My June article — “Life: A Magical Arte” — is up at Pagan Pages.
The title of my monthly column is Oak-corns & Apple-thorns, and it’s a reference to a two-part riddle I wrote which goes, “Which is the tree that bears the corn, and which the apple that wears the thorn?”
Do you know which two North American plants answer the riddle? Can you figure out how they might be somehow related?
AMRAYC in 8 mins: 10 Pushups, full stop, 10 Squats @cabal_fang #WOD
Posted in Martial arts
I’m always a few years behind the curve. This is known fact. So please excuse my enthusiasm.
I used to have a clunky podcasting thingy on my old laptop, but it required a manual synch to my phone, and the process was so clunky I only listened to like four podcasts then gave up.
Two years ago I got an android, and a couple of weeks ago I decided to download a podcasting app and give this new-fangled idea of podcasting another try (I’m officially an old geezer, I know this now. Podcasting has been around for at least 8 years. This is why the elderly often eat spoiled food out of the fridge. “It’s still fresh!” I just know someday I’m going eat rancid pork or moldy hummus and die a horrible death. Somebody help me…)
First I listened to Joe Rogan. Nice. Great stuff.
Then yesterday I remembered that Cory and Laine do a podcast over at New World Witchery so I scampered over there and listened to #50 — “Mountain Magic.” I always read the blog posts, but that was first time listening to the podcast. Are you serious? (side note: Haint blue paint on your porch ceiling? How did I not know about that? I’m as southern as sweet tea!) You guys are pros. Great production, great content, charming banter, intellectual sourcing of references, it’s all there. You even have radio-ready voices. Blown away. Well done!
You guys just shotgunned the radio in my truck. It’s mortally wounded. It hates you.
Make a deck of cards and write on them things you want to do on a regular basis that you never seem to do enough. Resolve to periodically pull one out and get it done that day. After you pull it out and do it, put it on the bottom of the deck.
Just make sure you put things on the cards that you can get done that very same day. Include things that are personal, professional, or spiritual that are immediately achievable. No projects, no long term goals, just mini-goals you can quickly and easily knock out of the park. This is your deck, so you can pull one out on a certain day of each week, each month, or as often as you like.
Because my cards contain actions that will push me to be the person I want to be, I call this my Tarot of Success. But you don’t have to call it that. Call it your Paper Drill Sargent, Deck of Mindfulness, Pack of Propinquity, or Trumps of Timeliness. Doesn’t matter.
I made 28 cards out of a cut up red file folder. But you could just as easily take an old deck of playing cards and write on them with a permanent marker, or use the flip sides of old business cards. They don’t have to be pretty.
But you could make them pretty if you wanted to. You could decorate and embellish them with artwork. You could turn down the lights and sit before a candle while you write them out, anoint them with oil and pray your God to make them holy, pass them through the smoke of incense, or wrap them in a scarf and sleep with them under your pillow to charge them with the power of your dreams.
666 Workout: (6) 25-yard Sprints, (6) Prisoner Squats, (6) Jackknifes. Repeat 6 times. @cabal_fang #WOD
Posted in Martial arts
Maybe you’ve heard about the Oregon woman who was raped after she called the police as the attacker was trying to enter her home — only to be told the cops are only open Monday through Friday. Budget cuts apparently caused the problem.
The case has sparked some debate. Reddit is blowing up. And then there is this annoying blob of mustard on the shirt-front of the internet by Amanda Marcotte entitled, “Enough Airy-Fairy Liberal Nonsense About Police. If You Don’t Want to Get Raped, Hire a Private Security Firm.” I’m going to go out on a limb and say Ms. Marcotte would be singing a different tune if this was her daughter, sister, or mother. Or herself.
As a self-defense expert, I think it’s great for people to learn to defend themselves. But the facts are that some people just can’t. Either they lack the dedication, the physicality, or the inclination. My fifteen year-old daughter is whip-thin, and no matter how much I teach her, she’d have tough time with a large, evil man. There are tiny people, handicapped people, old people — what about them? Is it “airy-fairy liberal nonsense” to expect a little help for them from the police?
The victim paid her taxes. Certain things come with taxes — like basic policing, defense against enemies foreign and domestic, you know, little stuff like that. This is the basics here. We’re not debating health care, or immigration, or “entitlements.” We’re talking about basic services. Where did her tax money go, exactly?
Can we please just park the conservative B.S. and take a ride on the common sense train? Can’t we just stop blaming the victim and agree that she paid her taxes and there should have been a police officer able to respond?
Every member of her county should refuse to pay any further taxes until there are adequate emergency services — police, EMS, and fire. And if there’s a problem with that, I’m sure there would be lawyers and an outraged public willing to come to their legal defense.
Thanks to Rachel for pointing to this brave and poignant post from A Forest Door.
Posted in Mysticism
I was watching a show on cable the other day called Red, Hot & New, and there was ten minute bit on Kim Kahana and his stunt school. Watching him repel down a four-storey wall it was hard to believe he was 83 years old. He looks more like 50! So I looked him up Wikipedia and I was floored.
How is it possible that I never heard of this guy before?
He dropped out of school at age 13. Unable to read and write, he survived on the street. As a soldier in the Korean War, he was captured and shot by firing squad. Pretending to be dead, he crawled out of a mass grave, made his escape, and received numerous medals.
After the war he returned home and got into the movie business, first as an extra and then as stuntman. He has over 300 movies to his credit.
He holds black belts in five martial arts. He once killed two men who were attacking a woman in a parking lot using only his hands and feet. Now he pays the bills by training stuntpeople.
If this guy’s for real, he should probably be running a superhero school instead of a stunt school.
“Finding your voice.” At the risk of sounding like Napoleon Dynamite, what does “finding your voice” even mean?
Seems to me that finding your voice isn’t as much about locating something as it is about releasing it, about forgetting what others want or need to hear and saying what you want to say.
Popularity is a pusher hawking a rush, and he’s trying to get you hooked. He wants you coming back and coming back, saying the words to get a hit.
Spit out that pipe and speak your mind.
AMRAYC in 9 mins: 8 Pushups, 8 Squats @cabal_fang #WOD
Posted in Martial arts
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I teach martial arts free of charge through Heritage Arts , a 501(c)(3) educational charity offering free or donation-only classes related to martial arts, fitness, outdoor skills, and spiritual development. Distance learning programs available. Visit the Heritage Arts website to find out more, or click here to join the Heritage Self-Defense group on Facebook.
What is Heritage Rough ‘n’ Tumble? It’s mind-body-spirit form of American Rough ‘n’ Tumble, a manner of no-holds-barred fighting that originated in the Southern Virginia backcountry during the Colonial Era and has since grown, evolved, and adapted to the realities of modern self-defense. An amalgam of the varying techniques brought to America by colonists from all over the world, blended with the fighting methods of the over 900 distinct indigenous tribes, American Rough ‘n’ Tumble is perhaps the world’s most fearsome martial art.
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Robert Mitchell Jr. 