I’ve been in contact with a lawyer on and off over the last couple of years regarding one of our old members – old both in terms of when they joined the society, and in terms of their age. Jim Ring was a frequent contributor to our Journal, the NZ Skeptic, writing both articles on a wide range of topics and many Letters to the Editor. Sadly Jim passed away last year, and the conversations with the lawyer, who was a friend of Jim’s in his later life, were about a collection of books of skeptical interest that he had collected over his lifetime and wanted to donate to the NZ Skeptics.

The NZ Skeptics book collection was given to the NZARH (the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, based at Rationalist House in Auckland) many years ago, and so I’m arranging for these books to be shipped straight to them. Hopefully the new librarian won’t mind too much that we’re giving her more work to do!

I don’t know much about Jim, having sadly never met him, but the first thing I know is that he lived in Nelson. I know this because all of his Letters to the Editor were signed off with “Jim Ring, Nelson”. Having talked with Jim’s lawyer friend a few times over the last couple of years, and skimmed through the articles he wrote for us, I can tell you that Jim was born in England and brought up in the Exclusive Brethren, moving to New Zealand in the 1960s as a 10 pound Pom. He had no children, but was married to Fleur – and both Jim and Fleur had a variety of interests that they spent their time on. Just within Skepticism, Jim was interested in and wrote articles for us about Creationism, UFOs, Doomsday predictions, alternative medicine, circumcision, cryptozoology and more.

Outside of Skepticism, Jim had a few other interests, and in each of these it seems that he both dedicated a lot of his free time, and excelled. I was told that he was a well-known cactus grower, and indeed a brief search online was enough to inform me that he has been published in both Cactus World and the British Cactus & Succulent Journal. Similarly, he was a freshwater fisherman, and was apparently known in local fishing circles as the magician of the Motueka. He kept diaries of all his catches, which he put back, and those diaries are now being used by a conservation group as a valuable resource on the history of freshwater fish stocks in the Nelson region.