How Karate Changed Our Lives

by Rachel Lovely

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

― Eleanor Roosevelt

I had a dream to give my children more opportunities than I had. Thanks to my best friend Elizabeth I was able to make my dream come true. I was sitting down, chatting with Elizabeth one night, and we were talking about our dreams. I told her how badly I wanted to put my kids into sports. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford it. Elizabeth, being the angel that she is, offered to pay for their lessons. I immediately enrolled my son, Jason, into karate.

When I first started college, I was required to take Math 0057. Mr. Bill Bauer was my instructor. I enjoyed this class very much. Mr. Bauer was very friendly and would share stories about his life with us. On top of being a math instructor, he was a bodyguard, and moonlighted as a karate instructor.

This made the choice of where to send Jason for karate very clear. Jason would definitely take Mr. Bauer's class. I had the thought in the back of my head to send him there, but I knew i couldn't afford it. When Elizabeth made it a reality for us, we were ecstatic.

On our first day of karate class, I couldn't wait to introduce Jason to Mr. Bauer. He introduced himself to Jason as Sensei Bill. With our history of math class, Sensei Bill had an immediate connection with Jason. He took him under his wing to show him the ways of Teikoku Shodan, a type of karate.

To describe my son a little bit, he is four years old, almost five. He is 71 Pounds, which is

rather on the heavy side for a four-year-old. I try watching his diet and his sugar intake. He is active, but the chunkiness runs in the family. There is also history of heart disease and diabetes in the genes as well. This is why I wanted for him to be in sports so badly.

　       Back to the first day of karate, he did alright. He is defiantly not a natural. He will require a lot of conditioning. He has fun and enjoys karate very much. Sensei Bill is amazing and takes his time with Jason. Jason does his kicks and punches. He does push-ups and jumping exercises. He has come a long way from where he started.

After his third class, Sensei Bill told Jason he needs to run, do pushups, and crunches at home to get stronger. Now Jason is teaching me karate. He asks to go running and do his pushups and crunches every day. Jason said if he must do it than I must do it also. Now he has me running, doing pushups and crunches. Which is great for me, because the history of diabetes and heart disease come from my side of the family.

Now we are becoming closer as mother and son through karate and exercise. Instead of watching movies we are outside running. I feel so much better daily because of the exercise I am doing. I haven't exercised in years. It is easier with Jason by my side encouraging me. We are going to live longer happier lives because of karate, sensei bill, and Elizabeth. The dream, that became reality is changing our future.

Musical Review: She Loves Me

by Emma Willis

Do you enjoy musicals?  If you do, She Loves Me, produced by the Ocala Civic Theater, is a must-see.  The musical’s cast was full of local talent including some of our very own CF theater students. 

This musical is based on a play by Miklos Laszlo that was originally directed and produced on Broadway. This musical has seen the stage and film many times and under many different names over the years. From the Perfumerie in the 1930’s, to She Loves Me in the 1960’s, to the film success of You’ve Got Mail in 1998, and back to broadway in 2016 as She Loves Me, this story line is one that has appealed to many generations. 

Set in Budapest in the 1930s, Maraczek’s Parfumerie’s shop clerk

Georg Nowack, played by Will Winter, falls in love with a mystery woman only known as “Dear Friend.” Seeking a job Amalia Balash, played by Ashlyn Gibbs, beats Georg in a sales contest, landing herself a job at the perfumerie.  Georg and Amalia instantly despise each other.  With Christmas approaching, quarrels encompass the shop.  The pen pals plan a date to meet face to face finally.  When Georg goes to meet “Dear Friend,” he realizes, much to his dismay, that “Dear Friend,” the one he thought was his true love, was in actuality his arch-rival Amalia.  He decides to keep his identity secret, but when he sees her heartbroken the next day, he begins to feel sympathy for her.  Not only is Georg feeling new emotions, but Amalia is surprised by new emotions of her own.  Will Georg reveal himself to Amalia?  Can these enemies become “Dear Friends”?  

The cast and crew did a fantastic job putting together and performing this musical.  If you enjoy plays or musicals, you should definitely visit the Ocala Civic Theater.  While She Loves Me is no longer playing at Ocala Civic Theater, there are many more plays coming this season where much of Ocala’s amazing local talent can be seen in action. 

  

The current play, Eternity, is playing now through April 21.

Bonus:  CF students can see the final dress rehearsal on the Wednesday night before the play opens at no charge with a student ID!  [Note from Mrs. Bufka --  Attending these definitely counts for extra credit.) 

Here is a link to the Ocala Civic Theater site: Ocala Civic Theater

Lonely House

 By Sarah Paar

Throughout my childhood, art was always an interest to me. It started as my favorite subject in class and metamorphosed into a hobby I thoroughly enjoy. I started to paint seriously starting at age 16. Since then, I’ve spent countless hours practicing and playing with paints, pencils, chalks, and more. My current favorite medium is watercolors.

This piece is entitled “Lonely House” and is an 8x10 watercolor painting. The content of this piece includes an older mobile home, lit only by the porchlight and the earliest of morning rays. I spent 7 years waiting for the bus right in front of this house. Most mornings, especially on the coldest ones, this house was lit exactly how it’s presented in the painting. Looking back, I feel nostalgia.

Everything about riding the bus was dreadful. There were early hours, cold moorings and hot mornings. The bus ride was long and slow, and it was taking me to a place I would have preferred not to be. Even so, the bus stop was a calm, quiet place. I believe this is why I feel nostalgic looking at this painting.

I’m not sure if anyone lived in this house after my 3^rd year at the bus stop. The porchlight was on, but the windows were always dark. After my 3^rd year at the bus stop, the dark red Jeep I would see leaving in the morning never showed up. For 4 long years, that house sat, all alone.

By the end of my 7^th year riding the bus, I was old enough to drive myself, so I stopped riding, and therefore stopped seeing the lonely house.

Half a year went by till I went by my old bus stop again. I was shocked to see what lay before me. The lonely house was gone. All that remained was an empty plot of land and the slab of concrete where the old house once stood. I still miss that old house and waiting for the bus every morning. It was a huge part of my childhood, and now it’s gone forever.

Talking is Improvising

by Christianne Wilson

On February 27th, 2019, Greg Snider presented a lecture entitled “Anyone Can Improvise.” Snider is a professor at the College of Central Florida, where he teaches saxophone and clarinet, and directs Jazz Bands and Ensembles. He is primarily a jazz musician, and as such is heavily involved in the tradition of musical improvisation. In his lecture, he strove to convey the thought that improvising is more than a musical or professional endeavor, but is an everyday practice that is applied to every aspect of life. He predicted that each audience member was already an accomplished improvisor but that we did not know it.

He began by defining improvisation, which he said is “composing, performing, or delivering without previous preparation; making, providing, or arranging from whatever materials are available.” Snider stated that improvising involves more than music. He used the example of conversation. When two people start a conversation they do not know what the dialogue will be ahead of time, but must decide with each remark what to say, when to say it, etc. His theory is that improv is part of our culture and we are taught its usage from birth.

His job, then, is to instruct his students to transfer this knowledge into music.He starts by setting the parameters. In terms of conversation, this would be things like the scene of the conversation, the size of the crowd, and the speaker's relationship to those to whom one is speaking. Musical guidelines could be rhythm, scale, and length of the song. This step guides the communicator and creates a direction or flow for him or her to follow. Snider demonstrated this by asking one of his students, Shawnli Rivetz, to improvise for the audience. Rivetz was able to convey an idea through his music that spoke to the crowd, by following the given guidelines.

In closing, Snider reiterated that improvising is simply modifying small things to add flavor to a conversation or song, and that anyone can do it.

The Influence of Music

By Virginia Boyd

I wrote this poem when I was thinking about what my life would be like without my music. As a musician, I hate going a whole week without touching a piano, organ, or pennywhistle, especially a piano being my primary instrument. Without music I would have a harder time expressing myself. I cannot even imagine what my life would be like if there was no music in this world.




The Influence of Music

Of all the sweet things I know
Music is the best.
I listen for it in my ear
To know that I am blessed.
Every time I hear a piece
It tenderly flows along,
Unless it is a dissonant one
Because then it’s a dissonant song.
Each different piece has its own property
That sets it far apart
From every other piece around
And they all have beats that make my heart
Flow with such fast rhythm and
Run without a stop
That if I heard no music
My body might truly drop.
For it would no longer
Have anything to hear:
The fast tempos of “Der Jongleur”
And the slow
Of “To a Wild Rose.”
But all I know
Is that if this world had no
Music with which
We could hear,
How could we know what pitch
We were singing in or not?
Or how could we even sing
Seeing as there would be
No music for us to listen to
For the rest of eternity.

OOAK Dolls: Step by Step

By Em Hudson

Making custom OOAK dolls is a hobby I’ve picked up in the past few months.

OOAK stands for “One of a Kind,” and although it’s a time consuming activity, it’s one of my favorite things to do. All the tips and tricks in this post are things I learned from Dollightful, Hextian, and Mozekyto on Youtube. If you get into this hobby yourself, I definitely recommend checking those channels out and following along until you feel confident enough to do it on your own.

First, I start out by picking out my doll. I like to use Monster High dolls, since they’re made out of a heavier plastic than Barbies and will last a lot longer. They also have different facial molds, so the features of each doll will be a little different. The doll I’m using here is an “Ari Hauntington” doll, and I’ve already used acetone-based nail polish remover to wipe the factory paint off her face. After I remove her face, I have to take the head off. Ripping the head off the shoulders can damage the doll, so what I want to do first is soak her in some boiling water. The hot water softens the vinyl head of the doll and that will make it come off the peg more easily.If you do this, remember to cover your hand in a towel when you remove the head! It’ll be hot to the touch, and water can get inside the head, so if it drips on you it will be painful!

Once her head is detached from her body, I can remove the hair inside. Her hair was long before, but in prepping the doll I cut it as close to the head as I could manage. Now that I can get at the hair from the inside, I can pull it out of the little holes in the head called the “hair plugs.”  To do this, I take a pair of needle-nose pliers and jab the end into the head, scraping around the inside to pull the hair out. It’s sort of awkward to hold, but I’ve found it to be the best way. I tried to use tweezers before, and while I could move them inside the head more easily, it took forever and eventually started to hurt my hand. I ran into the same problem when I tried small sewing scissors.

After scraping it out, I use the pliers to pull out any clumps of hair from inside the head. It looks kind of gross, but it would get in the way otherwise so it must be done.

 

Since her body is pure white, I’ll be painting it a more natural shade. I’d like to use airbrushes to give the body a more even coating, but I don’t have the money to get the supplies for that so we’re going with acrylic paints this time. I’ve also gone ahead and painted gloves on her, as well as adding in the whites of her eyes so that I have a guideline for painting her face later.

Now that she’s painted, I’ll spray her with a sealant called Mr. Super Clear. I’ve never seen it in stores and it’s not an American brand, so when I buy it I have to order it online. It’s very toxic and I always make sure to wear some form of respirator when I spray it, since it’s dangerous to breathe in. I leave the doll in a well ventilated area for half an hour. I hang mine up outside, since you can’t get much more ventilated than that.

After thirty minutes, she’s back inside. I’ve gone ahead and sewn her a simple dress. I kept it loose and sewed it to form after putting it on the doll to be sure I had the perfect fit. 

I’ll be setting her body aside for now to work on her hair and face. Normally when I give a doll a new head of hair, I use nylon that I order from Etsy. But in this case I want to give her a bun, so I’m using yarn so that I’ll have a material that holds up to styling a little more. To push the hair in, I’m using a rerooting tool I bought online to “root” the hair. I’m going around the perimeter of her head.

Now that I’ve gone all the way around, I’m using some quick drying Fabri-tac glue and squirting it through the neckhole and into her head. Be generous with it, since you want to make sure you cover every single plug, otherwise hair could fall out when you try to brush it.

While I could leave the yarn like this for some dolls and hairstyles, this time I intend to unravel it. I use a metal comb to pull the individual strands of yarn apart, and once I’ve done that, I can wrap her hair into a little bun and add some decorations. I also heated a metal chopstick up on my kitchen stove to make a homemade miniature curler. I wrapped yarn around it to curl her bangs and the loose hair in front of her ears. I burned myself once or twice, but her hair looks great! I’ve also pushed some sewing pins into her ears to mimic pearl earrings.

Since all the construction work is complete, I finally get to move onto the most fun part: cosmetics. I’ve gone to craft stores and searched through my house for different kinds of ribbons and accents to add to her dress. I’ve also gotten out my acrylic paint and gloss varnish. I painted on her face and used gloss on her eyes and lips, so that they’ll reflect light. I’ve also used some scrap fabric and fake flowers to make her a bouquet accessory. She was missing a pair of shoes, so I also sculpted some out of a type of clay known as Apoxie sculpt. Now all that’s left to do is finish the shoes and reattach her head!

Apoxie sculpt usually only needs to dry overnight, but the heels I made for her took three days. I’m not sure why it took so long. Maybe the clay was thicker than usual? In any case, it’s all dry now and I’ve painted it. I also attached pearls and painted the bottoms of the shoes red just to add a little more detail.

Reattaching the head is simple. There’s not much to it other than squeezing and pressing down on the neck peg, but hearing the head pop back on is a satisfying conclusion to a craft project that takes several days. 

From beginning to end, this doll took me about ten days. I’ve been wanting to make a bride character for a while, and adding all the bells and whistles to her wedding dress was a lot of fun! Maybe in the future I’ll give her a partner to get married to.