Barrett Dorko
15-08-2006, 03:55 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I went down to the basement on Sunday, rooted around in a small closet until I found six clubs that matched, plopped an old derby on my head and then headed for the car. I dropped three clubs on the way there.
The Rubber City Jugglers were gathering just south of Akron for their annual corn roast and I wasn’t going to miss it this year. Up until the early 90s I attended their weekly meetings and performed with them on a number of occasions. Once I got to pass clubs on top of the dugout in front of 45,000 fans before a Cleveland Indians game. I also hauled three bowling balls in a gym bag all over Cleveland Stadium in search of a safe place to use them. I never did find that place and for some reason several other club members remember this with a certain amount of glee. Go figure.
Sitting in air conditioned comfort Alex read my email about the meeting and began to think. He had been to a number of club meetings as a youngster and knew my friends there would remember him. It was 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday in Baquba and I’m told that once it gets over 125 movement outside is difficult to say the least, but Alex made his way to his NCO’s quarters, picked up a 240 Bravo machine gun, made sure it wasn’t loaded and tossed his camera to one of his men. “Come on outside.” The private groaned, thinking, “Now what’s Dorko up to?”
At this reunion I discovered that my “juggling persona” was easily unleashed. He is a wise-cracking, one-liner sort of guy that probes the conversation for comedic possibilities while trying not to offend those who aren’t ready for it. After all, not everybody expects this rapier wit. At least, that’s the way I see it.
Alex wrote me a note: “You never stop being a juggler. I think that it's one of those rare things. People play basketball but they don't stay basketball players forever. Jugglers may go five years at a time and never throw anything, but once they pick up that right object at the right moment, with the right audience, they're a juggler again.” (Army required expletives deleted)
After some fried chicken it was time to pass clubs for a while - something I haven’t done for years. I joined a group of seven, worked to remember when and how and to whom I was to throw and took a deep breath. In Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525949690/sr=1-1/qid=1155641506/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books) he writes of the persistence of rhythmic memory: “The average person seems to have a remarkable memory for tempo. (Studies indicate that even nonmusicians are able to remain within four percent of any song’s originally recorded tempo when asked to sing it years later) The neural basis for this striking accuracy is probably in the cerebellum which is believed to contain a system of timekeepers for our daily lives. Somehow it remembers the “settings” it uses and then can recall those settings when we want to sing a song from memory. The basal ganglia are almost certainly involved as well.”
A machine gun is not a broom and Alex was a little concerned. But he’s an Army Ranger now, and not the pencil-necked geek he was in high school (Sorry Alex. It’s that sharp-witted juggling persona I mentioned earlier still coming out). As you can see, he balanced the 22 pound weapon perfectly on his chin, walked about beneath the brilliant blue Iraqi sky and “joined” his fellow club members in Akron. I posted this photo when I arrived at the reunion later that day.
Before I let the first club fly I engaged my basal ganglia and recalled the rhythm of this task. I knew when to let go, when to receive another club and where to aim. Thousands of miles away Alex engaged the same system within, let his torso and legs find their way toward an old familiar path and everything he needed to do followed effortlessly. We both did fine.
I am so grateful for this connection.
I went down to the basement on Sunday, rooted around in a small closet until I found six clubs that matched, plopped an old derby on my head and then headed for the car. I dropped three clubs on the way there.
The Rubber City Jugglers were gathering just south of Akron for their annual corn roast and I wasn’t going to miss it this year. Up until the early 90s I attended their weekly meetings and performed with them on a number of occasions. Once I got to pass clubs on top of the dugout in front of 45,000 fans before a Cleveland Indians game. I also hauled three bowling balls in a gym bag all over Cleveland Stadium in search of a safe place to use them. I never did find that place and for some reason several other club members remember this with a certain amount of glee. Go figure.
Sitting in air conditioned comfort Alex read my email about the meeting and began to think. He had been to a number of club meetings as a youngster and knew my friends there would remember him. It was 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday in Baquba and I’m told that once it gets over 125 movement outside is difficult to say the least, but Alex made his way to his NCO’s quarters, picked up a 240 Bravo machine gun, made sure it wasn’t loaded and tossed his camera to one of his men. “Come on outside.” The private groaned, thinking, “Now what’s Dorko up to?”
At this reunion I discovered that my “juggling persona” was easily unleashed. He is a wise-cracking, one-liner sort of guy that probes the conversation for comedic possibilities while trying not to offend those who aren’t ready for it. After all, not everybody expects this rapier wit. At least, that’s the way I see it.
Alex wrote me a note: “You never stop being a juggler. I think that it's one of those rare things. People play basketball but they don't stay basketball players forever. Jugglers may go five years at a time and never throw anything, but once they pick up that right object at the right moment, with the right audience, they're a juggler again.” (Army required expletives deleted)
After some fried chicken it was time to pass clubs for a while - something I haven’t done for years. I joined a group of seven, worked to remember when and how and to whom I was to throw and took a deep breath. In Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525949690/sr=1-1/qid=1155641506/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7213658-3536738?ie=UTF8&s=books) he writes of the persistence of rhythmic memory: “The average person seems to have a remarkable memory for tempo. (Studies indicate that even nonmusicians are able to remain within four percent of any song’s originally recorded tempo when asked to sing it years later) The neural basis for this striking accuracy is probably in the cerebellum which is believed to contain a system of timekeepers for our daily lives. Somehow it remembers the “settings” it uses and then can recall those settings when we want to sing a song from memory. The basal ganglia are almost certainly involved as well.”
A machine gun is not a broom and Alex was a little concerned. But he’s an Army Ranger now, and not the pencil-necked geek he was in high school (Sorry Alex. It’s that sharp-witted juggling persona I mentioned earlier still coming out). As you can see, he balanced the 22 pound weapon perfectly on his chin, walked about beneath the brilliant blue Iraqi sky and “joined” his fellow club members in Akron. I posted this photo when I arrived at the reunion later that day.
Before I let the first club fly I engaged my basal ganglia and recalled the rhythm of this task. I knew when to let go, when to receive another club and where to aim. Thousands of miles away Alex engaged the same system within, let his torso and legs find their way toward an old familiar path and everything he needed to do followed effortlessly. We both did fine.
I am so grateful for this connection.