Recipes from the Dojo

My victory garden is really starting to produce despite the dry, hot weather we've had for the past month or so. And with the recent and predicted continuing daily rainshowers and cooler weather I figure it will really kick up production. I have been picking a hatful of jalapenos every day as well as anchos and banana and bell peppers. I've gotten a few squash and a few tomatoes. And I have eggplant on the way. Today I concocted a southern feast in celebration of the beginning of the harvest.

.

Roasted yellow squash sandwich:

Cut one large yellow straightneck squash into 1/4 inch thick planks. Spray both sides with butter-flavored cooking spray. Dust the top with dried basil, garlic powder, and black pepper and toast in the oven for about 5-10 minutes. While that is toasting, prepare...

.

Cherry tomato, Ancho, and Jalapeno Salsa Fresca

Drop a double handful of mostly-ripe cherry tomatoes into a food processor, add 2 whole jalapenos and 2 whole anchos. Sprinkle liberally with garlic, black pepper, dried basil, and dried onion flakes. Add a pinch of salt and a squirt of lime juice. Chop into salsa.

.

To complete the sandwich, lightly spread mayo on dark toasted multi-grain bread. Layer the squash planks on the toast, top with the salsa fresca, and serve open-faced with two Michelob Ultra Lime Cactus beers.

.

Yeah baybee!

Leg, hand, and hip throws

5AM judo with Rob and Rick

• footsweep to control moving into the deashi bump
• worked on deashi, kosoto, taiotoshi, and seoinage from the deashi bump. We did the seoinage as a hipthrow to illustrate the point in a simple way, but really it is classified as a hand throw.
• deashi into ukigatame
• ukigatame through half nelson into munegatame

Dr. Lee Ah Loi's Tomiki Aikido book

Dr. Lee Ah Loi literally wrote the book on Tomikiryu Koryunokata - the set of six "advanced" exercises in Tomiki's school of aikido. Here she has a nice, crisp demonstration of the begnning of Koryu Daisan, which kata is also known as Goshin no kata and which, as she remarks, bears great semblance to kodokan Judo's Goshin Jitsu (also developed by Tomiki Sensei).



This book makes an excellent reference, particularly after you get significantly far along in the fundamental material like Junnahon Kata (or Nijusanhon Kata) and Owaza Jupon. I refer to her book before almost every class as a reference for the "cool technique of the night." If you would like to purchase a copy of Dr. Lee's book, please check out my Amazon bookstore:

Magnolia-ryu

The other day Dave Chesser wrote a couple of good articles on training with the best local instructor you can find regardless of the artform. Good advice. It reminded me of how the Okinawan martial arts developed and evolved. I bet Dan Paden could verify or clarify my history, but basically, on Okinawa folks trained with whatever experts they could get their hands on. According to Funakoshi's autobiography, folks would work out with whatever local bigshot they could get to within a few miles hike. As a result you had a proliferation of local styles all simply named after the place they sprung up, like naha-te, tomari-te, shuri-te, shorin-ryu, etc...

.

That would be like having a Tulsa-ryu and a Magnolia-ryu and a Houston-ryu,

The Self-Education of Pat

I've given my other blog, The Self-Education of Pat a facelift and have begun posting at it again. That is where I write about things I'm reading that generally don't have to do with martial arts or Christianity (Those posts go here at Mokuren Dojo or in my faith blog, Presbyterian in McComb).

.

I have a new book geek challenge going on over at The Self-Education of Pat. Check it out:

.

http://selfeducationofpat.blogspot.com/2008/06/calling-all-book-geeks.html

The training log that had no name...

Aikido with Vincent and Ross

• ROM and ukemi with emphasis on turn-side rolls and turn-back rolls
• tegatana with emphasis on how shorter steps help conserve your energy and momentum and help you to stay in synch with uke.
• hanasu #1 and #3 with emphasis on starting to evade before uke has grabbed and putting both hands up between you and uke in the center like a cowcatcher or a snowblade.
• R1 and R3 as viable responses to a wrist grab, a straight lead, a grab-cross, or grab-hook
• R1→oshitaoshi→tenkai oshitaoshi→aigamaeate
• kaitennage - the push-the-head-through-the-armpit version

New guy in aiki class

Aikido with Kel & Allen

• ROM
• tegatana with emphasis on tsugiashi
• hanasu #1, #3, and #2
• shomenate
• chain#2 - YK1→maeotoshi and YK1→wakigatame

Cool jujitsu demo...

...but these guys make me tired just watching them.

Class cancellation

No aikido class tonight - I have a thing I have to attend. I look forward to seeing y'all again Thursday.

Car crashes into bikers

Boy this is terrible! You never know when this sort of crazy thing will happen.

MONTERREY, Mexico — A car ran through a group of bicycle riders racing on a highway near the US-Mexico border, killing at least one rider one and injuring 10 others. The 28-year-old driver was apparently drunk and fell asleep, crashing into the bikers.

AM judo

AM judo with Rob & Rick

• warmup with some light-movement randori with Rob
• footsweep to control drill with the idea of how do you make a reluctant or careful opponent attack so that it is easier for you to counter
• deashi as a response to stiffarming
• hizaguruma as a follow-up to deashi
• groundwork mobility drill with emphasis on positional asphyxia in kesa, mune, ushiro kesa, and tate

Knee jerk

So, I started this series on domestic violence with a couple of videos to get myself and my readers thinking about it. I sure would like for y'all to jump in with some commentary - I know there are some thoughtful folks out there that have been working on this topic... Anyway, I promised some more commentary of my own.

.

On the surface, upon watching the first video, I had much the same reactions that I would guess a lot of folks had - Why doesn't she fight back or flee? How can she allow that to happen to herself? Similar to my reaction to the Creamed Asparagus cartoon I posted about.

.

As martial artists, we make a detailed, prolonged study of violence. I would like to be able to say that I have the solution to situations like was portrayed in that video but that would be dishonest. Not because I think it is an insoluble problem or because I think that aikido doesn't have the answer - aikido is very much about this kind of problem, but the problem is deep and wide and any attempt to describe the aiki solution to it in a few hundred words would be ludicrous.

.

From a purely subjective point of view I thought there was something wrong with the abused woman's affect three years later. There was something disturbing and askew about her apparent ability to create the professional distance necessary to coach law enforcement officers using the videotapes her son made of her husband abusing her that viciously. I can't put my finger on it exactly - just a feeling I got watching it.

.

In the second video, Patrick Stewart speaks from a position of personal experience to advocate for greater governmental involvement in control of these situations. My knee jerk reaction to that is, "Oh, great! Another goverment program." I have an innate distrust in the ability of any government to compassionately handle this type of problem. But then, if not the government, who will step in? They are the only ones sanctioned by society to exert coersive force in this type of situation, so if a private party steps in they would be ripe for legal action. Still though, it seems like any decent man (or woman) who were to witness this sort of thing would have to stand in the way and to hell with the consequences - but we've seen that this sort of intervention doesn't always happen.

.

Here is another video with a celebrity stating a contrary opinion on the topic. This is certainly not going to be the last word in this thread, but interesting...

More on the French Curve

The other day I titled an article, 'French Curve' but I didn't really explain why in that post. What we were talking about that day in class was thinking about this particular set of exercises as being like using a French Curve.

.

That is, in the chains you know that there are points in space (relationships) that uke and tori should move through but it is not the points (techniques) that are important so much as the smooth, flowing, continuous curve through those points. You have to learn to move your body through an arc with uke without a lot of discontinuity. This is the same as a French curve - you plot a few points then find the template that matches those points most closely to help you draw your arc.

.

The moves in tegatana are small arcs. The moves in hanasu are French Curves. The techniques in nijusan or junana are the points that the French Curve helps you plot a course through.

.

We got a lot of mileage out of this analogy last class by working it with one-handed shihonage (that is releases #6 and #8). notice, that if you stand in place and hold uke's arm with your left hand and swing them through you describe an arc. Holding uke's same arm with your other arm you get a different arc through space. If you practice shihonage holding with both hands then you never have to develop this sensitivity to the precise arc that uke is moving through. That is why we practice two one-handed variants of shihonage - better opportunity to learn.

Patrick Stewart on domestic violence

More on the topic of domestic violence. This time it is Patrick Stewart talking about his firsthand experience of violence against his mother. Stewart is a great speaker and this is an honest, sober monologue on the topic.