Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 834

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 835

Warning: preg_replace(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 839

Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 834

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 835

Warning: preg_replace(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 839

Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 834

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 835

Warning: preg_replace(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 839

Warning: preg_match_all(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 834

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 835

Warning: preg_replace(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 4 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 839

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: group name must start with a non-digit at offset 8 in /home/e5m7uo8vro0d/public_html/mediawiki/includes/MagicWord.php on line 860
Stories from my life. - Huben's Wiki

Stories from my life.

From Huben's Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 11: Line 11:
 
I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others.  I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]].   
 
I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others.  I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]].   
 
===Tea===
 
===Tea===
I sometimes attended the high teas run by  
+
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_M._Carpenter Frank Carpenter] was the grand old man of the Entomology department.  His specialty was fossil insects.  He had an enormous number of graduate students over a 60+ year career.  There was a big celebration of his 90th birthday (I think) where an auditorium full of former graduate students (at least 40, including E. O. Wilson) celebrated and told stories.
 +
 
 +
I sometimes attended the high teas run by Frank Carpenter.  Somebody would volunteer to bring the tea and some pastry/snacks to go with it, and it evolved into a sort of competition.  So one day I brought in sushi and green tea, and another day I brought in Viennese pastry and coffee mit schlag (with heavy cream.)
 +
===Stephen J. Gould===
 +
I saw Gould a few times, including when he gave a tour of the fossil collection.  He was a very pompous man.
 +
 
 +
One day there was a seminar for candidates for associate professor to present their research.  This one presented his research, and when it was time for questions, Gould got up.  He rudely went on and on about one of his current hobbyhorses for maybe 10 minutes (it might have been female hyena pseudopenises.)  When he finally finished, one of the graduate students shouted out: "Could you repeat the question please?"  The audience roared with laughter, and Gould turned purple in anger.
 
===Birds of Paradise===
 
===Birds of Paradise===
 
I went to the Harvard MCZ one night to attend a guest lecture about Birds of Paradise, which are a showy group from New Guinea.  I happened to sit right behind two of Harvard's most famous biologists, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson E. O. Wilson] (who wrote Sociobiology and invented Island Biogeography) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mayr Ernst Mayer] (considered the father of the evolutionary New Synthesis and the biological species concept.)  Mayer was about 100 years old then, but his early work included a major expedition to New Guinea to collect and study birds, including Birds of Paradise.  I've got a personal policy of never speaking to an important person unless I had something to say that I thought would interest them.  Thus, while I'd spoken to Wilson a few times, I'd never introduced myself to Mayer.
 
I went to the Harvard MCZ one night to attend a guest lecture about Birds of Paradise, which are a showy group from New Guinea.  I happened to sit right behind two of Harvard's most famous biologists, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson E. O. Wilson] (who wrote Sociobiology and invented Island Biogeography) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mayr Ernst Mayer] (considered the father of the evolutionary New Synthesis and the biological species concept.)  Mayer was about 100 years old then, but his early work included a major expedition to New Guinea to collect and study birds, including Birds of Paradise.  I've got a personal policy of never speaking to an important person unless I had something to say that I thought would interest them.  Thus, while I'd spoken to Wilson a few times, I'd never introduced myself to Mayer.
Line 27: Line 33:
  
 
==Aikido==
 
==Aikido==
 +
I practiced Aikido at New England Aikikai for 30 years, the first 20 with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsunari_Kanai Mitsunari Kanai sensei] (8th dan.) I also practiced Iaido for 15 years.  I was promoted to 4rth dan in Aikido and 3rd dan in Iaido.  I had to stop Iaido and gave up on seated Aikido techniques as I developed hallux limitus (arthritic limited motion of the big toes.)
 +
 +
My first experience of Kanai Sensei was in my first week of classes.  During kokyu ho, he came by and seated himself to practice with me.  He grasped my wrists and I tried to move him, and it was hopeless.  I struggled for a minute or so, and started to relax, and he said "Don't give up!  Don't give up!"  So I resumed struggling fruitlessly, and after another minute or so I started to relax again, and again he said  "Don't give up!  Don't give up!"  I started again, and after a little time he graciously rolled over.  Then it was my turn to grasp his wrists.  It was a strange sensation: he had these enormous thick wrists from decades of sword work and Aikido, starting in his early youth.  They felt like iron bars wrapped in foam rubber.  I graped his wrists, rose into the air and landed on my back a few feet away without feeling why.  I was convinced!  In my last (30th) year of practice, I finally was able to make people rise like that sometimes, but I never integrated it into that sort of throw.  I've never felt that from anybody else, either.
  
 
At the Aikido dojo, some friends were massaging each other.  I remarked on it to some of the others, making vague pronouncements about giving and getting, karma, and finishing with a fully extended two-armed circular gesture to illustrate that it was "all part of the great circle of bullshit."
 
At the Aikido dojo, some friends were massaging each other.  I remarked on it to some of the others, making vague pronouncements about giving and getting, karma, and finishing with a fully extended two-armed circular gesture to illustrate that it was "all part of the great circle of bullshit."
  
 
I made it a point to not bother Kanai Sensei unless I had a medical problem or something that might interest him.  He was tired of people asking him what ki was and other foolish questions.  When I had to drive him a couple of hours each way to Smith College one day, I was racking my brains for something to converse about that might be new to him.  Finally, I asked him: "Sensei, what do you hate the most about teaching Aikido?"  He got a big smile on his face and said (roughly) "I hate it when they ask a question and they don't understand me but won't tell me that.  They just say 'Yes, Sensei' and continue to misunderstand."
 
I made it a point to not bother Kanai Sensei unless I had a medical problem or something that might interest him.  He was tired of people asking him what ki was and other foolish questions.  When I had to drive him a couple of hours each way to Smith College one day, I was racking my brains for something to converse about that might be new to him.  Finally, I asked him: "Sensei, what do you hate the most about teaching Aikido?"  He got a big smile on his face and said (roughly) "I hate it when they ask a question and they don't understand me but won't tell me that.  They just say 'Yes, Sensei' and continue to misunderstand."
 +
 +
When I was in Ecuador in 1988, I found the Aikido dojo in Quito.  I went there, and Mishi Lesser greeted me at the door in English.  She asked me where I was from, and I said New York.  She asked where in New York, and I said Long Island.  She asked where on Long Island, and I said Plainview.  She was from there too!  We went to the same high school and had most of the same teachers, but she was 3 years ahead of me and so we had never met.  She asked me if I knew [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshimitsu_Yamada Yamada sensei], and I said yes.  She said "He's coming here in two months to give tests and a demonstration!"  Small world!  So for the next two months, I assisted in test preparation for the students (I was first kyu, had practiced for 7 years, and was well aware of the USAF test requirements.)  When Yamada sensei came, we gave a demonstration that was on all three Ecuadorean television stations, with a live audience of about 3000.  I had to be his uke that he threw around, because the Quito instructor was a small woman, and it wouldn't look good for him to throw around somebody much smaller than he was.  During the freestyle demonstration, he told me to grab his hair, an attack I had never practiced in Aikido, so I grabbed enthusiastically.  He did a cool sankyo technique and threw me.  Afterwards, he said to me "You pulled my hair hard!"  Oops!

Revision as of 15:21, 25 November 2020

Personal tools
translate