Magician ready to make own news
By Edna L. Jakubowski
Journal Staff Writer

COLUMBIANA --- The hand is quicker than the eye, but if it’s smarter that the press will be determined Friday.

Michael Dustman will be a featured performer at the Harvey S. Firestone Park Festival of the Arts at 1 p.m. Saturday.

To show the county his talents, Dustman wrote the headlines of leading stories that will appear in Friday’s editions of the Morning Journal and Salem News.

Dustman was in Eastern Area Court Thursday when he began his magic trick.

Dustman wrote the headline on a piece of paper that was signed, dated, stamped and sealed in two envelopes.

The proposed headline is in the possession of the Journal and won’t be opened until 11 a.m. Friday.

Dustman said this is not a prediction of the future and he does not have psychic powers.

“This is a trick, merely another magic trick. I will not claim I have mental powers,” he said.

Dustman gave a small sampling of his work Thursday putting pencils through $50 bills, invisible card prediction tricks and coin acts. He also turned a $20 bill into a $1 bill.

Dustman started toying with magic at age 8 and is now 19 and a political science major at Ohio State University.

“You think you’re seeing it but you don’t know how it is done, like Clinton’s economic plan,” he said.

Dustman is self taught, learning most of his magic from books.

He is a 1992 graduate of Columbiana High School.