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[Chuck.Gordon]

Actually, I'm an OLD hand here at Aikiweb, but some of ya'll probably don't have a clue who this opinionated, bull-headed old fart is.

Here's the short form:

Who am I?

I'm just a guy doing budo. I've trained in various systems since about 1973, primarily in jujutsu, but have dabbled in traditional and sport karate (Shito Ryu, Goju Ryu, etc), Pa Kua Chuan, Escrima, Tang Soo Do and other arts. I train regularly with aikido and judo folks as well.

Lately, my budo pursuits are primarily jujutsu and weapons work, leaning more heavily toward sword and staff. The deeper I get in the study of ken, the more I believe the real secrets are found there ...

I'm permitted to teach through the chuden level in the Kokoro Ryu (see http://www.the-dojo.com/ for more info) and have been granted the (teaching) title renshi.

I have taught at all four of the annual Aikido-L seminars (http://www.aikido-l.org/seminars/) and have conducted several clinics and small seminars.

Here at The Dojo, we've held an annual seminar called Wood and Steel, offering local budo folks the opportunity to learn iai and jo, play with some excellent budo teachers and learn about the wider world of budo in general.

Outside the dojo, I'm a middle-level govenment functionary who writes, edits and designs print and digital publications for a Department of Defense agency.

I'm married to the woman of my dreams, Emily, who is a certified massage therapist (http://www.katsujin.com/) and also a budoka (she has a shodan in aikido and has trained in Wing Tsun and other martial arts for about 10 years).

In May, my beloved and I will move to southeastern Germany where I'll work for the U.S. Army doing much the same thing I am now, but likely moreso.

Anyone interested can follow our adventures through Emily's personal website (http://www.katsujin.com/mle/), where you can also see pics of our wedding (this past November, held right before the 4th Annual Aikido-L Seminar).

I'm also one helluva cook ...

Chuck

[MaylandL]

Welcome to the forum...I guess :)

I look forward to reading your posts given the amount of experience that you've had. If I'm ever in the neighbourhood I'd love to be able to attend one of your wood and steel seminars. Great website btw.

All the best for your training.

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by MaylandL
Welcome to the forum...I guess :)

I look forward to reading your posts given the amount of experience that you've had. If I'm ever in the neighbourhood I'd love to be able to attend one of your wood and steel seminars. Great website btw.

All the best for your training.

Heya Mayland!

Please do, if you ever get to this neighborhood (Indianapolis), come see my students and play. They're a good bunch and will welcome you, feed you and offer you some of the most excellent homebrewed beer available.

If you get to Germany, let me know. I should be moved and getting settled in there in mid to late May.

Chuck

[MaylandL]

Thanks Chuck. On the flip side, if you and Emily are ever in Perth Western Australia, let me know. I'll show you how to become one with aussie beer.

All the best and happy training.

[jk]

Hi Chuck,

I've lurked on the Aikido-L, and have certainly learned a quite a few things from the posts you and others have contributed there; let me offer you my thanks. Maybe you can help drag the other denizens of the list over here, where the threads are much easier to follow.

Hell, if you and the missus ever get to this part of the world, I might want to go down to Perth for some Aussie beer. It's on Mayland, of course... ;)

Regards,

[Bruce Baker]

I hope we have more discussions, and I am sure what you bring to us will be insightful and brutely honest. Making these threads all the more interesting.

Welcome.

[JJF]

Hi again Chuck!

Many are the times where I have enjoyed reading your posts on this forum. And after reading here that it is now certain that you will travel to Germany, I just have to once again extend my sincere invitation to both you and your wife to come visit me in Denmark.

I have just spend some time reading Emily's homepage, and It is suprisingly open and initmate. You both seem like very interesting people - both from a martial arts perspective and on a more personal level.

If you feel like training, then I am certain that you are welcome in our dojo too. Emily will probably be happy to know that we are under influence of Shoji Nishio Shihan, and you probably both approve of the emphasize we put on the sword and the jo in our Aikido :).

Drop me an e-mail soon or when you feel like seeing Denmark.

Sincerely

[akiy]

Originally posted by JJF
I have just spend some time reading Emily's homepage, and It is suprisingly open and initmate. You both seem like very interesting people - both from a martial arts perspective and on a more personal level.
Having known them both for years as well as having taken ukemi from both of them (both martial and massage), I'll say that they are, indeed, both very interesting and wonderful people.

Makes me want to pick up and visit Germany sometime again when they get there...

-- Jun

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by Jun Akiyama

Makes me want to pick up and visit Germany sometime again when they get there...


Jun, you will be encouraged, repeatedly, to do so. We'll leave a light on in the window ...

Originally posted by Jørgen Jakob Friis

I just have to once again extend my sincere invitation to both you and your wife to come visit me in Denmark


Jørgen, rest assured, we will accept your kind offer as soon as possible! Thank you!

Emily and I are blessed with wonderful friends, many who have really become family. Therein, I believe, lies one of the REAL values of budo training ... the development of community and establishment of a network of friends ranging far and near.

Chuck

[IrimiTom]

Chuck, around where in Bavaria are you going to be? I might spend the summer there in 2003 and I'm trying to find out about places where I could train in Aikido while I'm there.

Hope your moving goes smooth
Tom

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by IrimiTom
Chuck, around where in Bavaria are you going to be? I might spend the summer there in 2003 and I'm trying to find out about places where I could train in Aikido while I'm there.
Hope your moving goes smooth
Tom

Thanks. We'll be east of Nuernburg in Grafenwoehr (south of Bayreuth). Stay in touch, we'll be looking for budo buds!

Chuck

[JJF]

Originally posted by LOEP
Jørgen, rest assured, we will accept your kind offer as soon as possible! Thank you!Great! Really looking forward to it :)
Originally posted by LOEP
Emily and I are blessed with wonderful friends, many who have really become family. Therein, I believe, lies one of the REAL values of budo training ... the development of community and establishment of a network of friends ranging far and near.
Chuck Yep! I couldn't agree more!

BTW: Since yesterday I have been wondering if I should take advantage of your visit :D and try to arrange a workshop for the two aikikai-dojo's in my hometown with you as a guest instructor. Could be very interesting. Let's ponder on that one for a while.

Finally: Jun! If you decide to go visit Germany again then you are very welcome in Denmark too. I think of you as a bit of a nomad when it comes to dojo's so you should like it here (one ki-aikido, one Iwama-ryu and two 'regular' aikikai-dojo's in one town :)). Any which way you're very welcome.

[Bruce Baker]

Hey Chuck,

You and I have some pretty heated differences of opinion, thoughts on what we have learned and some terrible misconceptions about each other.

I may bring up some dark subjects, but I have no evil thoughts, intents, or dark agenga ... as some thread writers have alluded to. I try to consider the best of all things while understanding the obsticles.

I know that the very nature of peoples lives, the attempt to be individuals different from their parents or people they themselves disapprove of, lead to opinionated ideas that don't consider other avenues of thought, experience, or lessons valid outside their own lives. Hence, I only give in to educated information, and not sentences picked apart word by word without considering the meaning of the entire text?

Sometimes, The emotional response is the child we once knew returning to our adult selves?

Point being ....

Do yourself a favor and go back to reread your format of comments, entire threads, and find if it was comedy, youthful rebellion, or just plain off the hip emotion (many times I find my Meniere's is more a factor than not of first draft text) that is your response to something you do not like or agree with?

I too, can not relate to those sicker than I/with other ilnesses except when I am sicker than I have ever been before. So too, we all think that others who list their problems request sympathy, when all that is required is understanding that they attempt to control problems beyond what normal people have. More so, the insults and lauding text of superior intellect merely create more hard feelings.

I was merely trying to find a way to level the word playing field. (Japanese being a foreign language translated to and from English by my minds base understanding) I wish to bring home the point of all students being equal in information exchange, experience being the personal journey of each practitioner, no matter what their level of experience.

If the importance of being a peer of different people posting on threads is your concern, i.e... spending X number of years with X number of years within X number of teachers within your knowledge is the measure of a person, then we indeed are forming a monarchy or caste system within the confines of American society. I didn't think this was a game of I did this, and I am to be bowed to and worshiped? That would mean an informal monarchy, which the informal tone of certain posts certainly suggest with personal messages being written entirely different to higher ranked teachers within different Aikido organizations? Some thread posts lean in this direction as the insults change to praise for other teachers who are personally known to each other?

Hell, most teachers would rather be called by first name off the mat, out of the Dojo?

I thought we were all human beings just trying to do the best we could with what little brains we have?

I am sorry for any inferred tones to your posts, but the abject criticism of return responses can not make an old dog learn new tricks, but I have found, the old dog will teach himself what new tricks they need to get about.

As for others who read these threads.

Before you emotionally respond, temper your words with the thought. They should be instructive.

You should respond as if you wanted someone to instruct you/ give you new information to correct errors or learn from.

The human body has its own mechanisms that respond to illness, stress, and emotional responses, sometimes we have clarity of mind to understand and control them, sometimes they control us. I have fought this deterioration for a long time on many levels, damn firsthand experience sucks, but there it is.

I know that teaching/being a teacher can put you into a frame of mind that forgets the mind of beginner, who must prove and reprove what they are given before they believe it is something new that works. Let us never forget to always be beginners, questioning, learning, and finding new things to be proved and reproved until they are like old friends?

I have had almost two years to reflect upon who I was in a full time active life verses who I have become. If that is what it takes for me, what will it take to you and others to change? More? Less?

Enjoy who you are right now, it will change as time goes by.

As we say at the end of the day in the boat business, "NOTHING a good hangover couldn't cure!"

I gotta go back to smoking cigars and drinking flaming shots 181 rum. I am getting too soft in my old age.

See you down the road.

[akiy]

Hi Jørgen,
Originally posted by JJF
Finally: Jun! If you decide to go visit Germany again then you are very welcome in Denmark too. I think of you as a bit of a nomad when it comes to dojo's so you should like it here (one ki-aikido, one Iwama-ryu and two 'regular' aikikai-dojo's in one town :)). Any which way you're very welcome.
Thanks so much for the invitation and the welcome! I've never been to Denmark but hope to make it there some day, especially with international flights sometimes being cheaper than domestic United States ones!

-- Jun

[akiy]

Originally posted by Bruce Baker
Before you emotionally respond, temper your words with the thought. They should be instructive.

You should respond as if you wanted someone to instruct you/ give you new information to correct errors or learn from.
Personally, I never like it when people try to instruct me in a public forum like this. Conversely, I wouldn't presume to try to teach any of the folks here on the AikiWeb Forums things about aikido and other martial arts, especially as some of them have more years of martial experience than I do of breathing. People like Chuck Clark, Peter Goldsbury, Chuck Gordon, George Ledyard, and many others have probably quite literally forgotten more about aikido than I've personally learned up to this point.

Rather, I try to come here with the feeling of sharing my thoughts, experiences, and opinions. And personally (especially in these trying times across the world), I hope so will everyone else here.

Thanks, folks, for being here.

-- Jun

[MattLong]

Hi Chuck Sensei,

Pleasure running into you here as well. I enjoyed training with you last fall in Austin, when you stopped by Chiisai Aikikai on your honeymoon. It was a most informative seminar and a fun session.

Despite the weird tangent this thread has taken, I look forward to some good Aikido discussions in the future.

Matt

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by MattLong
Hi Chuck Sensei,
Pleasure running into you here as well. I enjoyed training with you last fall in Austin, when you stopped by Chiisai Aikikai on your honeymoon. It was a most informative seminar and a fun session.
Despite the weird tangent this thread has taken, I look forward to some good Aikido discussions in the future.
Matt

Hi Matt!

I had a blast there too. Ya'll have a great little dojo. We'll surely be back someday (in a couple years or so likely).

Give Polo a big koshi for me!

Chuck

[Chuck.Gordon]

Originally posted by akiy

.... People like Chuck Clark, Peter Goldsbury, Chuck Gordon, George Ledyard, and many others have probably quite literally forgotten more about aikido than I've personally learned up to this point ...

Geez. NOW I'm blushing. I got no business being included in that list of folks.

And, I note, this is my 100th Aikiweb post! Oughta be confetti or somesuch, huh?

Chuck

[MaylandL]

Originally posted by LOEP


...
And, I note, this is my 100th Aikiweb post! Oughta be confetti or somesuch, huh?

Chuck

Congratulations...hope this is what you're looking for :p :D