Labor Day Weekend Silat Seminar

This weekend just past, we had our annual Silat Sera seminar, held this year at the muy thai boxing gym next to the Place to Shoot, in Portland. This is a gathering designed primarily for Guru Stevan Plinck's students, though dedicated silat players from other styles are sometimes invited.

All day Saturday and Sunday we played, stand-up combinations, groundfighting, sensitivity exercises, and I had a fine old time. Even though everything we covered was pretty basic, each time I see it, it looks different. It is true that you never step into the same river twice.

The facility was great. Todd and Tiel found a barbeque place that delivered ribs and chicken and red beans and rice and cornbread and collard green on Saturday, and that was passing good.

Got a chance to meet Bobbe Edmunds, finally, who also brought one of his silat students, Todd, and that was cool -- Bobbe is really a nice man, no matter what you might have heard otherwise.

Yesterday was a particularly long day for me -- we got started silat about ten a.m., I left at four p.m., hurried home, showered, dressed in a tuxedo, and Dianne and I attended the wedding of Ami Margolin, and Andy Rome, Ami being the daughter of a writer we know.

It was a traditional Jewish ceremony, and the bride's parents, Phil and Doreen, had basically rented an entire hotel for it. Champagne, snack food, dinner, and dancing, with three different musical groups playing at various aspects-- a chamber trio, a jazz quartet, and a dance band. A truly happy event, and my guess was about four hundred people in attendance. We sat at a table with people we knew -- my literary agent, Jean Naggar, (who is also Phil Margolin's agent) and her husband Serge; Ray and Jean Auel; Mary Joan O'Connell: and our Congressman, David Wu. Lovely event, worked up a sweat dancing in my penguin suit, and we got home just before midnight. Walking the dogs was a slow chore because we were really tired by that point.