The Morning Midway: Jugglers & Bear Trainers, Rising and Falling ... And More ...

Covington Connected, we learn many things: Good news and bad, triumphs and tragedies, the beat of the big top without stop. Still has a pulse. Small community maybe, but to its fans, still a dynamic charmer that refuses not to keep getting back up each spring (okay, insert your month here) see only sunshine across mud, and hit the roads ...

World Champ Anthony Gatto, only juggler ever to land Monte Carlo Gold and recently a star of Cirque du Soleil's Kooza, shifting locations to the show's La Nouba unit at Disney World, and happy to keep working. Did ya know he likes to chat with the audience while keeping his stats in motion and intact? (11 world records, among them seven clubs forming a fluid fountain for 4 minutes and 20 seconds.)... Most of all, the Brooklyn born marvel expresses enduring pride over his Big Night at Monte Carlo: "For an act, it's the Academy Awards, in our little circus world." Yes, Anthony, you too see its littleness. But, don't ever forget, rings stars like you make it a GIANT world.

Smaller is better these days, and that's what the public wants, are you reading this, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey? Reading about the old largely unbooked Kaiser auditorium in Oakland facing uncertain times, I was warmed thinking about how Ringling crammed its three active rings inside the 8,000 arena (I doubt that claim, more like 6,500) during its early indoor years. Why not THAT the proper venue for the new and reduced Ringling-Barnum? And over in San Francisco, there's the more modestly intimate if squarish (literally) Civic Auditorium where Polack Bros. once held circus court. Why not IT, Feld, Feld & Feld? ... I'd rather share the show with a full house than sit in that cold Oakland Coliseum Arena ...

The death of German bear trainer Ursula Botcher came with such handsome photos, here posted for your eyes one of my favorites. the four foot eleven inch Ursula and her eleven foot-six inch polar bears essayed for Big Bertha a few seasons in the early-mid '70s ... Remember when circuses had bears and monkeys, seals and lots of other fun creatures cavorting about? ...

UPDATE: Sad to report, correcting my original posting on this matter, in fact Tito Montoya died last Friday, March 5. From Don Covington, "Tito was an amazing artist, regularly performing the triple somersault while flying with the Seguras on the Ringling show. He reportedly completed the quad several times when he was part of the Flying Vazquez." Tito had fallen 25 feet doing an aerial trick with Walker Bros. that he'd done thousands of times during his life. With the risks they take, sometimes come the heart-breaking falls. Leitzel, the Wallendas, among others. My heart goes out to the Montoya family ...