Hello everyone,
Before I begin with the meat of my email, I want to remind everyone that
our Wednesday practices, including the one tonight, are currently on
hold for the time being. In my initial announcement, I mentioned that
the closures was to allow the staff to clean and disinfect their
facilities and reopen on April 6th. The update to that is the closures
might last a little longer due to Mike DeWine ordering closures of most
public facilities, including recreation centers, gyms and movie
theaters, until further notice.
As for the Sunday practices, my original decision was to keep those
practices going as usual as long as the Martial Arts Facility is able to
remain open. When I made that decision, I was taking the small sizes of
our Sunday class into account, along with urging everyone to practice
proper hygiene and sufficient health monitoring. However, the last few
days has only shown an increase in diagnoses around the globe, and in
our backyard, which has forced the Governor to close many business and
events where large amounts of people tend to gather and increased the
calls for social distancing. At this point, I don't know what that
means for martial arts facilities, but regardless of whether they can
stay open or not, I have to make the difficult decision to also cancel
our Sunday practices until further notice. As great as it would be to
have a sense of normalcy in the face of all that is going on, and I look
forward to training with all of you every class, I just don't think that
all of that is worth putting everyone at risk.
We may be down, but we're definitely not out! We will resume practice
again as soon as the situation improves and business are allowed to
operate as normal! In the meantime, continue your dedication to Kendo
and Iaido through self-practice and cross-training!
Chris George
