Magic - Amazing!
I nearly turned over and went back to sleep this morning: too cold, too dark, too January. I knew my attendance record would hold up having been at the Board meeting just a few nights previously. But habits die hard and I’m going to be away for an extended time next month, and besides I almost always leave our meetings glad that I came. Well it was magical this morning even though our guest list was pretty thin, just Mana Sawamori (Japan), Anel Neumann (Estonia) and Magic John Finch our guest speaker.
Two members, Bernie Scrivener and Wayne Gowans, received Paul Harris Award pins for their growing contributions to the Rotary Foundation. The foundation, as you know, does magical things with the money.
Jumping right to the end because otherwise I’ll forget him, Eric Anderson performed a finale magic trick and raised a few laughs, but left a few people saying they didn’t get it.
As your club Secretary (and sometimes Scribe) it fell to me to give a report on last Monday’s Board meeting. A report that was, well not all that interesting but you can catch up on it and all Board meetings when the minutes of it are posted on the club’s website.
Bob Martin reminded us that next week’s meeting will be at Next Door Social Space (Plains Rd E. next to The Lord Nelson). Meeting starts at 7 and we will be presenting NDSS with a cheque representing raffle profits from last year’s Lakeside, and also, nota bene, that the following week’s meeting (Jan 31) will be at Joseph Brant Hospital.
Mana reported having finally been up the CN Tower – So cool she said. And Anel did some domestic stuff but including dinner at Fionn MacCools for the Polio Plus event last Monday.
Then we got into the magical part of the meeting (other than Eric’s dubious, spotlight-stealer, performance).
Our guest speaker was John Finch, aka Magic John who regularly entertains at The Carpenter Hospice. He performed a number of quite compelling stunts and, if you’re at all like me, you settle into the skeptical audience member routine more or less daring him/her to convince you. But after a couple of warm ups it became incredible, or as the small audience kept on exclaiming, “Amazing!”
Magic John retired from a lifelong career as a structural engineer, PEng. He needed a change because, as he explained, engineering is very binary, it’s either right (works) or wrong (doesn’t). So he went to magic school (not Hogwarts) to learn how to trick, deceive and bamboozle: we saw the, chosen-at-random, 9 of Spades disappear and then reappear in unlikely places; we saw a purple silk kerchief apparently teleport across the room; and were witness to half a litre of milk becoming a handful of Oreo cookies. Amazing!
And a refreshing start to an otherwise too cold, too dark, too January morning.
P. Scribe.