9/11 Blues...
In the martial arts we deal with violence and aggression as a matter of course. They are born of war and struggle, of the need to fight to survive and to protect ones family. I started martial arts training in 1977 because somehow my father had the idea that it would be good for me to know how to fight. Perhaps this thought was with my dad as his father was a German immigrant with a very German accent and a very German name that both he and my father shared in a moment in time when things were not so cozy between the Germans and the Americans. And at the same moment, things were equally uneasy with the Japanese and the Americans. Difficult times to be sure. And yet for me, the German American conflict has been the stuff of history class, and my encounter with Japanese culture has been a commonly pulled thread in the tapestry of life as I weave it, so much so that I barely think of Aikido or Soto Zen as being particularly Japanese. And yet, they are. Or were. W...