What does this symbol represent

[John Giacoletti]

Fred wrote:

Many instructors teach 5-6 nights a week for the love of the art and no money at all.

In Largo, the tradition is different.

The dojo and attached residence was built by Sensei Martin and his students in the early 1980's.

The free-standing building was built for the purposes of karate instruction. There is over 7000 sq. feet of classroom space. It has won architectural awards and was the model for the school Alan Dollar built in California.

Inflation and property values being what they are, the economic realties of the situation do not allow for teaching for the "love of the art and no money at all." Taxes and insurance do not come cheaply on a million dollar facility.

In order to maintain the quality and consistency of instruction over time, Sensei Martin has a small, select staff of full time martial arts professionals who are paid well for their services and provided with a range of benefits.

Young and capable men and women instructors deserve a home life, too, and the capacity to provide for a spouse and family. You can't achieve that if your staff has to work five or six evenings a week for free.

At the end of the day ... the student body of nearly 400 students feel they receive value for the tuition they pay. Our students reflect the diversity of the community ... Hispanic, Afro-American and Asian as well as caucasians from six to seventy. We're not geared to a college student body or suburban neighborhood. We got lawyers and roofers, cops and mechanics ... hard working folks who want quality martial arts for themselves and their family.

We have numerous families, a mom and dad and two or three kids, who pay $500 a month in tuition who are just as happy as Ben.

[benzocaine]

deleted.

[benzocaine]

deleted.... you're not worth it John. )*(

[f.Channell]

If Kanbun Uechi hit a time warp and washed up on the beach in Largo sounds like he couldn't train since he was penniless leaving Okinawa.

But certainly John if I was training at such a place I would expect to pay well for it. Many of my friends have big dojo and they certainly deserve it.

Building such a place requires excellent business skills, a certain charismatic personality, as well as outstanding technical skill.

I on the other hand have 100 students and wish I had 20. 20 good hard working serious training students would be fantastic.

My highest ranked student is my daughter who Van calls "little tiger" she is 11 and just won the Junior series in point fighting. When she leg conditions with you it's amazing. She and her sister were chosen to do a kumite by Narahiro Shinjo 3 years ago.

Sensei Martin sounds like quite a man, hope to meet him and yourself someday soon.

F.

[emattson]

Thought I draw my own modern style of the Uechi-Ryu symbol. Spent all day rendering the image using Blender, an open-source 3-D graphics program. It has incredible power, but the learning curve is steeper than a cliff. Many of its features I don't yet understand. Used waves and noise for textures, and lighted surfaces strategically placed for the glow affects. The characters were pulled from a Mattson's Uechi-Ryu site, cleaned up, and resized using GIMP, an open-source paint program.

For much of my childhood, I love visiting the Boston's karate academy to admire the beautiful artwork.