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MIT CONVENTION IN JUNE

On Saturday, June 17, 1978, the MIT Juggling Club in conjunction with the MIT Center for Theoretical Juggling is sponsoring a one-day juggling convention. This get-together will take place from 9 am to 11 pm in the Sala de Puerto Rico, a huge room on the second floor of the MIT Student Center, just across the street from the main entrance to MIT at 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A large lawn outside will also be available if the weather cooperates. For further information, call David LeDoux. Come on out and warm up for the Oregon convention!

FROM DAN JEFFERY

For those interested in literary references to juggling, here is a passage from chapter VII of Mark Twain's story The

Mysterious Stranger:

"When the astrologer went to the market square he went straight to a juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd and said: "This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see an expert perform.

"So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and another, and soon - no one seeing whence he got them - adding, adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands; and such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the air. The spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was a shining and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms and told the balls to go on spinning without his help and they did it. Afer a couple of minutes he said, 'There, that will do,' and the oval broke and came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled every whither."

POEM

Juggling isn't what it seems

It isn' thoughts or words or dreams

It isn't magic though it screams

Of sleight of hand and mystic scenes

Juggling is the wary art

Of tearing the whole house apart!

-- Robert Nelson

REVIEW

Readers of the IJA Newsletter may be interested in a booklet and a set of small bean bags which I ran across in a

bookstore on a recent trip to the West Coast.

The booklet is called "Juggling for the Complete Klutz" and has some 30 pages. Authors are John Cassidy and B.C. Rimbeaux, with cartoons by Diane Waller.

In an easy, funny way it teaches the basics of juggling three objects in a regular and a reverse cascade, and simple ball passing. There are a lot of useful hints.

It comes complete with a plastic net bag containing three bean bags of corduroy and printed fabric, each about 1-7/8 inches across. The bags are a bit on the small and light side, especially if you've been juggling with lacrosse balls. But they seem ideal for kids and for a person with small hands. Also, it would be better if they were not all identical so one could do some asymetrical variations.

The set may not interest you personally if you're even a novice juggler already, but it does make a very nice present for friends you want to turn on to juggling. It has a friendly, non-frightening personality to it.

The set is available for $5 plus 50 cents for shipping from Klutz Enterprises, Vallecito, California. Mine came two weeks after I mailed a check.

The authors also mention an upcoming book, "Juggling for the Exceptionally Gifted", which I haven't seen yet.

-- George Novotny, New York City