#i will prepare everything sunday and were actually way better staffed for the day i work vs the second (we have national two christmas days)

[autism-corner]

oh well

[rchtoziers]

3 from those new prompts for reddie? 🥺

3. “I’m not jealous.”

cait… as a treat…. i lowkey…… wrote this in the lmntsfy universe i hope thats ok xoxo

*

Their move to Houston is a quiet one.

Richie had gotten the job offer on an otherwise uneventful Sunday afternoon, while he and Eddie were curled up on their couch alternating between lazily dozing off and channel surfing. It was a dream Richie hadn’t even realized he had until they offered it to him.

So they packed up quietly and sold their house quietly and took trips back and forth from Chicago to Houston until they finally found a place they both liked and put down an offer. They rented a moving fan to take their things across country and they accepted NASA’s offer for a private jet to transport them on the day of the move, and when all is said and ton it only takes them a week at most to feel settled into their new home.

Richie has one month before his teaching job starts up.

One of the perks with Richie being offered a job to teach the new cadets is that, by extension, they offered Eddie a job at the hospital as well. His own department, actually, complete with an office and people who work for him and budget meetings and the whole deal. Richie had expressed that Eddie had interest in updating medical procedures for NASA flights, and in turn, they had given him a fully-staffed research facility, too.

It’s a bit overwhelming, if Eddie is being honest, in a way he has yet to get used to.

“You know, I keep thinking things are gonna settle down for us,” Eddie comments. He straightens the name plaque on Richie’s desk in his classroom. Because Richie has a classroom now. “Like, eventually the novelty will wear off, right? People will stop just offering us things?”

“Baby, you’re engaged to the guy who famously survived alone on a different planet for two years,” Richie tells him. His arms wrap around Eddie’s middle from behind. “People better never stop offering us things.”

Eddie smacks his arm. “It was only eighteen months, stop exaggerating.”

“Felt like a billion years.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you were pining desperately for me,” Eddie says back. “Wondering if you’d ever get the chance to tell me you were head over heels in love with me. Carving our initials into the Hab canvas and writing RIchie Kaspbrak in your logs every other day.”

Richie presses a kiss to the space behind Eddie’s ear. “It’s not a funny joke when it’s true,” he teases.

“Oh, shut up. I’ve seen your logs. I know what you were doing that whole time.”

There’s a long-suffering sigh from Richie that almost makes Eddie smile. “Yes, and the fact that you continue to love me after watching me sing horribly off-tune to your god awful playlist is a miracle I thank god for every day.”

Eddie laughs and turns in Richie’s embrace so that he can wrap his own arms around Richie’s neck, pulling him down those infuriating four inches so he can press a soft kiss to Richie’s mouth. “I’m truly the hero, here,” he says seriously. “Not you. They should make a movie about me.”

A startled laugh bursts out of Richie. “Sweetheart, you know that you’ll be in that movie too, right? Like they just announced the casting choice for your character? They are making a movie about you.”

“It’s about you, Richie! The rest of us just happen to be there!”

Richie tilts Eddie’s chin up. There’s an obnoxious, terrible, beautiful smug look in his eyes. Eddie is so in love with him, so desperately, even after all this time. “I knew you were jealous about the movie.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Eddie baby.”

Eddie sighs. “I hate you.”

“How many times do we have to go over this? I know you don’t. You know you don’t. The whole world knows you don’t. Hell, even NASA knows, which is why they gave you an entire hospital for you to play around in.”

“It’s not playing, asshole, there’s life-saving work that goes on in hospitals every day, plus the research I’m conducting is going to help prepare future astronauts for worst-case scenarios prior to mission takeoff, which could statistically prevent situations like the one that lead to you being stranded on Mars for eighteen months—”

Richie kisses him to shut him up. Eddie would probably be more put out by it, if it wasn’t a tactic he himself has used multiple times in the past. Eddie twines his fingers through Richie’s curls at lets himself be kissed thoroughly, lazily, sweetly. He wonders if he’ll ever grow tired of kissing Richie Tozier.

If he’s being honest, he already knows the answer to that.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very impressive,” Richie says finally, pressing a kiss to Eddie’s nose as he says it. “Dr. Kaspbrak is gonna save the American astronaut. Everyone is very impressed with you, you’re loved by the whole world.”

Eddie smirks. “Now who’s jealous?”

“Still you.”

Unable to stop it, Eddie lets out a surprised peal of laughter. He tightens his grip around Richie’s neck. “You’re insufferable,” he says, but they both know he doesn’t mean it.

“Oh, baby, you call me the sexiest names,” Richie deadpans.

Eddie presses up on his toes to kiss Richie once again. Richie smiles into it, but they’ve had lots of practice by now. Eddie knows how to kiss him around smiles and laughter and tears and everything in between.

“Hey,” he murmurs, when they finally break apart. “We just had a bunch of big changes. How you feeling?”

Still intertwined in Eddie’s embrace, Richie shrugs. “Like we just moved a thousand miles to live in Texas. But. Good? I love our new place. I’m mostly excited about this job. I’ve got you. I’m good.”

“You’re gonna be everyone’s favorite professor,” Eddie tells him honestly. Richie rolls his eyes. “No, don’t do that. I’m serious, Rich. These cadets, they’re gonna adore you. And not just because you’re gonna be the only professor who isn’t afraid to swear in class.”

Richie laughs.

“I’m really proud of you, you know that?” Eddie continues. He brushes his thumb along Richie’s jawline. “Taking this leap. Caring about it so much. There’s gonna be a bunch of baby-faced astronauts in this room that look up to you, and then they’re gonna learn from you and they’re gonna realize they were admiring you for the wrong reasons.”

“Yeah, yeah, hot for teacher,” Richie says. He laughs again when Eddie smacks his arm. “I’m kidding. Doesn’t matter, anyway. Teacher’s only hot for doctor anyway.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You’d think that you would get less sappy over time. Or make less inappropriate jokes.”

“First of all, I never make the mistake of thinking anything, ever.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans. “Where’s Teddy? Is it too late to warn him to fire you? He’s so going to regret this. Who’s idea was this?”

Richie kisses Eddie again, even though he’s laughing, and it doesn’t take long for Eddie to be smiling into it, too. Sometimes he can’t believe how happy they get to be, now. That this is their life. That he gets to wake up each morning with Richie next to him, even on the mornings that Richie wakes up gasping for breath and even on the mornings where Eddie wakes up screaming and even on the mornings where their coffee machine breaks. They get every morning, and they get every night, and they get all of it in between.

“I love you,” Richie says. It never gets old. Eddie presses a soft kiss to Richie’s collarbone. “Thanks for moving out here with me.”

“You said it yourself, I���m engaged to the guy who survived on Mars. Perks come with it.”

Richie grins. “You know, you really do sound jealous. I can get you a teaching job, too, babe. They wouldn’t even bat an eyelid. I can ask for whatever I want. Hey, NASA, can we get a teaching job for the neurotic doctor? Maybe he can show them how to avoid getting infections when you get stabbed with an antenna.”

Eddie sighs. “For the last time, I’m not jealous of your teaching job, or of the movie they’re making about you, or of Bill’s book about you,” Eddie insists. “I don’t want a teaching job. I don’t want a movie. I don’t want a book.”

“Then what do you want?” Richie asks. “Cause I can get you anything in the world, Eddie my love.”

“Dumbass,” Eddie says gently. “I have everything I want. I moved to Texas to make sure I could keep it.”

It takes Richie a second, but when he gets it his cheeks go pink and he grins obnoxiously from ear to ear and Eddie’s heart is swooping in his chest just at the sight of it. It’s incredible, how much stronger he’s felt about Richie since they started dating. How it just gets stronger every day.

“Now who’s the sappy one?” Richie asks, but he’s crying just a little so his teasing comes up short.

“Still you,” Eddie insists. Richie gives him an unimpressed look. “Okay, both of us. But I’m not jealous.”

Richie laughs wetly. “Sounds like something a jealous man would say.”

“Oh, for god’s sake—” Eddie groans, but Richie just pulls him back in when he tries to break away, and when he’s pressed against Richie’s chest again Eddie can’t help but kiss him.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Hermiting (Post 91) 6-3-15

I had forgotten just how muggy the Ohio summers could get. As I remember back, the humidity didn’t really set in until the middle of July through August.  I don’t recall being able to spread the May air like peanut butter.  They say that an old man’s memory is like swish cheese, so I have been mulling over what February realities I might have also wiped from my cerebral hard drive. I have a vague recollection about something called shoveling and a wispy half-memory of my wet eyelashes welding together after leaving a sports practice.

The process of our family becoming acclimated to life in the Buckeye State is ongoing.  People here use the word “awesome” quite a bit and say “hecka” not at all. Nicholas, Abby and the dogs have now arrived safely, so Natalie is teaching them the local lingo.  She is now on summer vacation, and naturally, has been ill in bed for the last several days.  My sister, Amy, also paid the house a visit with her cat in preparation for her own emigration back from neighboring Pennsylvania at the end of the summer.  She is a teacher and has accepted a job in the English Department at the school where our father taught for close to half a century.

It is a full house with representation from three generations and three species.  Not too long ago, this was how everybody lived except there might even have been another generation or two present to chime in with their opinions, to require changing or to complain about the outlandish new contraptions and styles. Even with our measly three age groups present, we are periodically annoying each other.  The full house has been a particularly difficult transition for me as my life in California was very solitary for the last six months or so.

Near the end of the road with my last employer, I was largely living at work, commuting or sleeping.  My work day ran from 5 AM to 5 PM on a light day.  I ran into Abby and Nicholas about once a week, mostly on Monday nights. I usually talked with our expatriate Natalie for a quarter hour each evening on my drive home.  That was about it for regular communication with others of a non-professional nature.

I spent most of my work day on the factory floor but had surprisingly little meaningful interaction with people.  During breaks and lunches I retreated to my upstairs bunker in a deserted hall of the building that had been left vacant through a near decade of staffing reductions.  Each midday repast consisted of a cup of oatmeal and a few minutes of a video game on my phone.  If you ruled out my Monday meetings of the Men of Saint Joseph, there are probably Montana mountain men that had more meaningful personal collaborations and interfaces in an average week than I was totaling.

It was just Stephen, the dogs and myself at 387 Madera St. Our conversations pretty much consisted of:  “What’s for dinner,”  “Take your medicine,” and “Why are your pouring Tapatio and Tabasco on meat that was marinated in Sriracha?”  That was about the sum total of Stephen’s and my nightly discourse.  The dogs and I didn’t converse hardly at all.

Mostly I moved through my days like a solitary chess knight, incapable of getting much accomplished, trotting about in an ineffective dance of survival.  I suppose I lived an active interior life, if you count worry and fatalism as an effective use of time, which it wasn’t.  Sometimes I read enjoyable books, but cancelled our television to prevent myself from sinking too heavily into the Premier League soccer season and hot rod shows on the Velocity channel.  All and all, it was a pretty much the life of a hermit expect it was missing piety, useful reflection, prayer and a closeness to God.  My fatal grind into complete secular isolation seemed to be halted mostly by the good people of IHM parish and finally by the great mercy of being handed my final pay stub by The Man.  God had a different plan for me or He could see that I was going to do no better than what I was doing so he moved my cheese.

Actually, the several weeks of my unemployment were a very helpful interlude for me.  I attended daily Mass and had several breakfasts with men that I had become close to during Pam’s and Nicholas’ illnesses.  With a firm understanding not only that God exists but also a belief that He had things well in hand, I pretty much left things in His capable control with regard to my job search.  I interviewed with only three companies and received two offers in circumstances which also provided a strong indication as to which of the two offers was the one I was intended to take.  Other than the frozen highway in Wyoming, everything seemed to go smooth enough so that I understood that I was on the right path.  Upon arrival I began to immerse myself into family life and found that I could still interact with relatives and be considerate of other’s feelings although I still have my bad moments.

When I get aggravated at a family member, it is still awful tempting to turn inward again.  Although the house isn’t large, there is usually a room to retreat to, or a way to avoid someone who is getting on my nerves.  It is not hard to give my dad the slip, he has two titanium knee caps, so I don’t have to run far or fast when we are not getting along.  With all the electronics available in modern day life, it is also easy to disappear Houdini-style emotionally and mentally out of the actual presence of other people even when you are in the same room with them.  Still I don’t expect God mailed me across three quarters of a continent to cyber hide from my family in a Facebook game or electronic sports page.  I try to appreciate the valuable time that I have been given with my folks, kids and siblings that I previously would have squandered.

Providentially, at Sunday Mass, the Feast of the Trinity, the local Teen Life priest gave a good homily in which he explained the imagery of the Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity painted by Andrey Rublev between 1408-25.  Having studied Russian and visited Greece, I have always liked iconography and had seen the work.  It is, admittedly, not my favorite, because the black squiggly thing in the back right of center has always bothered me.  Still, I like the story of the three Persons of God eating a meal with Abraham on their way to reconnoiter Sodom’s inequity, so I tuned in to what the priest had to say.

He explained that Rublev painted an empty area among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as a symbol of what our relationship with God is meant for us.  Our purpose in our Earthly existence is to learn to occupy that space among and between our Three-in-One God.  Father Jim talks about how as a young man he had a relationship with God alone but then later came to know Jesus through Mary Magdalene.  Anyone who has experienced one of his homilies can see that Jim also now has a close relationship with the Holy Spirit.  Many of the rest of us are more one dimensional in our worship with most of our attention going towards Jesus.  The priest’s homily explained that God wants more for us than a one dimensional relationship and Jesus will help introduce us to the Father and the Spirit if we just ask.

The homily made a lot of sense to me, and it got me thinking as well.  I would not make a good hermit, because I like being alone too much and not in a good way.  It used to drive Pam to distraction that whenever she gave me the silent treatment, I seemed to revel in the solitude.  I expect that the point of being a hermit is to draw away from the world and closer to God; removing yourself from the world so that you can more fully immerse your consciousness in yourself or an entertainment is exactly the wrong idea.  I think God has taken that option off the table for me.  I will reside hereafter in the midst of noisy family life with little refuge for solitude as the basement has proved entirely too dusty even though it serves as a partial sanctuary from the humidity.

[memsmedic1]

A different part of Asia 05/29/17-07/01/17

Back in February, just after the Iraqi army and coalition forces had liberated eastern Mosul from ISIS and initiated the West Mosul offensive, I had contacted the Academy of Emergency Medicine (AEM), a Slovakian NGO, and requested information on what was required to volunteer with their organization. I sent in the required documents, but not a peep did I hear back from them afterwards, so I figured that it was a no go- plus I am so busy with M-EMS that I didn't think I would be able to volunteer with them even if I was accepted. So I was completely taken by surprise when on Thursday the 25th, on our second to last day of EMR training in Myawaddy I received an email from AEM stating that not only had I finally been checked and approved, but that if I was available there was currently an urgent need for medics to treat escaping civilians as well as the soldiers fighting ISIS. The only problem was that I knew I wouldn't be able to take that much time off on such short notice so I didn't even get my hopes up. However, the month of June was when we had planned to teach a large EMR course up in northern Myanmar, and because of multiple setbacks in that area we were forced to cancel. So now we actually did have an entire month where we weren't scheduled for anything major. When I mentioned the opportunity at our post-training team meeting on Friday, Myanmar EMS was excited about the prospect and volunteered to sponsor my time to make the mission happen pending finalization of a couple of scheduling issues with the AREMT. So now I was excited! I spent an agonizing weekend not knowing what I was going to do, but finally Sunday night we received the confirmation that assured I would be able to go! Monday the 29th I purchased my ticket and started getting packed. Tuesday morning though I woke up and found an email canceling my ticket with no explanation so I had to quickly go through the entire ticket finding process again and was able to find a replacement that wasn't too expensive and only pushed my flight back by one day. (Which is amazing because for some reason there aren't too many flights headed to Iraq!) Thursday, June 1st I woke up super early to make it to the airport on time for my flight. Some of my team were traveling to Thailand to take care some banking business (Myanmar's banking system is Byzantine) and show our school property to a potential buyer so it worked out perfectly for them to drop me off at the airport on their way. The first leg of the journey went from Yangon out over the Bay of Bengal, straight across India, and over the Persian Gulf to Doha, Qatar. The airport sits right on the water and the end of the runway is actually a seawall so I felt like we had taken a wrong turn and were on final approach to Saint Martin before we actually landed and I could finally see that we were in the middle of a sandstorm that was partially obscuring my view of the skyscrapers and sand dunes! Inside the airport everything was extremely plush and lavish, there's an entire mall inside with every exclusive retailer in the world seeming to have a storefront. There's Mercedes, Ducati, and Lamborghini showroom models for sale and raffle scattered around, and if you're interested you can buy gold bars or coins in any of the jewelry stores! After a 3 1/2 hour layover, I boarded another almost empty flight that flew me northwest over the Persian Gulf towards Mosul and ISIS. The destination for this flight is Erbil, the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, a fully autonomous region in northern Iraq about 90 km from the city of Mosul and a major staging ground of the Battle for Mosul that has been underway now for the better part of a year. At first after crossing into Iraq the terrain was flat, bone dry, and arid desert, but the farther north we flew the more rugged and mountainous it became. Eventually I started to see trees on the higher hills and finally we started flying over snow covered mountains! Shortly after leaving the mountains behind we began to prepare for landing. Instead of beginning our descent a couple hundred miles away from our destination, we remained at nearly cruising altitude until we flew over Erbil. Then the pilot flew in a figure eight pattern while dropping us down towards the runway. We descended so fast that I felt like I was training for a trip to the space station while nearly levitating under my seatbelt! In the airport I went through customs and then took a shuttle to the civilian meeting point where I was picked up by Oliver and Sven, who run AEM operations in Iraq. After introductions they took me to their main base in Erbil. This is in what used to be a very nice mansion but it's been neglected for a while now and is surrounded by mostly abandoned and run down compounds. After we got there I was introduced to Monir, another paramedic who had arrived last night. Oliver gave us an orientation talk and then we went to the market to buy whatever gear we didn't already have with us. By this time it was 0130 for me with time change so I went to bed. In the morning we loaded up and met with Pete and Walter from Global Response Management to form a convoy on the 90 km drive to Mosul in Nineveh province. I was even allowed to drive one of the Toyota hiluxes in the convoy! After leaving Erbil we drove northwest through the desert passing countless checkpoints and places in the road where at some time either a large dirt berm had been across it and recently bulldozed through or where the road had been mined and the craters filled in with dirt. The closer we got to Mosul the more damage there was. Houses completely riddled with holes, burned out, or with blast damage. Finally ahead of us we could see the smoke over the city and as we stopped at the last checkpoint before crossing the floating bridge over the Tigris River we could hear the fighting. After arriving in western Mosul we stopped along the side of the road as refugees flowed by going in the opposite direction, a Predator drone circled overhead, and one of ISIS' Dushka heavy machine guns intermittently barked out strings of epithets a half mile to our left. We had stopped in this prime location for our mandatory security briefing:...Don't talk to the jihadi's...don't get shot or exploded...Don't run outside and wave at unidentified drones...If there's a problem run in that direction... Etc. Afterwards we struck off towards the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) forward operating base 1 and 3, which were combined after they sustained too many losses to operate separately. They are stationed in a couple large abandoned houses just west of the Old City. Along the way we had to drive within 700 meters of ISIS around the outskirts of ISIS controlled Old City. Here we dropped off a truck full of supplies as well as Monir to help reinforce two paramedics and several Iraqi medics who are already staffing this trauma stabilization point (TSP) co-located with ISOF. As the name implies, a TSP is located as close to the fighting as is safe and is where front line injuries come for stabilization so they can survive the trip to various field hospitals located several kilometers farther away from the front where they will receive additional stabilization or definitive care. Then we continued on to ISOF 2's FOB where Walter and I would initially be stationed with a team of several Iraqi medics and two Americans, Chris and James, at a second TSP that AEM is staffing. ISOF 2 is based in an old mosque just southwest of the Old City and had been an ISIS stronghold up until less then 2 months ago when this block was liberated. ISOF are US trained, urban warfare specialists who are engaging ISIS in close quarters, sometimes in hand to hand combat as they work in cooperation with the Iraqi army and the various militias and coalition forces to liberate the maze of alleyways and neighborhoods of Mosul's Old City inch by bloody inch. The challenge that makes this so difficult is that the streets of the Old City are so old that they are too narrow for tanks, Humvees, or even pickup trucks so all the fighting must be carried out via drone or other air strikes or dismounted, on foot. Also, ISIS refuses to let civilians leave the war zone and tries to shoot anyone who does, currently holding approximately 180,000 civilians (6/2) as hostages for their own enjoyment and as human shields, preventing coalition forces from simply razing the entire area to the ground. We threw our gear into the library aka bunk room and started introducing ourselves to the ISOF medics who were there at the moment. Before we even finished this our first patient came screeching up to the front gate in the back of a Humvee. An old man had been attempting to flee the Old City with his family when he was spotted by a sniper and was shot in the flank which also fractured his pelvis. We quickly stabilized him as much as possible and then called up one of the ambulances donated by the WHO and staffed by local volunteers to transport him to the hospital. It is amazing how all the civilians here in the neighborhood around the TSP and in all the liberated areas, many of whom escaped from the Old City only within the last week or two, are attempting to pick up their life where it was interrupted by ISIS. While many houses have been completely destroyed and thousands of homeless people are making their way to relatives homes or the IDP camps, even more are staying behind to begin the daunting task of rebuilding their lives and city. Some people are opening up their market stands and other businesses again, others are repairing damaged buildings and plastering over bullet holes, and city employees are repairing water, power, and sanitation infrastructure and clearing away as much of the rubble as possible. There are IED's camouflaged everywhere in the liberated areas, as well as unexploded ordnance, broken glass, disabled vehicles, and craters in the roads either from air strikes or IED's. Many roads are still barricaded on purpose to deter ISIS from driving their never ending supply of VBIED's (vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices) past the siege of Iraqi and coalition forces and into the liberated areas of the city. At first our patient volume was fairly low with just a few soldiers per day and the majority being civilians. The most common civilian problem was symptoms resulting from observing Ramadan which is from May 26 through June 24 this year- dizziness, weakness, tiredness, syncope, and kidney failure from not eating or drinking all day and then eating loads of salt and sugar at night. During the day the temperature rises to 115-119 degrees Fahrenheit and everybody is chronically dehydrated. Next most common problem is injuries resulting from exploding IED's- burns, shrapnel, head injuries, soft tissue injuries, "danglies", and amputations. Anywhere ISIS occupied for any length of time (all of Mosul) is infested with ingeniously disguised explosives. Candy bars, coke cans, toys, microwaves, refrigerators, faucet handles, livestock (we saw both a chicken bomb and a donkey bomb), doorknobs, and pressure plates under the tile floor running to a claymore built into the wall and plastered over are just a few of the items ISIS rigs to explode when families try to return home. Every day the sounds of the fighting echo in the background of everything we do. The sharp ringing and cracking of small arms fire that occasionally sends a bullet ricocheting off the wall of the mosque, deep heavy whumping of coalition air strikes and ISIS mortars, brrrrrrrrrrrping of A-10 Warthogs strafing insurgent positions, and the chest resonating kaboom of the occasional VBIED that would cause the curtains to jerk and the doors to shake and send up a massive fireball into the dusty sky became so normal that we hardly noticed them any more. After 10 days of working at ISOF 2 being on call 24/7 Walter and I took our truck and convoyed with Oliver and Sven back to Erbil to rest for a couple days and bring back supplies for the TSP's. In addition to sleeping and washing clothes we enjoyed exploring the city of Erbil which happens to hold the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world! You could probably say that we were all pretty exhausted and happy for a respite from the constantly "switched on" mode of the front but occasionally it went too far. One day while we were back in Erbil a huge shipment of medical supplies arrived at the airport for us and Oliver and Sven went to pick it up with one of the trucks and a cargo van. Unfortunately it was stuck in customs and wasn't accessible that day so they came back home. After getting back they realized that they had both ridden back in the truck and forgot the van at the airport! That very next day Monir, who had come back a day after me from the other TSP for a quick break also, went to get food from a great little restaurant close by and not only could he not find the shop, but when he walked back to where he thought the truck was parked it was gone! After frantically searching for it everywhere without success he got a taxi back to the house and told Oliver. Oliver and Sven took the keys and went to do a quick drive-by before calling the police and found the truck sitting nicely parked and locked within sight of the restaurant! After the break when we returned to Mosul Walter and I were assigned to staff ISOF 1 and 3 along with Monir, a paramedic named Anthony who was the team leader and a nurse named Steve, because two paramedics from Australia had arrived to volunteer for a while and were placed at ISOF 2. The Australians were very friendly and fun to hang out with. They were super health oriented and tried to work out on the roof of the mosque two or 3 times per day. It was extra funny because after just 2 days they both got violently sick from the food or water or both and had to go back to Erbil for a while to recover! Working at ISOF 1 and 3 came with a couple perks. For one, the ISOF medics here weren't as incompetent and tried to be proactive when treating patients. For another, there's a kitchen and a cook here so food doesn't have to come from ISOF headquarters! Only downside is that we have to keep our heads down behind the low wall on the flat roof because ISIS snipers have a clear line of sight to this position. On Wednesday the 14th ISIS rushed the front line and launched a counterattack with 7 VBIED's and approximately 100 men. At least 23 ISIS (aka Daesh) were confirmed killed and the rest were pushed back into the Old City. Casualties were plentiful and were divided up over several TSP's. On Sunday the 18th the Iraqi army and coalition forces officially announced a new assault on the Old City after almost a week of fighting at a standstill. This lull had occurred because one of the regiments of the 9th division had become bogged down while clearing their assigned section of the the Old City and everyone else had to stop their advance and wait for them to catch up again. Because there are so many players assisting in the Battle for Mosul, there are huge variances in training and proficiency and effective communications between everyone is sometimes lacking. Now that everyone is back in place the Iraqi army is confident that this is the "final chapter" in the Battle for Mosul that has been dragging on for almost a year. On the 22nd we woke up to discover that during the night the 844 year old Great Mosque of al-Nuri, from which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had announced Islamic State's so called caliphate on July 4, 2014, had been blown up by retreating jihadists. 😥 The Great Mosque is where the world-famous 148 foot tall leaning al-Hadba (the hunchback) minaret had been before it was also destroyed. Our TSP had been close enough to this piece of history that we could clearly see the black flag of ISIS flying at its peak. As the coalition continued gaining back ground from Daesh our TSP's at ISOF's forward operating bases started getting farther and farther away from the front line, which meant that anyone injured in the fighting had a longer way to come to reach medical care. So one day Oliver, Sven, and I went to find a new building to use as a stabilization point. After driving down the main road a little over a mile we found a water purification facility with a walled compound that would work great for us once it was de-mined. Unfortunately, the very next day it received several direct hits from a 120mm mortar and was completely destroyed. We then made contact with the 16th division of the Iraqi army who had a small first aid station set up in a carpentry shop a couple hundred yards further back from the water plant. They had three army medics working around the clock treating dozens of soldiers and over 150 civilians per day with almost no supplies. When Oliver asked Major Ahmed if we could bring in some medics and supplies to work with them the Major almost started crying. So starting the next day AEM started staffing medics at 16th division including myself, being sure to keep some volunteers at ISOF 2 and ISOF 1 and 3 to maintain coverage. Although some civilians just can't take it anymore and try to escape before the army recaptures their house or street most wait because one of the things ISIS enjoys the most is shooting men, women, and children in the back as they try to escape. Those who are liberated or make it to the Iraqi lines and searched and questioned and then walk down the road right past our TSP on their way to a family members home or an IDP camp. If they were shot or wounded by an IED on their way out of the Old City we would treat them and send them to the hospital via ambulance. There were also many patients with old injuries that we would assess and clean, and we treated hundreds of patients with life threatening dehydration. When the civilians were uninjured, we would simply greet them as they walked by, celebrating with them if they were happy and consoling them if they were sad. And there was always work to do assisting other humanitarian agencies in passing out food and water to the starving, malnourished children and their families. If the TSP was relatively quiet we would sometimes go and pick up loads of elderly, sick, or injured civilians in our ambulances or the large open freight trucks that the UN funded NGO 'Muslim Aid' uses to haul in food and water for the refugees passing our TSP and haul away dead bodies. This helps take some of the load off the Iraqi army who have evacuated hundreds of the injured on their armored Humvees either sitting or lying on stretchers tied to the hood. On the 23rd our position was overrun with overzealous reporters who had found out about our TSP and all the refugees fleeing down our road as the army pushed in opening escape routes and were trying to get stories. We banned them from the critical patient side of the carpentry shop and kept on working as best we could. After an hour and a half however, we began coming under mortar fire and all the journalists quickly started leaving. The army intelligence officers who worked with us at the TSP sniffing out disguised Daesh and their families discovered that one of the reporters had been hosting a live news broadcast and ISIS had used it to work out our location. Those reporters won't be coming back. They quickly called in coalition air support to locate the source of the offending projectiles and after several air strikes that were close enough to set off car alarms and rattle all the metal doors up and down the street everything was back to normal. Across the Tigris in east Mosul, which has been a liberated and semi- functional city for the past 5 months, three suicide bombers blew themselves up in a residential neighborhood in retaliation for the increased pressure they are feeling from the offensive, killing 5 and injuring 19 others. The next day on the 24th Major Ahmed received intel that we had a suicide bomber of our very own who had made his way through the army lines disguised as a cripple and was targeting our TSP. We quickly shut everything down and went to evacuate when Monir realized that he had lost the truck keys! We waited for several tense minutes until Pete arrived from ISOF 1 and 3 and we all piled into the back of his truck and called it a day! A total of 5 suicide bombers infiltrated the city that day and later that night we were woken up to care for some of their handiwork. On the evening of the 25th I was just relaxing after a suspiciously quiet day when I started hearing shouting and extra shooting and then convoy after convoy of Humvees, MRAPS, and M1 Abrams tanks screaming past the TSP away from the direction of the Old City. When I went up to the roof and looked around the entire city to the Southwest of our position was nothing but smoke and fire and shooting. It turns out several dozen Daesh had slipped past the Iraqi army's siege around the Old City through a series of "rat holes" (holes punched through the walls of interconnected houses as well as subterranean tunnels) and launched a massive surprise counterattack after popping up just on the the other side of ISOF 1 and 3 where I had been working that day. They lit houses and cars on fire and then began fighting their way back towards the Old City and us attacking Iraqi and coalition positions from behind. For a couple hours we were within line of sight of the new front line and I could see ISIS muzzle flashes and angry red tracers cracking through the air past the TSP. As you can imagine we were busy that night as panicking civilians tried to evacuate and fled in all directions without rhyme or reason, some fleeing east toward the Old City and some west towards the new offensive with cows and flocks of sheep and goats all mixed in. After the army got organized and started pushing back the offensive quickly crumbled and by midnight victory was declared although there was a thorough house to house mop-up in the morning. The last 3 jihadis involved in the counterattack who weren't killed barricaded themselves in a house holding a family of 14 hostage. After an 18 hour standoff 2 ISOF snipers were able to get in position to shoot two of them and the third was overpowered by his hostages. Before the army could move in the family opened the front door and tripped a claymore placed by the 3 Daesh to deter an attack on their position. Five family members were rushed to our TSP in critical condition and after doing what we could to stabilize them they were transferred to Mosul General. On June 29th, my last day in Mosul, the Iraqi army recaptured the destroyed Great Mosque where the iconic leaning al-Hadba minaret had once stood. This was met with great happiness by Iraqi army and citizens alike as a symbolic victory over ISIS in Mosul. That afternoon I had to tell all the medics and soldiers I'd lived and worked with for the past month goodbye, then I left Mosul and drove back to Erbil to clean up and pack so I would be ready to leave the next morning. In Erbil also I had to say goodbye to many friends that I had met and spent time with over the last month. Afterwards Sven dropped me off at the airport and after barely catching my flight I flew back to Doha, Qatar, and then on to Yangon, Myanmar arriving at six o'clock in the morning on July 1st. Volunteering in Mosul for this month was an amazing experience, making lifelong friends and memories. Even though there were so many sickening and twisted things happening while I was here I was able to help a little and make a difference for a lot of people and I am hoping to come back again sometime!

[bigyack-com]

The C.E.O. at the Center of New York’s Coronavirus Crisis

Dr. Steven Corwin was a doctor during the AIDS crisis. He was the chief medical officer at NewYork-Presbyterian on Sept. 11, 2001. He has never seen anything like this.Dr. Corwin, now chief executive of NewYork-Presbyterian, says the coronavirus pandemic has stretched his institution to the brink. It has taken a devastating toll on its patients, its doctors, its nurses and even the hospital group’s balance sheet.NewYork-Presbyterian’s facilities have been at the center of the crisis. The first confirmed case in the New York area was in one of the group’s hospitals, and over the past two months, its emergency rooms and intensive care units have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.Dr. Corwin believes the worst is over, at least for now. Yet he remains concerned about a resurgence of the virus as social distancing measures are relaxed around the country, and is particularly troubled by the emotional effects the crisis is having on doctors and nurses.This conversation, which was condensed and edited for clarity, was part of a series of new live Corner Office calls discussing the crisis. Visit timesevents.nytimes.com to join upcoming calls.DAVID GELLES When did you and your team first become aware of this novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan, and what steps did you start to take to potentially prepare for its arrival in New York?DR. STEVEN CORWIN Any time you see a viral infection like that in any part of the world, it raises your antennae. And when we saw what was happening in Wuhan, we were concerned about the possibility that it would come to the U.S. We started asking our infectious-disease people at that time: “What is this virus? How does it behave? What’s the mortality associated with it?” We were concerned enough to start preparing for a pandemic.GELLES How did you ramp up your testing, modeling and preparations?CORWIN We were hampered in February by the faulty Centers for Disease Control test, as well as the insistence that the C.D.C. do any potential testing where we thought somebody might be positive. That really held us back, and quite frankly, I think during that period of time we missed the idea of community spread. When we saw Italy and we started to model out what that looked like, we became extremely concerned, and started really ramping up our preparations.GELLES Part of those preparations were, of course, assessing how much personal protective equipment you had, how many ventilators and I.C.U. beds you had. What did NewYork-Presbyterian do when you realized just what kind of actual resources were going to be needed to combat this virus?CORWIN Our assumptions around pandemic preparation were flawed. The first was that you could do quick and universal testing and contact tracing quite easily. That was Strike 1, because that didn’t happen.The second was that our stockpiles of personal protective equipment could weather the first surge of the pandemic. That turned out to be completely false. We went from using 4,000 masks a day to 40,000 masks a day during the initial part of the crisis, to 90,000 masks a day at the peak of the crisis, and we did not have the stockpiles to make up for that.The third was that with a modest surge in intensive care unit beds we would be OK, and that was a gross underestimate. We had 450 I.C.U. beds. We got to 900 I.C.U. beds by the peak of this.Our preparation around the pandemic was insufficient, and the state and the national level was also insufficient in terms of stockpiling. We were on a hunt for P.P.E. right from the beginning. There was a free-for-all. We were able to secure some supplies from China. We didn’t have to buy things off the back of trucks, but we were very careful about how many masks we were using.GELLES When did you get your first case?CORWIN On March 1, in our Lawrence Hospital facility in southern Westchester, we had the first case of community spread of the virus with a 52-year-old male lawyer. That was the first time that we had seen somebody who did not have a travel history come down with the infection. We had admitted him to the institution on a Friday with pneumonia. We assumed it was a bacterial pneumonia. When he didn’t get better by Sunday, we did send a coronavirus test out, and he was positive. That’s when we knew we had community spread in New York State. And that’s when we knew that once you have community spread like that, that the outbreak was going to look pretty similar to Wuhan and Italy, and that’s when we really understood that this was going to be a crisis.GELLES Take us inside the E.R.s and the I.C.U.s over the past month or so. What’s it been like for your doctors and nurses on the ground?CORWIN I took care of many patients through the AIDS epidemic, another horrific story, but I’ve never seen anything like this. The sheer numbers of patients. The fact that all of them were really quite ill. The number of patients that needed to be put immediately on a ventilator. The number of patients that came into the emergency room about ready to die. The same in our I.C.U.s.It really was, even for somebody like myself, who has taken care of many patients through the years, really startling. The physical and emotional toll this has taken on everybody who works in our system is just enormous. It almost feels like the AIDS epidemic compressed into a six-week period of time. It’s something I’ve never witnessed in 40 years of medicine.GELLES At the peak of this surge, what was the single biggest challenge that your hospital system encountered?CORWIN The biggest challenge we faced was being able to create enough I.C.U. beds to withstand the high tide. We had to create I.C.U.s out of operating rooms, I.C.U.s out of procedure suites, I.C.U.s out of conference areas. That meant construction. It meant creating negative pressure rooms. It meant piping in oxygen.Then we had to come up with a completely novel way of staffing the I.C.U.s to be able to deliver the excellent care that people expect. Then we weren’t sure whether we had enough ventilators, and thanks to the ingenuity of our respiratory therapists, we were able to create ventilators out of anesthesia machines. We were able to split ventilators to be able to ventilate two patients simultaneously.GELLES Where are we now, and what are your concerns as you look forward in the months ahead?CORWIN First, just as a citizen having lived through this, it’s really important for people in other parts of the country to really understand how horrific this can be if an outbreak happens. I worry about opening up too early and having a significant resurgence of this. In the absence of substantially increased testing, you’re not going to know. I’m not convinced that the relaxation is going to be beneficial to the economy if we do it too quickly. We know we can’t do it too quickly.Our view of it is we have to keep a fair amount of our excess I.C.U. capacity. We have to stockpile the P.P.E. We’re going to be living with masks and protective gear for quite a while. It’s going to change the way we live as a country. It’s certainly going to change the way that my institution operates, and we’re looking at every aspect of that: from going into a doctor’s examining room and how to clean it, to how many virtual visits are we going to do, to making sure that we space hours so that we don’t congregate patients, to making sure that we don’t have more than four or five people in an elevator at any one point in time.The idea of 40 people in a waiting room? Not going to happen. The idea of people congregating in a cafeteria? Not going to happen. All of those things we’re trying to rethink now.GELLES How is NewYork-Presbyterian going to weather these staggering deficits under which it’s currently operating?CORWIN We think that over the course of this pandemic, we anticipate that we’ll lose probably, by year’s end, close to $1 billion, if not more than that. Thankfully, we have the balance sheet to be able to withstand that.I’m very fearful of the notion that we’re going to lay off people. I will resist that as long as I possibly can, and I’m hoping to avoid that, period, for a very simple reason. Morally speaking, all of the people that work for us have run through walls to get us through this crisis. You can’t turn around and say, “The finances aren’t great, so we’re going to furlough people.” So we’re going to do everything we can to have everybody who has a job keep a job, everybody who has a salary to be able to continue to maintain their living for their family. I think that’s what we owe to the workers who work for us.GELLES Given that, as you said, many of your assumptions were flawed, how do you change the way you prepare, going forward from this point?CORWIN We, as a country, have to think about the supply chain differently. All the manufacturing of the gowns, masks, etc., were, for all intents and purposes, in China or, ironically, in Italy. And so we were cut off from the supply chain, and we did not have enough of a stockpile to deal with it. The same goes for ventilator supply.The same thing goes for I.C.U. bed capacity. We’re not going to go back to the capacity we had. We’re going to have a fairly large reserve, larger than what we previously had. Flexibility, both on the space side and the staffing side, I think, is something that we were not prepared for.I also think that we get super specialized in medicine. But in this crisis we redeployed a lot of physicians who had not done intensive care medicine in quite a while. They did a remarkable job, but we have to be much more structured about giving people those experiences so that we can turn it on and turn it off as need be. Read the full article

[onthebackline]

SubWoofers 2.0?

This is a quick follow up to the blog just submitted, where I’ll run you through some of the issues that I was more aware of at subwoofers and what should change next year and go into a bit more detail on some stuff I missed. After a de-brief of the Subwoofers, it became apparent that there were many areas that could’ve been worked on, small things that might have improved the day immensely:

Reputable Companies.

One of the most annoying things leading up to the event was trying to assure that we would get enough fencing, as the fencing company required us to have a telehandler onsite to unload it, but we couldn’t confirm when the telehandler should arrive, as the fencing company couldn’t confirm to us when they themselves would arrive. On the delivery day, the poor telehandler operator ended up waiting from around 11 am till 6pm while myself and other team members shouted down the phone at the fencing company to find out where the fencing was. This was one incident that I had to deal with firsthand, but during the debrief we were told how several companies or parties that had been suggested to us, hadn’t really been up to standard.

Most of the suggestions came from the charity, who had previous event experience, but not on this scale, and effectively working for them we couldn’t really reject their orders. Thankfully the small annoyances that came from this didn’t pile together and the event was still a success, but it becomes easy to see the value of reputation after this experience. One amazing example was Entertec, the company who provided both stages, the PA system, Lighting and the main generators for themselves and some of the traders. Coming up to the event they kept good communication with our main stage manager and kept pestering us for the information they needed. When it came to the day of the event they were fully prepared with no issues, and again made my job, as second stage manager, the easiest task that it could be. It's important that if The Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity want to continue Subwoofers and make it even better next year, then they will need to establish contacts with a good reputation and to invest in networking within the event industry.

(Mainstage provided by Entertec)

Surprise Deck Chairs

So about 2 days before the event, we were told the hearing dogs had just spent a grand on 300 deck chairs for the event. In retrospect, yes the deckchairs were a good idea, even though everyone complained they took too long to clean up. The problem came from the fact that there was a massive lack of management when it came to how and where they would be distributed. The original idea was to have a steward take donations to loan out chairs to attendees, a donate what you like scheme. the chairs got delivered first thing in the morning and I went with a small team of people to help unload them, however, we didn’t know where they should've gone within the site and the delivery driver has just parked in the middle of the field anyway. Since there were 300 of these heavy wooden chairs, we simply made a few piles of them as they were folded and left them in the middle of the field. the story goes that since they looked ugly, stewards were told to arrange some of them in front of the stage before the site opened. This seemed to work out but the fact was there never was a steward collecting donations as no one had any free bodies who could work the entire open time and an easy few hundred pounds in donations were never collected.

Because this was such a last minute addition it was hard to incorporate it into the event anyway, but then there was little help from hearing dogs as they were the ones who suggested having a steward or volunteer, but then didn’t provide one when our team was just about fully staffed itself. this shows that we definitely needed to communicate to the Hearing Dogs better and make sure we had any ideas from them well in advance, but also let them know that we can’t just accept their ideas with such little time and expect it all to go right.

Team Specific lead up

So one thing that really annoyed the production and logistics team was being on site for 3 days around the event and arriving on Sunday at 7 am when the other teams only had to be in from 10 (I think). This could’ve been the grounds for an argument or two but no one really cared enough after a while for anything to happen. Logistics and production did understand the site better than the talent and marketing teams but that didn’t mean the manpower wouldn’t have been helpful to us, especially on the Saturday after the fencing had been late the day before.

The pack-down of the site had happened so quickly as there were around 40-50 people helping rather than just 15, and this would help everyone get an idea of the site if the helped build it rather then just turn up. And it would help reinforce this next point.

Pre-Event Briefing

One of the interesting things about the event is that all our team members had wristbands that allowed us backstage access, access on and off site and made us identifiable to security and other parties without having to be stewards.

I never got one of these wristbands, I never knew who was giving them out or where I got them from. As well as having everyone arrive at the same time to help build the site, it would’ve been beneficial to have even a short brief at the beginning of the day. so everyone can see the map and know the finalized locations of everything, so people without radios would know where the nearest person with a radio would be and simple stuff like that.

Thankfully, There were no serious incidents due to this, but it should definitely happen at a follow-up event, for organizers, stewards and external volunteers. I also missed a proper radio briefly, but apparently, no one had time for these (either to brief someone or to be briefed) and we were given helpful scenario codes.

Late Artists

I said in the earlier blog that around 80% percent of my artists started and/or finished late when performing on the main stage because we had the flexibility for them to overrun, however, we had no control of whether the artist due to be onstage was actually going to arrive on time. I wasn’t too panicked myself, there was enough free time for the artists to be late. but next year, that space could be used much more efficiently, meaning that set changeover times would be much shorter, and meaning having late artists wouldn’t cut it.

Artist variety

Ok, I'm just being picky here but I heard the same Robbie Williams songs on my stage twice and I realised I had way too many solo artists who could fall into the same genre. there was definitely variety near the beginning of the event planning process but it changed so many times and the majority of the artists on my stage ended up being audibly similar.

I feel like the talent team went out to find artists to fill spots on the stage, but I feel next year there should be an idea of what artists are wanted to fill the headline spot, what vibes they want for the crowd, and then have the talent team invest in the local music scene to find artists that match what they’re looking for. They should spend a long time building a lineup than just filling it as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

I think I'm done complaining for another 3 months at least, but before we go, it's easy to see some patterns within these problems and their solutions. The main one being communication. I think this has to be most importantly enforced between Hearing Dogs and Bucks Live. there were loads of little and annoying changes that got thrown on us, made as an executive decision by HD that we weren't always able to dispute. each of the teams should have a leader but i feel maybe a member from each team (maybe the leader, maybe not) could represent the team to HD, and whoever they should consult for info at Hearing dogs. Although, that's assuming that Hearing Dogs will work with the students next year. (I have no idea what their plan is...)

just a reminder, these weren’t the only problems we faced with the event, and some aren’t even important, but these are the ones I feel most comfortable talking about as these were the ones that directly affected my work towards the event. Either way that's all from me for a bit...

Adios amigos. Ill blog again in year 3 probably...

Hendrickx out