March 12, 2019
Chain of association: I heard lots of communal singing this weekend. On Saturday, at an Indian Dance concert, people in the seats all around me hummed with the singer(s) who accompanied the performers. Incredibly complex and intricate melodies to the Western ear were quietly and perfectly voiced by young and older women near me. At Sunday’s fundraiser, whole groups of people sang old pop music without a moment’s hesitation.
I cannot remember when I’ve last sung, outside of some religious service or ironing to Steely Dan, and yet during my childhood there was lots of communal singing. In school, in the schoolyard, during bus trips, or simply when kids gathered, even at birthday parties.
Same for playing board games – I know they are up and coming again, but not in my immediate vicinity. This was brought to mind when I spotted this article in the NYT and thought a board game about birds (and math) looked compelling.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/science/wingspan-board-game-elizabeth-hargrave.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Elizabeth Hargrave, an avid birder and public-health scientists decided to teach about birds while having fun.
“Aiming to design a game with scientific integrity, Ms. Hargrave pulled data on North American birds from eBird, a citizen-science project managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She also made use of the lab’s All About Birds website, as well as Audubon’s online guide. Then she built a spreadsheet. At its most extreme, it ran five hundred and ninety six rows by nearly one hundred columns — sorting, for instance, by order, class, genus, habitat, wingspan, nest type, eggs, food and red-list status. (Endangered birds confer special powers.)”
Apparently the game is a hit and sold out whenever newly printed; I wonder if older folks who have been out of the game, so to speak, can re-acquire strategy skills to play successfully – although what counts as success depends on what type of person you are: a competitor or a connector.
Next associative link: Under the bird game article were, as always for the NYT, links to older, related articles. What caught my eye was a game called Secret Hitler, apparently teaching about the slimy, subterfuge rise of fascism if people secretly put their mind to it.
It is meant, if I understood correctly, to warn of such strategies and raise consciousness about them. No-one seems to have asked if it works in both directions: teaching the wrong kind of people the wrong kind of methods…which made me think of Monopoly.
Did you know that the game, the seeming tool to raise midget capitalists, was actually invented by Lizzi Magie in 1902 to compel some changes in tax law? A vocal supporter of the single tax movement during the late 19th century she called for the abolishment of all taxes in favor of one tax placed on property. By relying on citizens who owned land for tax revenue, the policy would have hopefully narrowed the gap between wealthy landlords and their working-class tenants.To make these principles as engaging as possible, Lizzie Magie turned them into a board game.” Magie thought the game’s critique of greedy landlords was obvious, but it eventually evolved into a beast far removed from her original creation. It was banned in the Soviet Union and China and apparently drew the ire of Fidel Castro who accused it of being “symbolic of an imperialistic and capitalistic system.”
Makes you wonder, indeed, how games can backfire.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/93275/origins-7-popular-board-games
For music today, I settled on a website that provides music for boardgames. You type in the name of the game and they provide a playlist. The site is called Melodice. I chose a Settler of Catan song, since it is a German game and gives me an opening to show some beloved German landscapes….
