I got to stab people this week.
I’ve been looking for ways to get more active for a while. I’ve had a Planet Fitness membership for a couple of years now, but I haven’t used it much at all.
Academy for Performing Arts, where Middle Daughter teaches and has danced for years, hosts the NEOK Fencing club. I’ve talked to Kevin Stretch, the founder of the club, several times about joining up, but I never quite got around to it. Then this summer, he announced a weeklong summer fencing camp. I signed up, figuring this would be a good way to check out the sport and see if I was really interested before I dropped $200 on gear.
I loved it.
Eight of us signed up. I was the only adult in the class. It was kind of fun to make cultural references and watch the 10-12 year-old kids’ eyes glaze over. “Two Germanys?”
Anyway, it was a whole lot of fun, even if I was pretty darned sore all week. We did plenty of warm-ups and stretches each day, but there’s only so much prep you can do for when you’re spending most of three hours in a mini-squat, shuffling back and forth along the floor. Even Kevin, who’s fenced for 30+ years, was a little stiff by Wednesday.
Kevin taught us some general history of fencing and showed us the three weapons used. We focused on the foil this week, to make it easier for us to learn the basic lunge, parry/riposte, and things like right-of-way.
We picked up weapons the second day, focusing still on footwork and maintaining the proper distance from our opponent. Wednesday, we put our gear on: jacket, mask, glove (yep, just one), and plastron, or underarm protector, for a couple of students. The mask certainly changed things. You focus more on what’s directly in front of you, because it obscures some of your peripheral vision. You don’t use your peripheral vision that much when you’re fencing, but I was surprised by how much I missed it.
Thursday and most of Friday we spent bouting, mostly against each other, though we each took a go with Kevin. He beat me 5-0 Thursday and 5-2 Friday. In fact, I lost all of my bouts Thursday, but the other two were both 5-4 losses. I won once Friday, during the demo we did for family members. Even got my picture in the paper. (I’m not sure if the video link will work via archive.today. You may have to click through to the original article at the Tahlequah Daily Press.)
I had an absolute blast this week. I spent a couple of hours watching bouts on Youtube, and I’m hoping to catch some of the Olympic fencing events. I’ll definitely sign up for the beginner classes this fall.
Reading
I read an interesting piece at the Associated Press about the pigs being raised for xenotransplant. Meet some of the world’s cleanest pigs, raised to grow kidneys and hearts for humans. That turned out to be a pretty cool story. I’m all in favor of anything that helps transplant patients.
Did you notice though that one of the first modifications they make involves turning off the alpha-gal gene?
Alpha-gal syndrome, which you get from the bite of certain ticks, is an acquired allergy to mammalian meat products. It’s a life-changing disease, really.
Now it turns out that in working on solving one problem – making more organs available for transplantation – scientists have helped ease another one. People with alpha-gal syndrome can eat the meat from the pigs raised by Revivicor. Pig transplant research yields a surprise: Bacon safe for some people allergic to red meat.
Speaking Of Transplants
Just how far so we take the whole, “My body, my choice” question?
Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy published an intriguing piece Wednesday titled, Kamala Harris’s Unduly Narrow View of Bodily Autonomy. He recalls her questions for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, where she asked him, “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” Somin then returns to his own comments in 2022 about various laws regarding bodily autonomy, suggesting several that should be repealed. He includes the idea of organ markets in this list.
It’s currently illegal to sell most body parts under the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. I understand the ethical concerns behind allowing compensation for organ transplantation. I’m not sure I completely agree with them though.
Granted, movies like Repo Men show a potentially ugly side to the organ trade.
But I think it’s ignorant to think organ trading can be prevented. It’s already happening, right now. It sometimes doesn’t even require anyone’s consent. I think it’s altogether better to regulate and control it. Banning something generally creates a black market for the item, and no one ever wins in a black-market system.
Writing
The soundtrack for this post has been Sleeping Dragons – Deep Relaxing Ambient Fantasy Music.
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