World Martial Arts Academy of Crestwood

Breakfast at World Martial Arts Academy Crestwood. Thanks Master Winkler Greg Dickerson Bill Winkler

had an awesome class tonight outside. my nose is still a little cold. temps in the upper 20s. all part of the kick ice series... really the students that come to this and our saturday outside class show real grit... it is some fun too. not only the cold but having to yell over the sound of cars driving by our parking lot. but its all good. thanks drea, december, savannah, xander, olivia, kaity, franky o, dean, carlos, franky and molly for toughing it out in these bitter cold

Kinda cold last night but the toughest students showed up and were out in it!

Small class the other day. Had some extra time with my super kids! Getting them to run off the wall!

figured out a way to fog or mist the whold dojang with a disinfectant quickly. this is way better than mopping between classes and takes less time to dry! thanks master rigdon for this great idea! and it matches my other power tools!!!!! 18V Ryobi!!!! YAH baby!

We had some chilly, rainy weather the last couple saturdays. my students couldn't believe the conditions we used to train in up in upstate new york. we would start preparing for state championships in january and continue to train through june for nationals. we started at 5:00 a.m. at rec park running and doing kicking drills under the pavilion. then after 2 hours we would go home, shower and go to work or school. never mattered, rain or shine snow or ice. we were there training. we had a great class and the tough ones stuck with it and had a great time. im good for this through summer, just like the old days!

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response i...s magnificent: Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta: I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula. Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all! Kurt Vonnegut ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of getting to know you questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes. And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them. And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them. And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could Win at them.

A man saw a snake being burned to death and decided to take it out of the fire. When he did, the snake bit him causing excruciating pain. The man dropped the sn...ake, and the reptile fell right back into the fire. So, the man looked around and found a metal pole and used it to take the snake out of the fire, saving its life. Someone who was watching approached the man and said: That snake bit you. Why are you still trying to save it? The man replied: The nature of the snake is to bite, but that's not going to change my nature, which is to help. Do not change your nature simply because someone harms you. Do not lose your good heart, but learn to take precautions. By Diane Johnson

so testing this week went well for a corona era event. we will be working on this material into the new year! YAY!

this is what we will be working on over the next month and a half or so.