In Memory of Quintin Chambers

At Ellis Amdur's Kogen Budo blog, there was a remembrance of Quintin Chambers, one of the first westerners to study classical Japanese martial arts in depth. Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here. 

When a big bell tolls, the sound seems to sink into your soul, affecting you deeply.  In the Japanese koryū community the news that Quintin Chambers Sensei had passed most surely had that very same effect.

He trained in judō and aikidō, but when he found the koryū, he became enthralled by it. Quintin was one of the foreign koryū pioneers in Japan that trained under both Shimizu Takaji Sensei in Shintō Musō-ryū (SMR) and Otake Risuke Sensei in Katori Shintō-ryū (KSR).  Shimizu Sensei authorized him to instruct in SMR which he did in Hawai’i.  He taught the art to a group that always remained small; the required fee was sincere effort and thought about the art.

Describing Quintin’s demeanor is actually quite easy.  He was the quintessential British gentleman until he wielded a weapon.  You then faced a serious warrior with impenetrable zanshin. Quintin’s body was sinewy; the intent he exuded could be imposingly dangerous. However, he was absolutely not a typical budō jock.  This became immediately obvious as he spoke with the British Received Pronunciation acquired in England’s Public School System and at Cambridge University.  He could, for example, wax eloquent on languages, classical music, and politics.  Both his technique and language were precise.  Quintin taught the omote techniques but consistently sought the ura, insisting that the omote can get you killed.  Since KSR is a strong sword-based tradition, he also had great insight for the uchidachi side of SMR.  He thought the path of training is not a matter of how many years you must strive; rather, it was how many decades.

We remember him fondly and respectfully.  Anyone who trained with him knew it was an honor to have done so.  The good knight’s name and reputation will resonate long into the future.

 

From Joe Cieslik

I was fortunate in my travel plans and was able to visit and talk with Chambers Sensei several times before he passed. Right up to the end, he was concerned about his students and their training. He treated everyone with courtesy and respect. Because of his consideration, his students always tried to reach the high bar that he set. He accomplished a great deal in his life with talent, integrity, intelligence, dedication, athleticism and an innate generosity. I feel the world has lost someone completely irreplaceable and is a lesser place.

From John Howland

To anyone who knew him, any description of Quintin Chambers, the public man, would present an easily recognizable constellation of features. He was gentlemanly, charming, and considerate of others. His deep, resonant voice carried easily–he might have made a fine opera singer, but he always kept his volume down a few notches below oratorical. He was erudite and witty. His humor never coarse, but sometimes (oh, so gently) biting.

Quintin is well-remembered for his compassion. He loved animals and had an optimistic view of humankind. He once said, “Wherever you go, anywhere in the world, you find good people. That is the norm.” His handsome, angular features (sometimes pensive, sometimes creased into a boyish grin) were unforgettable. My wife always referred to him as “Dear Quintin.”

In contrast to his privileged background, Quintin chose to be a man of the common people. He denounced the vestiges of the class system in England and complained that his accent would make him unwelcome in a cockney bar. He was content to spend more than half-a-century living in the gentle climate and multi-ethnic diversity of the Hawai’ian Islands.

Chambers the critic was a somewhat different animal. His intense desire was to seek the combative utility beneath the pedagogical norms and performative aesthetics of the ryūha. It is well known that he and his training partner, Donn Draeger, conspired to establish what was then the International Hoplological Research Center in Hawai’i. What is less known is that one of his main reasons for volunteering to leave Japan before Draeger was the concern that his young son not be brought up in the Japanese public school system. He explained, “Their critical thinking is zero.”

Quintin the warrior was a man of highest integrity who expressed a willingness to fight for a cause at a moment’s notice. This was the man who ordered his students to hold back while he went, alone, to deal with a motorcycle gang who had threatened violence against one of them. Teacher, critic, warrior, friend; for all of these we are ever indebted.

The Passing of Wing Chun Master Kernspecht

Master Kernspecht was a leading figure in Wing Chun in Europe. He had a large organization and a vast number of students.

Frequent contributor Jonathan Bluestein as a close friend of Master Kernspecht and gave a eulogy at his funeral, which is below.

A guest post by Mr Bluestein on the Wing Chun of Master Kernspecht may be found here.

 

 

Reigando Cave and Miyamoto Musashi

Over at Japanese History and Culture, there was an article about the Reigando Cave, where Musashi sequestered himself to write the Book of Five Rings. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Reigando cave and a translation of the stone block.

When I visited Musashi Miyamoto`s Reigando cave there stands a stone block with writing on it. I could only understand a little of it so I asked my friend Eric Shahan if he had time, to translate it.

He generously translated it and allowed me to write it up on my blog. Thankyou Eric.

Translated this plinth regarding Miyamoto Musashi’s Niten Ichi School. This is in front of Reigando, Spirit Rock Cave, where he ensconced himself while writing the Book of Five Rings (the most translated Japanese book ever?)

The Origins of the Niten Ichi School:Niten Ichi Ryu, The Two Heavens Unified as One School of Sword, is not the two-sword school everyone thinks it is. The sword saint Miyamoto Musashi’s life was a journey. He sought to drift like clouds and flow like water until the end.

In his early thirties he fought martial artists from all the domains of Japan and this continued until he was 51 years old. Historically speaking, we have no idea what happened in that 20 year period other than he continuously travelled back and forth between eastern and western Japan seeking to duel and improve his swordsmanship. In the 17th year of Kanei 1640 he accepted Lord Hosokawa Tadayoshi’s invitation and became an advisor on military affairs to the Hosokawa Domain and moved into Chiba Castle in Higo Domain. At the order of Lord Tadayoshi, Musashi wrote the Thirty-Five Rules of the Sword, which he offered to his patron.Two years later, using the Thirty-five Rules of the Sword as a framework, he wrote the Book of Five Rings while ensconced in Reigando, the Spirit Rock Cave.

On May 12th of the 2nd year of Shoho 1645 he granted The Book of Five Rings to Terao Masanobu. To Terao Nobuyuki (Masanobu’s younger brother) he granted the Thirty-Five Rules and affirmed him as the head instructor and heir to his school. From this point on, with The Book of Five Rings having established the basis of the Niten Ichi School, the family who inherited the role of instructors of the school split into five branches. Despite not spreading beyond the domain, it flourished. However, by the end of the Edo Era only the Noda, Yamao and Santo branches still continued.

 

Birthday Post

Months pass, days pile up

like one intoxicating dream

an old man sighs.

- Ryokan

 
Today is my birthday. Won’t you help me celebrate?



Today I am celebrating another successful trip around the sun. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for all of my loved ones. 2019 has been a rough year on the family.

We lost my father in law and a brother in law due to old and and extended illnesses. There were a couple of distant relatives who passed as well.

What was harder to take was the passing of my sister in law whom I wrote about last year. She had Glioblastoma, the brain cancer that afflicted Sen McCain. She passed 14 months after her diagnosis, which is about average for the general population.

Her life was never the same since the day she felt that she needed to see a doctor. I’m sure that she had her private moments, but we never saw her complain. We never saw her ask “why me?”

Instead she was thankful for the time she could spend with her family and friends. She only showed endless gratitude.

The day that will stick with me the most was Opening Day for the 2019 Detroit Tigers baseball season. She was a great baseball fan.

My wife and I stopped over to see her. It was a beautiful day. She was watching the game with her husband. The window was open and it was as pleasant as it could be.

Unplanned, several of her closest friends stopped over as well. Her husband and I retreated to the garage to sit outside, enjoy a beer and listen to the happy chatter and laughter coming from her bedroom. She had a great day.



A few years ago, the company I worked for decided to close the division that employed me and I ended up with a job at a small trade association. We had a staff of four and a board of directors made up of members to provide oversight.

I leaned that November that the board of directors wanted to “shake things up.” When you have a staff of only four people, any shaking resembles an earthquake. I knew that I needed to begin looking for another job.

It’s not easy looking for another job when you’re in your 60’s. At least doing a job search while I had one helped, but it was tough going. I had plenty of interviews and a few offers, but I typically low-balled. It was discouraging.

I finally began talking to two companies in particular in Spring. I had worked for one of them before, about 10 years ago. I knew them. They knew me. It would be easy to slide right in there. The office was actually closer to home than the trade association.

The other was a European based company with a small staff in the US. I’d work from home. I’d have to prove myself all over again, but there was the allure of going to Europe a couple of times a year.

Around the fourth of July, the board of directors eliminated the position of one of my colleagues. I knew that I was next, so I needed to close the deal with one of these two companies, but which one?

My Dad once told me that in a situation like this, I should flip a coin and see how I felt about it. I decided to do Dad a few times better and throw three coins, six times. This seemed to be a perfect question for the I Ching. Whatever came up would have to be interpreted by me, which would help me to clarify my thoughts and feelings.

The hexagram I threw was #24, Return, with all the broken lines moving. This resulted in the final hexagram #1, Creative.


I chose the company that I used to work for. I began my new position as a field application engineer around the end of July. I am enjoying myself a great deal. They didn’t have this position before and I am having an impact. All the signs say that this was a good move.

 


I wrote a year ago that I had reconnected with my original taijiquan teacher who was a student of Cheng Man Ching in New York, back in the 70’s, Carol Yamasaki. I showed up just in the nick of time. Due to some health issues, Carol has recently turned teaching over to one of her senior students, who is well regarded teacher in his own right, Bret Hall. Unfortunately, I only seem to be able to make it out to class is once or twice a month.

For the last year, I’ve also been supplementing my practice with exercises and drills from another branch of the CMC lineage which can be found at Adam Mizner’s Youtube channel, along with renewed focus on the standing practice, or zhan zhuang. Mizner also has a distance learning course that is well thought out and presented.

Practice continues to go well. I’ve found that life just works better when I’m practicing regularly.

I would normally wake up an hour before I really needed to get ready for work to drink my coffee at a leisurely pace, watch the news, catch up on social media, etc. For the past several years I have been getting up an extra hour early to either run (which I since dropped but may return to) or practice taijiquan.

I’ve recently begun making that an extra 90 minutes early to make certain that I can consistently work on all of that material I want to practice.

I mentioned that I had dropped running. At my previous job, I didn’t have either short or long term disability insurance. I began to worry about doing damage to my joints that would require some sort of medical intervention after messing up my feet the previous year. Fine, I stopped running but put my focus into taijiquan.

Recently the Mrs has been wanting to find a health club with a real track that we could both go to for the winter. She likes to walk, and I could begin running again on a surface that would be much better for my joint health than the streets and sidewalks. So far, we haven’t turned anything up, but will keep looking.



Writing of the Mrs, this month we are going to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary. Somehow, I think that we must be doing something right.

I have come to the conclusion that the secret of a long, happy marriage is this: Every morning I look my wife in the eye and tell her: “I’m sorry, I was wrong and it will never happen again.” Then I leave the house for the day.

My two daughters are healthy, happy and prosperous. As I write this, the younger one is a few days away from running a half marathon with a broken little toe.

September 11 (1683)

September 11, 1683.

The seemingly unstoppable advance of militant Islam was brought to a halt and the tide turned at the Siege of Vienna in 1683.

Led by the last heavy cavalry in Europe, the Husaria, the Winged Horsemen of Poland, King Jan Sobieski III Poland routed the entrenched Muslim forces and the retreat of Islam from Central Europe had begun.

Kushida Sensei Passes Away

 The Winter Lion

Issuing his last roar,

Leaves all behind.

I just learned that Kushida Sensei, one of Gozo Shioda's first Uchi Deshi passed away on May 10th. I studied aikido under Kushida Sensei in the late 70's and on and off into the early 90's. He was a great martial artist and a great human being. I can honestly say that he's had quite an impact on my life.

I had previously posted a short video of Kushida Sensei. I thought it was appropriate to post it again. There is a black and white sequence in it from the 80's of him doing freestyle. That's how I remember him.




If you click on the link above, you'll be directed to the Gottsupidia wiki article. Below is an excerpt.


Kushida Takashi, born May 2, 1935, is an aikido instructor and founder of Aikido Yoshokai. Kushida began studying aikido under Shioda Gozo during the very early days of the Yoshinkan Dojo, which he entered together with Inoue Kyoichi. Not long after he began his training, he was asked by Shioda to become one of the first uchideshi (live-in student) at the Yoshinkan Dojo. For ten years, Kushida lived in the dojo as an uchideshi. He became a certified instructor in 1964 but continued to focus on his own training in addition to teaching students junior to him.

For twenty years, Kushida stayed with Shioda. During this time, he was Shioda's number one uke (for demonstrations and in class). In addition, Kushida handled Shioda's administrative duties. In 1973, a request for an instructor was sent from Kimeda Takeshi, who would later go on to found Yoshinkai Canada and currently lives and teaches in Toronto, Canada. In response to the request, Kushida left his position as chief instructor at the Yoshinkan honbu dojo and went to North America.

In 1976, Kushida started the Aikido Yoshinkai Association of North America (AYANA). In 1991, Yoshinkai Aikido in Japan established the International Yoshinkai Aikido Federation (IYAF, now defunct and replaced by AYF. See article Yoshinkan). Representatives of various countries discussed the mission, policies, and activities of IYAF with Kushida and Yoshinkai leaders in 1990. However,

Kushida did not wish to change AYANA's standards to conform with those of the IYAF and was subsequently dismissed from Yoshinkan by Shioda in August 1990.

Much like Tohei Koichi after he left the Aikikai, Kushida's contributions to early Yoshinkan Aikido have since been all but erased from the official records.

In December 1991, Kushida changed AYANA's name from Yoshinkai Association of North America to the Yoshokai Association of North America and began operating as an independent organization. Kushida's headquarters for the Aikido Yoshokai Association of North America in Ann Arbor Michigan is the Genyokan dojo.

Old Dogs

After 16 1/2 years, we're had to euthanize our beloved dog Annie.

In people years, she'd be about 90. She's had issues over the years as she's aged: blindness, deafness, an injury to one of her legs from a fall; but inspite of it all, she was full of life every day.

She had a bad decline over the weekend and we had to take her in.

Always, right to the end, she was a good dog.

We'll all miss her very much.

Our house seems so big and empty without her in it. I never realized how many little rituals we had every day. 

My wife has been sobbing non stop. As Annie grew more infirm, my wife's life increasingly centered around taking care of her dog.

My oldest daughter took the initiative and tracked down a puppy that met all the criteria my wife has ever mentioned "if we ever got another dog." They are picking her up tomorrow. I think Annie would approve.

A book I wrote about once that I think any dog lover would love is The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It's written from a dog's point of view. It's about an old dog who is at the end of his life looking back over his days and forward to what comes next. It's a beautiful book.

Another book about dogs that I enjoyed very much is Inside of a Dog by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz. Dr. Horowitz is a biologist who explains why dogs are they way they are and how they got that way. She uses her own dogs frequently as examples of her explanations. A dog owner would get a much better appreciation of his pet by reading this one.


A couple of years ago, I posted an extract from the book Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs by Gene Weingarten.I thought it would be appropriate to post it once again.

They can be eccentric, slow afoot, even grouchy. But dogs live out their final days, says The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten, with a humility and grace we all could learn from.

Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast madly off in all directions, fighting for command. Nor were they the exuberant archaeological expeditions of his middle years, when every other tree or hydrant or blade of grass held tantalizing secrets about his neighbors. In his old age, Harry had transformed his walk into a simple process of elimination—a dutiful, utilitarian, head-down trudge. When finished, he would shuffle home to his ratty old bed, which graced our living room because Harry could no longer ascend the stairs. On these walks, Harry seemed oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the arduous responsibility of placing foot before foot before foot before foot. But this time, on the edge of a small urban park, he stopped to watch something. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too.

Harry sat. For 10 minutes, he watched the fling and catch, fling and catch, his face contented, his eyes alight, his tail a-twitch. Our walk home was almost … jaunty.

Some years ago, The Washington Post invited readers to come up with a midlife list of goals for an underachiever. The first-runner-up prize went to: “Win the admiration of my dog.”

It’s no big deal to love a dog; they make it so easy for you. They find you brilliant, even if you are a witling. You fascinate them, even if you are as dull as a butter knife. They are fond of you, even if you are a genocidal maniac. Hitler loved his dogs, and they loved him.

Puppies are incomparably cute and incomparably entertaining, and, best of all, they smell exactly like puppies. At middle age, a dog has settled into the knuckleheaded matrix of behavior we find so appealing—his unquestioning loyalty, his irrepressible willingness to please, his infectious happiness. But it is not until a dog gets old that his most important virtues ripen and coalesce. Old dogs can be cloudy-eyed and grouchy, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, odd of habit, hard of hearing, pimply, wheezy, lazy, and lumpy. But to anyone who has ever known an old dog, these flaws are of little consequence. Old dogs are vulnerable. They show exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. They are without artifice. They are funny in new and unexpected ways. But, above all, they seem at peace.

Kafka wrote that the meaning of life is that it ends. He meant that our lives are shaped and shaded by the existential terror of knowing that all is finite. This anxiety informs poetry, literature, the monuments we build, the wars we wage—all of it. Kafka was talking, of course, about people. Among animals, only humans are said to be self-aware enough to comprehend the passage of time and the grim truth of mortality. How, then, to explain old Harry at the edge of that park, gray and lame, just days from the end, experiencing what can only be called wistfulness and nostalgia? I have lived with eight dogs, watched six of them grow old and infirm with grace and dignity, and die with what seemed to be acceptance. I have seen old dogs grieve at the loss of their friends. I have come to believe that as they age, dogs comprehend the passage of time, and, if not the inevitability of death, certainly the relentlessness of the onset of their frailties. They understand that what’s gone is gone.

What dogs do not have is an abstract sense of fear, or a feeling of injustice or entitlement. They do not see themselves, as we do, as tragic heroes, battling ceaselessly against the merciless onslaught of time. Unlike us, old dogs lack the audacity to mythologize their lives. You’ve got to love them for that.

The product of a Kansas puppy mill, Harry was sold to us as a yellow Labrador retriever. I suppose it was technically true, but only in the sense that Tic Tacs are technically “food.” Harry’s lineage was suspect. He wasn’t the square-headed, elegant type of Labrador you can envision in the wilds of Canada hunting for ducks. He was the shape of a baked potato, with the color and luster of an interoffice envelope. You could envision him in the wilds of suburban Toledo, hunting for nuggets of dried food in a carpet.

His full name was Harry S Truman, and once he’d reached middle age, he had indeed developed the unassuming soul of a haberdasher. We sometimes called him Tru, which fit his loyalty but was in other ways a misnomer: Harry was a bit of an eccentric, a few bubbles off plumb. Though he had never experienced an electrical shock, whenever he encountered a wire on the floor—say, a power cord leading from a laptop to a wall socket—Harry would stop and refuse to proceed. To him, this barrier was as impassable as the Himalayas. He’d stand there, waiting for someone to move it. Also, he was afraid of wind.

While Harry lacked the wiliness and cunning of some dogs, I did watch one day as he figured out a basic principle of physics. He was playing with a water bottle in our backyard—it was one of those 5-gallon cylindrical plastic jugs from the top of a water cooler. At one point, it rolled down a hill, which surprised and delighted him. He retrieved it, brought it back up and tried to make it go down again. It wouldn’t. I watched him nudge it around until he discovered that for the bottle to roll, its long axis had to be perpendicular to the slope of the hill. You could see the understanding dawn on his face; it was Archimedes in his bath, Helen Keller at the water spigot.

That was probably the intellectual achievement of Harry’s life, tarnished only slightly by the fact that he spent the next two hours insipidly entranced, rolling the bottle down and hauling it back up. He did not come inside until it grew too dark for him to see.

I believe I know exactly when Harry became an old dog. He was about 9 years old. It happened at 10:15 on the evening of June 21, 2001, the day my family moved from the suburbs to the city. The move took longer than we’d anticipated. Inexcusably, Harry had been left alone in the vacated house—eerie, echoing, empty of furniture and of all belongings except Harry and his bed—for eight hours. When I arrived to pick him up, he was beyond frantic.

He met me at the door and embraced me around the waist in a way that is not immediately reconcilable with the musculature and skeleton of a dog’s front legs. I could not extricate myself from his grasp. We walked out of that house like a slow-dancing couple, and Harry did not let go until I opened the car door.

He wasn’t barking at me in reprimand, as he once might have done. He hadn’t fouled the house in spite. That night, Harry was simply scared and vulnerable, impossibly sweet and needy and grateful. He had lost something of himself, but he had gained something more touching and more valuable. He had entered old age.

In the year after our move, Harry began to age visibly, and he did it the way most dogs do. First his muzzle began to whiten, and then the white slowly crept backward to swallow his entire head. As he became more sedentary, he thickened a bit, too.

On walks, he would no longer bother to scout and circle for a place to relieve himself. He would simply do it in mid-plod, like a horse, leaving the difficult logistics of drive-by cleanup to me. Sometimes, while crossing a busy street, with cars whizzing by, he would plop down to scratch his ear. Sometimes, he would forget where he was and why he was there. To the amusement of passersby, I would have to hunker down beside him and say, “Harry, we’re on a walk, and we’re going home now. Home is this way, okay?” On these dutiful walks, Harry ignored almost everything he passed. The most notable exception was an old, barrel-chested female pit bull named Honey, whom he loved. This was surprising, both because other dogs had long ago ceased to interest Harry at all, and because even back when they did, Harry’s tastes were for the guys.

Still, when we met Honey on walks, Harry perked up. Honey was younger by five years and heartier by a mile, but she liked Harry and slowed her gait when he was around. They waddled together for blocks, eyes forward, hardly interacting but content in each other’s company. I will forever be grateful to Honey for sweetening Harry’s last days.

Some people who seem unmoved by the deaths of tens of thousands through war or natural disaster will nonetheless grieve inconsolably over the loss of the family dog. People who find this behavior distasteful are often the ones without pets. It is hard to understand, in the abstract, the degree to which a companion animal, particularly after a long life, becomes a part of you. I believe I’ve figured out what this is all about. It is not as noble as I’d like it to be, but it is not anything of which to be ashamed, either.

In our dogs, we see ourselves. Dogs exhibit almost all of our emotions; if you think a dog cannot register envy or pity or pride or melancholia, you have never lived with one for any length of time. What dogs lack is our ability to dissimulate. They wear their emotions nakedly, and so, in watching them, we see ourselves as we would be if we were stripped of posture and pretense. Their innocence is enormously appealing. When we watch a dog progress from puppy­hood to old age, we are watching our own lives in microcosm. Our dogs become old, frail, crotchety, and vulnerable, just as Grandma did, just as we surely will, come the day. When we grieve for them, we grieve for ourselves. 

100 Years

Today is a very special day to me. My late father would have been 100 years old today. Happy Birthday, Dad.



My Dad was born in 1912, the same year that Arizona became the 48th State. He fought in WW II, lived to see a man on the moon, the introduction of the personal computer and hear his favorite music on CDs before he died.

He was the oldest son of Polish immigrants and was born in Detroit, Mi. His father died when he was 12, leaving him to be the man of the house. Twelve year olds were a lot more mature then.

The family owned a bakery and later also a neighborhood bar. My dad was a baker, a bartender and in the later part of his life, worked as a crane operator in a tool and die plant.

My dad told me stories about delivering the baked goods with a horse drawn wagon. If he took too long talking to a customer, the horse would sometimes head to the next stop without him.

As a kid, my friends knew my dad had once been a baker and went on strike one time. They wouldn't play with me until my dad made some homemade doughnuts. You could never have had doughnuts so fresh. They were outstanding.

Finishing high school wasn't common back then, but he did. He also played baseball and football.

After high school until before WW II, he played semi professional football. Maybe that's where my youngest daughter gets her athleticism

The bar was the center point of the neighborhood. On Friday nights, they'd show movies outside in the street, projected against a house wall and provided popcorn to keep the kids occupied.

When Prohibition came, they closed the front door of the place and their customers simply came in the back door. They rarely had trouble at the bar as some members of the infamous Purple Gang were frequent customers. My dad also had a few stories about bootlegging liquor over from Canada.

Leading up to WW II, he joined the National Guard. He was released from duty in May of 1941, but recalled a few months later after Pearl Harbor. He served with the 32nd Infantry Division "The Red Arrow"Division, in the Pacific.

In 1946, he married my mother, a neighbor who was nine years his junior. I am the third of three sons, coming along when my dad was 45. All my memories of him are of an older man.

I spent a lot of time with my dad when I was a kid. He was the epitome of patience and gentleness. He had a dry sense of humor. He stressed to me how important it was to read, write and communicate well. While not a highly educated man, he could see through a brick wall in time.

I remember listening to "Texaco Presents the Metropolitan Opera" every Saturday on the radio. My father loved the opera.

My mother's hobby was entering sweepstakes and one of the big prizes she once won was a week in New York to attend the Metropolitan Opera. They saw my dad's favorite, La Boheme. They met the performers and the conductor. For him, it was the very best prize that she ever could have won.

Classical music was a staple in my home. Also books. He and my mom used to dance polkas in the kitchen on Sunday mornings when the local radio station had Polish Hour.

Once he had the responsibility of raising a family, he left the bar and bakery behind and took a "steadier" job with a tool and die manufacturer that supplied the auto industry. The company he worked for was eventually purchased by Chrysler.

One of my brothers worked at that plant for a while, and described my dad's light touch on the controls of the crane moving multi-ton dies around the building. He said that dad had them floating around like soap bubbles.

I think I was in high school when he retired; maybe it was just after. That lasted about a week before he went out and got himself a part time job. He drove a delivery truck for a local tuxedo rental chain of stores and would continue until just a couple of years before his death.

My dad was a big dog lover, and the dogs loved him. If there is a better recommendation for a person's character, I don't know what it is. I don't remember us having only one dog, but we certainly had as many as four. My dad always kept a box of dog biscuits in the car and made sure that every hungry looking stray he saw at least had a biscuit. I remember him daily making his rounds, making sure the strays had something.

After I moved out, my parents had a neighbor who didn't deserve the dogs they had. My parents took two of their dogs away from them. One became a member of the family and the other one ended up with my sister in law.

The dogs loved him. My wife and I once had a black Labrador. When we were moving houses, the lab stayed with my parents for a week or so. When we took her back, she just moped around. She wasn't happy again until we finally gave her to my parents and she lived at their house permanently.

My dad used to boil chicken every day for the dogs. They got the meat and we got chicken soup.

A common scene at my parents house would be my dad in his easy chair, with the four dogs clustered around him. When he'd get up to go to the bathroom, they'd all follow him over there and wait for him (not always patiently) outside the door then escort him back to his chair. The lab would be as close to him as she could and would usually be resting her head or a paw against his knee.

When my dad died, the lab still sat by his chair with her head or a paw on the corner of the cushion where his leg would have been. She died shortly afterwards. The vet said it was cancer. I think it was a broken heart.

At age 79 he had a heart attack. I remember him in the emergency room. The doctor who was checking him out dealt with a lot of old people and was making a point of speaking loudly. My dad's hearing was fine. I remember him wincing while the doctor was bellowing at him, but he didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him to pipe down.

He had a second heart attack while in the hospital. They tried sewing his heart back together, but there was too much damage and nothing would hold. He lasted about a week before he passed. Telling my mother that her husband of 46 years had died; and my oldest daughter, aged 4 at the time and especially close to him, were the hardest things I ever had to do at the time.

Time has passed. The ranks of that generation have thinned to where there is just a few of them left. There are few things as poignant as the passing of generations.

I miss him.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

September 11th ... 1683

Below is an excerpt from a post I made a few September 11ths' ago. The original post may be read here.

Over 300 years ago, Western Civilization was nearly overrun by Islam. The seeming unstoppable tide of Islam paused at Vienna. On September 11th, 1683, the king of Poland, John Sobieski, at the head of his Winged Hussars, the last heavy calvary in Europe, led an army down upon the besiegers. They swept the Muslim army from the field, and from that day, the grip of Islam upon Eastern Europe weakened. This battle was the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Another Empty Chair

My mother is just short of her 86th birthday. She's had a long and full life.

She was a great story teller. She loved to tell stories about when she was young, during the Great Depression.

Even how she got her name, Stephanie, was a story. She was the youngest of her sisters. One of her older sisters was named Stephanie. When my Mom was born, my grandfather had been drinking, and really like the name, so... He had two Stephanies.

Eventually, the older one came to be known by Stella, and my Mom retained Stephanie.

Remember those old "Little Rascals" film clips? According to her, they could have been a documentary. For example, every time the dog catcher parked his truck on their street, he would be sure to find flat tires, his battery missing, and all the dogs released.

... then there was the time when she was 12, and got into a fist fight with a nun. Apparently, she had no fear of authority figures from an early age.

Up until the very end, anything she set her hands to became a work of art. She painted fine china, made Dresden porcelain dolls, and even recently crocheted a beautiful dress for my little niece.

What she was known for, however, was dressmaking. Dressmaking is the more common term, but what she did would more properly be known as courtier work. Courtier work is characterized by the attention to fine detail and workmanship.

Her mother died when my Mom was very young. She found her mother's sewing machine in the attic, and taught herself how to sew.

She had a bridal shop, Stephanie's, on Joy Rd, in Detroit, for decades. A common story would be for her to have made a baptism gown for a little girl, who would come back a few years later for a communion dress, then a prom dress, then finally a wedding gown. A few years after that, that same young woman would be ordering a baptism gown for her own child.

If someone came in and said that the price was no object, my Mom would take them at their word; but she couldn't help outfitting a less wealthy bride whom she liked far beyond what she could pay, or even for nothing.

She made a lot of dresses at the store, but not a lot of money.

My Mom's knack for creativity has found it's way down to my two daughters.

And of course, with the store, comes more stories. My favorite one involved a motorcycle gang who had moved into the adjoining building, whom she sort of adopted; or maybe they adopted her.

One day, a young punk came into the bridal shop, and what he intended was to intimidate my Mom and shake her down, along with the ladies who worked there, for whatever cash they had on hand.

My Mom could think pretty quickly on her feet and started speaking to him in Polish, pretending she didn't understand him; while telling one of the ladies (in Polish) to go out the back door and get "the boys."

Well, the boys showed up. The next thing he heard was "why don't you come with us." They escorted him out, and he never came back.

She loved entering sweepstakes and contests. When she first started, I was in high school, and she won a trip to Chicago to have lunch with Alex Karras and watch the Lions play the Bears. After that early success, she was hooked.

There were plenty of contests she didn't win, and she had her share of t shirts and baseball caps, but she won a lot of really nice stuff too. An entertainment center, some trips; in fact, I got to see the Olympics in Montreal, in 1976, because of a contest she won.

Trips were her favorite prize. She loved to travel. She had been to Europe several times, she cruised up the Alaskan Inside Passage several times - once she was traveling alone, and signed up to blindly share a cabin with a stranger chosen at random. She ended up with a hooker who was on vacation. I bet she had some stories.

She's been to Australia twice, and even rode a camel in North Africa.

She took some of her nieces on a couple of trips, and I think it influenced one of them to go on and work in the travel industry. Today, she works for an airline.

I think perhaps the strangest thing she won was breakfast cereal. Lots of it.

One day the doorbell range, and UPS delivered a case of cereal. The next day it rang again, and we got another case. After that, we didn't want to answer the door anymore.

I thought we were all set for birthday and Christmas gifts, but my wife thought we should donate it to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, and so we did.

Up until a few months ago, she was still cranking out those contest entries. It didn't matter what she won, she just liked winning something.

... and she loved dogs. The only bigger dog lover might have been my Dad.

When they lived in Detroit, they had a neighbor who had several dogs, but took wretched care of them.

So - she just took one dog away from them and wouldn't give it back. For another one, she found another home - my sister in law and her husband, and placed it there. That little dog thought he had died and gone to Heaven.

It wasn't all fun and games though. She had quite a few rough spots in her life.

Before the US entered into WWII, many Americans enlisted in the Canadian Army to go fight in Europe. She married one of them, 2 weeks before he was to ship out with the Canadian Commandos.

She never saw him again. She was a widow at 20.

She married my Dad, the next door neighbor, after the war. I'm the youngest of three sons. My brothers came along right away, there was a big gap, then I was born.

My oldest brother died in a car accident when he was 21. I was only 10, but I can still remember what a blow it was to her.

About 15 years ago, out of the blue, by Dad had a heart attack and died shortly after. Almost 3 months to the day later, my other brother died as a result of a gun accident.

My Mom moved in with her sister, and best friend, Helen.

Almost 10 years ago, my Mom had her first stroke. The main damage she suffered was to the part of the brain that connects where a thought originates, and where it is expressed. Basically, she couldn't speak or even write her thoughts. It was terribly frustrating, especially to her, as social as she was, but she adapted.

A few months after that, she fell and broke her hip. While she was in the hospital, I had to tell her that her sister, her best friend Helen, died of a massive heart attack.

She moved into an assisted living home where she stayed for several years. While there, I had to bring her the news that her favorite niece died of cancer.

A couple of years ago, as a result of her not being able to quite take care of herself adequately, and her having developed diabetes, she moved into a nursing home.

On Wednesday, she had another stroke. A big one. Today they moved her into hospice.

The reason I bring all of this up, is because no matter what she went through, no matter how small her world became, or what new restrictions were placed on her, she simply loved her life.

She appreciated her life. She simply didn't have it in her to complain. She didn't have any room or use for it.

If she taught me anything, it was from her example. She accepted whatever life brought her - "Thy will be done" - and made the very best of it.

She could daydream and imagine along with the best of them, but she never forgot that all the "would haves, could haves, should haves" don't add up to a hill of beans.

You life is what you choose to make of it.

Even towards the end, when she was restricted to bed rest and could do little else but read and watch TV, She found a reason to get up every morning and look forward to the day.

She appreciated her life, and she appreciated the people who came into it, in whatever way.

I was talking to some of the workers at the nursing home, and they told me how even though she couldn't speak, how appreciated she made them feel for coming in and doing their jobs to take care of her. Every day. Every time. Without fail.

If my Mom could speak for herself, she'd want to thank everyone. She can't, so I will. Thank you.

Good bye, Mom. We'll miss you.

----------------------------

Empty Chairs

A table full of empty chairs,
Reminders of Christmas past.
The children were too young to know
That's where Grandpa used to sit.
The brother who couldn't make the flight.
Close cousins becoming strangers.
The daughter with her friends,
the son at his in-laws house.
The party becoming smaller, quieter.
The children grown,
their table put away.
They have lives of their own,
each has a full house...and not enough chairs.

松

... and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest

From the Dao De Jing, Chapter 50:

Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.

Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.

Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.

My oldest daughter has a friend whose mother has had Lyme Disease for as long as we've know her (maybe four or five years). It wasn't diagnosed in time for any effective treatment to be applied, and she's had to live her life with the progressively dibilitating effects of the disease. When we first met her, she was already restricted to a wheelchair.

When someone has Lyme Disease at the stage she had it, one never gets better. Your body slowly atrophes. You can hold steady for a while, but your health will never improve. You can only wait until the next slip down.

In spite of this awful condition, she had always been one of the most positive people I've ever met. She was fully aware of what lay ahead of her, but that never stopped her from making the very best of her situation as it was that day; and within her constraints, living her life to the fullest.

She ran a company out of her house that provided materials for corporate training. When she became bedridden, and required a ventilator to breathe, her husband quit his job and took over the company. He could work there at the house and still see to her care. Her three kids all go to school locally, so they can live at home and help take care of her.

She managed to be a positive part of her family's lives with intelligence, wisdom, and good humor.

She went from being needing a walker, to a wheelchair, to being bedridden. She had her husband take a wall down to open up the house so she could be better able to see what was going on a be a part of it all.

She was always thinking "out of the box" and finding ways to make the absolute most of her life.

With each slip in her health, she adapted. She always found a way to give strength to her caregivers, her family, her loved ones.

She passed today. The world will be poorer without her. She seemingly had no fear about her fate, because she knew so well how to live. She had no time to dwell on dying, because she was too busy living.

Her example touched many of us. I can only hope that in my own times of distress, I can meet life with the strength and dignity she had, and she had it right to the end.

May God bless you, Mrs Targus.