alt Hacker NewsMany of you might know of Noisebridge, a beloved hackerspace in San Francisco. They had (have?) a juggling workshop every saturday called "Juggling with Judy", taught by Judy Pinelli, founder of the famed Pickle Family Circus (and a huge influence on Cirque Du Soleil).
I had no idea how famous or influential she was. She first taught us how to make our own juggling balls: snip the ends of a balloon, fill with enough rice to feel comfortable in the hand, then wrap that with another balloon to seal the rice in, then snip the ends of the second balloon.
Then she went through the usual sequence: throw a ball, er, balloon, from one hand to the next, then practice with two and so on. By the end of that 2 hour session, we had got the essentials.
The remarkable thing about this workshop was that Judy was at an advanced stage of multiple sclerosis at that point. She was pretty much completely immobile from the neck down, and couldn't even see our hands properly from her wheelchair. She could only see the arc of the ball, but that was sufficient information for her to tell us how we could improve. "Pull your elbow in". "Focus on the left hand, the right will follow".
After the 2 hour workshop, she'd go to Golden Gate park to teach juggling. All for free. I feel extraordinarily privileged. She's been my polestar in life.
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Great story, thanks for sharing. Just a minor correction: it's Judy Finelli, not Pinelli.
This is one of the nice things about the juggling community: it's one of the open, sharing communities where people are willing to freely share and teach. It's no cost/low cost entry. The juggling community has been a really important part of my life, so I see it as giving back to teach others.
Noisebridge is awesome. This illustrates beautifully what humans can be capable of.
Noisebridge! I went there as a tourist! I visited SF (I'm from Amsterdam), saw Noisebridge and felt right at home :)
Great story about juggling, thanks.
what means "snip the ends of a balloon"? when I think of balloons they are pretty large spheres for juggling
> She was pretty much completely immobile from the neck down, and couldn't even see our hands properly from her wheelchair. She could only see the arc of the ball, but that was sufficient information for her to tell us how we could improve. "Pull your elbow in". "Focus on the left hand, the right will follow".
I've both been a coach (paintball/martial arts) and been coached (golf) and it really is wild how good your brain can become at seeing the outcome or just a piece of the process and then working backwards to a root cause.
I sometimes make the analogy "in particle physics, you don't actually see the collision. You see the after effects and then figure out what happened by going backwards to what must have occurred."