Coming soon...

Greetings fellow members of Ring 41,

This month we will be having a very engaging young magician Bill Cook will share his knowledge about magic as he does it. Bill is both an outstanding close-up performer but also a very entertaining stage performer. He has also appeared in a movie about teenage magicians. This should be a great meeting.

Our January meeting will be very special. On Wednesday, January 30th we will have the opportunity to learn Broadway mentalist Marc Salem. Marc Salem having performed on countless stages and on television will be here in Wisconsin as part of the Milwaukee Repetoire's Season with a show called Mind Over Milwaukee. We will be meeting him after his show at the Carte Blanche theater. He will be presenting a lecture entitled: "Why I don't do lectures for magicians and mentalists". This will be a special opportunity to learn (from a performer who works for the public) what makes mentalism shows powerful and entertaining for the general public.

Several of us plan on attending one his performaces. If you are interested in going to see him that night before the lecture, please contact me now. If there if there is a group of ten people or more who would like to go together that night we can get a group discount. Come learn from one of the leaders in this form of magical entertainment.

The Ring would like to welcome the following new members:

• Scott Lane

Greetings fellow members of Ring 41,

We've had a interesting year with a number of interesting guests magicians and some clever contributions from our membership at our meetings. We have added some new faces who have already contributed much to our club. David Swoboda (our webmaster/secretary) has worked hard to try to keep you informed about what is going on. Our Jon Hughett our Vice President has arranged some really great lectures for us. Bill Crowley has stepped up to be our treasurer. Both Rath and John & Maria Kurtz worked hard to try to arrange special events for us. I thank them and everyone who has helped make our club successful. We recognized the tremendous contributions of Bob Salzer over the years and we mourned the loss of our good friend Dale Radke.

It's time to move forward and elect our new set of officers for our 2012-2013 season. If you would like to serve we welcome your participation. Our elections will take place next Wednesday (July 27th) at our last meeting before September. Whom ever is elected will be challenged to start planning for next season. I suggest that a planning group meet and sketch out a tenative schedule of events for the year so we have a game plan from the beginning. We can modify that plan as we book guest speakers or special events such as a show are finalized.

It is a challenging job to be the leader of a voluntary association such as ours. I hope that everyone will continue to try to work together to make our club the best magic club in Wisconsin. Please come to our last meeting of the year and share your thoughts, suggestions and abilities with the group. Bring along something magicial to either demonstrate or share with the group. Let's get the business part of the meeting done quickly and just have some fun! Hope to see you there.

The Ring would like to welcome the following new members:

• Raime Townsend
• Big Guy
• Kirk Patrick

Dear Fellow members,

Your President just returned from Branson where he attended the Branson Bonanza convention and learned a lot from Jim Snack about promoting yourself and your web site. Marty and Brenda Hahn do an excellent job running the convention and if you have the chance I encourage you to attend it.

Upon my return (last Saturday) we had an evening with Daryl. Daryl is a great performer and a good teacher. We had excellent attendance forty four persons attended and by the looks of things, I think Daryl did just fine selling his products. We ate together at Myers Family Restaurant and I believe the evening was a tremendous success. A great big thank you to David Swoboda and John Hughett for arranging and promoting the evening. I would support having a dinner and lecture again in the future.

What do you think?

I'll yield to Jon to tell you our schedule in the coming months.

The Ring would like to welcome the following new members:

• Raime Townsend
• Big Guy
• Kirk Patrick

Hello Fellow members,

We have begun 2012 with a bang. Our last meeting featured a wonderful video presentation on misdirection, suggested by David Swoboda. There was some nice sharing of magical ideas by both our older and youthful members. I really appreciate all of you who attend regularly and participate.

We would like to have a stronger teaching component at our meetings. I think it would be really cool if we had a close-up teach-in and a stage/parlor teach-in at our meetings. I know that between all of us, we have the talent and know how to be able to create such an activity. I know we have members that have studied theater. If someone would like to do an activity (demo or hands-on) related to the magician as actor that would be great. Some of our members as well as a significant number of our guests (at lectures) like mentalism. If there is someone who would like to share entertaining mentalism ideas with us, that could be very useful for those who enjoy performing as mentalists and for the regular magician who might put a mental effect or two in his/her program. I hope each one of you will consider sharing a little more of what you know with the rest of the group.

In April we will be putting on a show. John Kurtz is working on the details. We will also be having our annual auction the last Sunday of April. Bob Rath is working on the details of this event.

On May 5th (a Saturday. More details to follow) we will be having a rare opportunity to have Daryl (one of the best magical entertainers and teachers of magic) visit us to share with us his insights on performing as well as many of the wonderful routines he has created. Daryl is a FISM winner, author and teacher of magic. You will learn more than just tricks by watching him work. Everything he does within the performance of a routine is carefully planned and rehearsed. In his lectures and DVD's he shows you how he uses laughter and the character he plays to make the magic possible.

I once attended a lecture of his after studying a number of his Fooler-Dooler routines on DVD. After performing and explaining a routine, someone asked him a question about how something was done in that routine. He immediately rewound the video tape in his and repeated word for word, facial expression by facial expression the exact same routine. It was like watching a video replay of the routine. He then answered the person's question precisely! From this lecture you should come away with some great ideas on presentation as well as a variety of tricks suited to different skill levels and interests. If you have ever learned magic from his Encyclopedia of Rope Magic DVDS, you know how good they are. Studying them is like earning a graduate degree in Rope Magic.

I've learned all sorts of concepts that I have used in creating my own magic. You will want to be there for this lecture.

See you in February.

Mike Miller — President

Coming Soon...

Mike Miller — President

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

David, Jon, Maria and I are trying our best to have a first class magic club. So far we have had two great lectures (Dan Stapleton and Aldo & Rachel Colombini) with another great one (Devin Knight) coming up this month.

I would also like to express a special thank you to those who participated in last month's spooky magic. It is my belief that the best magic clubs are those which have a high degree of participation.

When you read about many of the great magicians who have proceeded us it is striking how often methods for effects were developed through the combined thinking power of many different magicians.

As we gather together around any given magical question we have the opportunity to make our own magic better and more powerful. Please actively participate in our regular club meetings. Your participation significantly contributes to the success of our group.

Remember: The Devin Knight lecture is on November 23rd not our usual last Wednesday of the month. Come enjoy the lecture that night and have your turkey on Thursday.

Hope to see you then!

Mike Miller — President