Waka wish

Going to Japan
tea practice and birdwatching
with good company

Gardens and temples and food
old friends and new friends meeting

Spring two thousand ten…

Composed by the Tuesday Tea Folk while painting Daruma's eye. Help us complete the verse?

Shiny and clean

The Chashitsu got a stem-to-stern cleaning just before Lunar New Year. Thank goodness for help from Pia, Laura and Kristin! Everything got removed from the room, right down to the bare walls and floors, dusted, vacuumed, windows washed. Dogu reorganized, repacked and relabeled. We even got a couple boxes out of storage and sorted them out. It was a very productive day.

Give to the Ink People when you shop the Co-Op!

Humboldt locals can provide a donation to the Ink People each time we shop at the Northcoast Co-Op in Arcata or Eureka. (The Ink People is the big mamma arts organization that took Horai under its wing.) Simply use the member number "85802" when you make your purchase and Inkers get some green. It's an easy way to donate to the arts and support the organization that fosters us.

If you're not in the area, you can still support the Ink People by becoming a member: Go to the Ink People's website, download the membership form (PDF) and join. And if you have spare change rattling in your pocket, please make a separate donation to the Ink People for Horai. It will help us to purchase tea or sweets for tea practice, or items such as chakin, sensu, kaishi... or whatever else we might need to do a demonstration. Buddah thanks you, and so do we.

Community Groups Selected for 1% Register Donation Program

The Gifting Committee of the North Coast Co-op’s Cooperative Community Fund (CCF) approved 48 non-profit organizations to participate in receiving donations from shoppers at the register, 12 more than last year. How it works: A Co-op shopper tells their cashier the number for the non-profit organization they want to donate to. The cashier enters that number into the register and one percent of the total is automatically added to the shopper's transaction. Membership is not required. A list of groups is posted at each register. The one percent donation is kept in the non-profit organization’s account and donations are distributed twice throughout the program year (July 1 though June 30). The next application period is Spring 2009.

In addition to the 28 previously participating groups, new groups include 4-H TRAIL, Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT), Friends of the Annie & Mary Rail-trail, Hospice of Humboldt, Humboldt Pride, KHSU, McKinleyville Youth Center, Miranda's Rescue, North Coast Regional Land Trust, Pregnancy Care Center of the North Coast, Redwood Coast Children's Chorus, Salmon Creek Community School, Sequoia Humane Society, Sequoia Park Zoo, Serenity Inn, St. Joseph Hospital Foundation, Sustainable Nations, The Ink People Center for the Arts, Trails Trust of Humboldt Bay, and World Shelters.

Donations to program groups fund operational costs and specific projects in the community. To view details for each program visit northcoastco-op.com and go to Donations. Scroll down to the Register Donation Program area at the bottom of the page. Monitor how much each group earns by clicking on the link “Click here to look up info on current program participants.”

CCF is a permanent endowment established and directed by members of the North Coast Co-op, which awards grants to support projects and the work of community organizations in Humboldt County. Through collaborative grant making the Fund seeks to strengthen the community by emphasizing projects and activities that promote democratic cooperative principles, community development and food security.

Register Donation Program Groups and Their Numbers for 2008-2009

4-H Leaders Council	80031
4-H TRAIL	80032
AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project	80053
Arcata Children's Centers	80658
Arcata House	81381
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates)	80001
CCAT (Campus Center for Appropriate Technology	87370
CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farmers)	80043
CCF (Co-op Community Fund)	80501
Dell'Arte	81883
Democracy Unlimited	80044
Food for People	80003
Friends of the Annie & Mary Rail-trail	82006
Friends of the Dunes	80611
HCAR (Humboldt Community Access & Resource Center)	80037
Hospice of Humboldt	82007
Humboldt Arts Council	80538
Humboldt Community Breast Health Project	80018
Humboldt County Red Cross	82002
Humboldt Domestic Violence	81965
Humboldt Library Foundation	80019
Humboldt Mediation Services	80046
Humboldt Pride	82009
Humboldt Senior Resource Center	80020
Humboldt Wildlife Care Center	80007
KHSU	83090
Lost Coast Camp	84230
Making Headway	80008
McKinleyville Youth Center	82011
Miranda's Rescue	82012
North Coast Regional Land Trust	82013
Pregnancy Care Center of the North Coast	85847
Queer Humboldt	80048
RCAA Youth Services Bureau	80012
Redwood Coast Children's Chorus	80039
Renewable Energy Student Union	80049
Salmon Creek Community School	82017
Sequoia Humane Society	82018
Sequoia Park Zoo	82019
Serenity Inn	82020
Six Rivers Planned Parenthood	84096
St. Josheph Hospital Foundation	82021
Sustainable Nations	82022
The Ink People Center for the Arts	85802
Trails Trust of Humboldt Bay	82024
Tri-County Independent Living	80050
World Shelters	80042
Y.E.S. (Youth Educational Services)	80025

US/Japan Creative Artists Residency

Artist challenge! This just in courtesy of Libby Maynard, Executive Director, The Ink People Center for the Arts.

US/Japan Creative Artists Residency
Japan-US Friendship Commission

Each year leading contemporary and traditional artists from the United States spend five months in Japan as part of the United States/Japan Creative Artists Program. They go as seekers, as cultural visionaries, and as living liaisons to the traditional and contemporary cultural life of Japan. The outlook they bring home provides an unparalleled opportunity to promote cultural understanding between the United States and Japan.

Cultural understanding is at the heart of this program. It provides funds for up to five artists to complete the residency in Japan. Artists are free to interact with Japanese artists anywhere in the country and to pursue activities of greatest relevance to their creative process. While many artists chose to remain in Tokyo, others have undertaken their residencies in Kyoto or other cities, and still others have worked in rural settings or have visited a number of sites relevant to their work.

While artists will be predominantly on their own upon their arrival in Tokyo, International House of Japan provides in-depth orientation materials, expert advice and professional contacts, as well as logistical support during the residency period.

The Japan-US Friendship Commission works cooperatively with the National Endowment for the Arts to sponsor this program.

Grant Award
Each artist will receive:

• a monthly stipend of 400,000 yen for living expenses, 100,000 yen a month as a housing supplement, and up to 100,000 yen a month for professional support services. (While the yen value may fluctuate against the dollar, applicants should be assured that these funds will cover the cost of living and working in Japan.)
• a total of up to $6,000 for round-trip transportation for the artist, domestic partner and / or unmarried children (up to age 18) and a baggage/storage allowance, and any pre-departure Japanese language study in the United States.

Because of the limited number of awards, only one residency will be supported for artists who apply as a collaborative team. In addition, while artists may wish to apply for other grants concurrently with the application to this program, selected artists may not hold a second award for financial assistance during the period of support of the US /Japan Creative Artists-EProgram.

See program guidelines for more information, or the website for general info.

Website: http://www.jusfc.gov/creativeartists.asp
Grant link: http://www.jusfc.gov/programguidelines.asp
Deadline: 02-01-2009

Greetings from Kansas

A lovely Japanese OShogatsu (new years) meal made by none other than my lovely wife Shigeko.

Our Flowers and decorations for Oshogatsu

This is the group of students I study Tea with at Kansas State. Ohno Sensei is in the green Kimono.

This is from the 2008 spring Festival. I was host for the Usucha demonstration. we had about 100 people viewing for each demo.

The video screen, while helpful for the people in the back, did give it a sort of weird blade runneresque feeling. Those of us actually doing the demonstration did manage to ignore it pretty much the whole time.

Hello everyone,

My name is Jeff, you can call be brewdude, and I am addicted to the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Hollix has graciously allowed my posting right here so I will stop in from time to time to talk about Horai mid-west. I am living in Manhattan Kansas going to grad school and still studying tea, though not as much as I would like. Right now I am practicing the usucha temai for ryurei (the table) The university owns a nice ryurei set and we are using it in the Kansas State University Japanese Festival this april. I hope to have pictures to follow. For now I will throw a couple from past Kansas tea events in.

grr, now I see the silly things but they are ABOVE the intro. It might take a while to get this thing down

Oh and Hollix feel free to shrink, remove or spindle any of the pics I put up here as I know we have limited storage space

Next time I will remember to add the photos before the text.

Jeff

Things I've missed

Blink, blink. Here are some recent Tea Tales by Shuai Chen we managed to overlook.

TEA TALES: Flower teas go well with other teas 10/22/2008 - Chinese tea is not all about those green leaves. There's a small category generally known as flower tea that includes many kinds of flowers you could find in China.

TEA TALES: Esteemed tea began as a mistake 01/21/2009 - Pu'er tea: It has medicinal powers as well as being a tea. It's considered a “drinkable antique.” Its value increases over time, like some stocks.

TEA TALES: Poem tells the story of a friendship
09/03/2008 - Experts in Chinese tea history have concluded that during the Tang Dynasty, there were three events of major significance. One was “The Book of Tea,” written by Lu Yu.