I have a report of the Solfest show on the www.cockburnproject.net
Solfest is always a fun gathering of the tribe. I see friends from all over there. I met up with Mark Squire (which I mention here again ). It’s always so good to see him. I also ran into Clay, who has stories to tell about the early days with Bruce and Colin Linden. This time I got his phone number.
I finally got to spend some time with my nieces Kelly (18) and Laurie (16).
This is out back of my Dad’s house and the house I grew up in.
I wish I were closer to them. Kelly is getting ready to go to college, working, has a steady guy and doing really well. Laurie is in a bit more the the teenage angst, being 16, and wasn’t all that happy while she was visiting. We do keep up in emails and I am glad for that.
Visited family in Michigan June 28-July 12. Spent a fair amount of time before leaving getting ready to go .. you know how it is .. I always want what I want and want to be comfortable. Any way I booked the flight in March, some time in May Dad called and told be he had a melanoma on his shoulder and had it removed. We thought/ hoped that would be the end of it. Well it isn’t.
Also at that time he was told he had type 2 diabetes. They decided to try and control that one with diet.
Here’s my Dad and his wife Sue:
The doctors went back in and took out more of the melanoma spot and the sentinel lymph nodes. The whole time we were there we were waiting on another appointment with a head/neck oncologist who is going to take out the rest of the lymphs in his neck and shoulders. This surgery is slated for August 8.
On top of that, they had him do a stess test on a treadmill (this is a guy who until this past year walked 5 miles a day and played 18 holes of golf regularly). He actually passed the treadmill part but the results came back that he had damage to his heart sometime a few months back.. a heart attack that he didn’t know he had.
How in the world can he go from being active healthy and strong to this???
Any way the stress of all the unknowing is paying its toll. I feel I should be there but he doesn’t feel it necessary now. Sue just retired, and its good she is there for him. Plus most of his brothers and sisters and their families are close by so he has support.
More on this trip soon.
More on the rest of life soon.
I went to a 4:20 party yesterday. I really went to see Carolyn, my friend who is battling cancer. It was a joyful, sunny day, she was surrounded by friends and family and I was so glad to see her. She was one of the group who went with me to see Bruce Cockburn last fall. At that time she was feeling much better than she is now.
I won’t go into all the gory details, but she has been on one therapy or another for a very long time. Sometimes there is lots of hope, other times a feeling of despair.
She is such a strong – vibrant – beautiful woman. Please pray / send light / or thoughts of seeing her as her strong vibrant healthy beautiful self.
Here she is with her grandson, Jonah, her daughter Crystal, and that’s her husband Mark in the background:
This is one of Mom, when I was still a baby. Photographs have come a long way since then.. and these were scanned.
And these 2 are of me when I was a teen..there aren’t very good shots and they don’t really ‘say’ who I was then, but you get kind of an idea.
I think I had a black wig on ?!! but I had short hair still then– this is around 1965.
And this is 1969 — i don’t think I wore that particular slinky shirt more than once! Funny how it gets in a photo.. there are so few from that time period!!
If you are really interested in having ‘old’ photos of both my mom and dad’s side of the family — let me know. I have some real old ones.. it would be nice for someone in the family to have them. I always planned on passing them on to my kids, but hey! I didn’t have any!! Just let me know.
Russel has been profiled this December by his Aikido Association – www.ai-ki-do.org. This is the profile:
Russel Wisby, 3rd Dan
Mateel Aikido, Redway, California
Division 2
In 1974 I took a defensive tactics class at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka. I was looking for a self defense class and I had no idea what to expect. The instructor was a Hawaiian named Richard Kahoali, a student of Koichi Tohei Sensei. He taught some Kempo but mostly Ki Society Aikido. I found myself becoming more grounded and empowered almost immediately. I was struck by how powerful Kahoali Sensei could be while at the same time being kind.
In 1982 Tom Moreland Sensei, started classes in Garberville and I trained with him until early 1983 when he stopped teaching for health reasons. He suggested that I check out Tom Read Sensei’s classes at North Coast Aikido in Arcata.
Read Sensei is a remarkable Aikidoist. He studied with Hikitsuchi Sensei in Shingu and went on to develop his own unique way of Aikido. This was my first taste of Aikikai Aikido and I really liked it.
The first ten years of my Aikido training were sketchy at best.
The call of the wilderness was strong in me. I bought land in Southern Humboldt County in 1977. Distance and circumstances kept me from training more than two years spread out over a ten year period. The only classes available locally at that time were Wing Chun, Karate and Tai chi. So I dabbled in all of them. None of them could compare with the experience of Aikido.
In 1985 Doug Knox, who was Tom Read’s chief student, moved to our area and started Mateel Aikido. Now, finally, we had local, regular classes with an able instructor and the possibility to progress.
In 1986 Knox Sensei moved to Oregon and Carl Tissol Sensei became Dojocho of Mateel Aikido. Carl had trained for a long time with Tom Read and was very influenced by his Shingu roots.
In January 1993 I received my Shodan from Read Sensei. He had numerous Gasshukus and this was my first exposure to other Aikikai instructors including Frank Doran, Mary Heiny, Jack Wada, Richard Moon, Terry Dobson, Linda Holiday and others.
Tissol Sensei encouraged us to go to Seminars and Summer Retreat at San Rafael to broaden our perspective of Aikido styles. Summer Retreat provided the opportunity to learn from top notch instructors, primarily Frank Doran, Robert Nadeau, and Hiroshi Ikeda Senseis. And there were so many fantastic guest instructors and morning class instructors that it would take too long to list them all.
In 1994 Carl stopped teaching and Forrest Kan and I became the Dojochos of Mateel Aikido. We had maintained our connection with Read Sensei’s Association of Independent Aikidoists, but as time went on we were more and more drawn to the teaching and style of Frank Doran Sensei. In 1997 we became official members of the Aikido Association of Northern California Division 2. Since then we have been inspired by Doran Sensei’s sage counsel and guidance.
We currently have about a dozen regular students. Some classes there are only six or eight of us. The highest number of students we have ever had in twenty one years of classes is twenty three. We have classes every Tuesday and Thursday night at 6:30 and every Sunday morning at 10:30 at our local Veterans Hall in Garberville.
The wonderful thing about living in a small country town is that you get to see the same people over and over again every time you go to town. So you get to know more people. A trip to the store becomes a social event. And likewise in our dojo we have seen and trained with the same people for years. Everybody in the dojo knows everyone else. Really well! So there is a strong sense of family.
Sixteen years ago I started a kids program with the intention of increasing our adult school population over time. But small town kids usually move away when they get out of school since there are no serious career options here.
Nevertheless I still teach kid’s classes twice a week at the Community Center in Redway at 4pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.
I also teach classes at four local schools throughout the week. Mostly kindergarten to eighth grade. At the busiest time of the school year I have seventeen kid’s classes and 150 to 160 students .
It would be so hard to pick one particular Aikido memory because there are so many.
It could be Doshu’s visit, or
A weapons class with Pat Hendricks or Danielle Smith, or
A quiet moment with B. J. Carlisle, or
A mind stretching realization in one of Nadeau Sensei’s energy classes, or
Being chastised by Doran Sensei in such a tactful and gracious way that if you weren’t paying attention you wouldn‘t even know it, or
Experiencing an almost hallucinatory shift in the light in Read Sensei’s class, or
Getting brutally honest feedback from an eight-year-old in kid’s class, or
The countless daily realizations that I am applying an Aikido principle to some seemingly mundane action, or
Any one of dozens of wonderful moments with a long list of generous and patient instructors I have been fortunate enough to meet.
I am deeply grateful to each and everyone of them.
But if I had to pick just one it would be my first Gasshoku in 1975 were I saw my first high ranked Aikidoist and student of O’ Sensei, Koichi Tohei teach. He was awesome.
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Wow, been awhile since I was here. As usual just too busy to post.
So, to review the last few months, we (me, Carolyn, Cristin, and Linn) went to see Bruce Cockburn at the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, on November 9. What fun!! It was a sunny drive there and back, lots of girl talk and shopping.
The show was SOLD OUT! It was quite fun, Gary Craig and Julie Wolf have blended fully with Bruce and it showed in everything they did. The crowd was receptive and keep the pace moving.
I met some great folks in line and would love it if they would get in touch with me. Darlene? Clay? John? woman in white sweater? (sorry I forgot your name!).
In talking with Clay, it seems once again the circle of Bruce has gone full circle, as he was mentioning a friend, Bobby, I realized that I too know Bobby and have spent much ‘Bruce time’ with him. I talked about that here, (down the page bit).
It would seem that the summer has been filled with concerts, not so really, they were just the high points to get me through the heat, work, and unsettled-ness of the move from town and all the projects we took on this summer that are not yet finished.
Check off the list: DirecTV with 2 DVR’s :), WildBlue Satellite Internet from GotSky.com. The internet connection we have is the slowest one offered for now.. I noticed a better download speed, but the upload is pitiful especially with ftp… even though it should be way faster than dial up it isn’t, so I will need to look into that.
The washer and dryer are waiting for the 8’x9′ foot porch to get enclosed. This wasn’t really my plan on getting machines here. I wanted to just throw a tarp over them in the winter and be done with it. But enclosing the porch was what came of that idea. I am ok with it, I think I will actually like it, but it got added to an already long list of stuff to do with little time and money .. so it isn’t yet done and I still haul laundry to town. Hopefully before the rains come it will get done.
We had to order a stove/oven. Non of those fancy beautiful ranges for us 🙁 They all use so much electricity, with their glow bars and all. We had to order one with little electric use, that we can light either with an electric start button OR with a match-clicker. It should be here in the next few weeks and then I will need to move stuff around in the kitchen area… remember we have no cabinets yet so it won’t be such a big deal..I hope. But it will be good to have a range, I have been cooking on a Primus 2 burner propane camp stove for a long time now.
We finally made it to the river one day just before the long heat wave hit.
A whole day just swimming and hanging on the river, this was in July, but it helped recharge my soul.
Now I am getting ready for yet another surgery, bunion this time …oh joy.. and soon school/ work for Russel starts up and rains and .. and.. there is never a good time to do this kind of thing.
