Professor,

After your last column I found a couple of jugglers in my area but no juggling groups. You promised more information about starting a club.

Dear Mr. or Ms. More,

The best advice comes from the Nike people "JUST DO IT." It's a little bit of, "If you juggle, they will come." The steps should be something like this.

TIME: First talk to the other jugglers you've met and pick a time; every Thursday evening, 1st and 3rd Tuesdays, whatever. Choose a regular, dependable day and time and stick to it. Like I said, "If you juggle, they will come." But, "If they come to juggle and there ain't nobody there, they ain't coming back!"

PLACE: If the season and/or climate are right, pick a park. Like your mom said, "Go outside and play. It's good for you." Find a public park with bathrooms, shade, a shelter (it WILL rain on jugglers), parking, and VISIBILITY. (See Publicity below) If the outdoor option won't work, you're going to have to find a gym. Good luck, you're going to need it! Most schools, churches, health clubs, etc. do NOT welcome outside groups or they want LOTS of money. And, be ready for strange reactions when you talk about a juggling club. Remember the movie "Cool Running" about the Jamaican Bobsled Team? It's a lot like that. "Normal" people can't begin to imagine there could ever be anything like a juggling club. Go figure?

Talk first to the local park district or community center. WARNING! WARNING! STAND BY FOR A SHOCK!! When you're dealing with "normal" (i.e. nonjugglers) you have to look and act as "normal" you can. In other words, it's time to be a grown-up. Give them typed letter along with a copy of Juggler's World and an IJA membership brochure. Give them a load of bull about how healthful juggling is, how it will improve eye-hand coordination, blah blah blah, blah blah. Feed the director a line that he can pass on to his board. Just telling him "juggling is fun!" will not cut it with normals. One good ploy is offering juggling as a class or workshop. Offer to teach free if anyone can come free.

If the park district plan don't work, it's time to start hustling. Talk to everybody; da Moose, da Elks, da Mall, da Zoo. You can find unused gyms, banquet rooms, etc. in the strangest places. If one of your jugglers is a college student, see if you can stay dry under their activities umbrella. If somebody is a driver for the transit district, try to use the bus barn. This can be the hardest part of keeping a group going. Many long established clubs have to fight tooth and nail for gym time so don't get discouraged. Stick with it!

PEOPLE: Dig out the IJA roster, check the listing by zip code and find every member in a 50 to 75 mile radius. Write up a fun letter telling these people what a great time they're missing. Get somebody to make copies at work. See if the local magic shop will spring for the price of postage. With luck this step won't cost anything (always a plus for cheap skate jugglers). Now get the computer nerd juggler (usually no shortage of them) working on a sign to put up in that magic shop. Run lots of copies and hit the local libraries, colleges, etc. Lots and lots of etc! See if the nerd can make a sheet of business cards. Copy at work, cut them out, make sure every member has plenty to share, and leave a stack at the magic shop.

PUBLICITY: You NEED to draw attention to this group of crazies. While you're at the library putting up posters, ask them for a book on writing press releases. Send out them out to the newspapers and TV station. The newspaper editors will spend time reading over any material you send them, but TV producers won't look past the first paragraph if it doesn't grab them. This is one case where a word is worth a thousand pictures. People will tear an article out of a newspaper and save it for a long time while a TV story is gone in a few seconds.

Dear Professor Cheek,

I started a juggling group about eight months ago, and it has grown slowly but steadily. We're located in a not-so-busy mall, and we encourage all passers-by to watch and/ or take a lesson, and have taught lots of people. But the only people who keep coming back are white males. We get few women who want to even try, and none who return. I would like to see more diversity here, but I'm baffled as to the cause or the cure.

Dear Puzzled,

OUCH! I took this job because it was supposed to be fun. Now you're asking ME? the HARD! stuff. No fair! As one of those "white male" jugglers, I'm not qualified to answer this one.

Sooooo, I turned this question over to our crack research staff and they ain't gotten a damn thing done since. Never have I seen them so excited, divided, or PO'd by a question. I've even had to break up fist fights. I'll try to summarize some (the ones fit to print) their comments on gender and racial differences.

Physical: There are some differences. The average female may not be strong enough to juggle three bowling balls, but males have a major (hopefully) handicap when it comes to unicycling. Bottom line, nothing to account for the lack of nonwhite or female jugglers here.

Childhood: Many people jumped on the "boys play lots of ball games" band wagon. If this is true we should see a great leap forward in the next few years from what I've seen in girl's soccer and baseball. Anti black and hispanic kids have been outdoing us poor white guys for years. Still no easy answer.

Math Ability: The percentage of female jugglers is very close to the percentage of female mathematicians. But, this seems to reflect interest rather than ability. The same percentages seem to fit science fiction readers/ writers, architects, engineers, and computer programmers. Maybe this is why half the Oriental jugglers I know are engineers from Purdue or MIT.

Cultural: This looks like the best area to find a good answer. Males seem less afraid of looking foolish than females and juggling, learning especially, qualifies as looking foolish. Juggling can be seen by white youth as a form of rebellion against society. In black society, rebellion may not be seen as a positive thing and the risk of failure built into juggling may be too big a threat. Minority youth seem to gravitate towards competitive rather cooperative sports. One researchers worked in a circus arts program with black and hispanic children. Those kids learned very quickly, then made up very competitive games to beat each other.

My personal guess has to with inertia. When there are more females and minorities involved in juggling it will be much easier to attract more females and minorities. I know it's a Catch-22 but all that you, or anyone, can do is teach as many people as possible and make everyone feel welcome. Good Luck! I can say that the few female and the very few black jugglers I know are some of the very BEST jugglers I know.

Sorry, folks, if this Q&A ain't too funny but the question and the problem ARE serious and deserve a serious answer. Maybe we can take this "problem" and turn it into a plus. One of the problems of society today is single (usually moms) parent families and a lack of a good male role model. Well, here we are a bunch of male models ready made. Get out there and get involved with Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Big Brothers. Do SOMETHING instead of just bitching about the problem!