Schaefer method

The Schaefer method of artificial resuscitation is the horsey ride of lifesaving.

That said, it was also kind of fun.

For those of you (read: everyone) who don't know how this works, it's pretty simple: the person to be resuscitated lies on his stomach, allowing fluids to drain from his lungs (and preventing him from swallowing his tongue!) while the resuscitator sits on his back "with his hands between the short ribs." (Reading this made me hungry, though I've eaten ribs only once in my life, with my grandparents somewhere in Jersey when I was maybe 10. At the time, they offended my occasionally-fastidious sensibilities, but I have a feeling that by this time in my life I would essentially be om nom nomming all the way home.)

Anyhow, the short ribs. The resuscitator leans forward, pushing the air out of the poor, conked-out rescuee's lungs, then releases pressure, allowing the air back in. In the Handbook, this is even illustrated, albeit somewhat uselessly. Please note that the pictures accompanying this entry are from the Handbook via Project Gutenberg, and not from my own demonstration, which involved 100% more sweatpants.

So, it's been a long week -- the first week of school means back-to-school throat (the teachers' affliction of a combination of stress, talking loudly, and sudden exposure to all the germs you didn't have to deal with over the summer), and this evening was shaping up to mean a long nap and not much else. However, my husband is a good, good person and was willing to volunteer himself for some saving of lives.

The entire process was pretty easy, and (according to John) works quite well in the lung-compression department. I kept asking for feedback while I was also doing the pushing-out-air section of Schaefering, which made it difficult for John to answer, but in later debriefings he made it clear that the whole shebang did effectively encourage some breathing. Surprise big of news: while being compressed, your communication is largely reduced to tapping on the ground with increasing or decreasing measures of urgency.

The main advantage to the Schaefer method, as far as I can tell, is this: it's quick and easy, and takes essentially no skill. While the internet has told me the Schaefer method was replaced by another lifesaving method (Holger Neilson, named for a Danish fencer whose name is funnier, and which involves pressing on the resuscetee's upper back) in 1952, and eventually by mouth-to-mouth in the late '50s. Mouth-to-mouth, of course, requires way more skill, or at least more physical contact. Schaefer? Easy peasy. You can even do it on your apartment floor, while wearing sweatpants.

Glub glub

When we left each other yesterday, we had just been talking about how many, many requirements the Swimming and Life saving badges have. And through a series of emails I've received today, I'm starting to get the idea that some of you may be a little doubtful that any actual swimming took place -- after all, yesterday's video did just cut off with me expressing some reluctance to get fully into the water.

Never fear.



Strict as I may be (or may be inclined to be), know this: Wendy's neighbor, Robin, is far, far stricter than I am. While I might have been tempted to consider that swimming 200 yards total and swimming 50 yards fully dressed could overlap, Robin was having none of it. This applied across the board -- diving from the surface and diving from the surface to retrieve a 5 pound weight also didn't overlap. (This is probably for the best, really. I'm sure that the original Handbook didn't mean for the scouts to conflate one badge activity into another, so really, Robin was probably right. Plus, it meant extra swimming for me, which was probably healthier after all.)

After some convincing (it was only maybe 70 out, and the water was an easy 10 degrees colder than that), it was time. We started out with the clothed swim, then moved into the two hundred yards and the one hundred hands-less backstroke. (Let me tell you, the photography for the hands-less backstroke just looks awkward, but it went much, much better than I'd expected, and was maybe the most useful piece of the whole set of requirements. After all, if I'm saving someone, I'll need my hands for other purposes, right?) I tried to switch up strokes in general, though it's been a long time since I really did much regular swimming.

When I was a kid, I took swimming lessons at day camp. I was much more of an indoor arts and crafts kind of kid, and my general lack of competitiveness led itself more towards basic swimming than towards kickball, volleyball, any of the standard summer camp stuff. (Besides, I was generally too independent for camp -- I didn't like the regimented schedule, either.) This leads, really, to another of the reasons why the Handbook and I are such a good match. While I was never a fast swimmer, I was an enthusiastic and solid one. I liked swimming because it was fun, not because it was something I might win. The Handbook, in fact, cautions against focusing too heavily on speed and competition in swimming -- "Speed swimming for itself alone is a very selfish sport so that the scout should develop his ability to make it generally useful to others." I keep returning to the public spiritedness of the Handbook, I know, but time and again I'm reminded that this is my favorite part of the project -- we're doing things because they're useful.

I'd forgotten a weight to dive for, but Wendy's mother, Bonnie, produced a small barbell, so I used that instead. The real difficulty there came in with the similar colors of the blue-coated barbell and the dark blue pool bottom. There was a certain amount of blind groping going on at the bottom of the pool. To be more true to the spirit of the badge, I think this would have had to take place in a lake or something with a dark, muddy bottom, so once again, I suppose the barbell camouflage will have to do.

The final piece, and maybe the best, was the actual rescuing. Wendy is a great sport, so she volunteered herself to faux-drown. I first did the release demonstrations on land, and they were no real problem -- I loosed myself from various chokeholds with no trouble at all. In the water, however, things got much more difficult.

See, here's my issue with the Life saving badge: not enough actual saving of lives. The only water-based lifesaving requirement is to demonstrate two forms of release in the water. There are two problems with this: first, there's no water depth requirement (though Wendy and I used the deep end of the pool -- it only seemed fair) and, other than those two releases (we did a wrist grab and a chokehold), there's no demonstration of pulling someone to safety or anything else lifesaving-related. For a document so concerned with completeness, the Handbook is mysteriously silent on this front. I've been trying to think of why, but I'm really coming up empty-handed on this one. Any ideas?

Regardless, Wendy was a good sport about these things and allowed me to mime knocking the wind out of her, breaking her wrists, all that kind of thing. Despite the lack of requirements, she also allowed me to pull her to safety (so much the better -- I secretly think this is the most practical aspect of the Life saving badge, even though it's not a real one).

By the end of the morning, I was content to award myself the Swimming badge, and I'm one demonstration of resuscitation away from Life saving. Happy end of summer, kids.

Swimtastic!

I don't care what the equinox says -- Labor Day is the end of summer, and that's that.

In general, honestly, I get a little glum at this time of year. It's not that I don't want to go back to work (I do, of course) -- it's just the passage of time, the (soon-emergent) chill in the air, all that. Of course, this isn't entirely the healthiest outlook, so this year I wanted to try to show summer a little appreciation on its way out.

Oh reader, I went to Long Island. And reader, I did more swimming than I have since I went to day camp.

There was a reason, of course. My dear friend Wendy is from Long Island, and she has a neighbor with a pool. A particularly tolerant neighbor, that is, one who got a phone call that went something like this: "Hi. My friend is doing Boy Scout badges. Can we go swimming in your pool in our clothes?" It is a fine, fine person who hears something like this and says yes.

See, in honor of the end of summer, and in honor of impending chilly temperatures, Wendy and I decided to tackle the Swimming and Life saving badges. So, this morning, I suited up and we headed over to Wendy's neighbor to take a dip.



The Swimming and Life saving badges are surprisingly simple, and they have a surprising amount of overlap. Swimming requires that one swims for a hundred yards, dives from the surface of the water, does any type of backstroke for fifty feet, and is proficient in the breaststroke, sidestroke, and crawl.

Life saving is a little more complicated -- rather than simply diving from the surface, the candidate has to drive into seven to ten feet of water and haul up a 5 pound sandbag. Instead of swimming one hundred yards, this time it's two (one hundred of which must be on the back without using hands, and for fifty of which the candidate has be to dressed (wearing a minimum of shirt, pants, and shoes). There are requirements regarding actual lifesaving, too -- demonstrating five methods of release (which appear to be just getting a drowning person to let go of you so you don't both drown) on land and two in the water, as well as demonstrating one particular resuscitation method.

It's been a long day, friends, so I'll tell you the rest tomorrow. (Spoiler! I don't drown.)

Mannahatta and me

The overarching theme of this project so far has really been a simple one. It's not just to look at the requirements for the 1911 Boy Scout badges, but to really reflect on them and how things have changed over the past hundred years. By and large, maybe things haven't been entirely successful, but I think it's not a bad goal.

Today, though, I came across a National Geographic article about an infinitely bigger (and certainly worthier) project (thanks, mom!). The Manhattana Project is the largest, coolest science fair project ever. Taking maps and historic records from the seventeenth century, Eric Sanderson and the Wildlife Conservation Society have used GIS data to build up image upon image of what Manhattan looked like long, long before Europeans arrived. Sure, my project addresses a hundred years and a whole borough, but this project? Four hundred years, plus all of New York City. There's no contest here.

The images are pretty astonishing for a bunch of reasons. First, there's just the technical aspect. I was once a real, live scientist (and, actually, my undergrad thesis dealt a lot with GIS analysis), and it's shocking how painstaking they were. Just the process of pinning down the coordinates of location upon location, then matching those points up with observations and maps is amazing.

Even more, though, is the series of then-and-now pictures. Looking at the aerial images of Manhattan is almost like seeing inside someone's Batman/Blade Runner nightmare. It's hard to look at just how dramatic the changes have been without wondering what's coming next.

Then again, should it be all bad? It's a much more complex question than just my gut reaction might make it. When we moved to New York, my husband and I both sold our cars, and the same number of people live in our apartment buliding as lived on half of our block in New Jersey, or as lived on my entire road as a child. There's a lot to be said for that kind of compression -- after all, when we cuddle up into a big, urban area, how much more open space does that preserve? Is the best environmental decision, really, to sacrifice some area (Manhattan, for example), and to simply build up up up and to be close close close until we're ready to burst?

What quality of life does that preserve? What can we afford to give up?

Thirty-four seconds.

I failed the Army fitness test today.

I considered lying to you about it. I went over the allotted time for the 2-mile run by a healthy thirty-four seconds, and I spent some time at the laundromat today reflecting that, well, maybe if I'd jaywalked a little more aggressively, or if I'd decided to run a little earlier in the day, when there was less traffic, I could have pared away that thirty-four seconds easily. But the truth is, that would be a lie. I failed the running test because I didn't run fast enough and that's that.

I thought so hard about lying (I told myself it was just tweaking my results a little bit, honestly) that I even floated it past one of my friends, the way we look for approval when we don't really think what we're doing is right by the approval of others might make it so. Fortunately, one thing pulled me out. First, the one I wish it was: my own moral compass. I mean, how can I lie, right? Lying is bad! But the real reason is the spirit of the project itself. If the object of this project of mine is to actually complete the badgework, then my own honesty is the only thing keeping this from turning into some kind of peculiar but fictional real-time story. And that's no fun. If I start lying about silly things (say, thirty-four seconds), it can become way too easy to move into bigger lies -- did I really successfully cook an all the required food for the Camping badge? Did I convince Prospect Park to let me raise corn?

As the Handbook (and my dad, actually) remind me, a scout is trustworthy -- heck, it's the first piece of the Boy Scout Law. It's not just honesty the scout should strive for, either. "The honor of a scout is a sacred thing, and cannot be lightly set aside or trampled on." This doesn't just apply to commitments to others (foolish as they may be -- are you, internet, really going to judge me for whether or not my run time was off by thirty-four seconds?), but, more importantly, to self-respect.

Now, I know that a few days ago I had some less-than-polite words for the Handbook, in general. I had a bit to say about mouth breathing (bad!), and a bit more about frogs' legs (huh?). But this bit right here, this is a critical one for me. I really do love that the Handbook sees behavior towards others as inherently tied to a sense of self -- it's almost Golden Rule-like. It's a nice bit, and maybe my favorite part of the Handbook so far. (If you're following along at home, you can check it out at Project Gutenberg, then just move down to the "Scout Virtues" section.)

This bit here, really, is what scouting should be about, and kind of what being an actual human being should be about, too. Don't we all want to think the best of ourselves? Don't we all want to have faith in those around us?

To lie to you about thirty-four seconds. Psh. You deserve better.

(Also, a quick reference to a bee-related article in today's NY Times!)

Pathfinding: Found!

In honor of the end of the summer and the beginning of the school year (starting on Wednesday!), it seemed like an excellent time to wrap up the second major badge project of the summer: the Pathfinding badge.

Only one (required) step remained: to "know something of the history of the place [and] its principal public buildings." And so, in pursuit of the principal public buildings (which the Handbook suggests includes things like town halls, etc.), I visited downtown Brooklyn.

First stop, Borough Hall, which has been (among other things) both a jail and a court. The NY Emergency Response Team was out in full force urging disaster preparedness of all sorts, largely through handing out a lot of hand sanitizer and providing a packing list for a go bag (a concept that just makes me feel to generally uncomfortable to consider creating). Despite my recent be-prepared theme, I didn't explain my current project to those kind folks. They might have thought I was weird.

I checked out the courthouses, too, both the Supreme Court building, guarded by the most bizarre possible triumvirate of statues (Bobby Kennedy, Christopher Columbus, and Moses), and the US Court, which (I'll admit) I first imagined was a movie theater. (That glassy facade just says "let's eat popcorn!" to me.)

Finally, I was surprised (very!) to learn more about downtown Brooklyn's noble history as a hotbed of abolitionists until I spotted the statue of Henry Ward Beecher (abolitionist, adulterer, and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe). Beecher's church was a major player in the Underground Railroad in NYC, and raised so much money for the Union Army and for emancipation that the guns wielded by Kansas' Union soldiers were referred to as "Beecher's Bibles." (Who knew I was this into history?)

So, is it time for a new badge?

I think so.

More running but (sadly) less bugle

I just got home from work. (For those of you on the east coast, yes, it's 9:30 PM.) Now, out of respect for my neighbors, sadly, that means no bugle. Not even taps. This is probably for the best, of course, though I may have to reconsider when I actually can do things like play taps, at which point we can consider switching things up a bit. But, for the time being, no bugle.

However, I did take the third run in four days today, for a grand total of more running than I've done in the past two years put together. I have high hopes for this section of the athletics badge, and I should be at the passing-the-run stage soon. I've been measuring the distance of my run very vaguely (oh! this seems like it's been a couple miles!) and timing it even more vaguely (oh! I put songs each of which are roughly 3 minutes long on my ipod and I've been out for 7 songs!), but I think I've got a good shot. For Thursday (I think), I'm going to actually time myself and actually run a pre-charted course. I'll keep you updated. (For the record: the Army physical fitness test standards are not actually all that stringent. It sounds tough, right? Not really.)

Other upcoming events: tomorrow (if I'm lucky), I'll get to downtown Brooklyn to complete the Pathfinding badge. Friday or Saturday I'll post my how-to-train essay (a 500-word requirement for Athletics), and Sunday and Monday there is a top-secret plan in the works. One hint: swimming fully dressed. Be prepared, folks.

Finally, a question: the Athletics badge requires that I explain the rules for one track and one field event. What field event should I investigate? (Heck, what is a field event?)