Guild Officer: “Are we really the owner of the marks?”
For those who have been around the Feldenkrais community for many years, the passage below is old news? Or not so much? When Bonnie Humiston, two-time Guild President and one of Moshe’s original american students, graciously gave me her time in a podcast last year, I had not read the passage below. Otherwise, I would have asked her about it.
Though I do not have the original letter, the quotation below is from a lawsuit filing, so I have no reason to doubt is veracity. Would love to post the original letter if anyone would like to send it to me.
June 4, 1985
“I’m sure that in the fall last year, I was very much taken with the notion of owning a service mark, and all the power and implications that went with that, and I was responding positively to Fred Goldberg’s [attorney] position that we were the owners of the FI mark and we should do all we could to keep it. However, several weeks ago, I began being haunted by the question, “Are we really the owner of the marks?” My stomach churned…. these are Moshe’s marks, how can we call them ours… . By what authority do we call ourselves owners – maybe we need another legal opinion; what legal grounds do we have to call ourselves owners. Frankly I was scared.”
I have a great deal of respect for Bonnie in writing a letter like that and raising the issue. In my view, it takes a great deal of courage to do so. What Bonnie’s original letter means in the larger issues of guild history and legality of the service marks, I do not know. To a certain extent, I do not care. But I do think that in a practice and community in which awareness is so important, we cannot afford to wall our selves of from any facts or information that might help us reflect on our own history, development and sense of self.
- Ryan
By the way: I heard that there was an early Guild meeting in which the idea of voluntarily giving up the service marks was discussed. Does anyone have any information on that? Are there any minutes or written records of the meeting? I though that there was a FeldyForum or Feldigest post mentioning it, but I cannot find it.
Regarding the early Guild meeting, I heard this about from Michael Purcell:
somebody at the meeting raised the dread specter of somebody from the outside claiming the service marks if the Guild gave them up. Like as if Coca Cola gave up its trademark, and I would file for it, and then charge them for the use of their name! Seems very improbable to me, but apparently it struck fear into enough hearts to defeat the idea of giving up the marks.
In my opinion, the marks are worthless anyway– which would be the point of giving them up, right? So who would steal them and what difference would it make?– and the obsession with them is pathological. ATM sounds like a cash machine, and the basic problem is that no one has heard of Feldenkrais (FeldenWHAT?), or Awareness Through Movement, or FI, and it’s just all totally confusing and useless. Alexander work, Rolfing, Tragerwork etc. just have one trademark name; it would make more sense to just talk about “Feldenkrais floor lessons” and “Feldenkrais table lessons”, or verbal and hands-on lessons, something like that.
I really like the idea of using “Feldenkrais floor lessons” and “Feldenkrais table lessons,”- how obvious! Great suggestion, thanks!
I simply call what I do lessons:
-”the lesson we are going to do today…”
-”do you remember that lesson when….”
-”when do you want to come in for a lesson…”
let’s see what else…
-”lessons for the back, hips, sitting, walking, thinking, sensing…”
“lessons in awareness, in function”
actually, I reminisce to a day when at Jeff Haller’s house and his daughter Grace, she was maybe 6, said
“are you here for a lesson?”..
If we are teaching people how to learn again, then the term “lesson” fits. It just so happens that the basis for these “lessons” was developed by someone called Feldenkrais.