Carrie Porter

The Wall Street Journal

When You Perform in a Firecracker Suit, Every Show Ends With a Bang

By CARRIE PORTER

FOWLERVILLE, Mich. -- At the Fowlerville Family Fair here, John Fletcher wrapped himself in more than 12,000 firecrackers and got ready to set them all off.

He tucked his ponytail under his protective suit, grasped a cigarette lighter with his left hand and planted his feet in a hydraulic bucket crane. As about a hundred people looked on, he gave the order to raise the bucket. "I started to cry a little bit when I put my goggles on and saw the crowd," Mr. Fletcher recalls. He admits he was scared.

Mr. Fletcher, who is 47 years old, has performed his act as "Ghengis [sic] John the Human Firecracker" dozens of times over more than 10 years. He estimates that he has ignited more than 300,000 firecrackers attached to the get-ups he creates to protect himself. Each year, he tries to make the act a bit more exciting for the crowd -- using more firecrackers or, as he did this year, more powerful ones.

Some people come back to see Mr. Fletcher's performance year after year. "I've never seen anything like it. It makes me very tense and nervous," says Stacey Lundgren, 60, who was in the crowd. "He gets hurt every time, and he just keeps on doing it."

Mr. Fletcher's motivation is complex. His performances raise money for charities like Cell Phones for Soldiers and local food banks. A former drug abuser and alcoholic who has been clean for 17 years, Mr. Fletcher says his affinity for pyrotechnics could be a new form of addiction. "I guess my firecracker suit is my drug, and it's a drug I can do that's going to help people," he says.

John Fletcher has performed his act as "Ghengis John the Human Firecracker" dozens of times over more than 10 years.

Mr. Fletcher is a short, skinny man of 47 with wavy hair that hangs nearly to his waist and a tuft of beard that juts from beneath his lower lip. When he isn't playing bass guitar with his rock band or preparing to turn himself into a stick of dynamite, he works at the Hell Survivors paintball field and at a gas station in Pinckney, Mich., about 50 miles west of Detroit.

A photo of Béla Lugosi dressed as Dracula sits on a shelf in the house trailer where Mr. Fletcher lives. Mr. Fletcher says the actor and the rock star Alice Cooper are his lifelong heroes. Mr. Fletcher grew up in Garden City, a Detroit suburb, the adopted son of an electrician who worked at General Motors and an Internal Revenue Service employee. One day, out of curiosity, he let a firecracker explode in his hand. "I was 10 or 11 years old, and it stung and left a red mark," he recalls, tracing a circle in the palm of his left hand.

About 25 years later, Mr. Fletcher was living in Pinckney and playing in a rock band. He had recently kicked drinking and cocaine and was throwing himself into his music. He was experimenting with guillotines and electric chairs as stage props when he thought firecrackers might be a worthy addition.

Practicing his act at a band mate's house one day, Mr. Fletcher attached about 100 firecrackers to a strip of light brown leather, wrapped it around his chest and lighted a fuse with a flick of his cigarette lighter.

"That was pretty much a walk in the park," he says. "So I just kept adding more firecrackers."

For his first major public performance at the 1999 Howellstock Music Festival in Fowlerville, Mr. Fletcher donned a black leather jacket he bought at the Salvation Army for $2 and matching leather chaps decorated with 6,000 firecrackers.

John Fletcher readies for his star turn.

The chaps failed to provide enough protection, and his pants caught fire. "Safety personnel were right by me, and they took care of it quickly," he says, but his legs were bruised and burned. He has had other problems over the years, including a bruised kidney and five fractured ribs. He tries to hold his breath as the firecrackers go off, but it is hard amid the pummeling. "Everything tastes like firecrackers for a week."

Although people don't pay to see him perform, Mr. Fletcher sets up donation boxes around the community before his performances. This year, he collected the equivalent of 1,000 meals in a combination of food and cash for Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan.

Last month in Fowlerville, about 20 miles northwest of Pinckney, the smell of fresh manure and hay was mixed with the aromas of fried dough and sausage links at the Family Fair. As Mr. Fletcher waited for his band, Southpaw, to perform, he struggled to stay calm. "The butterflies are really kicking me in the stomach," he said, rapping a pack of cigarettes against his leg.

After the band's last song, he told the audience it was time for "ignition."

Before putting on his exploding suit, Mr. Fletcher strapped on his body armor, made of five layers of compressed leather, and took a swig from a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Four friends draped the $200 suit on Mr. Fletcher's scarecrow frame. He had forgotten to put in his earplugs. "I've done it so many times, it's not going to make a difference," he said.

Last year, Mr. Fowler set off 13,000 firecrackers and broke his own record. This year, he went with fewer, slightly more powerful firecrackers. He spent weeks duct-taping 12,000 firecrackers onto a new black leather vest with matching chaps.

The crowd formed a semicircle along a line of yellow police tape around the crane. The amusement rides cast a garish light on the scene, as the crane began to lift Mr. Fletcher.

"I love you all," he yelled to the cheering crowd.

Once the crane had reached its full height of 36 feet, Mr. Fletcher held the blue Bic lighter to the fuse, and watched the flame run up his chest.

A series of explosions rippled up his torso, and sparks ricocheted off his armor. Smoke obscured his face. After about 30 seconds, Mr. Fletcher had to relight one of the fuses to keep the explosions coming. Onlookers whistled and yelled as the pops shot down one leg, then the other and finally on his back. With the final pop, the crowd grew quiet. Mr. Fletcher leaned over the bucket's railing, pulling off the shredded remains of his suit as he descended and tossed them to the ground.

GlobalPost

Recreational rioting: a youth fad in Northern Ireland

By CARRIE PORTER

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- A different strain of sectarianism plagues North Belfast today, more than a decade after Northern Ireland's peace agreement.

Stemming not from political ambition but still falling along the Protestant-Catholic fault line, daily skirmishes now have a catchy name: recreational rioting.

Considered a low-level nuisance, it has become the extracurricular activity of choice for youths in the poorest parts of Belfast, where unemployment is fierce, paramilitaries seethe underground and the Kentucky Fried Chicken is a popular hang-out. Fueled on alcohol, drugs and boredom, teenagers gather to throw rocks, homemade bombs and vitriolic slurs at one another.

For hundreds of years, the two tribes – Catholics and Protestants – have tried to share the same land, despite different understandings of history and culture. The brutality of the Troubles catapulted the small region onto the international stage as a conflict zone in the late 20th century. It was the 1998 co-sharing agreement that made Northern Ireland remarkable, as a seemingly impossible peace was found.

In contrast to the rioting that made international headlines in Northern Ireland last week — rioting that had a clearer political agenda and momentum from dissident republican groups — recreational rioting is "purely sectarian," said Sam Uttley, a community worker from the Lower Shankill Community Association. In other words, people form opposing opinions of each other based on their cultural upbringing.

Uttley spends most of his days and nights fielding text messages and scouring Facebook and Bebo, a United Kingdom social networking site, for hints about skirmishes around his ward.

“During the year Protestant and Catholic kids meet at cross-community events and exchange telephone numbers,” he said. “Later, when they get bored, they text each other for a fight.”

Anti-social behavior is a problem across the U.K., formally recognized by Parliament’s Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 to curb youths’ destructive habits like noise complaints, graffiti and trespassing. The difference here is the way it hinges on sectarian history.

The summer marching season, the peak of which is July 12, observes the communities as they celebrate their heritage with parades, showcasing the proud loyalty to each side’s version of history. A heady display of flags, flutes and family combines with warmer weather for a recipe of literal and figurative Molotov cocktails.

Last week, more than 80 police officers were injured in Northern Ireland, as they tried to keep the peace between the two communities during annual parades.

But for Joe Keenan, who lives on the peace lines, the recreational rioting does not stop when the summer parades end.

In 1984 Keenan moved into his new home in North Belfast and was greeted by a black steel fence. Only eight inches high, it marked the pencil-high boundary between his Protestant lawn and the Catholic youth, armed with glass bottles and golf clubs, who lived up the street.

Today the fence has become a wall eight feet tall. From his stoop Keenan has a front-row seat to the sectarian fighting that refuses to burn out. Keeping a detailed log of events, he has recorded 44 attacks on his home since January.

“It is bad enough getting it from the Catholic side but also when you get it from your own Protestant side, you just think they need a good kick in the head,” said Keenan, who at age 52 is out of work since a construction injury a few years ago.

Punitive measures for rioting are historically weaker in the Northern Ireland than in England, where rioting offenses can lead to years in jail rather than months, according to Neil Jarman, the director at the Institute for Conflict Research (ICR), based in Belfast.

“It all feeds into the notion that rioting is not that serious,” he said. “The kids will come out because they enjoy it, but engaging with them will be the solution, not in a punitive sense but in stopping them from wanting to partake in the activity.”

“The challenge is to give support for a community that doesn’t support us,” said Inspector Norman Haslett of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), who is in charge of policing in the toughest pockets of Belfast, during an interview in late May. “We must build up trust and understanding … they throw rocks at us … it’s a learned behavior.”

Some analysts say the chronic recreational rioting is a product of the area’s poverty. In spring 2010, Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency released a deprivation report that ranked wards by factors such as income, employment, health and education. Wards in and near North and West Belfast took seven spots in the top 10 of nearly 600 wards around Northern Ireland for overall deprivation.

The lack of economic opportunity mixed with a long history of fighting creates a bubble of contained tension and constrained peace at interface points between the two sides. “The level of segregation is so striking here,” said Chris O’Halloran of the Belfast Interface Project (BIP). “Only five percent of kids go to integrated schools for Catholics and Protestants, and ten percent inter-marry.”

As practice coordinator for BIP, O’Halloran works on regeneration projects for interfaces in Belfast. “There are 88 instances of defensive use of public space in Greater Belfast,” he said. “A lot of those aren’t walls or fences, but instead derelict space.”

This number has nearly tripled since the cease-fires in 1994 and 1995, when the official number was 27. While O’Halloran said the stark contrast could be attributed to poor counting in the early 1990s, he acknowledged the lack of progress in these areas.

“Rioting was widely tolerated as a normal spectator sport,” said Jarman of ICR. “The sectarian geography of Belfast enables it to happen easily because there’s an easy target, so it is predicated on sectarian differences without being overtly sectarian.”

The rash of street fighting comes at a critical time for Northern Ireland’s peace process. In April Westminster transferred policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland, symbolizing the final “jigsaw piece” of the peace process.

Meanwhile, dissident activity has spiked. The Independent Monitoring Committee dubbed dissident groups “highly active and dangerous” in a report this May, while the PSNI raised the security alert to its highest level since the 1998 Omagh bombing.

In an ICR study earlier this year, 70 percent of the youths reported having contact with the police. Of those youths, 38 percent described their experience with police as “disrespectful.”

A bloated sense of violence, with media coverage of burnt-out cars and riots, trumps signs of progress, which most people in Belfast say is obvious. “Five or 10 years ago we wouldn’t have had both politicians coming out to condemn the rioting like we did this year,” said Jarman of ICR. His study also found 32 percent of the youths described their meeting with police as “polite.”

“We have to remember that trouble hasn’t escalated into other parts of the city, and there is cross-community support for peace,” he said.

But for Keenan on Oldpark Road, a night of sleep would be peace enough. He keeps a fire extinguisher by the front door, which has been replaced by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive five times and now is made of the sturdiest wood available.

The Wall Street Journal

Dementia Studies Find Diet, Exercise Matter

By CARRIE PORTER

Two studies published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association add to evidence that long-term lifestyle habits may reduce the risk of mental decline in old age.

The first study, a long-term look at 1,880 elderly people in New York City, found that a Mediterranean-type diet and physical activity each were linked to less risk for Alzheimer's disease. The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center released the data as part of a larger research project on aging.

The second study, a shorter-term observation of 1,410 patients in France, found some correlation between a Mediterranean-type diet and slower cognitive damage.

Nikolaos Scarmeas, the author of the first study, grew up eating fish and vegetables in Athens, Greece. Now the neurologist suggests more people take up his mother's cooking. Marked by high consumption of foods such as vegetables, legumes and cereals, served with olive oil, in addition to moderate fish and alcohol intake, the traditional diet has long conferred better cardiovascular health.

Starting in 1992, researchers at Columbia University monitored elderly patients every 18 months for diet, exercise and mental health, in addition to a number of controls including age, sex and education. "This is one of the first studies to tease apart the independent contributions of diet and exercise for dementia prevention," says Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the research. "It suggests that aging need not be a passive process."

These studies are observational and not definitive, but they hint at what might reduce the chances of Alzheimer's or dementia. In the Columbia research, those who adhered most closely to the diet reduced their risk for Alzheimer's by 40%, while those with the highest physical activity decreased their risk 33%, compared with people who didn't adhere closely to the diet or were not physically active.

The French study found that subjects who adhered to the Mediterranean-type diet experienced a slower rate of mental decline than those who did not eat the diet, but did not prove a link for dementia, which requires a clinical assessment of a variety of mental and social functions.

Doctors in the field are careful to note that none of these findings demonstrate a causal relationship, but instead reflect the advantages of a continual healthy lifestyle. "The benefits don't just occur at age 70 when you suddenly stop eating McDonald's and start eating Brussels sprouts," says David Knopman, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who wrote the editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA and wasn't involved in either study. His editorial highlights confounding variables in the studies. "Healthy diet and exercise is part of a package of lifelong healthy living."

Zaven Khachaturian, a senior science adviser to the Alzheimer's Association, agrees. "This offers interesting insight but we need to turn it now into clinical trials," says the former director of the Office of Alzheimer's Disease Research at the National Institutes of Health.

These findings arrive a few weeks after new research identified a gene that could help predict who will develop Alzheimer's—the leading cause of dementia—and at what age. The report, given in mid-July at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, concentrated on DNA surrounding the ApoE gene. Researchers say more studies are needed before the findings can be confirmed.

For now, Dr. Scarmeas says his studies strongly suggest that a Mediterranean diet and exercise both confer independent and positive health benefits. But together, they are even better.

ABC News

What a Degree in Circus Arts Can Teach You

By CARRIE PORTER

LONDON -- Running away to join the circus, once an avenue for youngsters looking to avoid responsibility, has gone legit. Now, in addition juggling bowling pins, fireballs and hula hoops, aspiring students can throw in business class or two and actually earn a circus degree.

The Circus Space, an abandoned London power station turned circus school, is the first in the United Kingdom to offer a bachelor's degree in Circus Arts. With accreditation from the University of Kent, the school says circus graduates boast employment numbers of 90 percent.

"In the past eight years, we've seen an enormous growth in the number of artists who want to take part in the degree program," said Philip Nichols, the head of marketing and communication for The Circus Space. "It is an intense and dedicated program, with everything from physical training and specialist skills to business planning."

Once relegated to the tent of tigers and tricks, rise of Cirque du Soleil has spurred increased mainstream popularity, and now circus has spread to classrooms, leadership workshops, and youth programs in the U.S. and abroad.

"Circus is reflecting wider shifts in society," said Leila Jones, the producer and programmer for the Roundhouse CircusFest in London. "There's a move away from traditional circus to become more challenging and sophisticated."

Housed in the same venue that has seen the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney, Jones' seven-week festival aims to encourage thousands of people to enjoy the circus' delights.

"At Sadler's Wells we've had a number of outstanding circus shows at our main house and West End venue the Peacock Theatre... In 2009 Traces attracted over 30,000 people to the Peacock Theatre in a five and a half week run, with some sold out performances," said Kingsley Jayasekera, the organization's marketing and communications director.

"I think it's the combination of thrilling storylines, accomplished acrobatics, great music and captivating stage sets which has resulted in such a positive increase in audience numbers. Psy, which opened this week at the Peacock Theatre has had standing ovations every night, evidence that modern audiences still enjoy the agility and skills of traditional circus performers but with an up-to-date edge."

More Young Americans Drawn to the Circus

With a new appetite for contemporary movement, the art form's circus stereotypes of animal acts and children's entertainment are losing ground. Instead, artists are using circus for everything from team-building workshops to youth diversity programs to social commentary.

In Chicago, there is CircEsteem, a circus school intended to unite young people with diverse racial and economic make-ups. Their first youth-directed circus show, Brave New Circus, is an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," and "addresses ideas of individuality and subverting the dominant paradigm...taught by a clown who stumbles through a perfectly ordered world and creates chaos, " according to the organization's website.

A few others include Circus Harmony in St. Louis, Xelias Aerial Arts in Minneapolis, New England Center for Circus Arts as well as Circus Smirkus, both in Vermont.

"There is actually a strong youth circus culture in the United States," said Amy Cohen, a 2009 U.K. Fulbright Scholar who is researching contemporary circus arts at The Circus Space.

Cohen co-directed last year's American Youth Circus Organization festival, which organizes a network for youth circus groups to promote youth participation in circus arts.

"More young people in the U.S. are exploring international options because there are not any formal circus performance degree options in the U.S."

One British circus performer and educator is pursuing her Ph.D. at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, while a few others are working toward master's and doctorate degrees in child development and circus at American institutions.

"Circus gives access to a broad range of old and young people with skills that naturally go along with life," said Nichols of The Circus Space.

"From a philosophical view, it is not elitist and something everyone can do, plus it is a metaphor for many things people do in their life. It literally teaches you balance."