December 2023 Meeting – Linking Ring Report

It was holiday time for Ring 21 as a fairly large group of both old and several new members met for the annual December get together that included a pot luck plus some ordered dinner, a toy collection and, of course a bit of holiday magic.

Keeping alive the spirit of former (and unfortunately, the late) club president Robert de la Guerra, members contributed a large assembly of gifts for neighborhood kids which were piled around the tree. There were a few announcements and one was about the new “coffee table” book by David Ginn which has just been released called “Kids Love Animals’ and includes hundreds of tricks and ideas for those of us who do kids’ shows (by the expert himself).

Eventually the well-fed magis were ready to show off some “holiday magic,” and although not all kept to the theme, there was a lot of variety. Wendy Sobel started off with one of her favorite effects as she pulled some beautiful flower boxes from a paper bag and told the story of her grandfather bringing modest gifts to woo the woman who would become her grandmother.

A new member named John who explained he worked as a Urologist had an appropriate trick using sponge rubber shapes and describing some of his medical challenges. For me I think it proved to be one of the funniest—and most unusual tricks I’ve witnessed at an IBM meeting!

David Martinez had Wendy think of her favorite card and, surprisingly, it turned up attached to her IBM Membership Card! Bob Weiss did some clever sleight of hand with tiny bottles that kept changing as he counted them on the table and into his pocket. Elroy Codding surprised the group with a card trick using a (supposedly) shuffled deck but miraculously dealing out cards that matched in the piles they were dealt and finally 13 that were of the same suit and in “new deck” order.

In a valiant attempt to stick with the Holiday Theme Gerry Schiller had cards with Santa’s reindeer names and provided some history about Moore’s famous poem and how it has influenced so much of our current Christmas story, then he jumped ahead a hundred years and told how Rudolph became the new addition to the Santa story. But Gerry was sure to add two more reindeer names that kids who sing

Rudolph’s song have added: the bad reindeer named Olaf (and they sing his name in the line “Olaf the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names”) and at the end we get “Glee” since the reindeer “shouted out with Glee” at the end!! I’ll bet those two are even new to you!

Our raffle followed and all left the meeting with some “Great Expectations” of magic to come in 2024. Sorry but I had to get Mr. Dickens in my report—since he’s such an integral part of the holiday story. Just be thankful I didn’t end with a “Bah humbug”.