Virginia Aronson, AB’69, AM’73, JD’75, walks to a corner of the Lincoln Park condo she shares with her husband, Simon, AB’64, AM’65, JD’73. She turns her back to us, closes her eyes, and prepares to read my mind. Simon, standing near me, starts an easy, well-rehearsed spiel. He takes a deck of cards, riffles through them, and says, “Stop when you see a card you like.” I stop him at the two of hearts. We turn to Ginny on the far side of the room. “I think it’s a heart,” she says, “and I’m thinking it’s a low card, perhaps the two of hearts.” Simon then bids me to select any two dice from a huge bowl of over a hundred different colored dice. I choose two at random.
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“You’ve chosen a pink one and a purple one,” she says. I roll the dice; Simon asks Ginny to tell us what the total was. “The total is 10, but it was too easy, because there’s a five on both.” So I roll again, this time a seven. Ginny tells me so, that it’s a five and a two, and which number is on which color die.
Magician Simon Aronson, AB’64, AM’65, JD’73, performs at a children’s party at age 16. (Photo courtesy Simon and Virginia Aronson) Magic wasn’t his only passion.
Young Simon developed an interest in civil liberties (his father, Arnold Aronson, AM’43, was a lobbyist for civil rights and civil liberties legislation). He enrolled in the College with the plan of continuing directly to law school. He placed out of most of his first year, earning his degree in economics a year early. The Law School accepted him, but he wrangled a deferment so he could get a master’s degree in philosophy. One deferment led to another, and he eventually started a doctorate. During this time he cotaught a class for first-years on humanities and social sciences with James Redfield, LAB’50, AB’54, PhD’61 (now the Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures) in the New Collegiate Division.
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Dreamer ro grf download games. At the same time, Simon continued experimenting with card tricks and seeking out other magicians. In 1965 he ran across a mind-reading duo at—of all places—a Woolworth’s in downtown Chicago.
The magicians would entertain shoppers with a little mind reading, then sell them horoscopes. Simon befriended one half of the act, Eddie Fields; although Fields never taught Simon the secrets of his act, it inspired him to learn more. He resolved to create his own mind-reading act and started by reading everything he could on second sight. “In many ways, it was a very U of C kind of thing to do,” he confesses. Simon had been frequenting a Chicago magic shop run by a well-known magician named Jay Marshall, who kept in his store a library of obscure works on the craft. Simon dug into Marshall’s collection with all the fervor of a grad student.
“I spent weeks in his library researching all the manuscripts on two-person mind reading,” he recalls. “There must have been 30 or 40 different things, and from that, I put it all together to create something that would be workable for me.” Once he and his first partner, his then girlfriend, had polished their act, they took it around Chicago, earning extra money for school by working at nightclubs and sweet sixteen parties.
Along the way, he exchanged one girlfriend/mind-reading partner for another, then broke up with the second girlfriend—but kept her in the act. Meanwhile he started dating a sociology grad student named Virginia “Ginny” Cook. Ginny was very much Simon’s opposite, hailing from Bremerton, Washington, and recruited to the University by the Small School Talent Search, which brought promising scholars from rural areas. She had no experience with magic and no interest in performing it. Whereas Simon enjoyed being the center of attention, performing for an audience terrified Ginny.
As time went on, though, Simon’s performances with his ex started to grate (“I kept assuring her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only mental!’” Simon says). Ginny ultimately resolved to displace Simon’s magic partner.
“Sitting alone on Friday, Saturday nights while he’s out with his beautiful ex-girlfriend was sufficient incentive,” she says. “Although I needed a lot of incentive to learn that because getting up in front of a public audience at that stage of my life, that was a big deal.” Simon agreed, and spent the next few months teaching Ginny the secrets of his act. Magicians love to ruminate over the nature of magic, says Simon, and he’s no exception.
He draws a parallel between magic and comedy. Just as a comedic punch line entertains with a sudden twist that upends the joke’s frame of reference, a magic trick entertains by seemingly breaking the rules of logic and laws of physics. A good trick creates “the illusion of impossibility,” he says. “Science sets forth the immutable laws of the physical world and the immutable laws of logic, and magic simply demonstrates that they’re wrong—or, at least, creates the illusion of it.” The Aronsons guard the secrets of their act carefully. (I have my own theory, but out of respect for the Aronsons’ craft and the magician’s code, I leave solving the puzzle as an exercise to the reader.) But they will say two things about how their act doesn’t work.
First, there are no hidden cameras, microphones, or electronics of any kind. Second, they’re not drawing on any paranormal abilities. Occasionally someone who’s seen them read minds will ask to engage them for their “psychic powers,” but Simon is quick to clarify that they’re entertainers only. Ginny and Simon in a promotional photo for their act. (Photo courtesy Simon and Virginia Aronson) The couple would occasionally entertain colleagues and clients with magic.
One client so badly wanted to learn Simon’s secrets he offered to fly them to Switzerland in exchange; another promised he’d send five new deals Ginny’s way. “Of course Simon never cooperates,” she says with mock irritation. (“I have my professional oath!” he retorts.) Simon joined the firm Lord, Bissell & Brook and also became a specialist in real estate law. He found magic useful as well, albeit for a different reason. “If you have clients who are more than one-shot clients, they want to know you as a person,” he says. “They want to know, is this someone who’s interesting, who’s a neat person to be with, who can tell me more than what’s in the legal contract?
So to be able to do card tricks, or have them over for dinner and show them a mind-reading act, or invite them to one of our shows, or do a show for their organization—that’s a way of cementing relationships.” (Also, he adds, “neither of us knows a thing about sports.”) He also found a way to make his firm serve his magician ends by taking advantage of the typists. He made them a deal: he’d perform card tricks for them, and they’d type up the manuscripts of his books on card magic. Though as a performer Simon is best known for the mind-reading act with Ginny, many magicians know him better as an inventor of card tricks (he’s written nine books on the topic). Simon eventually made partner, retiring in 1999. Ginny, the first woman managing partner at Sidley Austin, retired in 2010. With more free time, they regularly travel to magic conventions and host visiting magicians from around the world in their home. The Aronsons have also worked to spread the joy of magic.
They’ve endowed a scholarship at a children’s summer magic camp. They also funded a program at the UChicago Medicine’s Comer Children’s Hospital that brings a magician in once a month to boost the spirits of the kids receiving care there.
Simon has continued to develop his card tricks. For 52 years he has participated in a small weekly meeting of magicians who bounce ideas off each other—what magicians call sessioning. They’ll try out new tricks, hone their skills at others, get feedback, and sometimes share a professional secret. But the Aronsons’ stock-in-trade is still “It’s the Thought That Counts,” which they’ve been able to perform more frequently since retiring. They refine the act constantly, based on the kinds of objects today’s audiences are likely to have.
As I leave their apartment, Ginny says to Simon, “You know, if we ever get a bust of Beethoven again, I think what I’d say is—” then cuts herself off and glances over at me. “But maybe we should wait until he’s gone.” Aw, nuts, I think—she read my mind. The story of the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction is one of science, of war, and of people. What is it like to sort through the papers of one of America’s most celebrated writers? Two newly discovered species bring humans closer to understanding our lineage.
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Simon's collected early works, compiled in one volume. Contains the complete texts of his first three books, The Card Ideas of Simon Aronson (1978), A Stack to Remember (1979) and Shuffle-bored (1980). Includes Red See Passover, Simon's Favorite Card Trick, Mis-mate, Simon's underground treatise on the memorized deck principles (that started the current wave of memorized miracles), an entire chapter on subtle uses of the advertising card, Under Cover Four Play, Ad-Jacent, and the original presentation of the Aronson stack (with three different poker deals, a perfect bridge hand, spelling combinations, a blackjack deal, and more). Shuffle-bored presents Simon's self-working, totally hands-off card miracle: without any questions, outs, gaffs, ambiguities or moves - and without ever touching the cards - the performer announces exactly how many cards are face up, in a spectator freely shuffled deck! Plus additional effects published in Kabbala and Hierophant.
Your looking for memorized deck work, right? But I had already learned how to memorize a deck from the Nikola stack chapter at the end of Encyclopdedia of Card tricks. I found Aronson's stack on the internet and memorized it. So I wanted 'bound to please' to learn some good mem deck work. Problem is, there are some mem deck effects, but most are card tricks for magicians. Quite simply, I find (right now) one of the most potent tricks with any mem deck is simply have spec take a card, you glimpse any adjacent card to INSTANTLY tell him his card.
For a lay spec, its complete mastery of a 'selection-location'. He picks any card.
You instantly name it. Was it Dai Vernon who said something like, the simpler an effect is to describe, the more powerful it is? Invisible Deck: A thought of card. Only one reversed.
(Minds blown!)). This is NOT the case with what I'm seeing from Aronson's work.
IN FACT he often deliberately makes procedures MORE 'muddy' to disguise the simpler true method. This is ONLY to throw of knowledgeable cardicians. A the end of one of the enclosed books, 'A stack to remember', is a bibiliography of mem-deck work'. Perhaps any of these would be more interesting to me.
Also, I feel somewhat underwhelmed by 'shuffle-bored' for the same reasons mentioned above. Is it really that earth-shattering to predict how many cards are face up in a face down deck? Again, the procedure is too muddy. This material will intrigue magicians that you perform for, so get it if you want to wow your buddies at the magic club. But for a lay audience, stick with more entertaining or direct effects. 5 of 6 magicians found this helpful.
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Shop with confidence thanks to our. View our. Mail orders: Penguin Magic, 3299 Monier Circle, Unit A, Rancho Cordova, CA 95742 Call us at 800-880-2592 International Dial: +1 707-317-6733 © 2002-2016 Penguin Magic. All Rights Reserved. We hope you found the you were looking for!
Just wrote Simon about any PDFs of fate calendar being available. He answered no nor was the trick available as a separate purchase from his book. He makes the Birthday calendar available free on his website (unfortunately that link to the PDF was not working when I just checked ), but if you have Adobe Acrobat you might make copies to edit. Else, most people us Excel or its equivalent on Apple products. As you probably know the card pip symbols are available in the Symbols font. Lcwright1964 Special user Toronto 568 Posts.
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