Page 4                                                 October - November 1977

LLOYD TIMBERLAKE, European Correspondent

Lloyd Timberlake (b. Atlanta) was moved by a dull senior year at college and an autobiography of W.C. Fields to learn three balls. . Then he quit. Four years later while working for Reuter, the British News Agency, in New York, he saw and bought Carlo's book. He's never looked back. (He's looked up some, down a lot, between his legs occasionally -- but never back.) Completely lacking a news nose for major American trends, he sought out, interviewed and wrote a story about Carlo and The Book. Carlo put him in with the New York juggling Mafia, including Hovey Burgess. Believing the world was ready for and even needed a man who could get a big university to pay him to teach juggling, Timberlake also did a piece on Burgess.

 

Timberlake moved for Reuter to London in late 1974, and was contacted immediately by Lindsay Leslie, Scotland's answer to Sergei Ignatov, who had read the Carlo piece in his hometown newspaper and wanted Lloyd to introduce him on a hugely popular TV talent show he had won a place on after four years of auditions. So three-ball­cascade Timberlake found himself telling eighteen million Britons about juggling in general and the IJA in particular. Having passed himself off as an expert, he decided the only honest thing to do was to juggle seriously. Then his wife told him the only way he could justify buying Raynolds clubs was to earn the money juggling ("What about our friends with pianos? Surely they don't ...," he pleaded, but She Had Spoken.) Taking his clubs, made from plastic bowling pins liberated from a Lower East Side Boys' Club, to tourist-choked Portobello Road, he fell in with the buskers and street performers. In fact, he has been working since then (summer 1975) with a guitarist he met that first day, in an unnatural act of bad jokes, bad juggling and reasonable music. You read in a previous issue how he blundered into working five concerts with the Rolling Stones, including one in front of a live audience of a quarter million. Shortly after the convention his group was called upon to appear at London's huge new National Theatre

(outside!), which is worried about its stuffy image. Generally when not Science Editing -- he knows less about science than he does about juggling -- he and his group are wandering about London dropping things on attendees of church fetes, neighborhood festivals, and assorted fund raisings. With Lindsay in Scotland, Bobby Menary in Northern Ireland, and London's Toby Phillpot travelling a lot, there is little competition. IJAers passing

through London really ought to look him up, just to reassure him they are "still Out There.

-- Lloyd Timberlake

 

TOM DEWART, Convention Co-Chairman

 

I started juggling about three and one­half years ago when Bob Morganti and I were roommates in Springfield, Oregon.

 

Bob showed me the basics with balls, and a short time later (but after a good deal of practice) I began teaching adult education night school juggling classes at Lane Community College in Eugene. Currently I am Oregonizing the 1978 IJA Convention.

 

This fall I will start my third year of teaching at Lane.

 

When I first saw juggling, I was not interested in it. It took becoming a juggler for me to appreciate it. I

believe juggling has given me a confidence I never had before which I will be able to apply to other aspects of my life.

 

FROM JOEY JORDAN

 

I attended this year's convention and greatly enjoyed it. Recently I worked the Jersey State Fair and some other IJA'ers were also on hand. On the "Bionic Woman" TV series I caught a glimpse in the background of Picaso at the MGM in Vegas.

 

If anyone can locate some good "soup plates" such a Gran Picaso uses, please inform the rest of the IJA membership through the Newsletter. I will be headlining at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Tahoe (following Montego who is there now).  After that I go to Japan. Please drop by and see me if you are in the vicinity of Tahoe, and have a great time in Eugene.

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