crow on lamppost
contemplates a CAW!
but is silenced
by a morsel clamped
in its beak.
Crow Mind [Kyōka]
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BOOK: “Ninja Weapons” by Charles V. Gruzanski
Ninja Weapons: Chain and Shuriken by Charles V. GruzanskiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Online – Internet Archives
The first item to get out of the way is that this book doesn’t have a particularly apt title. The book was originally released with the more accurate (but less sexy) title, “Spike and Chain,” and then this edition came out in early 90’s when fascination with all things ninja was high. An accurate title would be “Masaki-ryu Chain Fighting Basics with Information on Throwing Blades on the Side.” But, of course, that would be a horrible, wordy, and tremendously unsexy title. Still, the bulk of the book is a description of the postures and fundamental techniques of fighting with a short weighted chain (called manriki-gusari [10-power chain] in Masaki-ryu or by the more literal kusari-fundo [chain (w/) weight,] elsewhere) and then there is a section on shuriken (throwing spikes and stars) to pad the book out into a three-digit page count needed to be a proper book back in the day.
I should point out that I don’t mean this all as a criticism. I am much more pleased with a book on Masaki-ryu weighted-chain technique than I would be with one that rambled on speculating about the vast number of weapons associated with the ninja. But it’s important to know what the book is about because if you are looking for a guide to the weapons used by ninja, you would probably find this weak sauce. First, there’s little to no mention of ninja in the text. Second, the story given for the development of the manriki-gusari is that of a gate guarding samurai, Dannoshin Toshimitsu Masaki, who didn’t want to have to sully the Imperial grounds with blood and so took up the chain as an alternative to sword fighting. Finally, while shuriken were said to be used by ninja, they were not exclusively so and the history in this book also cites Edo period samurai with developing the art.
If you are interested in Japanese weighted chain weaponry, and specifically Masaki-ryu, this is an excellent book for you. If you’re interested in throwing blades, you might be a little disappointed with how thin that part is, but it does discuss a lot of the fundamentals in a concise and practical way. If you are looking for a book on all the weapons used by ninja, this is not the one for you.
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DAILY PHOTO: A Gray Lake
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PROMPT: Fitness Routine
More fitness, less routine. Develop a habit for movement, a love of it, and nature will take its course. Don’t leap into punishing routines, start easy, listen your body, and you’ll get to that point incrementally — but it won’t feel like punishment.
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Little Blue [Haiku]
from a gliding boat,
a little blue flower spied
as all else blurs.
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Nature’s AC [Haiku]
water rolls past
moss green rocks;
hikers pause in cool.
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DAILY PHOTO: Tall Pines, Kolsay Lake
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PROMPT: Overrated
Joyce’s Ulysses springs to mind. I do love some of the language, but — overall — reading it was a bit like getting my teeth drilled. (But I have been known to have a different perspective upon giving a book a second chance.)
There are many long works that I thought could have used an editor (e.g. Moby Dick and Atlas Shrugged,) but still I see their literary appeal.
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Tree Hell [Tanka]
pine cone wedged
in a rotten sleeper,
on derelict tracks,
may become a tree
and made into sleepers.
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BOOK: “New Comic Limericks” ed. by Ivanette Dennis
New Comic Limericks by Ivanette DennisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This anthology consists of 63 pages of whimsical limericks with amusing cartoon illustrations by Louis Marak. There aren’t laugh-out-loud yucks to be had here, but the wordplay of these poems is clever and the limericks are more well-crafted than most. It should be pointed out that there is nothing risqué in the collection either. The most best-known limerick writers included are Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, Gelett Burgess, and Charles Barsotti. [Incidentally, the most famous writers included are Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Robert Louis Stevenson.]
The pieces take a wide variety playful approaches to the limerick from eye rhymes, slant rhymes and the shape poetry of Charles Barsotti.
If you’re interested in limericks and wordplay, there is a lot to learn from the examples presented in this anthology.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 