A few months ago a 68-year old lady from Colorado shocked the world by competing in a cage fight against a woman who was not even half her age. Many thought she was insane for doing that. But even though she did not win that particular fight, what she did win was the respect of many people of all ages who now see her as an inspiration.

The lady in question, Ann Perez de Tejada, did not just walk into a cage and pick a fight. She has been training in all the disciplines that make up mixed martial arts (MMA) for quite some time; she’s a third-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (a form of submission grappling), and has been training in Muay Thai (similar to kickboxing) for five years.

^{Photo by Amanda Armstrong at Trihex Photography.}

“I started karate when I was 53 [...] I was watching the classes my youngest son was taking and finally worked up the nerve to slink into the back row, where I've been ever since,” she says of how she got started in combat sports. “When I was getting ready to test for my second degree black belt, I started jiu jitsu; a few years later I was invited to train with an MMA fight team and just fell in love with the sport. I gradually developed an overwhelming desire to take a fight myself.”

And fight she did. “I've had two amateur kickboxing fights in a local promotion here in Colorado called Just Bang, sanctioned by the Colorado Muay Thai Association,” Ann says. “We felt my first fight was a success, and would have been a victory had it not been declared an exhibition because my 24-year-old opponent didn't make weight. I lost the second fight by decision; I believe that girl was in her late 40's. At that point, I decided that if I were going to fight again, it would be MMA.”

Taking an MMA fight requires an obscene amount of courage and skills. You just never really know what your opponent will hit you with: besides the usual jab, cross, hook and uppercut, there could be elbow strikes, head kicks, a knee smashed against your face... and that’s just the stand-up portion. You could also get tripped and taken down to the ground or lifted in the air and then slammed on the ground, only to then have to defend a possible submission, which could come in the way of a choke, an armbar, a kneebar or, if your opponent can’t make a submission work, he or she could just go for some good old “ground and pound,” with punches viciously raining down on you until the referee decides to stop the fight. There is a good reason why most pro-MMA fighters usually train six days a week for more than three hours a day.

That said, it is not surprising that many people would react negatively to a 68-year-old woman giving cage fighting a try. But if someone who has some MMA training watches the video of Ann’s fight, he or she will notice that Ann actually had a game plan and was not simply “winging it.” It is easy to see how Ann catches her opponent’s leg and then tries to take her to the ground by pushing her back. Later on, when her opponent takes Ann down, you can see Ann moving around, trying to avoid staying flat on the ground and really attempting to get into guard position (in which she would wrap her legs around the opponent’s waist, making it harder for the opponent to submit her.)

Unfortunately, things didn’t go Ann’s way that day, but just because she lost the fight doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to fight. Even Ronda Rousey has lost - and was actually knocked out. Furthermore, Ann was cleared by two physicians and met all Boxing Commission requirements. "Most important of all," she stresses, "I was cleared by my two coaches, who between them have over 60 cage fights." Her coaches are Luke Caudillo, a UFC vet and coach of the amateur fight team at Grudge Training Center, and Nick Honstein, a former Australian national champ, Cage Fury Fighting Championships national champ, and Titan FC fighter.

^{Ann poses with her coaches Nick and Luke post-fight}

Still, when video of the fight hit the internet, so began the onslaught of armchair MMA critics who described the fight as “disturbing.” “a freak show” and “mind-boggling.”

“I believe that there were so many negative comments due to the first couple of write-ups that came out on blogs, which were simply made up since no one contacted any of us,” Ann says. “They were filled with errors, the worst being saying that I was knocked out when all I got was a small cut closed with a steri-strip. I wasn't knocked out or even rocked," she adds. 

Ann's opponent also got her fair share of criticism for going all out on Ann, but Ann wouldn't have it any other way. "Both my opponent and the referee were awesome! [My opponent] has been criticized for fighting hard, when that's what she is supposed to do - why anyone would be stupid enough to actually say that is beyond me! The ref did not stop the fight early; he gave me every chance to get out of the position, and then stopped the fight when I couldn't - all by the book."

While Ann says she was appalled at the viciousness of many of the comments, she also says she understands that people want to believe what they read, and unscrupulous “journalists” can easily cash in by sensationalizing the way they present the issue,” Ann notes. "Bottom line - age IS just a number, and if you're in there, you play by the same rules as everyone else, whether your 18 or 68," she says.

Despite the internet snark-fest, Ann actually gained many fans thanks to that fight. “[The support from the fans] and of many fighters, training partners, and others from the fight community more than made up for the negative comments, especially as the real story has started to be disseminated,” Ann says. “I've found along this journey that friends and supporters pop up in the most unexpected places.”

Since the fight, Ann has become somewhat of a celebrity. She has been featured in Fox and NBC, among other mainstream media outlets. She also says she has gained many new Facebook friends. But her life hasn’t changed much. “I'm still training, working on the things that need to be fixed, and of course I have a higher profile than I did before – doing interviews and videos is definitely a new experience for me,” she adds.

While Ann hasn’t given much thought to future fights she would like to have, she definitely wants to get in the cage again. “I would like to take another fight sometime in the next few months if the stars align, and I do plan to stick with MMA as long as I can.”

A brief foray about Structure -

When folks think about structure they usually do not think of it in as many different ways as is possible, and even the structure that is language has trouble dealing with that reality. Just as English has only a few ways to describe Snow, the Inuit Language has a great many completely different words. In English only a few adjectives like wet or powdered are the best we can do. 

The Japanese go even further. Their concept of a saw as a tool for cutting wood, becomes not only a dozen different names depending on the specific cut, but a different actual saw design for each name and purpose, most able to be used interchangeably but unlike using a salad fork for a dinner fork, something a master carpenter would not do. The generic word "saw" however sloppy allows for a use never considered, while just having a different name for every concept, means that the new concept needs a new name generally understood before you can even discuss it.

And so it is with structures of reality, some like whole Atoms, Protons, and Quarks describe things, at the base of the structure of Matter. However, The 5 Platonic solids (cube, tetrahedron etc.) do not describe that sort of structure but a concept of structure that deserves a different word. While knowledge of one can inform the other; they are very different things. Many names are needed for the different concepts of "structure of reality"; all valid but taking different meanings.

Likewise, Language has many concepts all called "structure" that are required for the very concept of language to exist, and the structures of use and mechanisms by which ideas are put together in different languages. Also, lurking under the surface are the many mechanisms of the brain by which language is created and used, and the mechanisms on a generic level that, like Geometry, sets the rules by which thought happens. This is utterly alien to the logic mechanisms of a computer and why I do not think "Hard AI" will ever be possible with anything that would fit a realistic description of a computer, no matter the improvements in technology.

How groups operate to create and achieve goals is another concept of structure that deserves its own family of names and here we get quickly into the weeds, for all the books, papers, and thousands of years of thought, appears to me to have missed out on several concepts of the word. A very big problem up front is the structure of how a particular thread of thought evolves, that two perfectly verifiable systems can evolve to be accurate inside their system but nearly incomprehensible in the other, and indeed, the structure that has evolved separately are not the only ones possible, but each one limits what can happen from there.

A good example of this was the discovery of the links between pathogens and disease. It is very easy to show that the pathogens are necessary for the disease to present itself. If they are exploding in population within, then the body, unable to cope, will suffer damage and death is the likely outcome. An issue, of course, is that the pathogens are everywhere, and yet everyone is not dead or dying, so the concept of immunity becomes the path that the research travels.

Meanwhile, another society that has no idea that disease is caused by these creatures (pathogens), but does take careful note of other aspects of life, and gives those aspects names, and learns how they operate in immunity (but don't realize or think of it as immunity) can develop an effective long term "solution" that is not perfect, but is effective in that society. The paths to perfecting the system will be very different. In the end the two systems are mutually incompatible conceptually, and involve underlying concepts that are unbelievable across that divide.

All this barely hints at the generic problem, that actual thought and comment, no matter how brilliant, limits the path from there, sometimes in very dysfunctional and damaging ways, both in the thoughts of the individual, and in the means that allow those thoughts "out-side-the-box" a place in the path of the advancement of humanity. Even the concept of "out-of-the-box", limits the kind of acceptable thoughts about "out-of-the-box".

Part of the problem is the Mechanisms of human thought that are built as a complex of metaphors, that every thought is a connected chain of related ideas, that sometimes implies many related concepts, but can throw the mind off by expecting the mechanisms of the object described by the metaphor to act the same as the object of the metaphor. (i.e.; if the brain is just a complex computer, we can build a complex computer to be the same as the brain, but the metaphor is not the reality. Incomprehensible in the other, and indeed, the structure that has evolved separately are not the only ones possible, but each one limits what can happen from there.

A good example of this was the discovery of the links between pathogens and disease. It is very easy to show that the pathogens are necessary for the disease to present itself. If they are exploding in population within, then the body, unable to cope, will suffer damage and death is the likely outcome. An issue, of course, is that the pathogens are everywhere, and yet everyone is not dead or dying, so the concept of immunity becomes the path that the research travels.

Meanwhile, another society that has no idea that disease is caused by these creatures (pathogens), but does take careful note of other aspects of life, and gives those aspects names, and learns how they operate in immunity (but don't realize or think of it as immunity) can develop an effective long term "solution" that is not perfect, but is effective in that society. The paths to perfecting the system will be very different. In the end the two systems are mutually incompatible conceptually, and involve underlying concepts that are unbelievable across that divide.

All this barely hints at the generic problem, that actual thought and comment, no matter how brilliant, limits the path from there, sometimes in very dysfunctional and damaging ways, both in the thoughts of the individual, and in the means that allow those thoughts "out-side-the-box" a place in the path of the advancement of humanity. Even the concept of "out-of-the-box", limits the kind of acceptable thoughts about "out-of-the-box".

Part of the problem is the Mechanisms of human thought that are built as a complex of metaphors, that every thought is a connected chain of related ideas, that sometimes implies many related concepts, but can throw the mind off by expecting the mechanisms of the object described by the metaphor to act the same as the object of the metaphor. (i.e.; if the brain is just a complex computer, we can build a complex computer to be the same as the brain, but the metaphor is not the reality. It is better than a clockwork. That was the metaphor previously, but similarly limited)

Another "Structure that deserves a different name" deals with the nature and structure of stories. In real life, having a good life with no drama and a peaceful time is for most the ultimate best life. However, in storytelling it is the ultimate worst story. If folks start making decisions based on story characters, then there are several problems.

Central, of course, is that in every story there is a real God that actually decides every thought, action, and consequence of the characters and no matter what the real probabilities decides exactly how the dice will fall. That God, of course, is the author and can make every action turn out based on those needs of the author. If one sees their life as such a story then a God writing it and making such choices, and fixing the dice, feels obvious, without understanding why. 

The Bible is just such a book of stories. Imagine if Adam and Eve had been good kiddies and never done anything wrong. The Bible would be a leaflet with nobody to read it. More to the point, as people learn to tell stories it is not a big step to imagine that you are part of such stories and the story would need an author to make all those decisions and how probable is it to have so many possible outcomes has only one outcome after the fact.

Where such stories are the basis of experience (and everyone starts life as a child, learning far more by story than experience) it really screws up folk’s expectation of probability. A shark attack is wildly improbable but a major fear because it makes a great story. On the other hand, climate problems are slow and there is nothing dramatic on a day to day basis, so it make a bad story, and thus is given a low probability even as it is a near certainty.

Where folks thinking their lives are stories, seek drama rather than solving problems, would much rather start a war rather than reach an agreement. Of course, it takes two to have a different attitude and one side cannot get to the most obvious solution when the other side sees anything short of total arrival at some ideal endpoint as a need to fight on or give up in defeat; even if that endpoint is a fantasy, 

Knowing that they are going to die eventually, it is an easy step to seek immortality in stories, and not much of a step to try and improve the story with huge damage, very foolish risk and vain Glory in the worst way. Those who are remembered indeed fit exactly that model, throwing away the chance to make Real Change and have an Empire of Free People working together to make everyone's life as pleasant and boring as possible.

Now, in all the news media stories that are complex and not dramatic like Federal Budgets, or regulations, there is little that you can get a hook in, even though the information is vital. The fall back is to play the conflict with almost no boring actual details. In these, and so many other ways, there are aspects of the structure of how things are thought about that cause weaknesses in Society, because such alternative structures are barely conceptualized, much less studied or understood, even the words used can make another structure's ideas be incompatible with the standard mode even though it could have much deeper insights.

Creating a society that power does not flow to a privileged elite; that a revolution does not move out one Dictator only to find another worse in charge; is not something commonly done and much of the focus is in magical thinking that "our side" would not act as the "Other side" and would not take advantage and yet any power wielded without restraint only very rarely uses self-restraint.

A layout and discussion of mechanisms that would actually work and is thought through, considering all the potential issues that could come up, that has a strategy to solve them, is desperately needed before taking the leap rather than cobbling it together after, but it would be deadly boring to read.

One morning my son dismissively looked at me — as many of the adult children of old guys do — and said, “You have your Old Guy summer uniform on.”

“Old Guy summer uniform?”

“Yea, you know, cargo shorts, flowered shirts, Birkenstocks.” He thought I was wearing Birkenstocks.

I was wearing Costco-stocks. I didn’t know what Birkenstocks were, so I snuck off. (Before you criticize, I have never decided if “snuck” is a real word. Sneaked sounds pretentious. But you probably understood what I meant when I wrote “I snuck off.” Therefore, in some sense it is a word. But now I have fantasies of legions of petty English teachers and persnickety copy editors plotting to forbid me to ever write in English again. But, of course, I digress.) Off I went to locate a pair of Birkenstocks.

I discovered two places where Birkenstocks can be found in Fresno. One was at a shopping center in a store catering to 14 year-old girls. The other was a Birkenstocks store in North East Fresno.

Between the ‘60s and now, a lot of hippies must have made a few bucks, because I ended up paying over $100 for a pair of sandals. In case you didn’t see that, I will break one of my cardinal rules and use all upper case letters: OVER A HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A PAIR OF SANDALS. I won’t tell you how far over. But it is further over than the price of any sandals I have ever bought before. I once spent $20 on a pair at Costco and had a knot in my stomach for years. Things have changed.

Now, I also have bought a hat that makes me look like an anthropologist searching for the fossil beginnings of humans. It was around $100, but people told me a Tilley hat was an Old Guy requirement. And the Tilley people also say their hats float, so I needn’t fear losing my investment if I ever go on a boat.

Jimmy Buffet is probably the role model for Old Guy uniforms. He looks and acts like an Old Guy who has spent too much time on the beach drinking beer and (in his case successfully, I’m told) wooing younger women. But, is it possible to drink too much beer on a beach? I think not. He’s rich. He sails, flies airplanes, used to smoke a lot of pot, can play a slightly better than mediocre guitar, and has written more than a few good songs. And he is on the road a lot. What a life.

Some people claim Mick Jagger is a good Old Guy uniform role model. I disagree because he seems to care too much about what he wears and how he looks. He is probably the guy Carly Simon was thinking of when she wrote, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” I admit I am a little jealous of him because he can jump around on a stage for hours while singing “Satisfaction” for maybe the googolplex time, and I can neither sing nor jump around on a stage.

But his body just doesn’t match his face. According to his face, he has done a lot of heavy-duty living, but his body seems to be that of a 13 year-old boy. Plus, I can’t imagine him in a flowered shirt.

Keith Richards, though, makes the cut. Just the fact he is still alive marks him as a special human being, although he looks like he’s been dead for a decade or two. His special ability, besides playing a great guitar, is that he just doesn’t seem to care about how he looks or acts. It isn’t that he is apathetic, it just seems that seconds last hours for him and he enjoys each one just for the hell of it. I don’t think he knows the Sixties are over.

Bruce Springsteen is such a great Old Guy that it is hard to believe he is just a month or two my junior. He’s 66 this September. I can imagine him in a flowered shirt and sandals, but all his clothes are probably bespoke and specially designed to look casual. However, the Boss deserves to be on the list because he is...well...The Boss, even if he is from New Jersey.

And, of course, one can never forget the great Jeff Bridges, a.k.a. “The Dude”. He is almost the archetypical Old Guy. He looks good dressed poorly and great dressed well. But he has been on the cover of AARP Magazine and ergo automatically is an Old Guy. He also has been on the Cover of Rolling Stone, which is like playing in both the World Series and the Superbowl. In the same lifetime.

My wife says because he has a long-term marriage he should be on the list. I won’t say if I agree with her. Some thoughts are better left unsaid.

Dear Michelle,

I am writing to ask you, how do we go high? Your powerful speech on July 26, 2016 continues to surface in my mind, especially when I hear and see bullying, hate speech, insults and fighting. Because I am not doing a very good job of it. When you first said these words it seemed so easy, ‘just go higher, don’t stoop to the level of a bully, just do be better, act better...’ But it’s really, really, frickin’ hard!

And make no mistake about it, this November when we go to the polls that is what we’re deciding, not Democrat or Republican, not left or right. No, in this election and every election is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives…….. our motto is, when they go low, we go high. 

How do you do it? Or do you have private moments when it gets to you? Your husband told us, ordinary people, that change only happens when "ordinary people get involved, get engaged and come together to demand it. I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours," 

Well, I am certainly an ordinary person and I have been working hard to involve myself in my local community by joining our local party clubs, by working in my local school, by attending community meetings, by calling and writing to elected officials. I knew it would be challenging and that there would be disagreements. I am not completely naive despite being told by a fellow board member that I have been manipulated and can’t see the forest for the trees. What forest? The forest of disagreement. According to her, when one Democrat disagrees with another Democrat they are blind, not just that they have a different view- no, it’s blindness, apparently. How hard is it to have a civil conversation? Because I have really tried. And I just cannot do it anymore. Try, I mean.

Here’s the really funny thing, there will be those who might read this and say, “What a bunch of BS, she is a hypocrite, she argues all the time and she thinks she is always right, she needs to just STFU.” How do I know some will say that? Because they have. What horrible, awful thing did I say? I am not even sure. I do talk a lot. I do write a lot. I do post a lot.

When social media erupted I was definitely guilty of saying the first thought that popped in my mind because I finally had a place and an opportunity to do so. It didn’t take long before I was corrected, before I recognized my own behavior and made a concerted effort to change. I started seeing the ugliness from others, even close personal friends and I just didn’t want to be like that. I read books, watched TED talks, and listened to folks wiser than I speak. I watched Oprah interview Brene Brown and she described how she felt when she read the comments on her Youtube talk. Apparently they were pretty brutal and she hide in a dark room for days. 

Whether you like Oprah or Brene, or don’t, it doesn’t matter because the message I got was, “Words hurt and they hurt A LOT!” However you identify yourself someone out there is going to disagree with you and even further they are going to apply not just a label but a whole identity about you that probably has nothing at all to do with who you are. And I have been guilty of it too, I have made assumptions about people that may have no basis in fact. I have judged many other people who may not have deserved it. And I am really sorry that I have and am trying to make up for it by not doing it anymore.

However, does it mean that I have to listen and read and watch other people do it? I try to have conversations but if it gets insulting, ugly or demeaning I walk away, both figuratively and literally. And that’s still a problem because for some people, walking away means weakness or stupidity or blindness or even that by walking away I am trying to violate their Freedom of Speech! And that is why I am writing to you to ask you what, ‘going high' means. Is there a better way for us to get to know each other and hear each other?

Do we have to stick around and listen and read people’s rants and raves? Does insisting on civil discussion really mean that ‘free speech’ is being hindered? Where does their free speech end and my self-protection begin?

Which leads to snow-flake and political correctness because if I try to walk away from an angry rant I am a snow flake, libatard that can’t handle honesty, truth and reality and by not sticking around to listen to cursing and trash talk I am shutting someone up and not allowing them their freedom of speech.

I did think that being in a small rural community there may be more of a sense of comradery and willingness to try harder to get along, sadly, the rage and vitriol of the world at large has made its way into the mountain tops. We are just as rude, belligerent, arrogant and nasty as the rest of the country and world. The following comments come from people I know and work with and they are about acquaintances we have in common.

It so difficult to not insult back, so very, very hard. How do you do it? Sometimes it seems that it is not even worth trying except that at 3 AM my words come back to haunt me, “Why did I say that? What would Michelle do?”

I guess I am a work in progress. Still. And always will be.

Thank you for inspiring me,

Deborah Baron