By Cecilia Ramos, Grass Valley Aikikai
Every year at Summer Camp we have a fabulous raffle to raise money for Birankai North America’s Scholarship Program. Prizes range from small to large. Many are handmade by our members and the grand prize is Summer Camp for the following year. I would like to encourage everyone to buy raffle tickets and donate prizes.
A few years back I won a set of three porcelain “whiskey” cups. They were lovely, but I couldn’t figure out why they were called whiskey cups. I packed them carefully to survive traveling home in my suitcase and was relieved that they arrived undamaged. Putting them on the shelf I noticed they weren’t straight and looked again for damage. That was when I realized they had been made crooked on purpose, like they were drunk! Hence the name! Whiskey Cups! I treasure them and love their crookedness.
Last year Neal Dunnigan Sensei, chief instructor of Wheatbelt Aikikai, won a piece of calligraphy brushed by Chiba Sensei. It was donated by Lizzy Lynn Sensei, who herself had won it as a raffle prize years before at a camp in San Diego. She rolled it into a tube to get it back to her dojo in Northern California, and then had it framed. It was quite large, perhaps five feet tall, but narrow. When she decided to donate it back, the size became a problem, as it seemed a pity to take it out of the frame. The solution was to ask Carole Gifford to drive it three hours to Grass Valley, as she was coming to our Mountain Weapons Seminar. Then my student Iris Vandevorst’s family drove it up to Seattle. In between the seminar and camp, the beautiful calligraphy leaned against the back wall in my dojo and I Continue reading “Raffle Prizes and Devil Eyes”