A bit about
Cyril
I am the Resourcerer at Better World Magic. I empower my audiences to create a sustainable future using my experience as sustainability professional and my background in magic and storytelling.
My background is a mixed bag….but the combination of my two great loves of environment and magic is turning out more fun than I ever expected. I have worked in recycling and sustainability for more than 30 years, overseeing efforts in higher education as well as government. When magician Jim Sisti gave me the epiphany that magic was a great way to showcase the power of recycling to turn old into new, I started down a new path. I became one of the world’s very few performers of “enviromagic,” an environmental magician. Although I have performed internationally and presented to corporate and institutional clients in formal settings, I still enjoy using enviromagic in informal settings. Sometime the small settings of a sidewalk or local event are best for sharing big ideas.
Two schools, one of them magical, have been a big help. The Yale School of the Environment is where I first got on a recycling truck, made my first scrap run, and matched the Big Picture environmental learning with real world experience. Jeff McBride’s Magic & Mystery School is a real-world Hogwarts for modern magicians. This is where I received the help to take enviromagic to the next level. I have expanded my skills to create shows on water, energy/climate change and other important topics.
As you might guess I am a big fan of nerdy pastimes: Harry Potter, roleplaying and board games, Star Trek and Game of Thrones. I enjoy these best with a local beer and, once in a while, a wee dram of whiskey.
Tell me about yourself, your work, and how we can work together to create a brighter future! – C.J.
203-737-0475
21 things
about me
I. I am often vexed by computers and other technology.
2. I use the word “vexed” perhaps more often than I should.
3. As part of a year-long research project into Chinese folk traditions I slept in a Taiwanese graveyard.
4. I have been happily married to my best friend, Becky May, since 1991.
5. While visiting the Pyramids of Giza I got nabbed by Egyption security for veering off the tourist route and heading down a side passageway.
6. My dad was a cowboy. Literally. As a boy he herded from horseback the few head of cattle his dad owned.
7. I speak Mandarin Chinese fairly well, and speak Spanish very poorly.
8. My wife fixes the car, repairs the fence and does most of the nuts and bolts maintenance. I can barely hammer a nail straight.
9. If I could have dinner and conversation with several of my favorite, now deceased, authors it would be with JRR Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin and Terry Pratchett.
10. The best week of my life was a rare vacation with my wife: a 25th anniversary trip to Iceland.
11. The second best week of my life was Master Class at McBride’s Magic & Mystery School, a real-world Hogwarts for modern magicians.
12. Guilty pleasure: ABBA.
13. For two weeks I lived in a shelter of leaves and branches I made while on a tracking and survival course.
14. Despite working in an administrative job for much of my life I suffer from bureaucraphobio, the fear of bureaucracies.
15. Fetching lettuce from the depths of Dunvegan Castle on the Scottish Isle of Skye was the more fun part of a somewhat grueling job working at the tourist restaurant there for a summer.
16. If I were to have a conversation with God in human form I hope God would appear as Morgan Freeman.
17. Apples are my favorite food having grown up surrounded by apple trees, orchards and having picked apples for a part-time job.
18. NERD: Star Trek, roleplaying games, board games, Harry Potter, glasses.
19. A shot of single malt Scotch whiskey waved under my nose just might bring me out of a coma.
20. Being in Nature is perhaps the closest I ever feel to God or whatever each of us may call The Divine,
21. I do realize that recycling will not save the world. But recycling, when done properly, is a part of the solution.
