"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day -- "Does it happen all at once, or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.  "You become.  It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has turned gray, and your eyes are squinty and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all, because once you are REAL you can't be irrelevant, except to people who don't understand."

The original (unmodified) version was written by Margery Williams in The Velveteen Rabbit, a famous children's book  -- ed

     As part of the overall karate workout, kata practice indisputably plays less of a role in today's karate training than in the past.  This is because modern karateka devote more time training in basics, sparing and other skill-building exercises.  Since kata is not longer the sole method of learning and practicing karate techniques, it is more important than ever to maximize the time spent on forms.
     Until the 1920's, most instructors would teach a student only a few, sometimes only one, kata.  The student would continue to practice this one form until it was mastered to the satisfaction of the teacher.  During training, individual techniques were sometimes extrapolated from the kata, and their application explained.  Often, applications were never explained, leaving the student to reason out their own applications through a long and tedious process of self-discovery.  A student could spend up to three years on just one kata.  The saying "three years -- one kata" grew out of this traditional methodology.  Obviously, judging from the relatively large number of kata taught by a few instructors, three years was not applied to each and every form.  Yet, any student could expect to spend a considerable amount of time perfecting the moves of a single form before being allowed to progress to the next one.
   
   from  Unante  by John Sells


….Slow and Steady Gets You Ready:  When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur.  When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning.  Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made.  Don't look for the big, quick improvement.  Seek the small improvement one day at a time.  That's the only way it happens - and when it happens, it lasts".

     The Winter Kojosho Black and Brown Belt Testing was held on Saturday, January 4, 2003 at the Kojosho Heights (Indian School) Dojo in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Mr. Absher conducted the annual event, assisted by the Kojosho Board of Regents.  The day-long test covered basics, hard-line forms, Kojosho Forms, self defense and sparring.  Mr. Absher announced the following promotions at the traditional awards banquet that evening:

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