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Meeting this month’s cover subject, Ton Onosaka, in the early 1980s was the start of an extremely long friendship between us that lasts to this day. He is now 86. I began working with Ton closely in 1985 (at age 25) and his wisdom and manner of approaching life was markedly different than anyone I’d met before. He did not lecture, but taught by example. As if by osmosis, the more time you spend with Ton, the more you learn about how to live life in a generous manner. Ton is perhaps the most truly altruistic person I’ve ever met. He wants nothing for himself, only to give to others. Only to help others learn about life and magic, for magic is his greatest love (next to his wife Mama-san). He leads you in a gentle way toward a path of learning that is difficult to fully grasp until you’ve personally felt it. I am not special—everyone loves Ton; every Japanese boy and girl he’s introduced to magic and nurtured until they blossom with their own thinking about magic; every magician from the West whom he’s brought to Japan to plant seeds from which Japanese magicians can then grow; and pretty much every one of you. For without Ton, there would be virtually no books on Japanese magic in English. Few of the group of Japanese magicians he mentored would have come to the west. He is mostly responsible for the cross pollination between magicians in Japan and the United States and Europe, which has been extremely influential to both cultures. For all of this he asks nothing. This issue we celebrate Ton with an interview conducted by Max Maven and the publication of Ton’s original version of the card index (which you can make at home).

Connie Boyd was one of the early female solo magicians in Las Vegas, and she is well remembered for, among other things, a beautiful floating ball routine where she surprisingly floated up to the ball at the end. While still performing, most of her time is spent teaching and organizing her female recruits who she has coached into full-time illusionists and sent out on the road in their own shows. Chloe Olewitz floats up to Ms. Boyd for a few questions.

Al Schneider’s latest “Broadcast from Nowhere” explains yet another wonderful routine, this time with bills; In “Classic Correspondence” Mike Caveney writes about the shameless crazy Alexander (the guy who knows); Dr. Gustav Kuhn completes his three-part series on science and magic by asking how one can advance the other; Hannibal goes West (Part One) in “Happiness is the Road”; In Part Four of “Going Pro,” Andi Gladwin takes a look at how some of his friends did exactly that; John Bannon describes a great trick by Cameron Francis in this month’s “Dealing With It”; In “Magicana” Jonathan Friedman divulges a coin routine that will make you cry, and Bob Farmer’s latest bit of cleverness, for which we supply the prop; our monthly features round out the issue: “Knights at the Magic Castle,” “On the Slant,” “The Eye,” and “Light from the Lamp” with reviews by Francis Menotti (books), Danny Orleans (tricks), and Nathan Coe March (videos). Counting down to the Genii Convention in just a few months!