John Bussard Donates Mats to The Alabama Build-Vention. A Note of Thanks.
I must take a moment to again thank John Bussard for his generous donation to The 2014 Alabama Build-Vention of 2000 square feet of ZEBRA mats. John, they have arrived --and will serve the Greensboro community in a multitude of ways, for years to come. The Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention 2014 is a martial arts business convention, definitely the most unconventional business training event in the martial arts world, where the learning happens, the exchange of ideas, and the classes --while we build and renovate homes and other structures in cooperation with Pam Dorr and the team at www.herohousing.org. John's donation of mats gives us some of the tools we need to help the martial arts take root in Greensboro --next to the landmark work of Pam, Samuel Mockbee (http://samuelmockbee.net/) and www.rurualstudio.org ---and alongside the work of John Bielenberg and his Project M (http://www.projectmlab.com/). For 10 years now I've been taking martial arts teachers, instructors, and their staff members / students to Greensboro --to sleep on the floor, to eat local food, to get dirty while operating power tools and hammers, to help a community in transition, and to live the simple life of volunteerism for a short-week ---all for the purpose of re-thinking how we teach the martial arts, how we impact the places we live, and how we inspire students to take the work out of our dojos and into the world. This is a completely not-for-profit event that survives only on donations from the international martial arts community. We fund it thru small donation from students and teachers who appreciate the work, who are moved by it, and who want to support the movement the work represents away from the crass and blatant commercialism, up-sells, and product-mongering abundant in the "industry." The link for info and to donate is here: www.ubbtAlabama.org It's working; more martial arts teachers than ever before are starting to blend community activism, serious, grass-roots volunteerism, into their agendas ---inspiring students from age 5 to 75 to see our training as something more than learning how to fight. This year we host one of the most prominent and important environmentalists of our era, Ms. Julia Butterfly Hill --who is coming to further the dialog we've started about "Environmental Self-Defense" and how we, martial arts teachers, might come to serve the movement for more sustainable, sane, and sensible living --in ways that cause less harm, less exploitation, and less irreparable damage to the world we all inhabit. John, your donation greatly enhances our ability to do this work. Thank you.