This year Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis and Tai Chi Jeung will be performing at the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts on Saturday, June 3 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm. Pictures of last year’s performance (and others) can be found here on Master Lee’s site.

We have just received word that Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament will not be held this year. This is disappointing but not surprising; the tournament has been growing steadily smaller for the past few years. I imagine that the economy and rising gas prices played a significant role in this decision, considering several schools travel from as far away as Texas and Massachusetts to attend.

Oh, well… maybe next year. On the plus side, this means that I have a free Memorial Day weekend for the first time in about five years. That hasn’t happened in so long that I have no idea what I will do. Maybe spend the whole weekend sleeping on the beach out at Grand Haven.

More details about our Festival performance as the day approaches.

This morning Rick said that a great deal of what we call spirituality boils down to “don’t be an asshole”. We discussed it for a moment, and decided that not being an asshole is probably the most difficult part of trying to be a good person.

For the past several months the Center for Women (YWCA) has been showing signs that it may be closing in the near future. The most recent of these was the announcement that they will no longer be open on weekends. The announcement came about a week before the new schedule went into effect, and as a result we (Master Lee’s students) had to scramble to find a new weekend space.

That space, for the rest of the month, is From the Heart Yoga, which is owned by our Senior Student, Rick Powell. At the Center for Women we have an entire gymnasium available to us, a basketball court with 20-foot ceilings. FTHY has about a quarter of the floor space. The down side of this is less room to move, which limits the number of students who can practice at any one time. The upside is that we have to be more aware of our personal space, and we have to pay attention not only to where we are, but where we are moving to at any given moment. This is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It is nice to have the space of a gymnasium, but in a space that large it is easy to isolate ones self in a corner and not pay much attention to the rest of the class. Not so in a restricted space.

When I joined Master Lee’s class fifteen years ago we practiced in a small dance studio in East Grand Rapids, and the classes were about half again the size that they are now. After about a year we moved to the YWCA. So for many years we have been in a space which is much larger than we actually need. I suspect that by spreading a small number of students out to fill that space we have lost some of the intimacy which was such a vital part of the class so many years ago. Certainly it is not uncommon to see people in a corner “doing their own thing” as the class winds down for the day. Whether or not they are being disruptive, it takes away from the vibe of the class as a whole.

Rick has repeatedly pointed out that when we practice together as a class there is a certain energy which seems to ebb and flow with the movements of the tai chi and kung fu forms, and that while we create this energy as we practice it also guides us, and when people in a class do not participate, the energy is diminished and disrupted. Also when six people are spread out over a thirteen hundred square-foot space, even if we are performing in perfect synchronicity, it is not the same as if we are in closer quarters, where in addition to just watching each other to make sure we are performing at the same pace, we need to be aware in a more subtle way, so we can react harmoniously to the movement and energy of the people around us.

I suspect that, before the end of the year, we will have moved all of our class sessions to a new location. Though I will miss the (excessively) large room we have had for so many years, it will be good to be in a more intimate space.

I just posted the photos of the Midland Tournament to Master Lee’s website. Many many thanks go to our student Vickie Rikks, who drove all the way to Midland to be with us, and took many wonderful photos.

That didn’t take as long as I thought it would.

Photos from the Festival 2005 performance are up at Master Lee’s website. Once again, many thanks to Anisa for offering her superb photography skills.

Photos from the Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament will be posted later in the week.

Enjoy!

I just regretfully informed Team n3kk1d that I will not be joining them in the MS-150 this year. Too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it.

This Saturday I and many of my classmates will journey to Midland to compete in the Midland Open Martial Arts Tournament. This will be our fifth(?) year competing, I think.

Next Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 PM our school will perform at the 2005 Grand Rapids Arts Festival. We have been doing this for about as long as I have been a student.

It comes down to this: If I have time to train for a bike rally, then I have time to train for a kung fu performance.

The design for es.o is slowly coming together. At this rate, I should be ready for the 2006 May 1st Re-Boot.

This past Thursday was the first day of the lunar new year, the Year of the Monkey. Today Master Lee and the rest of our kung fu school participated in festivities at the East Garden Buffet. There was much good food and much good cameraderie. Master Lee gave new swords to all of the instructors, and one of the instructors, Nancy, gave me a matted photo of me performing a tai chi sword routine at the edge of a lake.

So now I have a great photo of myself, and another sword for my collection. At last count I have eight tai chi swords, one kung fu sword, a kwan dao, a fan, an axe and four daggers.

I am approaching the last new pages of the Goya book. At first it bothered me a little that so much of the first half says nothing about Goya himself. On reflection I realize that Connell wrote the book so that at each stage of his subject’s life, the focus is on that which was most important or influential. And what was most influential to Goya’s life was not always Goya.

Damn. Been so long since I updated this thing I almost forgot how to work the admin screens.

Two quick notes:

The over-talented and under-employed Bock has redesigned his site, so head on over and check it out. It is a beautiful thing.

Friend and classmate Craig Marks has written several articles for Martial Talk Magazine , and I have just finished converting the first to HTML for Master Lee’s website . Craig has done a superb job with the research, and the article should be an interesting read for practitioners of all styles of martial arts.