Lori:
It was a pleasure to meet and talk with you.
I have enjoyed this summer camp and have met many wonderful people who I can now consider new friends. I am honored to refer to you in this manner.
I took many pictures of the camp and will post some of them on my website in a week or so. I will post the link to these pages when they are up.
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Len Testa
An Absolute Pleasure
Moderator: Available
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Tony-San
An Absolute Pleasure
Len,
If I may second your kind words about camp - it was a pleasure to meet and talk with you this past weekend. Putting so many faces to the names and words on these forums was nice - and the added dimension of real live personality makes these pages more "real" now knowing the people behind the posts.
George Sensei and Susan did a spectacular job providing the opportunity for all of us to get together and break bread (and bones!) (or other body parts that intercepted strikes during the Saturday night competition/demonstration/matches) and learn and enrich our lives with in such a unique venue. You will not see many gatherings of such size, organization and intensity that continue to welcome and accept with open hearts and minds practitioners of different style, language, objective, focus, origen or mindset. From my limited experience, summer camp has evolved into an exciting opportunity to learn and share without the burden of distrust and political maneuvering that haunts other organizations attempts at anything similar - from my perspective it seems as if those things are left outside the gates - as often intended elsewhere but never truly realized. Sure - summer camp is not immune to problems or conflict - but perhaps the open atmosphere and attitude of all-comers does much to facilitate smoothing over of any ripples before they turn into major rifts.
I for one am happy that I went - even if I could not work out (which was STILL very frustrating!) because the gifts I came away with were more than just a few techniques I could have picked up from some exceptional instructors... they were the gifts of friendship and camraderie that go beyond the application of technique. For me, this year at camp taught me other things... and I consider myself the richer for having experienced them.
Honored and pleased to have met and spoken with many of you on these forums - and others who aren't regular contributors either (yet!). Hope to see you again at Winterfest!
Lori
If I may second your kind words about camp - it was a pleasure to meet and talk with you this past weekend. Putting so many faces to the names and words on these forums was nice - and the added dimension of real live personality makes these pages more "real" now knowing the people behind the posts.
George Sensei and Susan did a spectacular job providing the opportunity for all of us to get together and break bread (and bones!) (or other body parts that intercepted strikes during the Saturday night competition/demonstration/matches) and learn and enrich our lives with in such a unique venue. You will not see many gatherings of such size, organization and intensity that continue to welcome and accept with open hearts and minds practitioners of different style, language, objective, focus, origen or mindset. From my limited experience, summer camp has evolved into an exciting opportunity to learn and share without the burden of distrust and political maneuvering that haunts other organizations attempts at anything similar - from my perspective it seems as if those things are left outside the gates - as often intended elsewhere but never truly realized. Sure - summer camp is not immune to problems or conflict - but perhaps the open atmosphere and attitude of all-comers does much to facilitate smoothing over of any ripples before they turn into major rifts.
I for one am happy that I went - even if I could not work out (which was STILL very frustrating!) because the gifts I came away with were more than just a few techniques I could have picked up from some exceptional instructors... they were the gifts of friendship and camraderie that go beyond the application of technique. For me, this year at camp taught me other things... and I consider myself the richer for having experienced them.
Honored and pleased to have met and spoken with many of you on these forums - and others who aren't regular contributors either (yet!). Hope to see you again at Winterfest!
Lori
