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Have to go into the way-back machine for this.
OK, it's 1979, so I'm about 18 years old, and I'm living in San Diego, CA.
And I'm taking martial arts classes at a school called the Taoist Sanctuary.
The San Diego school was an offshoot of a similar (and slighly older) school in Los Angeles.
At that time, there were two main Sifus -- Master Share K. Lew and Master Abraham Liu, and their senior students,
John Davidson ( very sadly, now deceased ) and Bill Helm. I learned a lot from all of them -- a bit of martial arts,
most of which I have long since lost, but a heck of a lot more about how what it meant to be an adult. (I *think*
some of the latter lessons have stuck.)
One of the things that made the Sanctuary unusual -- at that time -- was that they were openly teaching what
people now call "Chi Gong". Back in those days, it was called "Taoist Yoga", when it was called anything at all,
and it was very rarely taught outside of China, even more rarely to non-Chinese. (Again: we're talking 1978-1979
here, and fortunately, it's much easier to find people teaching all of this stuff these days.)
Okay, so what does any of this have to do with "Men Who Stare At Goats"?
Well, one day, we all come into class at the Taoist Sanctuary, and we have a guest. An ex-Army Lieutenant Colonel
named Jim Channon. (I might have the spelling of his name wrong.) Channon wanted to create this thing that he called
"The First Earth Battalion", which sounded like an American version of Samurais, or Shaolins -- warrior monks who
would use unorthodox methods to "win conflicts without fighting." Channon was traveling up and down California gathering
information about and observing various schools of what we then called "the human potential movement" but now would
probably be called "New Agers". Basically mining ideas and techniques for his "First Earth Battalion." The Taoist
Sanctuary was one of his stops. Where he had heard about the school, I have no idea. He came in for several nights
running, watched the training practices, took notes, and made lots of sketches. Yep, Channon was a pretty fair sketch
artist. I talked to him for maybe half an hour, one of the nights he was there. He seemed very sincere, but honestly I
found it hard to take him seriously. (Taoists? New Agers? In the U.S. Army?)
I know that Channon took Abraham Liu and Bill Helm back to the army war college for a martial arts demonstration. I
never saw him after that, and I don't have any idea how much luck Channon might have had selling his idea to the Defense
Department, or what happened to him after that.
Has anyone seen the film?
J.
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