Keep the Lights On part 2

Our second annual "Help Us Keep the Lights On" fundraiser to help us pay our PG & E bill is taking shape. The date is Saturday October 30th. And remember tomorrow as I write this is October 1st. The event will consist of an afternoon of training followed by a socially partially catered gathering. In the spirit of keeping things moving from year to year we have some different instructors lined up this year. Linda Holiday sensei and myself from last year. Senseis Jackie Cossman(Aikido of Mt View) and James Friedman(Suginami Aikikai San Francisco) will be teaching at this year's event. The training will start at 1:15 pm and go till 6pm. And the social gathering follows the training. The gathering is geared for friends of the dojo and for dojo alumni no longer at this time training to participate in the event.

My personal wish list. Someone to co-ordinate the social event and organize the catering. Someone to help contact dojo alumni and friends to let them know about the event. Someone to organize a dojo clean up Saturday morning. Someone to co-ordinate the taking of the money for the training. And there are other things I have probably overlooked as I write this, so please feel free to talk to me about that.

I have been in communication with the building's agent for handling the utilities. He explained that this is an old building which eats power. And due to our lease agreement, we pay a substantial part of the building's power. This offsets our very reasonable rent. So our portion of the power bill has more than doubled from when we started here in the early years of the new millineum. Eventually I would like to explore an effort to go at least partially solar, but the immediate thing is to make sure our monetary reserves for the dojo are not totally drained by this year's bill.

I designed some sweat pants using the katsu hayahi characters that were very popular earlier on a t-shirt. And I am in the process of putting together a dvd of the dojo's and my history of aikido(the matsuri in b flat video on youtube). So I am putting together some guidelines for donations:
Maximum Package: $300 or more
-training October 30th
-new Aikido of San Jose sweats “katsu hayahi”
-“Matsuri in B flat” dvd of Aikido of San Jose’s history and lineage

Non-training Maxi Package: $200 or more:
-new Aikido of San Jose sweats “katsu hayahi”
“Matsuri in B Flat” dvd of Aikido of San Jose’s lineage and history

Training plus: $100 or more
-Training October 30th
-ASJ sweats”katsu hayahi”

Just Training: $50
these are just guidelines. If you are financially challenged yourself you can donate any amount and that would be appreciated and still participate in the training. Or if you would like to offer your assistance for the event in lieu of a monetary donation. Your energy on any level is appreciated.

If you would like to purchase the sweats only that can be arranged. Just contact me. If you would like your donation of any amount to be tax deductible, also please contact me at jack@aikidosj.com.

This blog does seem to reach a wide variety of people. If you would like to participate in the fundraiser but are out of area and can't train, please feel free to do so. Just contact me at the e-mail address above.

Here is a new music video. Solar is a Miles Davis piece: