Karate, Marc and Myra

Karate and Aging
-Len Buchanan

 
Let’s start by being honest up front: I’m aging. When I hit 50 (more than a decade ago), I had to stop playing squash because of rotator cuff pain. Sudden moves, like sneezing, brought tears to my eyes. I had to find something new that would help me stay physically and mentally fit.
 
My perception of karate was that its teachings were strict and left little room for variance in its practice if you have physical limits. Turns out that perception was wrong. Karate’s practice can be adjusted to suit the individual. Here are some facts:
 
Fact 1: Karate lets you adjust the syllabus to fit your physical limits.
 
I don’t kick as high as an 18-year old. I do push-ups hinging at the knees. Working within one’s physical limits does not mean I don’t push myself. Mind + body control forces you to pay attention to your muscles and focus on what your mind wants to accomplish. Often, instructors emphasize that the first move in any action is to look first. I think there is a step before that: engaging the mind. The mind is supposed to be in control of the body, but in reality, it is a two-way exchange. The complex movements in karate benefit the brain too. The range of movement in karate prepares you for what may be needed: arms, legs, eyes, feet, head and mind. Keeping that exchange going degrades as you age and becomes difficult. Climbing on some fitness machine does not engage the mind.
 
Fact 2: Karate keeps the mind-body interaction sharpened.
 
You can’t do karate by simply going through the moves. When class begins we kneel, close our eyes and clear our minds. It never ceases to amaze me that that small division causes me to forget the outside world and focus on what’s going on in the dojo. All the problems outside the dojo are held at bay until the class is over and sometimes the effect lasts longer. This is part of the social contract with the other students. You are there in the dojo to learn and respect the other students. The trust we show each other is seldom found outside the dojo. I stand there with my arms behind my back, abdomen unguarded, while someone throws punches and pulls the punch just in time to make a firm but harmless connection. Well, some hit harder, but that’s part of conditioning. Where else in life do you do that! I often find myself laughing in class when I’ve done some slapstick move (“Len, the other right!”), no matter how rotten the day was.
 
Fact 3: Karate is a social event.
 
I’ve met many people from different backgrounds that I would never have met were it not for karate. It has expanded my circle of friends. So much so that during COVID, we organized weekly social meetings via Zoom. Lots of people who were limited in their social contacts wanted to meet with other karate students. Keeping those relationships alive was important to many.
 
Fact 4: Karate keeps you younger.
 
You may not be 18 but karate makes you less creaky! Aging introduces other problems: the degradation of balance and coordination. Most hospitalizations for seniors involve a fall. As you get older, bones weaken and muscles shrink. Karate makes you more comfortable with your body, improves knowing your physical limits and pushes you to widen your range of movement and flexibility. This helps strengthen your bones and stretches those muscles.

Fact 5: Karate keeps you safer.

Finally, aging makes many people vulnerable to becoming a victim of attack. Karate teaches you how to defend yourself. Even better, it teaches you how to avoid such situations. Keep your hands up and ready at all times. Make sure you pay attention to your surroundings. And if it becomes necessary, you defend and run. At least these concepts are parked in our brains and ready to use. Karate gives you confidence and lets you carry yourself in public without appearing vulnerable.

Ultimately, Karate’s purpose is to know how to fight or avoid a fight. Katta (detailed patterns of movements) are simulated fights. The 20 self-defence moves are a controlled fight, but can be mixed to fit the situation. Employ everything you have learned; mind engaged (a fight does that!), a good defensive posture and eyes wide to look for the opening that will end the fight.

I’m a bit of an evangelist for karate. I think everyone should practice karate. Find a dojo that fits your needs, with teachers that can guide you to what needs improving.

Poetry Corner
-Arthur Herold

Renascence

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide
Above the earth is stretched the sky
No higher than the soul is high

The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand
The soul can split the sky in two
And let the face of God shine through

But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart
And he whose soul is flat -- the sky
Will cave in on him by and by

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Equity Member Interview -- Marc Staveley

Marc was born in Leeds, England in 1958. His grandmother (mother’s side) met an Egyptian man doing his degree at the University of Leeds. They married and lived in Egypt until their daughter (Marc’s mother) was 16, when they went back to England. So, Marc is ¼ Egyptian. He is the eldest with 2 younger sisters, also born in Leeds. His parents decided to emigrate to Canada, to Fort Erie, when Marc was 8. His father arrived with $100 in his pocket. “He had more bravery than I have,” Marc says.

Fort Erie was an interesting place to grow up. It is a small town but has the advantage of a large, urban centre close by (Buffalo). His favourite bar in Buffalo was closer to his house than his favourite bar in Fort Erie. He volunteered 3-4 times/month at the Shea’s Performing Arts Centre as an usher. A music promoter offered the volunteer ushers paid work at his rock concerts once or twice a month. He saw all those mid-70’s rock groups like Billy Joel and ELO; it was a lot of fun. He also sold cameras in Zellers and worked at Radio Shack. He did these jobs during the school year.

His father was an electrician by trade and Marc worked summers with him in his father’s contracting firm, doing wiring. That firm eventually failed and his father then worked at the Port Weller Dry Docks – one of the largest ship building firms in Canada. Marc worked as a carpenter on the ships. He had other summer jobs too: at Fort Erie he dressed in 1812 garb and played soldier for the tourists and he tore down things (a nunnery for one) in deconstruction. He worked at an auto-wreckers, disassembling auto parts and fixing them for resale. During high school he bought junker cars and fixed them himself, often with his father’s help. He had a Fiat in university that he worked on every weekend because, if he didn’t work on it, it didn’t work.

He was an ‘A’ student all through high school and didn’t have to work at it. When he went to university, he had a hard time because he’d never learned to study. He started in Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He didn’t love it, and had a roommate in Computer Science who got him an account on the computer the CS students used. He spent hours and hours exploring on it. He tried to switch to Computer Science after his 2nd year but, while they accepted him, they said he would have to start from first year. No way. By this time, he was known by some of the professors in CS, and he’d had some work terms there. He asked them to hire him to work for the CS department full time. He did that for 3 years.

He met Kris during this period. The student union put on rock shows through different entertainment venues in Waterloo. He was working security. Marc had a deal with the lady who sold roses that he would buy, at a discount, whatever was left over from the night. He handed them out to any women from the student union who had worked that night. (What a charmer!) He gave one to Kris. Did Kris think he had bought it just for her? Yes, that night; but he disabused her later. Anyway, it worked. Later, he was looking for a place to live and Kris had a lease on a townhouse and a renter who backed out. She offered him a room in the basement. “Three days after I moved in, she seduced me," he says. And he moved upstairs.

He worked for the CS department while Kris finished her undergrad. He and Kris got married the summer before her last year at Waterloo in 1984. She got accepted to do her Masters and PhD in psychology at Princeton University in New Jersey. With the help of her supervisor, he got a job in the new CS department at Princeton. He was a staff researcher, system admin and jack of all trades. Both Waterloo and Princeton, during this time, were at the vanguard of computing as we now think of it, including the internet. He got a taste of consulting there because staff could take 2 days/month off to do projects in the community; he worked with Sun Microsystems, very new at the time, one of the biggest sellers of Unix based systems.

After graduating from Princeton, Kris got a position as an Associate Professor at Waterloo; they returned, and he got a job at NCR. Kris didn’t enjoy being an academic and he wanted to start his own consulting company. They talked her parents into letting them live rent-free in the farmhouse in Buckhorn (which was then their cottage), while he got his business off the ground. Kris did all the billing, receivables and travel arrangements, which she liked doing and which freed her up for other interests.

In his consulting work, Marc would help customers decide what they needed in computing and project manage that for them. He specialized in large infrastructure builds and migrations. At times he would go back and forth between his consulting company and being an employee when an interesting job at a start-up cropped up. He travelled all over North America – a lot in Silicon Valley, Dallas, New York, and in Europe -- Stockholm, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam. Because he was born in England, he could get an EU passport. Kris came with him on the long-term travel jobs. In his last job he was an employee for Index Exchange for 5 years, ending his career as the Chief Technology Officer.

Marc is now “retired but open to doing some consulting, maybe." (Is that retired?) Is he tired of it all? Yes, his job entailed long days, often 6 days a week. As a consultant he was the fix-it guy, which is high-pressure because it involves time and effort to get it done quickly.

Marc likes to read trashy novels, science fiction and fantasy. He really likes to build things – he built an amazing addition to their cottage on Georgian Bay. He has been looking into lock-picking (!!!) Are you thinking of a life of crime now? No, he likes it because it has a mental component but you are still doing something with your hands. (Bell Labs had a bin with locks and picks. When stuck on a problem, they would walk over and work on a lock; it got them out of their headspace.) He and Kris both enjoy cooking. They go snowshoeing, skating, and walk their property with their dogs. In the past, they travelled a lot and will continue to do so.

Marc’s last word. There are very few of his career decisions that weren’t instigated by Kris. All of them were the right decisions that were progressions that allowed them to do what they wanted. They’ve been real partners in life.

Introducing… Myra Hirschberg

For those who don’t know, Myra is an integral part of the newsletter – she is my second set of eyes, checking for errors. If I don’t always take her advice, she is gracious about it. So, I want to start by giving a big shout-out to Myra for her help.

Myra was born in New York City and grew up in Queens. She couldn’t wait to get out of Queens; “it’s a lot cooler now than when I grew up there”. Her parents were accountants; her mother worked for the NYC Board of Education. Her father worked for the city’s Budget department, but loathed being an accountant. When they got a mainframe computer, he was interested, spent a lot of time down the hall, learned all he could, and switched jobs to work there. She remembers going to work with her father and playing with old punch cards and seeing a huge computer with big reels of tape going round and round. She had no idea what it was, but it was really cool.

She has a sister 10 years older than her. When she was young, she hardly knew her but they are very close now, though she lives in Florida. Her mother died when she was 15, and her father remarried when she was 18 and that gave her 2 step-sisters, with whom she became very close. One died last year of brain cancer; the other lives in Los Angeles now.

Myra went to the University of Rochester, majoring in psychology. She was really interested in linguistics, but not so completely passionate about it that she was willing to be an academic. She moved back to NYC in Manhattan and got a job as a copy editor at Simon & Shuster for 3 years. She was very active in a drive to organize a union for publishing workers – much to her surprise she was one of the ringleaders. Despite not being successful, she discovered what she wanted to do as a career, and so went to Cornell University for her Masters in Labour Relations.

She worked for the Textile Workers Union in NYC, and then tried to build a national union for medical residents; moving to Washington DC. Unfortunately, there were legal barriers because most of American labour laws are written to exclude anyone who could remotely be considered a student. They had a number of successes, but the union ultimately could not sustain itself, so that job and the national union disappeared.

This had been the only job where she had to do a lot of travelling and she loved it! She could control where she went and had one out of town trip a month, so it was not inconvenient to her life. She travelled all over the U.S. and, since they didn’t have a lot of money, she stayed with the local group of people and got to know them. She went to New Orleans for the first time in her life and loved it, Chicago and smaller places – all of it was fun and interesting.

In 1981 she returned to NYC and lived in Brooklyn. She tried to get another union job, but was unable to; unions are not very trustful of people who don’t come out of their membership. She went to work for NYC because, at this point, it was in financial trouble and she really wanted the city to survive. She got a job in the department that ran NY’s public hospital system; they had public employees and the largest hospital system in the U.S. While her sympathies were really with the workers, her past experience was useful. In meetings she could say, “Yes, but what the union is going to say to that is…” Between negotiations her real job was to figure out a way to get things done despite what the rules said; she was not particularly committed to bureaucracy. People respected her for this and she was asked to be involved in many things.

Toward the end of her time there, there was a real possibility that NYC would go bankrupt. What everyone in her line of work ended up doing was negotiating layoffs. She got involved in negotiating a severance package offered to management. Once it was settled, she took it! It wasn’t a great package, though, because the city was broke. It was her last full-time employment.

In university, Myra had gotten involved in international folk dancing. It was a fabulous way to meet people and she continued doing it; it was a way to find community – wherever she travelled, she could find the local dance. It is a very accepting community. After her second return to NY, she switched to contra dancing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_dance] and stayed with that. She met Tom at a dance week in West Virginia. They had no expectation that the relationship would continue – everyone had these dance camp romances and while lovely, once the week is over, they don’t continue. However, they started meeting at dance weekends and over time started seeing each other outside of that and got more serious.

How did her family feel about her moving to Canada? She was older than most people are when she got married, so her family was supportive (Whew, finally!) The wedding was at Five Oaks Retreat Centre in Paris, Ontario. It was really relaxed. Some people remember being in the pool and seeing Myra and Tom go by in their wedding garments and saying, “Oh, I guess we’d better get out and dry off.” (Though no one showed up in their bathing suits!) Tom is fond of saying they got married in Paris. He just doesn’t add the Ontario part.

Tom retired at 45 and she joined him. They say they traded money for time and do a lot of things – if they can make it themselves, they do! Myra had travelled outside of work even before meeting Tom. She visited England a few times, other parts of Europe, East Africa and a really big trip to Nepal. (Nepal was a 40th birthday present she’d planned to prove to herself that her life wasn’t over yet.) She and Tom had been to Louisiana every other year because of food, Cajun music and dance. They took cooking classes and did volunteer work in Thailand, and went to Cambodia. They’ve been to Israel and Viet Nam. Just before the pandemic, they went to Italy.

Myra does volunteer work with their dog Tayo, who is a therapy dog. She had a nursing home that she visited regularly and some one-off visits to schools, colleges and universities. However, this work has been short-circuited by the pandemic. So more time to make stuff!

Some Inspiring Words:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes then you are making and trying new things, learning, living, pushing and changing yourself and changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before and -- more important -- you're doing something.

-Neil Gaiman