performed many times at the Forks Hotel in Buffalo. Mike mentions that he performs this trick when he can't fine a glass to perform his "Coins To Glass," which, by the way, will appear in the third Forks book when it comes out. By the way it has an inconsistency near the end, but this could very possibly make reconstruction impossible. My "Encased Collectors" is an extension of Gene Maze's "A Simple Case Of Dealing" from PRECURSOR XLII. The main thing here is not to deal too slow that it is obvious that there are no face-down cards on top of the encased deck, but it does not have to be ultra-fast, either. Just get into a nice rhythm, and once the seven cards are in a spread on the table, the surprise should cover the discrepancy. "You Take It From Here" by Norm Houghton is, as Norm says, not a trick, but a series of ideas in search of a trick. Please read the article and if you get any further ideas please let me know. Just to let you know, I got a routine from these ideas, and it will appear in the next PRECURSOR. This is how PRECURSOR started. William P. Miesel October 1, 1993
When I started the final work on this issue of PRECURSOR, I was amazed to see the above date on William's editorial. He had worked very hard and had gotten several issues on disk before sending them to me. I think I had three unpublished issues on my computer at one time. This is the last of those. Just received issue XLV. This issue is on schedule, being published in early April, 1994. And speaking further of William, I just noticed that on the back of the dust jacket of the first volume of the reprinted Ibidem there is a reproduction of a signature "Bill Miesil". Have I been spelling it wrong all these years? William tells me that the children's show "Xuxa" on the Fox network occasionally has magicians on the program. I haven't found the show on my cable network, so I can't comment any further. You might want to take a look at it, though. I talked to Ron Zollweg the other night. He had written a letter to Tony Giorgio of Genii, and he had sent me a Xerox of his carbon. He remarked how difficult it was to read such a copy. And I had to cast my mind back to the time in 1983 when I moved and lost the original of an issue of PRECURSOR. William had to send me a Xerox of his carbon, and I had to retype the entire issue from that. I've not lost another PRECURSOR manuscript since then. But ... I've lost ever so many goodies in the meanwhile, the latest being a dictionary of strange words. It is somewhere in my office at work or in my house. I don't think it is anywhere in between, but I can't be certain. Ed Eckl