Jim,

You and I have spoken about the older days when mutual respect and trade of ideas and products was more in fashion. You said that things had changed, I assume gotten more "mercenaristic".

I know The Cafe was born out of a desire to return to that feeling of mutual sharing. What main one or two things do you think every magician could focus on to help facilitate this return?

You and I have engaged in some traditions from the past, and I have both extended and accepted that tradition with others. Any other traditions you think could help the magic fraternity's course head back to those good days?

Tough one, Tom. One of the problems is that you have two distinctly different groups in magic (at least!) whose goals are completely different. One group is performing professionally and their main audiences are the laypublic. The other group is doing magic as a past-time (not that there's anything wrong with that...) and their audiences tend to differ. Sometimes this results in different kinds of magic with a completely different set of appeals.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Magician's Guild idea from the past being resurrected.