In the past few days on Facebook, I have seen links from some of my old PA buddies to articles defending Joe Paterno in the wake of the Freeh report. Since I don't feel like making a stir on FB, I will comment more anonymously here, and get it off my chest.
Allow me to start with some confessions - (1) I have not read the whole Freeh report; (2) I did not read all of each of the articles that landed on my Facebook page, either. The reason for #1 is that I don't have much time to sit still reading anything of any length that can be found on a computer. If I have it in print or on my ipad to read on the subway that is a different story. As for #2, I just couldn't get through the poorly written drivel. I would start, then something would piss me off, and I'd have to stop. Maybe there were some good points buried in there somewhere under the self-pitying muck, but I just could not stick with the articles long enought to find them.
Look - I trust the Freeh report did a solid job, because that seems to be what he does. Also, let's face it - football is a sacred ritual in central PA, and Penn State is the grand temple. When I used to visit my aged father during football season, my first step was to consult the schedule and plan visits during away games. Otherwise the traffic was murder, not to mention that doing one of my dad's favorite activities - going out to dinner someplace - was impossible. Traffic going back east on Sunday morning was heavy, and crazy; I mean, I live in NYC - why would I want to subject myself to high-speed stupidity during a home visit? No thanks. Basically, if you were not a Penn State football booster, you did not belong there, at least from about September until January (that would include me).
The emails uncovered in the Freeh report make clear what many of us already knew. They covered for the guy. They did. They covered for him because reporting him would have been bad for The Program. It's not just the university that depends financially on the football program, the entire area - restaurants, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and ancillary businesses in that tiny town have profited enormously from Penn State football. So some poor kids got thrown under the bus. Everyone else was making a profit, engaging in Lions' Pride. How many times have any of us, especially women, when victimized, been asked to not say anything? He has a family. He'll lose his job. (Or you'll lose yours.) It's not so bad. You'll get over it.
Did other people cover besides St. Joe? Yes. Lots. That the family is now hiring people to conduct their own investigation is, to me, yet more evidence of hubris. Don't like the results? Buy some new ones. Keep going until someone tells you what you want to hear. And for the one apologist in an online article who said these sorts of crimes take place "everywhere" [so what's the big deal about this time?] I say, yeah - that's right. That's why Joe P. should not get a pass. No one should.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Missing out on the principle
The wife of one of my students came by the other day. She is friends with the student who provides space for us, and she was seeking some advice from him on a project she was working on. We spoke casually for a few minutes, since I know her, and I have not seen either her or her husband for some time.
Her husband was my first student in my new enterprise, after I left my old place. He had joined the old place because of me, and when I left, he was the only one who went with me, as opposed to quitting outright or staying behind. He helped me land rental space for a new class; he also connected me to the community college program where I am still able to teach each week. In a way, I owe him for helping me redo my act for what I am doing now.
But all along it seems there was a trade-off involved, which I was not totally aware of. It turned out the ulterior motive was that he wanted to study the particular style that was the cause of the rift with my old place, and which I have at least temporarily shelved in favor of stuff I find less politically fraught to teach. There were hints, of course, that he preferred one style over another, and I knew that. Still, when I asked him directly, he said he was happy to do anything, but he hoped that eventually I would return to the other style. In truth, at least until the end of 2011, I also thought that might be a possibility. Events at the end of the year, though, convinced me that there was not much to be gained by continuing, and by "gained," I mean in terms of maintaining some respect in the ryuha and providing a fair shot for my students who wanted to study. It's very difficult to accomplish those two modest goals when a number of people are actively working against those interests and when the teacher is indifferent, to put it rather mildly. It does take me a little while to see the handwriting on the wall sometimes, but once I see it, I never look back.
During one of our last conversations, I offered this person some alternate paths to training in that particular style - (1) to train with the group who kicked me out, since they were still offering the style he was interested in; or (2) to go to a dojo in New Jersey where the main branch of the style was being offered, quite unaffiliated with the offshoot branch, but very similar in technique. I had also suggested several times that if he would like to arrange a mutually convenient time and place, I would be willing to work with him, even though I do not consider it part of my curriculum at this point. (Considering everything, this was meeting him more than halfway, I think.) I told him that I was not kicking him out in any way, and he would always be welcome in my dojo whatever he decided.
But, for whatever reason, he has not come back to okeiko. Last I asked him about it, he said he had obligations on my teaching evenings in the form of networking seminars and other things that were keeping him away. Getting space for a semi-private workout was a complete nonstarter, since the subject never came up again.
Leave it to his blunt-spoken wife to make everything clear: he would not come to okeiko because I was not teaching what he wanted to learn; and, as for free time, he had taken up dragon boat racing so he was not available to do anything else. Mystery solved.
Years ago Otani Sensei mentioned something to me that has guided my practice for a long time: "Once you know the principle, the technique doesn't matter." In fact, this idea had guided my practice even before he articulated it. When I was training, we did whatever Sensei or the sempai on deck wanted to teach, whether it was empty-hand techniques, jodo, kenjutsu or some weird, obscure stuff that the sempai had picked up at a seminar and that no one (including the sempai) would remember by the following week. No one complained. No one. We were just so grateful to be there, doing cool stuff every week (or even boring, repetitive stuff) that we didn't care; or if we did, we kept quiet. We were not allowed to complain, or be picky. If we did not like what was being taught, it was understood that we were free to look elsewhere, and Sensei was the best game in town. And with experience and observation, it has become clearer and clearer to me that there is a principle, and it is always there. Once I discovered it, I began to see it everywhere. I can't say I see it all that clearly even yet, but I know it's there.
Perhaps it's that the internet has opened up so many possibilities for practice, we now feel as though we know what we are missing, and since everyone seems to have less free time than ever (leaving out the dragon boat practice schedule), people have become fussy and very specific about what they want to study. "I want to learn this, and not that." As one of my other students put it lately, "It's like going into a math class and saying 'I want to learn math, but I want to use this book, because this is what works for me.' It doesn't make sense."
Not only that, but you can't learn the principle if you don't know it exists.
Her husband was my first student in my new enterprise, after I left my old place. He had joined the old place because of me, and when I left, he was the only one who went with me, as opposed to quitting outright or staying behind. He helped me land rental space for a new class; he also connected me to the community college program where I am still able to teach each week. In a way, I owe him for helping me redo my act for what I am doing now.
But all along it seems there was a trade-off involved, which I was not totally aware of. It turned out the ulterior motive was that he wanted to study the particular style that was the cause of the rift with my old place, and which I have at least temporarily shelved in favor of stuff I find less politically fraught to teach. There were hints, of course, that he preferred one style over another, and I knew that. Still, when I asked him directly, he said he was happy to do anything, but he hoped that eventually I would return to the other style. In truth, at least until the end of 2011, I also thought that might be a possibility. Events at the end of the year, though, convinced me that there was not much to be gained by continuing, and by "gained," I mean in terms of maintaining some respect in the ryuha and providing a fair shot for my students who wanted to study. It's very difficult to accomplish those two modest goals when a number of people are actively working against those interests and when the teacher is indifferent, to put it rather mildly. It does take me a little while to see the handwriting on the wall sometimes, but once I see it, I never look back.
During one of our last conversations, I offered this person some alternate paths to training in that particular style - (1) to train with the group who kicked me out, since they were still offering the style he was interested in; or (2) to go to a dojo in New Jersey where the main branch of the style was being offered, quite unaffiliated with the offshoot branch, but very similar in technique. I had also suggested several times that if he would like to arrange a mutually convenient time and place, I would be willing to work with him, even though I do not consider it part of my curriculum at this point. (Considering everything, this was meeting him more than halfway, I think.) I told him that I was not kicking him out in any way, and he would always be welcome in my dojo whatever he decided.
But, for whatever reason, he has not come back to okeiko. Last I asked him about it, he said he had obligations on my teaching evenings in the form of networking seminars and other things that were keeping him away. Getting space for a semi-private workout was a complete nonstarter, since the subject never came up again.
Leave it to his blunt-spoken wife to make everything clear: he would not come to okeiko because I was not teaching what he wanted to learn; and, as for free time, he had taken up dragon boat racing so he was not available to do anything else. Mystery solved.
Years ago Otani Sensei mentioned something to me that has guided my practice for a long time: "Once you know the principle, the technique doesn't matter." In fact, this idea had guided my practice even before he articulated it. When I was training, we did whatever Sensei or the sempai on deck wanted to teach, whether it was empty-hand techniques, jodo, kenjutsu or some weird, obscure stuff that the sempai had picked up at a seminar and that no one (including the sempai) would remember by the following week. No one complained. No one. We were just so grateful to be there, doing cool stuff every week (or even boring, repetitive stuff) that we didn't care; or if we did, we kept quiet. We were not allowed to complain, or be picky. If we did not like what was being taught, it was understood that we were free to look elsewhere, and Sensei was the best game in town. And with experience and observation, it has become clearer and clearer to me that there is a principle, and it is always there. Once I discovered it, I began to see it everywhere. I can't say I see it all that clearly even yet, but I know it's there.
Perhaps it's that the internet has opened up so many possibilities for practice, we now feel as though we know what we are missing, and since everyone seems to have less free time than ever (leaving out the dragon boat practice schedule), people have become fussy and very specific about what they want to study. "I want to learn this, and not that." As one of my other students put it lately, "It's like going into a math class and saying 'I want to learn math, but I want to use this book, because this is what works for me.' It doesn't make sense."
Not only that, but you can't learn the principle if you don't know it exists.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Kumidachi
Last night, we were working on kumidachi, in preparation for a demo/lecture that is coming up in a few weeks. Two people are going to assist, and since one of them was at practice last night, it seemed appropriate to start working on what we would be doing later on. In addition, we had a new student. I like this guy - he's polite and funny and seems to have the budo/life balance thing taken care of - at least for now. Unfortunately for him, he is always being pushed into more advanced techniques, because he frequently comes a bit late to okeiko, and also, at the moment, I have no advanced students available to work with him separately. What we do lately, we all do together. But, he has good ma and a fairly good memory, and good humor: When I apologized at one point for once again pushing him into something he was really not ready for yet, he said he was happy with whatever we did. Reminds me of myself, in a way.
Kumidachi is paired kata practice, and "tachi" refers to "sword." Proper execution means good timing, good technique and a good sense of concentration. Theoretically, kumidachi is supposed to be done only by senior students, as it is considered too complicated for beginners, as well as dangerous generally for people not totally familiar with the timing of paired kata of attack and defense. However, we always did a lot of kumidachi compared to other groups, and I started these forms at the beginning of my training. Moreover, from a demo standpoint, it's good to be able to do either bunkai or kumidachi for an audience. Last year, I did this lecture/demo thing by myself, and I had to use a camp counselor as an uke. The crowd loved it, but he was scared, and I was concerned. We were lucky, I think. This year I have a couple of assistants, since I don't believe in ever-continuing luck.
The forms we are working on were designed by my teacher, derived from an amalgam of established styles, and probably including some ideas of his own. One of the old sempai wrote them down, and then arranged them (almost as brilliantly) to build on each other, for the most part. By my personal reckoning, I believe we are the only people who still practice them; which makes them doubly important to me.
And they are not run-of-the-mill kata, either, but a series of mind- and gut-stretching chess moves. In some cases, the uchidachi (attacker) can decide whether to initiate an attack on either the right or the left, and the response by the shidachi (defender) has to change depending on the attacker's choice. In others, the defender can make the choice of right or left for the counter, but picking one or the other increases or decreases the distance to the opponent. Kata that have built-in variations - they are similar to, but at the same time nothing like, kumidachi I have encountered in other styles.
The difference is in my two students - one has a couple of years of training, and the other a beginner at iai, but with years of jujutsu training behind him. Of the two people, of course the newbie is more scary. While the more experienced student, for reasons known mostly to him, has trouble remembering the handful of forms we have worked on so far, after a review he can reliably perform the kata. The other person's timing is totally unpredictable. In particular, when he is the uchidachi, he likes to hang in the opening kamae, whatever it might be, for several very long seconds before attacking, while he reviews the kata in his head before moving.
Of course, it is unwise to do any such thing in reality. Kamae are positions from which one is supposed to do something, not wait. But since he is a beginner, I let him have his hang time, while at the same time reminding the more experienced student he had better not pick up the same habit.
So I decided to be his partner, partly to spare the other guy the fear of the unknown, and partly to see if I could handle the waiting game. Nerve-wracking, and exhilarating. And I did not get much sleep later for thinking about the whole experience. Now THAT'S a good practice!
Kumidachi is paired kata practice, and "tachi" refers to "sword." Proper execution means good timing, good technique and a good sense of concentration. Theoretically, kumidachi is supposed to be done only by senior students, as it is considered too complicated for beginners, as well as dangerous generally for people not totally familiar with the timing of paired kata of attack and defense. However, we always did a lot of kumidachi compared to other groups, and I started these forms at the beginning of my training. Moreover, from a demo standpoint, it's good to be able to do either bunkai or kumidachi for an audience. Last year, I did this lecture/demo thing by myself, and I had to use a camp counselor as an uke. The crowd loved it, but he was scared, and I was concerned. We were lucky, I think. This year I have a couple of assistants, since I don't believe in ever-continuing luck.
The forms we are working on were designed by my teacher, derived from an amalgam of established styles, and probably including some ideas of his own. One of the old sempai wrote them down, and then arranged them (almost as brilliantly) to build on each other, for the most part. By my personal reckoning, I believe we are the only people who still practice them; which makes them doubly important to me.
And they are not run-of-the-mill kata, either, but a series of mind- and gut-stretching chess moves. In some cases, the uchidachi (attacker) can decide whether to initiate an attack on either the right or the left, and the response by the shidachi (defender) has to change depending on the attacker's choice. In others, the defender can make the choice of right or left for the counter, but picking one or the other increases or decreases the distance to the opponent. Kata that have built-in variations - they are similar to, but at the same time nothing like, kumidachi I have encountered in other styles.
The difference is in my two students - one has a couple of years of training, and the other a beginner at iai, but with years of jujutsu training behind him. Of the two people, of course the newbie is more scary. While the more experienced student, for reasons known mostly to him, has trouble remembering the handful of forms we have worked on so far, after a review he can reliably perform the kata. The other person's timing is totally unpredictable. In particular, when he is the uchidachi, he likes to hang in the opening kamae, whatever it might be, for several very long seconds before attacking, while he reviews the kata in his head before moving.
Of course, it is unwise to do any such thing in reality. Kamae are positions from which one is supposed to do something, not wait. But since he is a beginner, I let him have his hang time, while at the same time reminding the more experienced student he had better not pick up the same habit.
So I decided to be his partner, partly to spare the other guy the fear of the unknown, and partly to see if I could handle the waiting game. Nerve-wracking, and exhilarating. And I did not get much sleep later for thinking about the whole experience. Now THAT'S a good practice!
Monday, July 2, 2012
This year's summer silliness
An update to this post - this week the NYT posted a story about an unfortunate young woman who fell down a set of stairs at an apartment building, hit her head, and died. The investigation is ongoing, but cops are in part blaming - her high-heeled shoes. 'Nuff said.
We remember last year's weird sartorial choice - the band-aid dress. This year's is meant, I think to accompany it - the sky-high heel shoe. Like the band-aid dress, these personal skyscrapers have been around, but, since I saw two pairs in the span of one block today at lunch time, perhaps they are "having a moment," as they say.
To be honest, they are sort of cool-looking, the way sculpture is cool-looking. But the thing about sculpture is that, while beautiful or interesting or thought-provoking, we are not intended to wear it. I suppose it is one thing to wear stilts while relaxing at a restaurant, or padding around the soft, carpeted floor of an office in Midtown, but just try to stand for any length of time, let alone try to walk in them. There's a reason the concrete jungle is packed in with flat-wearing office workers and tourists. As cool as they look, like any artwork, the sky-high heels are not wearable.
A woman in sky-high heels is basically asking for trouble. We are probably about 3 months away from some tv news story in which special-guest doctors declaim the number of injuries from wearing 7-inch heels. Once the doctor story hits, we all know the trend is on its way out. Allow me to be cynical - when the market starts to dip for these items, the stories about how they are not good for you anyway start to come out, followed by some new trend women are supposed to throw their discretionary cash at.
Actually, in a world-weary way, I am looking forward to whatever comes next. Midriff-baring tops were followed by the "muffin top" critiques on the morning shows. Honestly, I thought I heard some sigh of relief from the fashionistas as that trend happily receded into the sunset (I sighed too, and I never, ever wore one). Now band-aid dresses are having their moment, held over from last year. I can't wait for this one to go away. On Saturday, in the 90-plus degree heat, I encountered an enormous - let's just say person - in a band-aid dress that barely covered her(?) butt, double-D (or E?) cups, very long fingernails and a fabulous updo. S(H)e was easily 6'5", and was walking a teeny-tiny dog on a fancy leash. We met at the pet store (yes). If I was more brazen with my cell phone camera, I would have used it. Also, the pet store lady was a Zen master for not bursting out laughing. Only in New York. But if anyone is ambivalent about why getting rid of this trend would be a public service, next time I'll get proof.
And of course, the heels (even our friend in the previous paragraph had the smarts to wear bejeweled, but flat, sandals - really, really big ones). I saw an article in the NYT a few weeks ago about some shoe designer who had opened a gallery-type store to showcase his (why is it always his?) skyheel creations. The writer noted that some of the shoes were priced in the "low four figures", but that people were actually buying them, in spite of the economy. Make that women - women were actually buying them.
Which brings us to the conundrum. My mother would have said that women have the right to wear whatever they want, enhance themselves surgically this way and that, and are entitled to inflict every notion of bad taste on a public that just wants to go about its business free from visual assault. My counter in these discussions was to try to figure out what it was about us as a society that insisted on requiring that women maim themselves with the idea that it would make them more attractive - I guess - to men. Given that I have never even plucked my eyebrows and never seemed to lack for male attention, I never understood it. Men who were attracted to me often said I seemed friendly and approachable. The band-aid dress as armor - who knew?
Of course, we are not the only time or place to insist on maiming - China had foot binding; European and American fashions once mandated corsets so tight and stiff they deformed women's figures and messed up their internal organs. The problem became so bad, an actual movement for women's dress reform took shape (haha), and the graceful fashions of the early 1910's -20's were the result.
Maybe we need Dress Reform II. Or at least shoe reform. As much as I hated the flipflop (flipflop, flipflop, flipflop) trend, it was preferable (gasp) to this one. Please, climb down off your shoes before you hurt yourself.
* * * * *
We remember last year's weird sartorial choice - the band-aid dress. This year's is meant, I think to accompany it - the sky-high heel shoe. Like the band-aid dress, these personal skyscrapers have been around, but, since I saw two pairs in the span of one block today at lunch time, perhaps they are "having a moment," as they say.
To be honest, they are sort of cool-looking, the way sculpture is cool-looking. But the thing about sculpture is that, while beautiful or interesting or thought-provoking, we are not intended to wear it. I suppose it is one thing to wear stilts while relaxing at a restaurant, or padding around the soft, carpeted floor of an office in Midtown, but just try to stand for any length of time, let alone try to walk in them. There's a reason the concrete jungle is packed in with flat-wearing office workers and tourists. As cool as they look, like any artwork, the sky-high heels are not wearable.
A woman in sky-high heels is basically asking for trouble. We are probably about 3 months away from some tv news story in which special-guest doctors declaim the number of injuries from wearing 7-inch heels. Once the doctor story hits, we all know the trend is on its way out. Allow me to be cynical - when the market starts to dip for these items, the stories about how they are not good for you anyway start to come out, followed by some new trend women are supposed to throw their discretionary cash at.
Actually, in a world-weary way, I am looking forward to whatever comes next. Midriff-baring tops were followed by the "muffin top" critiques on the morning shows. Honestly, I thought I heard some sigh of relief from the fashionistas as that trend happily receded into the sunset (I sighed too, and I never, ever wore one). Now band-aid dresses are having their moment, held over from last year. I can't wait for this one to go away. On Saturday, in the 90-plus degree heat, I encountered an enormous - let's just say person - in a band-aid dress that barely covered her(?) butt, double-D (or E?) cups, very long fingernails and a fabulous updo. S(H)e was easily 6'5", and was walking a teeny-tiny dog on a fancy leash. We met at the pet store (yes). If I was more brazen with my cell phone camera, I would have used it. Also, the pet store lady was a Zen master for not bursting out laughing. Only in New York. But if anyone is ambivalent about why getting rid of this trend would be a public service, next time I'll get proof.
And of course, the heels (even our friend in the previous paragraph had the smarts to wear bejeweled, but flat, sandals - really, really big ones). I saw an article in the NYT a few weeks ago about some shoe designer who had opened a gallery-type store to showcase his (why is it always his?) skyheel creations. The writer noted that some of the shoes were priced in the "low four figures", but that people were actually buying them, in spite of the economy. Make that women - women were actually buying them.
Which brings us to the conundrum. My mother would have said that women have the right to wear whatever they want, enhance themselves surgically this way and that, and are entitled to inflict every notion of bad taste on a public that just wants to go about its business free from visual assault. My counter in these discussions was to try to figure out what it was about us as a society that insisted on requiring that women maim themselves with the idea that it would make them more attractive - I guess - to men. Given that I have never even plucked my eyebrows and never seemed to lack for male attention, I never understood it. Men who were attracted to me often said I seemed friendly and approachable. The band-aid dress as armor - who knew?
Of course, we are not the only time or place to insist on maiming - China had foot binding; European and American fashions once mandated corsets so tight and stiff they deformed women's figures and messed up their internal organs. The problem became so bad, an actual movement for women's dress reform took shape (haha), and the graceful fashions of the early 1910's -20's were the result.
Maybe we need Dress Reform II. Or at least shoe reform. As much as I hated the flipflop (flipflop, flipflop, flipflop) trend, it was preferable (gasp) to this one. Please, climb down off your shoes before you hurt yourself.
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