If you have a question next summer at the IJA's 45th annual festival in Montreal, no matter where you are, just yell out, "Hey, Serge!"
If Serge Trempe, president of JAQ (Les Jongleurs Associes du Quebec), isn't nearby to answer, somebody else surely will because, Trempe assures us, nearly everyone in Montreal is named Serge!
Trempe, the local coordinator for the festival, is working hard with IJA festival coordinator Ginny Rose in making arrangements for next summer's event (July 20-26 at McGill University). Now's the time to lend a hand to help make it all happen. If you'd like to involve your club or group in the back-room shenanigans next summer, contact Trempe at: 252 J.C. Michaud, St. Basile-Le-Grand, Quebec JOL 1S0, 514/461-1918.
Trempe assures IJA members who have never visited Montreal that they will be impressed. He said, "Montreal is an exciting, colorful European-like city. Eccentricity is welcome here. It's home to the Cirque du Soleil, unicycles are an ordinary means of transportation and street performing is an established tradition. It's beautiful and clean, and jugglers will enjoy wonderful night life, shopping and outdoor cafes."
McGill University boasts an old campus set on a mountainside in the middle of the city. It's just below a forested park, and mere steps from the metro which will take jugglers three stops to St. Denis theatre, the site of the Public Show. The Just for Laughs Festival will occupy that theatre in the week following the IJA festival.
If you don't play, you can't win! And there are good prizes for everyone who helps the IJA recruit new members between now and June 1, 1993. Here's how it works.
The contest is open to individuals or to IJA affiliates. Each new member you sign up must write your name or the affiliate name in the "referred by" spot on an IJA membership form (or reasonable facsimile). A new member can be credited to either an affiliate or an individual, but not both. You must claim your prize by June 1, 1993, but if you sign up enough people by June 1, 1992, you can apply your prizes to the Montreal festival.
The prizes are: an IJA T-shirt for 5 memberships; T-shirt and one year IJA membership for 10 memberships; T-shirt, membership and a free festival activities package for 20 memberships; T-shirt, membership, festival activities package and festival room and board for 30 memberships.
Remember, everyone who reaches these goals will receive awards. If you need IJA membership brochures, contact IJA director Sandy Brown (913/651-7625) or secretary Tom Bennett (216/745-3552).
Ron Wirgart's Fall issue letter mentions that Juggler's World used to include a report on "the business of the IJA directors." Thanks for the reminder, Ron!
Keeping the membership informed makes the board accountable to you. The easiest way to do this is for the chairman to report in the magazine on decisions which would be of interest to our members. The following is by no means a complete summary of board activity, but highlights some of its recent actions.
August 1991: We spent $2,000 for pins and patches to replace our dwindling stock, allocated $2,500 for a Roster, and sold $375 in donation cards. The St. Louis festival made about $40,000, of which $25,000 will be put back into the Life Members Fund. Committees began working on the upcoming year's projects.
September 1991: Membership is 3,288. The board approved the budget for the year. It is a deficit budget, but we anticipate doing well at our 1992 festival. The selection process for the People's Choice Award was changed for the Montreal festival. We began discussion on award recipients for Montreal. The board is looking into insurance coverage for IJA members. Internal controls will be established throughout the year. Lengthy discussion was held on Combat and the board decided to continue it, but didn't decide who will run it in Montreal. Board decides to let Adam Gardner be our liaison for memberships in Europe and to sell our tapes. We hope this will increase membership. Introductory membership offer for festivals approved on a trial basis.
October 1991. Membership is 3,342. Board decides to pay travel expenses to the festival for treasurer, secretary and Juggler's World editor. Membership contest established. Permanent festival site committee established. Board decides to keep monthly conference calls as this one was short. The chairman will have the option to cancel the call if there is nothing imperative.
November 1991: Chairman cancels conference call. Board allots $200 toward a championships survey.
December 1991: Current membership is 3,193. Glenn Ceponis is elected to the board to replace Cathi Bouton, who resigned. $200 is allocated to send out a survey on championships. $100 allocated for conference calls by the committee considering permanent festival sites. Approved plan to give rewards to regional juggling festivals who participate in membership drive. Approved a plan for three month trial of membership director to call individuals whose membership lapses.
For more specific information on any matter, feel free to call myself or any board member from the list below.
The Fall issue of Juggler's World gave short shrift to the winners of the Numbers championships in St. Louis. A photo of Anthony Gatto announced that he won all three individual events, but didn't emphasize the full measure of his accomplishments. Gatto actually set new IJA records in all three events he entered, eclipsing marks he set himself at the 1989 festival. The new marks are: in balls, 60 catches with 9; in rings, 43 catches with 9; and in clubs 230 catches with 7.
None of the Team Numbers winners set new records, but they were totally left out of the Fall issue and we'd like to recognize them now. The winners were: Balls - Allen Knutson & Jack Boyce (160 catches with 11); Rings - Alex & Nick Karvounis (92 catches with 10); Clubs - Alex & Nick Karvounis (388 catches with 9).
In addition, the previous issue called for unlisted winners of the Combat competition to step forth and take a bow, since those results were misplaced after the competition. Mike Sackett of Kent, Ohio, was kind enough to let us know that he won the novice division of that event.
New Yorker Tom Cutrofello joined the Peace Corps in December 1990 and was placed in a remote area of Papua, New Guinea, where he now teaches mathematics and juggling.
He reports there are 300 boarding students in his school in Koroba, a remote area of the highlands occupied by the Huli tribe and not visited by outsiders until 1940. Australians, the first Westerners to arrive, discovered subsistence Huli farmers who raised sweet potatoes and pigs, and dug trenches up to five meters deep across the countryside for irrigation, to keep pigs out of the gardens and for tribal warfare.
Missionaries and other Australian colonizers started settling the Koroba are in the mid 1950s with the goal of stopping tribal fighting and modernizing the Huli way of life. Cutrofello says the past 40 years have wrought many changes in Koroba. All his students wear Western clothes. His high school received a $10 million grant from the World Bank in 1981 and built 16 classrooms, 10 dormitories and 17 houses for teachers. Cutrofello lives in a modern house with three bedrooms and an upstairs loft with a solar water heater on the roof. The previous occupant (a former Huli teacher and amateur guitarist, left him a giant poster of Elvis in the kitchen.
Cutrofello began the Pandanus Nut Juggling Club last summer to occupy the time for both he and his students during the slow weekends, and named it after an indigenous tree with coconut-flavored nuts. All 15 current members are female, and he says juggling is viewed as a woman's sport.
In its six months activity, members have made significant progress. A 7th grader named Kip learned three clubs in just a couple of hours, juggles four balls and can pass seven with Cutrofello. Cutrofello says she does not want to try five balls or pass clubs because it would mark her as superior to her friends in a society where individuality is not entirely acceptable.
In conclusion, Cutrofello wrote to say he believes the math he is teaching is important, "but somehow I feel that the juggling lessons will have more of an impact on their lives in the long run."
He invites both visitors and donations of juggling equipment. Contact him at: Koroba High School; Box 72 Tari; Southern Highlands; Papua, New Guinea.