May, 2024 Ring Report
Past International President, Mike Stratman, did a wonderful officer installation at the May meeting for the incoming officers and Board of Directors (of which Mike is one of them), and after a few announcements to support some local magicians, we were ready for some magic.
Of the eighteen gathered for the meeting, three were visitors and two of them were ready to do their initiation performance. We were elated that Doc Waddell was encouraged by Sherman Wires to join, and Doc showed three effects with his “utility wand” including lights from the tip, causing sound and ultimately vanishing. Next up was Andrew McGrath who has attended the last two Winter Carnivals and loves both magic and card artistry. Andrew did a fun presentation of the Chicago Opener with our new president, Michael Priestap, and then did a beautiful coin sequence with four coins. We unanimously welcomed our two newest members!
The Ring’s new Program Chairman, Andrew Hyder, had a full schedule of magic planned for us starting with eight members sharing their favorite Tenyo effects. Andrew gave a brief history of the Tenyo company (that started in 1880), and shared his copy of Tenyoism – the two-volume book that came out in 2016. Andrew did the Mystery Pyramid, Jack Wilson showed his Matchbox Penetration (that we are researching to see if it is indeed a Tenyo effect), Bill Sturgis did the See-Thru-Card, Michael Priestap did a great Soft Coin presentation to music, from Zoom Tom Vorjohan shared Knot Fantasy in its original packaging (like Monkey Bar, but with a double ending), Tim Pressley showed the recently released (2023) Final Piece to show that “magic is much more than just a puzzle,” Stacey Roach did both T-25 and T-38: the wildly popular Silk Serenade and Crystal Box and talked about several other Tenyo pieces, and we finished the Tenyo performances with Bill Osburn via Zoom sharing the Tenyo effect marketed by Milton Bradly in 1994 called The All-Seeing Eye.
As we wrapped up the Tenyo, Michael Messing shared that the Color Changing Hanks (or Chameleon Handkerchiefs) that he does is original Tenyo with a vinyl tube. He also shared that two other pieces he has performed are Tenyo best sellers: What’s Next and the Crystal Tube.
We moved into other performances starting with a “work-in-progress” where Ray Adams was a “thief technician” that could get three 4” metal disks to penetrate off a ribbon and then removed a hole from one and made the hole appear on another. Later, Ray talked about his costuming and how he decides what to wear. A great success for Ray taking close-up effects and growing them for the stage. Roy Schubert also had a couple effects he wanted input on to make them better involving a prediction and a deck of cards and more of Roy’s creative thinking. Jim Stott shared his McCombical Deck presentation with Tim Pressley assisting. Stacey Roach did a couple of effects and was open to suggestions, but his work on these was already strong. For a little Show & Tell, Michael Priestap shared a “find” of an old Kirby VanBirch program and shared things he learned after looking up Kirby’s information.
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