48-2,p30

It's midnight on Saturday and the gym puts rocks. Energy left over from the Extravaganza puts an electric sheen over the jugglers. They all seem hyper and happy, especially Steve Mills's son, Anthony. He has the maniacal gleam of a kid

who has discovered that walllength mirrors were made specifically for those little balls that are covered with suction cups. It's frightening to think that someday, like his father, he will discover golf. At 2 a.m. it's time to close the gym. Most will crash for the night, but four still-wired carloads go off in search of an open Denny's.

Sunday begins very slowly. The gym is half empty, but by noon things have picked up, and at 1 p.m. Rhys Thomas makes the last of the door-prize announcements. An amazing amount of stuff has gone out, and this is just what was left after hourly prizes given over the last two days. (Oh good and beneficent vendors!) Then he presents the Ben Linder Memorial Award for Inspiration to Laura Green, Miss Tilley. This is well deserved and not terribly surprising, as her charm, openness, and spirit are much appreciated.

The sun is shining warmly (Animal must have been doing his magic again) and at least half of the juggling activity is going on outside. Inside, the usual workshops are given and taken. The first half of the Show & Tell workshop is full of Mr. String tricks, some of them new even to Mr. String. It then branches out to rubber-band tricks, and concludes with a few actual juggling tricks. I see a minute of the session on busking (always my favorite) but this time it seems populated by those voted least-likely-to-busk, and no one knows what questions to ask.

I leave early to introduce the workshop on Juggling and the Law, presented by Kohel Haver and Michael Davidson of Northwest Artists and Lawyers, Inc. Some of the points they make: 1. You can protect your original routine from being used by others. 2. When you make your living at it you can deduct more than you earn, but you can't do it very often. 3. The most recent relevant case law is The Great Luccinni vs. some TV-station that taped his entire 14-second act and broadcast it.

Luccinni is a human cannonball. Luccinni won big bucks. I would have liked to find out what elements determine when it's worth bringing suit against someone who steals your routine, but I had to run the 3-Egg Enduro and see to the scrambling of a gross of eggs.

It's late Sunday afternoon and broken eggs cover the grass and track outside the Sports Center. They also cover the brick and concrete walls of the Sports Center, so this is probably the last 3-Egg Enduro we'll have. Repeated attempts to crash the pool and some new dents in the gym floor were the only other bummers of the weekend. The Portland Juggling Festival is five years old and still growing, and I suppose such matters are normal growing pains, and part of the cost of becoming the largest regional juggling festival in the Western Hemisphere.

Animal takes down his parachutes, folds up his tarps, and then helps the rest of us clean and sweep the gyms. For me, he was the elemental and animating spirit of the festival this year - the Green Man in our juggling garden. As I drive away I can hear him laugh, seemingly for no reason other than the joy of it.