Hall of Fame

Martin Carey in Ireland wrote me to say that I have been selected for the Official International Black Belt Hall of Fame for 2008. Thanks to my friends in Ireland.

Newsletter

There's a link available on my site under Resources and follow that to Newsletter to get a free e-mail newsletter. It's just gone live and the January edition is about ready to go out.
Have a Happy New Year!

New year, new stuff

Some of you may have received a newsletter from me through my website last week. I'll be able to offer a free newsletter that you can subscribe to through the site soon. If you're already registered, you may want to go in and check that your e-mail is current and/or correct since I got a lot of bounce-backs.
I'm working on a subscription version as well, something that will be of use to everyone, especially school owners. More info to come.
The new book is due here around 12 January and I'm looking forward to shipping it out to you. The pre-publication discount is still in effect.
Some more info is being developed for the member's only section of my website, too. Look for that soon.
More to come.

For our Systema friends

Friends of Laura

A few weeks ago some of you got an e-mail from me asking for your help. Laura Megard, a singer here in Ft. Myers, has a daughter in St. Louis who was hit by a drunk driver. She was later found to have leukemia as well. Laura needed help and an event was held to raise money. $4000 was raised in about 2 weeks through the efforts of Bo McCormick and the Special Forces Motorcycle Club.

Just thought you'd like to know. And thanks to those who helped.

You may need this

I found a tool that I feel is useful to anyone interested in communicating better. It's a free publication from the US Air Force called The Tongue and Quill. At almost 400 pages, it covers how to write and speak better, as well as research tips for helping you build your arguments. If you are looking for something to help improve your presentations on the mat, take a look.



http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/shared/media/epubs/afh33-337.pdf

Promotion

Mr. Gary Ellis of Plymouth, England recently promoted his long-time student, Mr. Mark Richards to sixth degree black. Mark has been training with Mr. Ellis since he was a teenager over twenty years ago. I was consulted on the intended move up and was happy to concur.
Congratulations to Mr. Richards!

How I spent (part of) the weekend

No, they didn't all get out of that airplane. These are the instructors and participants for a Civil Air Patrol Squadron Leadership School held at the Sarasota airport this weekend. I was asked to teach a section there on Professional Development. I had also been asked to do a presentation on overwater safety at an open house on the St. Petersburg/Whitted airport that same day, representing the Federal Aviation Administration (I'm a volunteer safety team member for them). It was a busy day, flying around Florida. The weather was great and I met some interesting people.

One participant at the school asked me what martial art I did because I had mentioned that I teach and that perspective is so important. We tend to look at things one way from the teacher's point of view and another totally different way is from that of the student, and teachers tend to forget that, which was my point. He guessed that I was a grappling guy. No, I told him. Shotokan? No again. He was at a loss so I told him Kenpo and he responded that he was a Tae Kwon Do person. I did not get to ask him why he guessed those other arts because we were interrupted. I'm curious as to his reasoning. Was it my body type or demeanor? Interesting.

The other interesting thing was the Whitted airport itself. It's a historic place because that's the first scheduled airline service was started almost 100 years ago. Cool stuff, this aviation thing.

Down time

Shaolin Temple

Ozzie Rivero, one of my Ft. Myers black belts who moved to Chicago, sent this. He's standing in front of the Shaolin Temple in China. That makes him the second one of my guys to visit there.

Tucson seminars

Shawn and Rebecca Knight packed their school when they hosted a successful seminar weekend in Tucson. I was there to teach with Steve LaBounty and Ed Parker. I met many new people from Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Frank Soto was there from Mexico, too. Dennis Conatser from Scottdale showed up; I hadn't seen him since Ed Parker's funeral in 1990.

What a great group they have out there. They remind me a lot of Steve White's group in New England. They are very cohesive, organized, and eager to perpetuate their art. One of their black belts, a girl named Candace, was found to have leukemia. They've been very supportive of the family in so many ways I can't describe. At the post-seminar dinner on Saturday night the young lady and her family came by for a few minutes. The school members had folded almost 1400 paper cranes for her, which they presented to her there. The cranes are significant in that they represent wishes for her return to health. One family is planning to go to Japan to a place where they hang these paper cranes outside. The wind and sun deteriorates them and when they break up, they believe the wishes are dispersed with the wind to spread the good wishes. That's just one sample of the family atmosphere of the AIK schools out there.

I was able to connect with my judo teacher, Carole Wolken-Melcher, who lives in Tucson. She came down to the studio and we had dinner together. She's 77 now, looks great, and we had a nice dinner and conversation. It was so good to be able to see her.

The seminars were very well attended, and seemed to be be well-received, based on the feedback I got. It was the first time I'd actually gotten to watch Mr. LaBounty teach. His session on what-ifs using forearms and elbows was right up my alley. It was a pleasure to watch. Ed Parker had the crowd going, with applause breaking out frequently.

Another really cool thing was going up toward Mt. Lemmon with some of his people and watching them run their forms out on the rocks up at 6,000 above sea level. The weather was nice and the view was spectacular.

All in all, it was a good weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing them again in 2009. Thanks to crew for hosting.

You have to know why

I do occasional flight instruction and a few weeks ago I was asked to fly with a lady that the regular instructor was having problems getting ready for her flight test. Since I didn't know her I felt that asking her about her motivation for learning to fly was fair game as she had close to 200 hours logged and had failed her FAA flight test three times. She had a nice Piper Cherokee 140 like what I had learned to fly in that her boyfriend had bought for her to learn in. He owns a Beechcraft Bonanza.
She told me that she got very nervous during an exam, and that she didn't feel the examiners had been fair with her. I questioned about what she thought she would do after she got her pilot license, since I had seen a bit of self-sabotage in both karate and flight training when someone got near a "promotion". She answered that her boyfriend, who was quite a bit older, had expressed the desire for her to fly his bigger, faster, more complex airplane in the event he lost his medical certificate. A medical is necessary for pilots to fly aircraft of the type most of us fly. She stated she didn't want to fly it because it scared her. So it boiled down to her training to get a license she really didn't want to fly and airplane she didn't want to fly.
We went out to fly and she did a fine job. When we landed I told her I thought there was no reason she couldn't be a pilot if she really wanted to. But I counseled her that she really had to want to do it for herself and nobody else. Yesterday I got a phone call from her flight instructor telling me that she and her boyfriend were selling both airplanes and she was quitting. "You nailed it" he said.
I've seen many a student in my studio who was there because someone else wanted them there; a parent, boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse who was really into the arts and wanted this person to be as well. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. As my title says, you have to know why you're doing something. A little introspection can be a good thing.

Who would have thought?

Over the weekend I taught a seminar at Gulf Coast Kenpo in Cape Coral, FL, hosted by Mike and Renee Squatrito. Five schools were represented. I was a bit surprised by the turnout on a holiday weekend. Local students from Gulf Coast and K. Zwarg's studio in Ft. Myers were there in force. But out-of-state attendees came from Windy City Kenpo in Chicago, Keith Mathew's studio in Canton, GA, and Gary Bell, a Bruce Meyer black belt were there. Australia's Jack Nilon was there, too. It was good to see some people I hadn't seen in a while, including some of the younger students I had trained when I owned the Ft. Myers studio.

I covered some techniques and extensions from the original Ed Parker purple belt curriculum in two seminars. It would be impossible to cover all 32 techniques in any detail in three hours, so a few related techniques and others often misunderstood were the focus. There were some white belts present as well as up to 4th blacks, so everyone could pick up something. All attendees received a certificate of participation.
My niece was promoted there also. She's being trained by Genie Byrd, who did the promotion ceremony.