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Yesterday a stunt woman from “Hollywood” came by our dojo to get a feel for Japanese swordwork. I didn’t really have a chance to talk to her; Sensei just told me she was from Hollywood and wanted to know how to handle a sword. It’s cool that she wants to be more authentic. Of course, the other side of it is that it takes hours and hours of training just to know how to make a basic cut, how to hold the weapon, relax the shoulders. There are so many little details. It’s the land of make-believe, however, the realm of the dramatic. God forbid anyone learns how to fight from the movies. Read more »
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Land of the Sequoias. Home of the “largest living thing on Earth.” That would be the Sherman tree, named after a fellow who burned many a plantation etc… at the end of the Civil War. Somehow Sherman ended up being the biggest. Not the Clara Barton tree, nor the Lincoln tree. Whatever. It’s a BAT. Big Ass Tree. Sequoia’s are so big that when couple of enterprising gentlemen decided to cut one down and take part of it to the U.S. centennial celebration in 1876, they were laughed out of the exhibition as frauds. And yet the Piltdown Man lasted for years. Is there no justice in the land of credulity?
In the land of world records, the General Sherman tree is supposed to be the biggest living thing. Not the tallest (a redwood), not the oldest (bristlecone), but the biggest. Of course, then there are all these arguments about what is living (bark?, dead parts of tree?) and what about those quaking aspens who clone themselves and cover whole hillsides? So never mind all that, it’s a Big Ass Tree. I imagine myself building the world’s tallest tree house, feet dangling over the edge, drinking a precarious cup of coffee.
These trees have been around for a very long time in more ways than one. They can live over 3000 years. The trees that left their imprint in the Petrified Forest are believed to have been sequoias. They belong in a world of dinosaurs, of megafauna-something left over from a bigger time, a grander time for our much beleaguered natural world.
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