Personal Thoughts

While I don't claim to have pinned him down perfectly, you can see my attempts to share some stories and memories of a good friend. Robert Nelson, the Butterfly Man.

Letters from France (and Germany)

In 1989 I moved from San Francisco, California, to Châlons-sur-Marne, France, to become the juggling instructor at the National Circus School of France. The letters that I mailed to friends and family were my attempts to share my experoiences of living in a foreign country, make sense of the culture shock of not being able to speak the language, or feeble cries for help.

Year-end letters

In less-politically-correct times, these have been referred to as Christmas cards. Had I known how much postage I could have saved over the years by just being patient, and waiting to post them online...

How the Dice Got Their Spots is a brief discussion of different ways to mark the six sides of a die.

The following articles previously appeared in JUGGLE magazine:

Thursay, September 23, 2010: Two numbers by Jochen Schell

I enjoyed working with Jochen when I lived in Europe. More people should see these two routines from a master.

Directly below is a portion of Jochen's Schell's top-spinning number.

Directly below is some of Jochen's Schell's ring number.

Tuesay, June 1, 2010: Virtual Kendama

Found this virtual kendama game on the Internet and posted it to the rec.juggling newsgroup.

Juggle sensei Matt Hall then pointed out a more sophisticated virtual kendama game. Thanks, Matt.

Monday, May 31, 2010: A funny misunderstanding

Well, I tried writing a blog. It didn't work out that well. I don't have any complaints about Wordpress to set up and maintain a blog; it seems fine. One of the bigger factors in not being diligent about updating a blog is that I already have two writing outlets: the Teach-In column for JUGGLE magazine and the occasional book.

A large factor in taking down the blog is the spam. The most frequent entries from other people were spam notices for various products and/or web sites that I don't want to help promote. It was mildly annoying to have to delete these attempts. Plus, it seems as if this page works well for sharing questions, ideas, stories, and whatever.

The first story I'd like to share took place in the summer of 2006. I had helped arrange for Jérome Thomas to be the special guest for the IJA festival. Katje Sabin was coordinating the festival that year.

A few days before the festival Katje forwarded an e-mail from Jérome. The original e-mail listed some items needed for his show. The list included a set of juggling rings, a chair, and some other stuff. The reason Katje wanted me to see the e-mail is that Jérome also requested a tower. Katje wanted to know the dimensions of the tower. It looked like there might be some frantic, last-minute construction for the Cascade of Stars show that year.

Although I was familiar with Jérome's work and had seen several of his shows, I couldn't provide any more information about the height of the tower, how strong it needed to be, or what material it should be made from. The best I could do was to reply that we will find out from Jérome when he arrived in Portland.

Drove down to Portland and went to the airport to pick up Jérome. I asked him what kind of tower he needed for his show. After a little confusion we figured out that his original e-mail contained a small typo. Jérome had meant to list a towel as one of the things he needed for his show.

Think it was in the mid-eighties that I succumbed to the idea of sending out end-of-year newsletters. The only saving grace I can try to claim about these annual texts is they tend to highlight low adventures. A low adventure usally starts out well and then somehow disintegrates into something that might be considered unpleasant, if it weren't so amusing.

So, here is the list of annual, year-end updates.

Contact Information:

t o d d a t t o d d s t r o n g d o t c o m

Please adjust to make the above a valid e-mail address.

Please Note: Orders are usually shipped once a week from Washington state (in the United States of America).

This web site was last updated on October 1, 2023.