INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA [Assembly Report for May 2005]
Harry Riser Assembly No. 31
President: Ken Kern
Secretary: Paul Harnishfeger
Meets the first Monday, 7 PM at Mystic Tai Lodge, SE corner of Illinois & North St.

Assembly 31 and I.B.M. Ring 10 hosted Michael Close lecture. We were treated to a lecture by an excellent magician that all felt was one of our own. Effects included The Trick Lance Burton Showed Me, Gary Plantâ??s Magnetized Cards, The Luckiest Cards in Las Vegas, Sideswiped Meets the Bammo Deck Walloper, Red Blue Mama Fooler, and Butte Ox? Two Butte Ox! This was an excellent lecture with an excellent presentation.

During May we were again treated to another superb lecture by one of our own, Harry Riser. Mr. Riser, a renowned card magician, displayed additional talents with a Coin Magic Lecture. Harry began with a brief discussion related to the 1878 book by Jean Robert-Houdin about various methods used to palm small objects. He opened with a coin trick that he learned from Dai Vernon where coins magically penetrate through a table or his hand. Harry continued by showing how a coin, described in the Robert-Houdin book, can vanish. Included in the evening lecture was a demonstration of an excellent retention vanish, an assortment of beautiful palming positions, superb passing techniques and using these methods in an assortment of excellent coin effects. Harry caused coins to vanish, appear, and transpose from an assortment of objects that included his hands, an Okito Box, a pocket coin purse, and a Boston Box. The methods he learned from many of his mentors and vignettes about these greats in magic were eagerly shared with those present. Some of the coin magic demonstrated this evening is described in his first book, â??The Feints and Temps of Harry Riserâ?? and other effects will appear in his second book soon to be published.

Bob Vasileff, Scribe