In the air

Feb 24, 2002

A beautiful day today, and one to be outside.

Erin and Anna drove to the campus bookstore, and I biked up to the nearby park. A high school baseball game occupied one of the ballfields, and four guys played soccer on the basketball court. While buzzards floated above me, I juggled, first my three golden juggling clubs that I bought back in high school; when my arms were tired, I switched to juggling a soccer ball on my feet and thighs. I didn’t last long, and soon I flopped down on the grass to juggle memories.

In high school (in DeKalb, Illinois) I played soccer year-round, on the school team and on indoor teams I helped organize. Our goalie, Chris Guio, was one of my best friends, and soon we were learning to juggle together. A third soccer teammate, Peter DeLoca, learned, too, and together we formed the Bernoulli Bros. Juggling Troupe. While we had business cards, we had only one gig in the year or so we were together: we juggled at the public library for a Saturday kids hour. We got the name Bernoulli Brothers from our physics teacher, Mr. Smith, who suggested that we name ourselves after the famous mathematician brothers, whose work helps airplanes to fly today.

Another friend of mine, Rob Deemer, conducted the high school orchestra’s final concert our senior year, and he choreographed one of his own arrangements to include Chris and me juggling in front of the orchestra.

The nice thing about reliving those days is that the juggling balls stay up in the air longer. My reminiscences seem to happen in slow motion, even though they’ve been cascading through my brain of late.

Later in the day, little Anna and flew down the highway, using Bernoulli’s principle, to Garner, NC. We arrived half an hour late for a free concert by the new traditional Irish band Providence, but they’d only just begun to play, and they fiddled and strummed and sang for an hour and a half longer. Anna was dressed in her shamrock island dress — Erin had one of the women on Paama sew this dress when we were in the Peace Corps; Erin had found the fabric with little shamrocks, and planned for the day when her daughter could wear it to a jig. Anna and I danced in the foyer, and after, Clodagh the fiddle player signed the cd and, with a twinkle in her jet-lagged eye, said, “I saw ya dancing with yer daughter.”

Sixty Minutes tonight featured a story about a fantastic new surgical therapy to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson disease. I watched with interest, because I wrote an article about the very physicians who were featured tonight. Read my article about deep brain stimulation.

Anton Zuiker ☄