"Everybody thought . . . well, they figured that an old black woman, just off the boat from Haiti, must know something about the hoodoo, right? Do you know what my Mama did in Haiti before she came here? She was a seamstress and a teacher."

The Japanese art of fencing, also known as kendo, has long since been converted to a modern sport-like martial art, and exported around the world. Competitive teams have sprung up at universities, recreation centers and company-sponsored fencing halls all over Asia and Europe and it has a strong following in such far flung places as South America, the United States and even Israel. But the sport has no stronger extra-Japanese following than Korea.

I had planned evolving into this, / a million years from now.