Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception

Mandy Davis - Diva of Deception - is a professional close up magician working for banquets, dinners, receptions, weddings, bar/batmitzvahs, private parties etc. A member of The Inner Magic Circle, she serves on their ruling Council and currently holds several posts. . Mandy is also a member of Equity and twice honoured with the Society of American Magicians' Presidential Citation.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

I'VE BEEN TAGGED!

Do you know about tagging? I've just been tagged and this is the result...

Firstly, though, I need to post the rules of tagging so you all know what the game actually is:

The rules are as follows:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Write down the first 4 sentences.
4. Invite 5 friends to do the same.

Here then are my five sentences taken from page 123 of Eight Cousins:

"Rose's sprain proved to be a serious one, owing to neglect and Dr Alec ordered her to lie on the sofa for a fortnight at least; wheareat she groaned dismally, but dared not openly complain lest the boys turn upon her with some of the wise little sermons on patience which she had delivered for their benefit.

It was Mac's turn now, and honorably did he repay his debt; for, as school was still forbidden, he had plenty of leisure, and devoted most of it to Rose. He took many steps for her, and even allowed her to teach him to knit, after assuring himself that many a brave Scotchman knew how to "click the pricks." She was obliged to take a solemn vow of secrecy, however, before he would consent; for, though he did not mind being called "Giglamps," "Granny" was more than his boyish soul could bear, and at the approach of any of the Clan his knitting vanished as if by magic, which frequent "chucking" out of sight did not improve the stripe he was doing for Rose's new afghan."

Yes it's a childish piece as it's from a children' book - albeit one first published in 1875. This will explain the strange sentence construction - the extensive punctuation with many semi-colons but few full stops. The writer may surprise you - it is, in fact, Louisa May Alcott whose works known to you probably don't go further than Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys. However she did write others, the most well known of these being 'Eight Cousins" and 'An Old-Fashioned Girl".

Louisa lived at Orchard House in Concorde, Mass. with her family and the most famous of her books was based on her own siblings. Her father founded a School of Philosophy in the grounds of their home and both it and the family home are now tourist attractions. No photos are allowed inside but the guided tour is very interesting, embracing as it does both the life and the times of this warmly considered writer and advocate of feminism.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

BACK FROM THE US OF A

It's a full week now - and I still feel times when I'm tired, sleeping till noon without a moment of wakefulness but full of delight at the wonderful time we had in New England.

We visited four states - Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York State. Society of American Magicians' Pres. Elect Bruce drove us hundreds of miles and we met some splendid people such as Vinny Grosso whose garden is a go-kart track and whose house is actually on a creek; Eddie Gardner of Diamond Magic (now we know whose emails we delete with increasing regularity) and Peter Lantros who gave us a tour of his Patriot Missile factory (I kid you not!) and also housed us for two nights at his wonderful museum, the Magic Barn,where I surprised everyone by spending all of one night playing poker on one of Peter's marvellous arcade machines.
We ate masses of food, Bruce stopping over-regularly for meals to supplement the Dunkin' Donuts and coffee he seems to live on. And, in spite of the rain, we managed two history visits:

To Salem and the Witch Museum with its fascinating waxwork presentation (no animatronics here) and also to the preserved home of Louisa May Alcott who wrote Little Women and its sequels. Both of these were fantastic opportunities to learn about things we'd only vaguely acknowledged before.

Then there was the shopping! I felt like a millionaire as everything is so cheap whilst the pound is strong against the dollar. they decided I went to every Macys in every mall - but Bruce and I also descended on a couple of Disney stores which had great sales - Rob is now the proud owner of a shirt and a hoodie which sport Grumpy from the seven Dwarfs!

Thanks to all who were so very kind and helpful to us on our amazing trip... and it doesn't end there as I'm out to Kentucky in July. Now there's jetsetting for you!

Meanwhile - I'll be posting some more of the amazing things I photographed, particularly from Peter's collections.