Out of the Blue
By Shane

Something weird came my way in the last couple of weeks. Well, it's a good kind of weird, but weird none the less.

It ended with this email; I'll tell you how it all began later:

I am a magician and a law enforcement officer who combined both professions that is now known as POLICE MAGIC aka LAW ENFORCEMENT LEGERDEMAIN. Having been involved with magic for 25+ years and in law enforcement for 20+ years, I find that using magic with a message when giving a lecture or doing a magic show with the same type theme has audience members remembering the strong points of the message. I have been very fortunate. I learned under some grand masters of magic in my early days. Fr. Cyprian Murray, ofm, cap first taught me about props, style and sleight of hand. Magic Ian fine tuned my skills later on and guided me in using Police Magic. I have met some great magicians (both famous and not so famous) who do a super job of entertaining audiences nationwide. I have had the opportunity to meet some other law enforcement officers who are also magicians and showed them how to theme routines on law enforcement topics such as home security, drugs and alcohol abuse, con games, carnival game fraud, personal safety, etc. Magic has been very good to me as it provided an opportunity for me to learn to be outgoing. It has also been challenging to find magic tricks whose effects fit certain themes. A good friend of mine who is also a magician and law enforcement officer, Bruce Walstad, taught me about con games and carnival game fraud. Attending his seminars brought home the point that many con artists use principles of magic to deceive victims. I am interested in seeing if others, law enforcement or non-law enforcement magicians are interested in starting a Police Magician Society. Law enforcement is good at networking with others. This would be a grand opportunity to network with magicians who want to use this approach for shows or lectures. You don't have to be a member of law enforcement for this title; just someone in magic who wants to use this unique style. Believe me when I say that the audience will love this style of delivery, especially with their children.

Glenn Hester
www.policemagic.com

Now, I have to tell you I get emails like this two or three times a month. These are always from decent folks with their own niche in magic who are looking for like-minded souls. I try my best to steer them in the right direction, point them to others I know who are into That Sort Of Thing (whatever it is). But this one? Well, this Glenn Hester person did something by contacting me; he made a connection. Again.

Here's the middle of the story. I'll get to the beginning later.

Six years ago, I was out of magic, working for a series of companies in data security/terrorism, and having a blast in that field. Lots of travel, lots of excitement, and a sense of Doing Good. Then one of the guys I was working with got into magic. He did a Hopping Half routine for a few of us. Later, I told him I had been out of magic for a couple of decades. He asked why I didn't get back into it. I didn't have an answer. That night, I went home and was emptying boxes (anyone who has moved a household across country knows what that particular hell is like -- all your stuff is in some sort of limbo, usually in a box marked 'kitchen'). In a box were three items, packed together: some letters from Paul Harris (dated '78), my notebook (with liner notes from my mentor), and a small pamphlet of "message magic" I had picked up somewhere. In a rare feeling of nostalgia, I started seeking out my old mentor and my old teachers. I found they had were all gone, passed away, dead.

Why didn't I get back into it? Why didn't I get back into magic? I flipped through the notebook, I looked at the letters, I read the pamphlet. Now I felt I had to get back into magic. Too many people had spent too much time teaching me too many things -- these three things, found orphaned in a cardboard box, were proof of that. I couldn't let all of that go bye-bye. What they taught me needed to be shared in one way or the other. I couldn't let everything pass away like that. So Visions was born.

But I promised the beginning of the story, and here it is.

Eleven, maybe twelve years ago, I was moving for the umpteenth time and, as such things go, there were tons of items to go through, to filter through, to find out which things needed to be moved with me and which ones needed to be thrown away or disposed of in some fashion. I was out of magic completely already -- making my way through the IT world -- and I had a ton of props just laying around. There was no way I was going to move that junk all over the country.

So, a friend of a friend, a magician of some sort who I was totally unfamiliar with, came over to the house one day. We talked briefly and I began giving him virtually everything I had bought over the years I was into magic hard and heavy. I can remember some of the pieces, others I cannot, but I do remember the look on this magician's face... it was a mixture of gratitude and sadness. He was grateful for the load of junk I was getting rid of (junk by Owen and P&L and others) but he was also a little unhappy about something. I didn't know what it was, and I wasn't about to ask -- he was a stranger, after all.

Anyway, that day he presented me a gift: a pamphlet of his magic, the same pamphlet I would find years later and would help spur me back into something I dearly love.

It was Glenn Hester's pamphlet, and Glenn was the magician I had given my stuff to that day, and Glenn was an instrumental part of my return to my love.

And a dozen years later, Glenn and I connect again, probably by accident, likely by coincidence, but you'll have a hard time telling either of us that it wasn't Magic. I recommend against trying it.

Glenn stayed in magic, and he grew as a result. Still doing "message magic", still teaching safety and law enforcement with his magic, but also branching into teaching about carny cons and swindles and teaching both laypeople and law enforcement officers about it. Throw in his work with legislatures trying to get laws passed to keep those "fun for family" fairs from being burns. Now he's looking at starting up a group of magicians-cum-cops who can share their techniques of getting messages to people through magic. But, as Glenn told me later, it's not just for cops but for anyone who wants to reach people, deliver a message, and use magic to do it.

Right up my alley. I mean, after all, haven't I been preaching that our magic needs to be about us as well as the trick? That magic, to reach any real level of performance art, has to carry our message, no matter what it is? And while I'm a very vocal proponent of that, I also know I have a lot to learn from others who have been doing such a thing longer than I have.

So I joined Glenn's group, which right now is a Yahoo group but will be so much more. I know Glenn, I knew him even when he was a stranger all those years ago. The man has a goal and he'll reach it. Frankly, I like his goal. I'll be there to help him if I can.

And Glenn did tell me what he was sad about that day a dozen years ago. He was saddened because a magician was leaving magic behind. That idea didn't sit well with Glenn, no matter how he benefited from it. He said he thought about that day a lot since it happened.

That's dedication to magic which is rare these days. And that pretty much sums up Glenn Hester.

Well, that and his baseball cap with the revolving blue light on top. But I'll leave him to talk about that.

Magic, after all, is a big umbrella. And sometimes, like with me and Glenn and our weird little happening, it shows up in the strangest of places.

Oh, before I forget, you can contact Glenn through his website (http://www.policemagic.com). And if you're the least bit interested, you can join his Yahoo group here. Yes, it's brand new, but as a first step to a bigger goal, it's a good one.

Shane