Ringling Storms North Carolina ... UniverSoul Rails Against Hookerhood ... Kelly Miller Packs the Tent in Texas Opening ... Egypt Juggles Free!

Good Morning, Egypt! Welcome to your brave new world! Your story is heart-warming, and now may I ask aloud, whatever happened to your flair for juggling? Funny that I can't recall ever watching an act from Egypt. And they say the whole thing, juggling and all, started right in your midst, whether you invented the ancient arts or were taught them by visitors from India. Anyway, please get back with the program. Another country that lags woefully behind the circus-producing curve is my own U S of A, where, once upon a raped civilization, the natives are said to have also juggled. Sad story. We do share that much in common, so it seems ...

Feld fondles North Carolina with all three of his touring circuses. What with all the concessions I assume to have been foisted upon the public, NC must have doubled its landmass weight over the weekend. Ringling history was made, claim the Felds, when the Red, Blue and Gold Units appeared simultaneously in the cities of Fayetteville, Raleigh, and Greensboro through yesterday.

UniverSoul Circus boss Cedric Walker telling an Atlanta reporter, "our non-black patrons are increasing every year and loving the show." I might love your show, too, Mr. Walker, if you'd bring it my way and not pitch it next to a social dump where pushers and pimps rule the night. Walker earlier conceded that his circus simply could not find enough African American performers to make it an all-black show. That realization is something most of us, going back at least to Paul Binder, have known for some time. Nationalities represented in UniverSoul's talent pool this year include Cubans, Chinese (of course), Russians, French, and Latinos. "We haven't' done or discovered anything new," says Walker. "We've just mixed it with an urban lifestyle ...

And Church, too. Mr. Walker's big top still comes with a sermon, this year's admonishing the young ladies to resist the spell of street pimps and the Johns with cash from suburbia in for an hour of relief. Says the boss preacher, proud to be a black man operating a circus for 17 years now, his show also "speaks to how young ladies can get dragged into a lifestyle because of music videos and flesh that has to be shown." Well, his heart is in a good place, but sawdust and salvation don't mix very well. During my one visit to UniverSoul, when the sermon came on, half the women in the seats, many of them young and with children in toe, fled the tent ... Back to those mean American streets, where fast sex is the default culture to the mindless masses (sorry for my own sermon) ...

Update: I wrongly identified the picture above as that of David Smith, from its misleading placement in a story in the Daily Times out of Farmington, Indiana. This fellow is likely Smith's nephew-in-law, Chachi Valencia, who stepped in while Smith was recovering. Other corrections appear here.

We all were young once, even I: At 68, senior human cannon ball David Smith is still young enough to take on bookings to supply that good old reliable circus thrill. And then some! At a show in Farmington for Jordan World Circus of Las Vegas last week, Smith got tangled up in the netting after a 200-foot flight, and ended up on crutches, a first for the senior daredevil during his 36-year-career. His nephew, Chachi Valencia, filled in. Smith gives good press copy: "My body still says, Yeah, I can do it, but my mind says, You're crazy!" Another zinger: "You've got to be smart enough to build it," remarked Smith, with more than 9,000 launches under his belt, "but dumb enough to get in it."

Clowning for Gold on Kelly Miller: The show kicked off its now-annual opening weekend at Brownsville, Texas, packing the tent for the majority of shows, some so well patronized as to necessitate the old spiel, "Please folks, can you move a little closer so all of your neighbors can see the circus too!" Oh, yes, I remember that spiel, so many years a go. Such sweet music it must have been to the ears of Kelly-Millers own Ringling, John Ringling North II. Maybe it even sweetened his reaction to the acts (show, on paper, appears to be staying last year's course). After one of the performances, he approached clown Steve Copeland with Cadillac praise for Steve and Ryan's newly installed spitting gag. "the funniest clown gag I've ever seen," sang the North of Norths. Giddy with joy, wrote Steve on his blog (from which this report was derived), "SCORE." Ah, yes, let's leave the tent on a high and happy note. And may all your all laughs be circus laughs! ...