• Skip to main content

Aikido'Ka

Grass Valley's Family Martial Arts School -- Focus, Fitness & Fun

Community Service

Nov 09 2016

On Making Things Better

It’s hard to fathom how the country went so wrong with yesterday’s election. I can’t say that things won’t be as bad as we fear. I’m afraid that they’ll be worse. So many, many people are going to suffer badly.

Our task is to figure out how to thrive given the circumstances.

One of mNkosi Johnson Sayingy favorite sayings is . . . “The best revenge is living well.”

That’s what I think we should do. Let’s not pretend that something horrible hasn’t happened. It has. But we should enjoy ourselves and our loved ones. We should work to create a better, happier world. We should work to increase well-being. What other people do certainly affects us, but they’re going to do what they’re going to do. And we can live well.

Which brings me to how we can do this. And, for that, I turn to Nkosi Johnson:

“Do all you can, with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are.”

That’s how we can make things better. Or, at least, that’s what I’m doing to increase well-being:

I’m going to do everything I can with what I have, in the time that I have, where I am.

Re-starting now.

Way more to come.

Written by Frank Bloksberg · Categorized: Community Service, Self-improvement · Tagged: community service, Nkosi Johnson

Jul 22 2013

Why Aikido’Ka Won’t Be at this Year’s Fair or Why Elephant Rides and Respect Don’t Mix

African elephant photo
Elephants are not carnival rides. Image from Wikipedia.

An Open Letter to the Community,

My name is Frank Bloksberg. I have lived in Nevada City for about 18 years. I am a lawyer and run a martial arts school, in Grass Valley, called Aikido’Ka. At Aikido’Ka, we train in aikido – known as the “Art of Peace.” Aikido’Ka is different than other martial arts schools, because we are dedicated to peacefully resolving disputes and performing community service. For instance, we have raised over $13,000 and 6,000 pounds of food for the Food Bank.

Aikido’Ka has been open for 6 years. We’ve had a booth at every County Fair since we’ve been open. The County Fair is a huge outreach opportunity for us. We meet a lot of our future students there. Deciding not having a booth is a really big deal for us.

Aikido is based upon respect – respect for our fellow students, teachers, our training space. The respect inherent in aikido is a deep, profound respect. Without the support, trust and willingness of our fellow practitioners, we cannot practice the art and improve ourselves in the ways that aikido provides.

By design, the respect that we learn spreads to the rest of our lives. And for that reason, I have to seriously consider the respect/ethical implications of supporting a Fair that offers elephant rides to entertain children.

Elephants are intelligent, wild and very dangerous animals. The only way to help ensure that they are reasonably safe in unpredictable public situations is to use training techniques that are extremely powerful. We know that the training techniques involve some pain and fear.

Whether the training techniques are brutal or abusive doesn’t matter. One may be able to argue in good faith that abusing a creature is ethical for an incredibly important purpose. Or one may be able to argue in good faith that causing pain and fear in a creature is ethical for a really good reason. I might disagree with these arguments, but one may be able to make the arguments in good faith.

In my personal view, the value of entertaining children with an elephant ride is trivial, at best. In other words, what a child receives from riding an elephant is not worth putting the elephant through anything at all. It certainly cannot justify taking elephant babies from their mothers or putting elephants in fear or pain. It certainly cannot justify the risks involved in moving elephants around the country and placing them in unpredictable public situations where they can hurt people.

To me, the only ways to conclude that elephant rides are appropriate is to consider the rides of far greater value than I do or to completely disregard the elephants’ interests. Please do not think that I am placing the elephants’ interests over human interests. I am saying that we must consider the elephants’ interests to ethically decide what to do. And, here, where the value received from elephant rides is so small in comparison to the harms inherent in offering elephant rides, I cannot ethically support the rides.

Now that I have concluded that offering elephant rides at the Fair is unethical, should Aikido’Ka have a booth or perform aikido demonstrations at the Fair? If respect means anything, acting respectfully must include acting ethically.

If Aikido’Ka supports the Fair by participating and paying our fees, then we directly and indirectly support the presence of the elephant rides. We would support the rides directly because HTWT will not be paying the Fair anything at all. So we would, in part, be paying for HTWT’s presence. We would support the rides indirectly by letting the Board know that we will support their decisions even if those decisions are unethical.

We could have a booth and place a banner saying that we don’t support the elephant rides. We cannot do that, because that seems hypocritical to me. We’d be supporting HTWT’s presence, while trying to convince everyone that we didn’t.

For these reasons, and others, we won’t have a booth at this year’s Fair.

Each year at the Fair, we offer a “Fair Special.” The Special is always really good. Since we won’t be at the Fair this year, we’ll be offering a really good “Un-Fair Special.” Please watch for it. We’ll announce it soon.

Written by Frank Bloksberg · Categorized: Community Service, Ethics, Respect, Self-improvement · Tagged: Nevada County Fair, respect

Dec 10 2012

How Safe is Your Child from Bullies?

Stop Bullies SignHow Safe is Your Child from Bullies?

I am absolutely thrilled to announce About Bullies – the Aikido’Ka Anti-Bullying program. About Bullies is about one thing only: Helping you keep your child safe from bullies. We’re going to make this program as great as possible. So, we’re beginning with a 4 question survey to make sure that we’re going to provide you with what you need.

When you complete the survey, you will be in the first group to know when our free program is available. You’ll also save 50% off of our first premium program.

We could really use your help, so please click here to go to the About Bullies website!

Frank Sensei

Written by Frank Bloksberg · Categorized: About Bullies, Community Service, safety, Self-Defense

Nov 13 2012

Hero’s Journey – One Year to a Heroic Life

Dr. Gideon Haimovitz at We Can Drive Through 2012

We’re starting a new program at the dojo that I’m calling Hero’s Journey. Since Hero’s Journey is at its beginning stages, it’s not fully put together.

But here’s basically what it is: Heroe’s Journey is an intensive 1-year long program to change your life for the better. We all know that we have the potential to live a heroic life and do amazing things. It’s time to start!

We have to decide to actually pursue our heroic dreams, organize and dedicate ourselves to living a heroic life. That’s what Hero’s Journey is. Goal setting, organizing, doing. And lots of accountability, aikido training, fitness and community service.

You’ll be seeing in our blog members of Hero’s Journey telling about their experiences, challenges and accomplishments.

Dr. Gideon Haimovitz is one of the first members of Hero’s Journey. He runs Grass Valley Chiropractic. Gideon’s very serious: He’s training in almost all of our classes, both aikido and kettlebells, and he’s helping with many of the youth classes. He’s also traveling to seminars to improve his aikido.

Gideon will be commenting to this post about some of his experiences so far and what he’s working to accomplish.

Written by Frank Bloksberg · Categorized: Community Service, Hero's Journey, kettlebells · Tagged: aikido, aikido training, Change Your Life, Gideon Haimovitz, Hero's Journey, Intensive, kettlebells

Oct 16 2012

Testing is Thursday, October 25!

Our next rank demonstrations will be October 25 from 5:30 – 7:00 pm — during the regular Thursday night class time. We usually have our demonstrations on Saturday mornings, but with so much going on we didn’t want to delay. So earn your new rank next Thursday!

If you, or your child, will be testing on October 25, please be sure that you have fully completed the Intent to Promote form. The form is on our student website. The form has a place for the student’s teacher. So, please leave time to get that signature. If you are an Aikido’Ka member and have not registered for our site, please do. It has tons of important information and videos on it. If you’re not an Aikido’Ka member, sorry — the student website is private.

Also, to successfully perform a rank test, each student must complete his/her community service before testing. Participating in We Can Drive Through 2012 does count for community service.

If you are demonstrating for a stripe, then just show up and do your best. If you’re not sure what to do, or you haven’t been involved in testing before, then go for a stripe! Show up, do your best and have tons of fun.

Our classes and demonstrations are open to the public. If you’re not a member yet and you’d like to see what we’re up to, please drop by! Here’s a map to the dojo.

Written by Frank Bloksberg · Categorized: Community Service, testing · Tagged: demonstration, rank test, stripe testing, testing

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 ·