Depot, for instance. But that’s in the next county; the county I live in has around 4,000 full-time residents.
A ‘True’ Honorary Unsubscribe
There are some readers I correspond with a fair amount over time, especially Premium subscribers. Ian in the U.K. was one of them. I had a recent letter from him in my “use in an issue when space is available” folder, in which he had written:
OK, Pal, Where’s the Fire?
Forest fire season has started in Colorado. Last week you may have seen pictures of the “Snaking” fire in the mountains west of Denver on the news.