The toughest task I had to do as a medic in the Air Force Reserve was taking footprints of aircrew

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the July 8, 2026 Pioneer Toastmasters Club meeting in Boise I was the Table Topics Master. The meeting theme chosen by our Toastmaster Brian Reublineger was The Toughest Job You Will Ever Love [from the Peace Corps, where he once had been a volunteer]. So, I prepared and used the following job-related questions:

 

What was the toughest job or project that you ever had?

 

What is your current job? What do you love or hate about it?

 

What was the best (or worst) project you ever worked on?

 

What was the best (or worst) job that you ever had?

 

At your current job, what was the best (or worst) day you ever had?

 

At your first job, what was the best (or worst) day you ever had?

 

From 1972 to 1978 I served as a medic in the Air Force Reserve. The clinic I worked at once weekend a month did flight physicals. The toughest task I ever had to do was taking footprints of aircrew. A Student Report, 88-2610, from April 1988 by Gary M. Triplett at the Air Command and Staff College titled Use of a Computer-Assisted Identification System in the Identification of the Remains of Deceased USAF Personnel said:

 

“The DOD has recognized the applicability of fingerprints, footprints, and dental comparison for the scientific identification of deceased active duty personnel for some time. In 1959, the USAF began footprinting of all aircrew members. The footprints are to be used for remains identification to supplement the fingerprints obtained from all active duty members when they enter service.

 

The footprints of USAF personnel performing flight duty recorded as a permanent part of the member’s medical record on AF FM 137, Footprint Record, are reviewed for accuracy and currency during each flight physical.”

 

Both footprints were taken on a single record card using printers ink rolled onto a glass plate. But the Air Force manual describing footprinting was vague about how to get the inking right. Luckily I found out that the United States Secret Service had a publication, a 14-page Guide to Taking Palm Prints published in 1972, with the following succinct explanation:

 

“STEP 1: PREPARATION OF INKING PLATE

 

In order to obtain clear, legible palm-prints, fingerprint ink must be spread on the inking plate in a thin, uniform coat. This can best be accomplished by placing a daub or two of ink on the plate (Figure 2). The ink can be spread evenly over the entire plate by rolling the ink roller back and forth over the plate until the desired consistency is obtained. (Figures 3 and 4.) The proper thickness of the ink may be judged by placing a slip of white paper under the inked glass plate. If the ink is of the desired thickness, the outline of the paper will be barely visible.”

 

An image of soles came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Tourons and the Disneyland Syndrome

 

 

 

 

 

Touron is a portmanteau word combining the first four letters from tourist with the last two from moron, as shown above. There is an article by Gig Morris at TheTravel on February 19, 2025 titled “Tourons” on the loose: Travelers are behaving so badly that they’ve earned their own nickname. For example, at Yellowstone National Park, they get injured after they come 11 feet from a bison rather than the recommended minimum of 75 feet. She said of touron:

 

“It sounds new, but the word can be traced to the mid-1970s within the National Park System.”

 

Another article by Katie Jackson at the New York Post on October 3, 2024 is titled Moronic tourists are ruining travel – how not to be one on your next vacation. I found the word discussed in a very profane four-minute YouTube video from Lewis Black on March 27, 2026 titled Tourists, Morons, & Lava | Lewis Black’s Rantcast Clips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I was aware of the concept long ago. In the mid-1980s my brother Tom and I had visited the Smoky Mountain National Park. We wanted to get a great view by climbing to the highest point in Tennessee, Clingman’s Dome (Kuwohi). There is a mile-long paved trail leading to the concrete observation tower (shown above) via a spiral ramp.

 

That morning the sky already was medium to dark gray, so it was not a matter of if it would rain, just when. Both of us wore jackets. I got a big golf umbrella out from my car and used it as a walking stick on the way up from the parking lot.

 

Lots of tourists on the trail were without umbrellas or even hooded windbreakers. Just as we began heading back down it began to pour. We stayed dry, but most tourists got thoroughly soaked. I later referred to their behavior as the Disneyland Syndrome – behaving as if they just were in an amusement park rather than a national park.  

 

 

Mayor of Nampa, Idaho dies while speaking in public

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Michael Davis at Medium on January 4, 2023 titled Why Public Speaking ISN’T Your Number One Fear claimed:

 

“No one has ever died from giving a speech.”

 

But on May 31, 2017 I blogged about thirty examples in a post titled Spouting Nonsense – Nobody ever died from public speaking. Sadly, we just had another local example.

 

There is another article by Chris Bradford at the New York Post on March 19, 2026 titled Newly elected Idaho mayor Rick Hogaboam, 47, dies after collapsing mid-speech during town hall. And there is yet another article by Becca Longmire at People also on March 19, 2026 titled Idaho Mayor Rick Hogaboam, 47, Dies After Experiencing Medical Emergency While Speaking at Town Hall Meeting. There is a brief biography of Rick at the Office of the Mayor.

 

 

A decorated book drop at my friendly local public library

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I return books at the Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library I get a chuckle from using their decorated inside book drop. When I pull the handle on its drum, it rotates downward to reveal eight teeth, as is shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That library branch also has a drive-up book drop. Some book drops are more complicated than they appear. There may be a spring-loaded surface inside. As shown in this brief Reddit video, books do not drop all the way to the ground from the slot.  

 

There is an article by Dr. Steve Albrecht at Library 2.0 on April 5, 2024 titled Horror Stories from the Book Drop: A Recap of Items Found by Librarians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside book drops sometimes are vandalized. Back in 2010 a disgruntled patron threw mayonnaise and other condiments into the drop at the Victory Road branch of the Ada Community Library. Another Reuters article on January 29, 2011 described how a Woman who dumped condiments in book drop pleads guilty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that’s not the worst thing possible. Still another article by Chuck Knox in LIDAR Magazine on January 15, 2018 titled Future After Fire: The Renovation of the Eckhart Public Library said that:

 

“In the early morning of July 2nd, 2017 3 individuals were wandering the town of Auburn, Indiana looking to cause trouble. That trouble resulted in 1 of the 3 dropping a lit 1” mortar style fire firework in the return book drop box of the Eckhart Public Library. The result was an intense fire that caused an estimated 3.4 million dollars’ worth of damage to the building and its contents. The Auburn Fire Department was quickly on the scene and had the fire extinguished within 10 minutes of arriving. Even with their quick response the damage was horrific. Within a week of the fire the Auburn Police arrested Nykolas Elkin age 24 for the arson. He later admitted he placed the lit firework in the drop box; he was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the crime.”

 

Images of a mayonnaise jar and a fire truck came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An xkcd cartoon about hazardous male-to-male extension cords

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The xkcd comic for January 23, 2026 is titled Double-Pronged Extension Cord. My colorized version is shown above. It was discussed at Explain xkcd. A Wikipedia article titled Gender of connectors and fasteners has a section on Safety that explains how this is a tragedy waiting to happen:

 

“A double-ended male connector for utility-supplied (mains) electrical power is extremely dangerous, and sometimes is called a ‘suicide cable’ or ‘widowmaker cord’. Some hardware shops explicitly refuse to make or sell them when asked by customers who have mistakenly hung a string of Christmas lights backwards and wish to connect the socket end to a wall socket, or who intend to connect a generator or inverter to their home's electrical circuit in the event of a utility power outage. The exposed prongs on the live end of the cable pose serious electrical shock and fire hazards, and when improperly used in a generator setup may cause the equipment to burn out when utility power is restored. It can also backfeed power into the grid, potentially damaging utility equipment or even electrocuting linemen attempting to restore power.^”

 

There is an article at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) web site on September 15, 2022 titled CPSC warns consumers to immediately stop using male-to-male extension cords sold on Amazon.com due to electrocution, fire, and carbon monoxide poisoning hazards. A follow-up article at Consumer Reports by Tobie Stanger on September 16, 2022 is titled Don’t Use Male-to-Male Extension Cords Sold on Amazon – or Elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For photography male-to-male extension cords sometimes were used to synchronize a pair of electronic flashes for cameras, like the suicide cable shown above. Of course, this was potentially dangerous because someone else might instead plug one end into an AC wall socket and destroy your flash. See an article at STROBIST in April 2006 titled Lighting 101: Build a Pro Synch Cord, Pt. 1.

 

The image of a suicide cable came from Wikimedia Commons. 

 

 

In 2026 only you can prevent bad presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since 2015 (except for 2023), on the first of January I have posted about how only you can prevent bad presentations. That slogan, of course, is based on the Smokey Bear one about preventing wildfires. My last one was that Only you can prevent bad presentations in 2025!

 

How can you do better? There is an article by Maurice Decastro at Mindful Presenter on December 28, 2025 titled 10 Ways to Develop Strong Public Speaking Skills in 2026 that lists these ways:

 

Overcome your fears

Learn to tell stories

Own your voice

Learn to pause

Understand how you move

Involve your audience

Create impactful slides

Learn from the masters

Cultivate a growth mindset

Get some professional help

 

Images from Wikimedia Commons of Carl Cohen, Frieda Pavlo, John Archibald Wheeler, and Mark Kac had captions added using PowerPoint.

 

Please don’t snore when you fall asleep at a meeting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage (shown above) on July 9, 2025 titled Make It Count. On June 16, 2011 I blogged about how you can Learn to ignore these audience behaviors:

 

“On Tuesday I spoke at the NACE Intermountain Section meeting in Salt Lake City. My topic was an introduction to stainless steels and corrosion. I’d given basically the same presentation at their Sun Valley Symposium in January 2010. Before I began I asked the audience to raise their hands if they had attended the other meeting. About 6 of 30 did, and I told them it was OK to go to sleep, but not to snore.”

 

An article by John Boitnott at Inc. on March 6, 2018 titled What to Do When Your Co-worker Is Snoring suggests how to avoid this worst moment:

 

Be loud

Move

Invest in headphones

Politely wake the person up

Notify a supervisor

 

 

Simon Sinek describes recovering after losing his train of thought

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent two-minute video from Simon Sinek at TikTok on March 17, 2025 titled What’s your worst public speaking horror story? It also is at Facebook and Instagram. He says about that potential worst moment that:

 

“In the speaking world, there is a big conference thrown by an organization called the Meeting Planners Association of America. Basically all the people from all the big companies and events planners that basically book all the speakers. And if you get invited to this conference, it’s a big deal because if you nail it you’re set for life - because all the people who will hire you for the rest of your career are in the room. And if you fail, I mean your career is basically over. It’s going to be rinky-dink little events for the rest of your life.

 

Anyway, as I was getting going in my career back in the Start with WHY days, I got invited to the Meeting Planners Association of America. I got to speak at it – great honor! I’ve given the speech 1,000 times; I know it inside and out. I’m out there, I’m on the stage speaking. I forgot my train of thought. It’s happened, I’m a pro. I know what to do: go quiet. Find your place, keep going. So I go quiet, not finding my place. Now the panic sets in. I look at my pad, I look at the audience. I don’t know anything that’s going on. I can’t ask the audience, ‘Can you tell me what I was thinking?’ That would be a disaster. My hands are sweaty. My heart is pounding. I don’t know what to do. My life is flashing before my eyes at the end of my career.

 

So I turn to the audience and I say, ‘Do you ever have that experience where you lose your train of thought and just sheer panic sets in? Your hands get clammy, your heart starts pounding?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m having that right now and let me tell you, I’m so glad it’s happening cause it makes me feel alive.’ And the audience erupted. And then I turned to the audience and say, ‘Can somebody please tell me what I was saying, cause I’ve completely forgotten?’ Somebody shouted out, I picked up and off I went. I got more applause for admitting what I was going through than for the actual speech. So it ended up working out okay.

 

I want to hear your horror stories as well. I wanna hear the time you were giving a speech at a wedding, a presentation for work, maybe you were standing on a stage as well. Tell me some of the horror stories you’ve experienced and maybe even how you turned them around, or how they didn’t get turned around. And the one thing we think is the most harrowing – I’ll send you a book just to say, ‘Sorry you had to go through that.’ So just put them down in the comments; can’t wait to hear from you.”

    

The cartoon was adapted from a surprised face at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Ignoring your audience is truly terrible advice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on February 1, 2018 at X entrepreneur Naval Ravikant claimed that:

 

“The secret of public speaking is to speak as if you were alone.”

 

And he repeated that at Naval Ravikant Quotes on December 27, 2021 and Naval Ravinkant bot on May 20, 2025. Ignoring your audience obviously is terrible advice!

 

An audience image was cropped from here at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Brain freezes while giving TED talks taught two speakers about vulnerability

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful article at Fast Company on May 6, 2025 by Jamie Woolf and Scott Simon titled We both froze while giving TED talks. Here’s what it taught us about vulnerability.

 

Jamie forgot her meticulously researched open line and instead whispered an expletive right into the microphone.

 

And Scott was a minute and fifty seconds into his talk when he realized that he’d left the presentation remote backstage. He did a sideways slide off of the red circle to retrieve it.

 

Because they began with high credibility their unplanned moments became strong points of human connection with their audiences. They discuss these five points:

 

Create intentional “vulnerability loops.”

Transform mistakes into growth narratives.

Create structural support for imperfection.

Create equitable spaces for vulnerability.

Know your audience.

 

The cartoon ice block and brain came from OpenClipArt.  

 

There may be no warning before a disaster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I was reading an excellent book from 2018 by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Roennlund titled Factfulness, It is subtitled Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. The fourth chapter is titled The Fear Instinct, and it begins with an essay on pages 101 to 103 titled Blood All Over the Floor:

 

“On October 7, 1975 I was plastering a patient’s arm when an assistant nurse burst through the door and announced that a plane had crashed and the wounded were coming in by helicopter. It was my fifth day as a junior doctor on the emergency ward in the small coastal town of Hudiksvall in Sweden. All the senior staff were down in the dining hall and as the assistant nurse and I searched frantically for the folder of disaster instructions, I could already hear the helicopter landing. The two of us were going to have to handle this on our own.

 

Seconds later a stretcher was rolled in, bearing a man in dark green overalls and a camouflage life jacket. His arms and legs were twitching. An epileptic seizure, I thought; off with his clothes. I removed his life jacket easily but his overalls were more problematic. They looked like a spacesuit, with huge sturdy zippers all over, and no matter how I tried I couldn’t find the zipper that undid them. I had just registered that the uniform meant this was a military pilot when I noticed the blood all over the floor. ‘He’s bleeding,’ I shouted. With this much blood, I knew he could be dead in a matter of seconds, but with the overalls on, I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I grabbed a big pair of plaster pliers [scissors] to cut through the fabric and howled to the assistant nurse, ‘Four bags of blood, O-negative, Now!’

 

To the patient, I shouted, ‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘Yazhe shisha… na adjezhizha zha …’ he replied. I couldn’t understand a word, but it sounded like Russian. I looked the man in his eyes and said with a clear voice, Bce Tnxo Tobapniii Wbenckaya Bojbhniia,’ which means ‘All is calm, comrade, Swedish hospital.’

 

I will never forget the look of panic I triggered with those words. Frightened out of his mind, he stared back at me and tried to tell me something: ‘Vavdvfor papratarjenji rysskamememje ej …’ I looked into his eyes full of fear, and then I realized: this must be a Russian fighter pilot who had been shot down over Swedish territory. Which means that the Soviet Union is attacking us. World War III has started! I was paralyzed by fear.

 

Fortunately, at that moment the head nurse, Birgitta, came back from lunch. She snatched the plaster pliers from my hand and hissed, ’Don’t shred it. That’s an air force ‘G suit’ and it costs more than 10,000 Swedish kronor.’ After a beat she added, ‘And can you please step off the life jacket. You’re standing on the color cartridge and it is making the whole floor red.’

 

Birgitta turned to the patient, calmly freed him from his G suit and wrapped him in a couple of blankets. In the meantime she told him in Swedish. ‘You were in the icy water for 23 minutes, which is why you are jerking and shivering, and why we can’t understand what you’re saying.’ The Swedish air force pilot, who had evidently crashed during a routine flight, gave me a comforting little smile.

 

A few years ago I contacted the pilot, and was relieved to hear that he doesn’t remember a thing from those first minutes in the emergency room in 1975. But for me the experience is hard to forget. I will forever remember my complete misjudgment. Everything was the other way around: the Russian was Swedish, the war was peace, the epileptic seizure was cooling, and the blood was a color ampule from inside the life jacket. Yet it had all seemed so convincing to me.

 

When we are afraid, we do not see clearly. I was a young doctor facing my first emergency, and I had always been terrified by the prospect of a third world war. As a child, I often had nightmares about it. I would wake up and run to my parents’ bed. I could be calmed only by my father going over the details of our plan one more time: we would take our tent in the bike trailer and go live in the woods where there were plenty of blueberries. Inexperienced, and in an emergency situation for the first time, my head quickly generated a worst-case scenario. I didn’t see what I wanted to see, I saw what I was afraid of seeing. Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”

  

We can avoid being dumbstruck from fear by first having a disaster exercise. I blogged about that topic back on September 11, 2012 in a post titled Disasters and triage.

 

As a Boy Scout back in the early 1960s I was part of one of the exercises in Pittsburgh called Prep Pitt. At the Civic Arena I was made up as a casualty with a compound fracture of my forearm. Modeling clay and protruding chicken bones were used. I was sent to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital.

 

And when I was in tech school to be an Air Force Reserve medic in 1972, we had a plane crash disaster exercise. Three years later, I was at Greater Pittsburgh airport when the crash phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. An Air National Guard tanker was going to land on a wet runway with two of its four engines shut down. While we waited beside the runway along with the fire trucks, I sat in the back of our ambulance and thought I’m ready for whatever happens. Fortunately they landed OK.   

 

A single-panel comic about replacing a motivational quote for your boss’s speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 23, 2025 there was a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic by Zach Weinersmith titled You can make your boss’s speech more memorable by replacing their motivational quote with Richard II’s speech to the peasants at Waltham, 1381.

 

Always proofread your PowerPoint slides before you speak. If you had asked an employee to insert a quote, then instead of one from Wayne Gretzy like:

 

"You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” or “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.”

 

you might find:

 

“You wretches detestable on land and sea:

You who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live.

Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were,

and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage,

not as before, but incomparably harsher.

 

For as long as we live we will strive to repress you,

and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity.”

 

The image was adapted from this one at Openclipart.

 

Fifty Awful School Presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We always can learn from mistakes made by others. There is an article by Robyn Smith and Rugile Baltruanite at boredpanda on December 8, 2024 titled 50 Terrible School Presentations People Have Had The Displeasure of Witnessing. I picked three of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When doing research, you should recognize some web sites are satirical, like The Onion. The #4 presentation said that:

 

“In college during Abnormal Psychology, [when] a student did an entire presentation on Obama’s bipolar disorder she kept citing an article from The Onion.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the #13 presentation said:

 

“Sophmore year of high school we were tasked with bringing in an object from home and giving a presentation on how the object explains you as a person. Kid brought in a knife, not a big one, but a knife nevertheless. He actually gave a decent presentation … but ended up getting expelled because of it later that day.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the #24 presentation involved a smelly fruit called a durian, which in Wikipedia is described:

 

“The persistence of its strong odour, which may linger for several days, has led some hotels and public transportation services in Southeast Asia, such as in Singapore and Bangkok, to ban the fruit.”

 

Her presentation unfortunately was:

 

“Someone gave a speech about durian in a class once. She brought a small frozen sample that thawed as the class went on. The professor let students step out of the room. Coincidentally, one of the culinary classes reported a gas leak and pulled the fire alarm.”

 

The cartoon was adpated from Openclipart. Images of an onion, a  kabar knife, and a durian all came from Wikimedia Commons.  

 

 

Donald Trump told us a fairy tale about an emergency helicopter landing with Willie Brown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his August 8, 2024 press conference Donald Trump told us a fairy tale about an emergency landing of a helicopter. It might as well have started with the classic phrase Once Upon A Time. But he didn’t say when it happened (day, month, or year), or tell us where that helicopter was going, or everyone who was on it. An article by Domenico Montanaro at npr on August 11, 2024 titled 162 Lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact-checks former President Trump listed it at Number 130, which was:

 

“Well, I know Willie Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together and there was an emergency landing.”

 

But Willie Brown wasn’t on that flight – Nate Holden was. Another article by Don Lee in the Los Angeles Times on August 10, 2024 is titled Willie Brown wasn’t on that frightening helicopter ride with Trump. Here’s who was. Yet another article by Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at The New Republic on August 13, 2024 titled Trump mixed up two black politicians in weird helicopter story also provided information from another passenger, Barbara Res.

 

“Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development Barbara Res was also on the terrifying flight, and recalled the white-knuckle encounter in her 2013 book, All Alone on the 68th Floor. She confirmed that Trump, his brother Robert, and Holden were all on board the aircraft as it lost control of some of its instruments and was forced to make an emergency landing in a New Jersey airport.”

 

Still another article by Maria Ramirez Uribe at Politifact on August 9, 2024 titled Trump’s unproven story about Willie Brown and a harrowing emergency helicopter landing said that Trump had told the same story in his 2023 coffee-table picture book, Letters to Trump:  

 

“ ‘I knew Willie Brown a long time ago,’ Trump wrote. ‘He was a hot politician and had a great ‘way.’ ’ We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together. It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it. His time with Kamala in retrospect turned out to be very interesting – but only he can tell that story.”

 

There also is a six-and-a-half minute YouTube video from CNN on August 13, 2024 titled Other passengers contradict Trump’s account of scary chopper ride. And even another article by Rachel Dobkin at Newsweek on August 11, 2024 titled Donald Trump’s helicopter claim raises questions from critics added in summary:

 

“Brian Krassenstein, who gained popularity on social media after trolling Trump on X, formerly Twitter, during his presidency, wrote on X on Saturday morning: ‘Donald Trump recently made a claim about an emergency helicopter landing involving him and Willie Brown, which is either a blatant lie or a clear case of mistaken identity (confusing 2 black men).'

 

He continued: ‘The real issue here is Trump’s refusal to admit a mistake. Instead of acknowledging the error, he’s doubled down on the falsehood, which highlights a concerning pattern … this behavior should alarm voters because a leader who cannot admit fault is likely to repeat mistakes – and in this case, he’s doing so over something trivial yet insists on misleading the public.’ “   

 

The image of a helicopter was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

A public speaker can tell us a story about being in a seemingly dangerous place. But a heritage interpreter can actually take us there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on December 19, 2010 I blogged about Heritage interpretation and public speaking. Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources to visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies.

 

Interpretation Canada (IC) has an eighty-page 2015 book titled The Interpreter’s Big Book of Disasters. Their IC blog has a post by Munju Ravindra on June 12, 2019 titled IC Blog: Lessons from the Interpreter’s Book of Disasters: Intertidal Stranding. She tells about taking visitors to Fundy National Park on the Bay of Fundy (which has the world’s highest and lowest tides) on a tide walk. At low tide they went out to a reef which was normally underwater when it was higher:

 

“....We eagerly set off with a group of about thirty visitors (including five or six young children). After walking across slurpy mud and a few damp barnacle-clad rocks, we arrived at the designated spot – a rocky outcrop with small pools fringed with rockweed. We got right into it: exploring, exclaiming, puzzling, and looking up all this wonderful stuff we encountered in my field guides. There was beauty everywhere: clumps of blue mussels clinging to the edge of the outcrop, saffron-coloured sea stars, prickly sea urchins, endlessly bizarre worms, unidentifiable clumps of egg-seeming goop, and our big prize – a silver spotted sea anemone.  

  

We were all seriously into it. So into it, in fact, that I didn’t lift my head up even once to look around at our surroundings, until my mother materialized at my side, tugging at my shirt and whispering, ‘Um, I think you should look at the tide.’ Oops! We were stranded on a rapidly shrinking rock that had gone from outcrop to island during the hours we’d been delightedly ogling sea creatures. Trying to sound as if this was entirely part of the plan, I told the group to gather up the field guides and magnifiers, and to get their backpacks on their backs and ready to go. As they looked goggle-eyed at the rising water, I realized it was time to act. As in theatre. ‘We’ll need to wade!’ I said cheerfully, trying to keep the question mark out of my voice. ‘I think we should carry the kids. The water might be a little deep. Ish.’

 

And, off we set, children precariously balanced on various sets of shoulders, my field-guide-laden backpack held high above my head. We waded slowly through rising tide with water up to our thighs. Everyone stayed very focused; there was no talking, no laughing, and we made it back to dry land without mishap. No one slipped, no one drowned, but everyone got thoroughly soaked. I was horrified. I said goodbye to my now-shivering visitors and staggered back to the office, chagrined, to explain to my supervisor that I had almost drowned an entire group of visitors. Under the circumstances, she was gentle: she gave me a talking-to, warned me to prepare myself for some negative comment cards, and we put the matter to bed.

 

But, the negative comment cards never came. Instead, we got card after card of positive comments about the visitors’ wonderful experience, how their children were inspired to study marine biology, how valuable of a place this Bay of Fundy was, and how ‘wow!’ A week later, the park superintendent received a letter raving about the extraordinary experience that this family had with me (Me! Clueless, disastrously dangerous, un-knowledgeable me!) In particular, they enthused, their children had loved how we had to get off the island at high tide. It was an adventure, it was exciting, and they loved the creatures they had seen.

 

I learned that a sense of danger (perceived danger, not real danger) can create a very compelling experience, allowing people to feel as if they have achieved something special. This sensation can be created by leading your group across a rushing brook, taking them outside without flashlights in the dark, or challenging them to hike to the top of a certain peak. Essentially, we are providing them an opportunity to transform themselves in the environment we are interpreting. I also learned that as the guides, we are the ones responsible for the situation, and we have to find ways to keep part of our attention on the logistics.”  

 

The image of the Bay of Fundy came from Wikimedia Commons.