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Old 06-01-2012, 12:36 PM   #26
Ellis Amdur
 
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Location: Seattle
Join Date: May 2003
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Re: A New Column: It Had to be Felt

Over the past month or so, there have been some wonderful follow-up posts to some of the columns - among them George Ledyard's on Saotome sensei, Stefan Stenudd on Nishio sensei, Thomas Christaller on Watanabe sensei, and today, Gadi Shorr on Chida sensei. This project is beginning, slowly, to pick up energy, making it go beyond my "personal" project. The reader will note that in many of the follow-up posters have had different experiences than the original writer of that column, and it is a mark of their integrity that they have followed the criteria of this project - letting their own experience stand on its own, whether it be in contrast or agreement with those who wrote before.

In the next month, we will again have four columns: I will be writing on Shibata Ichiro, and Henry Ellis on Noro Masamichi. I'm also happy that there will be columns by new writers: Jorge Garcia on Kato Hiroshi and Marc Abrams on Imaizumi Shizuo.

I want to reiterate one idea for these columns. You may not have had the experience of taking ukemi for a certain teacher - but YOUR teacher has. If you wish to do an interview of your teacher, in the same spirit as the columns here and with the same condition, PLEASE do. If it is a follow up to another column, simply post. If it is an idea for a new column - something new - please let me know your idea before you get started, as I do perform a kind of gate-keeper/editor function in this project.

On that note, there are only a few people left alive who took ukemi for Ueshiba Morihei, or his contemporaries. People have interviewed them, but without specificity. DO let me know if you have a chance to interview such a person - and you and I can go over how best to get information that is relevant to the project of IHTBF.

Ellis Amdur

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