Here’s a new game for gamers and the rest of us. It’s a game designed to put more than our console-fingers to work. The idea is “to make our communities safer, kinder, more just, and better places to live.” I’m talking about the Compassion Games. Anyone can participate from anywhere.
For details, including how to join a team and play, go to http://compassiongames.org.
It’s the First Monday in October, meaning it’s National Child Health Day. It’s a day established in 1928 to promote our children’s physical health, but why not focus on their mental and emotional well-being, too? We can play a few active games with them, take a walk or bike ride together, or team up to clean up the garden. We can also spend some extra time with them, maybe having a little picnic in the backyard, doing some chores together and complementing them on their help, giving them a few extra hugs, talking to them, one-on-one, about friends, school, activities they’re involved in or a movie you saw together or an incident when you both saw someone acting as a bully. Yes, these are things we should be doing every day with our children. But this is a great day to redouble our efforts–for the good of our children.
Sunday is EARTH DAY. It’s a day to celebrate our Earthly home and give some thought to how we can protect it. This kid shows that it can actually be child’s -play:
What a fun day! I didn’t want to go to a stupid old Earth Day Fair. Then Mom told me the game we’d play. I’d pick something there and bring it home to do. So could Shari and Mom and Dad. Shari’s project is dumb. She keeps turning off the light when I’m on the pot too long. I thought the black hose Dad and I set up to heat our pool was really stupid, but it works. Mom put out a birdhouse and feeder but had to move them over ‘cuz of the bird poop. I didn’t know we had that many birds in our neighborhood! My Earth Day thing’s best of all. I put a bunch of worms in a barrel in our backyard and watch them turn stuff into dirt. What’s really fun is the family rule that all of us have to help all the others with their project. That means I get to chase Shari around with a bunch of worms and not get into too much trouble. You oughta try this game. It’s fun!
Here, in the middle of the year, many of us are reviewing our family budget to make sure we’re okay until January. This is a good time to take a close look, to see if our spending habits reflect what we say we believe. For example, I believe in human dignity, so shouldn’t I stop buying at that huge discount chain that has been in the news often for mistreating and intimidating their non-documented immigrant employees? I respect how hard local farmers work, so why not buy at farmers’ markets and through co-ops? I may have to pay a little more. But I can save money (and the environment) by walking or car-pooling sometimes. Or by exchanging one night out a month for a family-centered game-night in. I need to make my priorities clear to myself and to the stores and corporations I buy from. They notice how we spend our money. That makes our family budget a potential weapon of mass instruction!
I just HAD to share this one with you (thanks to Jim Knudsen for sending it to me). It’s our National Anthem, but presented in a new, impressive, imaginative, “wow” way.
If you don’t make it to the end of the 1:40 minutes, you’re really missing out!
I USED TO pride myself on my logic. No more. Not since yesterday.
You see, I’m one of those people who isn’t fond of football, even the Super Bowl, not even the half-time show. But I like to watch the commercials–mainly to see how, if I had $5 million, I could fill 30 seconds. What I did this year was record the game for later viewing (and for skipping through to catch the ads).
Before that, though, I recorded Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials 2016. That’s what I watched yesterday. Sounds logical so far, right? I thought it was. Until I realized something: I was zipping through the program’s commercials to watch what? Commercials!
Sigh……
Here’s a new game for gamers and the rest of us. It’s a game designed to put more than our console-fingers to work. The idea is “to make our communities safer, kinder, more just, and better places to live.” I’m talking about the Compassion Games. Anyone can participate from anywhere.
For details, including how to join a team, go to http://compassiongames.org.
I’m not surprised that Ray Rice assaulted his fiancé (now wife) or that the NFL is letting him off with a slap on the back, er, I mean, on the wrist. A look at the history of NFL game suspensions (rather than kicking them off the team) shows that these Good Old Boys think that violence is a healthy part of the sport—or is it a sport in itself? Consider these suspensions:
Felony aggravated assault on your fiancé/wife = 1 -2 games
Assault on a former roommate = 3 games
Alleged sexual assault in a nightclub = 4 games
Altercation with a bodyguard = 4 games
Attacking a stripper and threatening a security guard, or DUI that killed someone = 16 games
Participating in a “bounty” = 3 – 16 games
Illegal hits on opposing players during a game = 1 – 2 games
Shooting self in the leg = 4 games [my personal favorite]
Participating in dog fighting = 2 games
DUI = 2 – 3 games
Multiple DUIs and other incidents = 32 games
Involvement with steroids or tattoos = 6 games
For a more offenses and penalties, see the chart at CBS.com.
By the way, Commissioner’s Roger Goodell and the league’s excuse for Rice’s mild penalty is that they have to go by precedent. I guess reason and justice don’t count, especially if the offender wins games for you.
Remember the excitement as a young kid of getting together with a couple of your friends to play? Maybe one would bring a ball, another his dog. You’d run around, devising games and new rules as you went. When you were tired, you’d stop, sit under a shade tree, and complain about your siblings or a mean teacher. In other words, you’d hang out together, enjoying each other’s company.
Contrast that to what was on TV’s 7 on Your Side earlier this week. The segment compared video games for parents thinking about getting one for their child for Christmas. What interested me, though, was the scene: three young boys, presumably friends who had come together to play, sit in a circle, each totally absorbed in his own video-game world. No words or glances were exchanged, no sharing of what was going on in the device clutched in any of the young hands. No indication that any of them knew that anyone else was present in that intimate-looking circle. In short, no interaction.
Me and my video game. Who needs friends?
Tag has a new version–The Knock-Out Game. A group–usually of young men–wanders around until they choose, at random, an unsuspecting “playmate.” Then one of the gang, er, I mean group, runs up to this person and punches him/her as hard as he can, trying to knock him/her out with a single punch, then the gang runs away. Yes, I mean “him/her,” as well as various ages and ethnicities. Recent victims have included a 50-year-old English teacher stepping off the porch (hit by a 15-year-old boy), a 78-year-old woman, and a 14-year old youngster in Modesto. At least two deaths have resulted, plus painful injuries sending victims to the hospital.
It’s group-influence at its worst. It’s humanity being senselessly vicious. And they’re so proud of their acts that they brag about them on social media.
It makes me sick.
