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This
year has been extremely busy for the members of the Brandeis
Dojo—past and present. We’ve had the great fortune of
inter-acting with each other and other dojos very often this
year in Boston, but also across the US and internationally. We
have lots of reasons to celebrate, so we thought we would
share some highlights with the whole IKA.
 Jamaica's
Brandeis
Kokondo-ka Rebekah Konn is back in town for a visit
and is training this week at the BKA and at Mr. Adam
Garber's South Shore class.
Rebekah is in the Peace Corps and is doing great work
in urban Jamaica with teens through many community programs,
including a major initiative to enhance literacy which she
started.
On the BKA social scene, eight dojo members recently
traveled together to Montreal, Canada for a full weekend, and
amazingly, after nearly 16 hours of driving in two days,
everyone made it home happy and still friends.
This trip followed earlier non-martial arts weekend
excursions as a dojo to Cape Cod (arranged by red belt Karen
Kerney) and to Sensei Warren Postman's
home in Vermont.
Currently, Mr. Ian Platt is organizing
an outing for the dojo on May 23 for dinner at a Malaysian
restaurant and a screening of the new movie
"Matrix-Reloaded." Mr. Platt is not starring in the
movie though he has most of the Freshman convinced that he has
replaced Keanu for the sequel.
Sensei Jean Pirina and Mr. Greg
Sirokman are finishing up their second year exams at
Harvard Law School and MIT's Ph.D. chemistry programs
respectively. They have both trained really hard this year in
Kokondo in spite of brutal workloads. Along with Ms.
Cabrini Pak who is currently traveling in Italy, they
all just were just promoted to Shodan in karate.
Cabrini joined the IKA as a member of Dr. Szlyk’s
dojo in Washington, D.C. and moved to Brandeis in 2000.
Shihan Arel, Master Howard and
I will be at the Seattle BEMA seminar this weekend where we
will see most of the Stanford University dojo, too. Mr.
Hua's class is expanding quickly thanks in large part
to Dr. Fiona Plow's recruiting efforts. Also
at BEMA will be the familiar face of brown belt Laurie Harris,
the Brandeis roving ambassador.
Laurie has gotten to know many people in the IKA in the
last few years at regional seminars across the country.
Laurie and most of the Stanford crew spent last weekend
studying with Shihan at the Bakersfield,
CA seminar hosted by Sensei
Mike Shinault and Sensei
David Smith. Mike
and Jen from the Stanford
dojo just saw Laurie last month as they were all hosted by
Sensei Chuck Martin at the St.
Louis seminar. They
had the chance to train with Mr. Martin’s students under the
eyes of Masters Arel, Howard and Dunne and Sensei Jeff Soltez from Kansas and Seattle.
The month before that, they trained in Richland,
WA at Sensei Mike Stevenson’s seminar with Shihan and Master Dunne.
Sensei Shan Hua will be at visiting
Brandeis for classes in May.
Mr. Hua will also be spending time in South America in
the coming year studying Spanish intensively and doing
volunteer work before spending a year in the elite MBA program
at INSEAD, one of
the world’s top business schools. Shan also just announced
that he got engaged to Lia Nguyen, a Jukido and karate student at the Stanford Dojo and
also a Brandeis alumnus.
Shan looks forward to training with Sensei
Toropainen and the European Kokondo-ka while living in
Paris.
Brandeis
and Stanford dojo black belt Sensei Alex Hallock is
now in New York City doing
post-poctoral work at Columbia University and
his new karate classes are going well. He will soon be
inheriting former students from Brandeis and other dojos,
including current BKA and Quinnipiac Kokondo-ka who
are heading to NYC for the summer. Dr. Hallock will also be
travelling to Seattle this weekend to train alongside his
buddies from Stanford.
I've
been asked to extend greetings from BKA old time Brown Belts Mike
Parker and Shira Silverman and black
belt Mr. Andrew Feigenson, all of whom are
living in New Jersey and planning to get back involved in
Kokondo as soon as possible. They are certainly staying in touch and I am sure we
will see them again soon.
Mr. Bill Willand, Jukido black belt and
11 year IKA member has been busy finishing High School and
training/teaching at the Brandeis, South Shore and Concord
Carlisle dojos. Bill will enter Clemson University in
South Carolina in the Fall where he will soon start the ICKA's
newest Jukido dojo and will work closely with me and with Sensei
George Rego from Florida to get the class going
quickly and efficiently
Denver, Colorado's Jukido and karate brown
belt Dr. Melanie Harris is looking forward to
the arrival of BKA member Bob Fincutter who
is relocating from Boston. Bob and Melanie
will train together until Melanie returns to NY, and Bob will
be back to see his BKA friends in advance of the International
Seminar. Green belt Amalia Nitu hosted a
goodbye party for Bob last weekend right after Bob took BKA
members Mike Ukstins and Sophia
Mendelsohn flying all over the state. Bob just earned
his pilot’s license and hopes to fly himself to regional
seminars in Utah, New Mexico and California from his new home
in Denver. His
passenger Sophia is
the BKA President and recently won an elite
scholarship based on outstanding performance in the Chinese
Language and East Asian studies.
Sensei Johanna Glazer's Concord-Carlisle Jukido
dojo
is also doing great this spring and began teaching a new
session this week with best sign-up rate to date. She is also
keeping at least five of her previous students whose test at
Brandeis in April was outstanding! Johanna and Len
Glazer's son Joshua can now
pronounce most of the Jukido terminology and is doing very
good ukemi as he gets ready for his 2nd birthday on Memorial
Day weekend. The other Boston area dojos are also doing well
under Sensei Garber and Sensei Lisauskas. Sensei
Dean Ierardi is currently investigating options for
the newest Boston area dojo, most likely in the Burlington,
MA 128 area.
Sensei Greg Szlyk and his wife Carrie
(Jukido yellow belt) are moving a little bit further
south in Virginia now that Greg has finished a six year
surgical residency at GWU Hospital in Washington, DC. He has
been running his dojo in DC continuously for the last 10 years
and looks forward to resuming his training and teaching in Fredricksburg,
Virginia as soon as possible. He recently trained
alongside Mr. Ben Friedman, Mr. Mike McKeon, Master
Steve Dunne and me in Chicago at Master Dunne's home
dojo, which was an absolute treat. Greg and Ben are two of the
best and toughest black belts ever to come out of Brandeis and
have miraculously managed to continue their training and
teaching through very challenging medical school programs.
Master Steve Dunne will be spending his
annual summer vacation in CT once again with his family and
will conduct his 3rd Annual Seminar at
Brandeis in July. We don't know what he has planned, but you
can count on sweating and learning a lot. Sensei
Betancourt, the Strait Brothers and
the Tolland dojo will be coming up to
Brandeis for the evening and possibly Master Wood
and Sensei Scott Cohen will
come up that night to teach as well. Everyone is invited and we will get the word out when
we have a date set.
Sensei Michael Oshinsky is
doing well with his Philadelphia dojo. He and
his wife Chanah Leah (BKA Jukido blue belt)
just had their 5th child named
Rachel eruv Pesach. (No--they are not all named
Rachel eruv Pesach.) In his new dojo is one of his old time
students from Cornell named Bryan Armitage who
will enter medical school in the Fall and will continue his
training with Sensei
Scott Cohen at Quinnipiac
University in Hamden, CT. Two of Michael’s other Cornell
students from the mid-1990’s Jason Ehrlich and Ben
Gelman are now training in Israel. Jason will
be travelling to the US for the International seminar.
Jason's
training partner is Eyal Klein (a Kokondo
student of the BKA's first black belt) that Shihan
Arel, Sensei Len Glazer and I worked with in Israel
in 1993. Eyal has practiced Kokondo for over 10 years after
already earning a black belt in another style of karate and he
will travel to Finland in June for 10 days where he will train
intensively alongside Kokondo-ka from Finland, Norway,
Belgium and Great Britain. Eyal and I have been in
close contact for the last year and he trains regularly with Sensei
Dan Some in Israel and leads workouts in the
Herziliah area. Shihan, Sensei Steve Lisauskas, Sensei
Vesa Toropainen and I will be teaching the European
Kokondo Summer Camp in June, and conducting advanced
training for one week after the summer camp for senior
students, including Eyal and the Finnish instructors.
Eyal is very excited about meeting more members of the
International Kokondo family and his strong work etc will be a
great fit with the Finns.
Sensei Mike Schultz and Brandeis Yellow
Belt John Doerr opened their own company last year
called Wellesley Hills Consulting and are really doing well
with many new clients, even in this tough economy. Check out http://www.whillsgroup.com/
to read about their accomplishments to date. Many folks have
asked when we will see them back in the dojo. Hopefully it
will be soon, but at least we know that they are quite busy
doing great work under tough circumstances.
John’s son Andrew Doerr, a Yellow 1 in karate is currently the youngest member
of the Brandeis dojo but has a great spirit and attitude.
Andrew just received press attention for outstanding
performance on an advanced math project for his middle school
in Wellesley. One
of Mr. Schultz’s students from his Babson
College dojo named Jeff
Sutton continues his study of Kokondo under Sensei Adam
Garber.
Our
very own BKA Karate red belt Raphi Rosenblatt is
already training hard for the summer in Jukido with Sensei
Rego in Florida. He has made the long drive twice to
Mr. Rego's Palm Coast dojo and has been very well received.
According to Sensei Rego, "Raphi is doing extremely well
and he is picking up Jukido very fast and is a natural...in
two days, he already feels like a "regular" in the
dojo."
Congratulations
to everyone in all of these dojos for their great efforts this
year to keep building and strengthening Kokondo Karate and
Jukido Jujitsu across the globe.
More than ever, the IKA is a true family which benefits
from the rich diversity of its members while uniting us all
around a set of codes that continue to be relevant, practical
and applicable in all aspects of our marts arts and personal
lives.
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