28 thoughts on “Guide Dog Trainee Saves Trainers”

  1. Oh thanks.
    My computer time is a bit more unstable nowadays than it used to be.
    But I’ll try to check back and to gather up stuff and post it there.
    Very nice!

  2. Malisha,

    A bit later this evening, a memorial thread is going to be posted for him. You may want to repost that post there (or, of course, add whatever you wish in memoriam).

  3. Oh Professor Turley, sorry I didn’t see your post about Idealists707 until just now. Here’s about what I know:

    Idealist came from a single-mother family in one of the Carolinas (probably North). He described a difficult childhood, mom being very concerned about appearances, wanting the children (him and one brother I believe) to always be paragons of virtue so HER reputation would not be besmirched. He felt ostracized in school and grew up too smart to be comfortable.

    He was an electrical engineer. He ended up in Stockholm after having traveled to the Far East, the Middle East, other places, and in Stockholm he worked for some engineering firms, married the woman he called “My Kirsten,” and became very much accustomed to the Swedish socio-emotional “way.” He explained this to me: more or less, it taught, “Do not be extraordinary; that is offensive.”

    But I think Jon was extraordinary. When we met on a separate e-mail location (at hushmail.com), I told him to adopt a screen-name that would let me figure out who he was, and he called himself “FallingPetals.”

    You may remember that he set up a “virtual government” in which I was the poet laureate. I called it “Chief Cook and Haiku Jotter.”

    So I sent a haiku to his niece, that could be read at his memorial service:

    These falling petals —
    Each one describes a new path
    as it heads towards earth.

  5. Nal, you’re correct. At the 4 second mark the dog does look first, but did not move. The guy in the back looks a split second after the dog did and he is the one that began running and shoved everyone forward. It’s not the looking that saved them, it was the shoving/running.

  6. Malisha,

    Thanks you for the update. Just you so know, on another thread, Darren suggested an “In Memoriam” blog entry for Id707 and I forwarded the suggestion to the Prof (fine suggestion that it was).

    And what Mike said. He could be hyperbolic, but he was certainly a colorful character to have around. We may not have always agreed, but he seemed a decent guy. May he rest in peace.

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