Primal Glee

If you like the whole psychology thing, there's an article I write that seemed to me particularly timely, once again. It's called: The Therapeutics of Primal Glee, and it's the text of today's FunCast.

Case Mod - The Ultimate List

Case Mod - The Ultimate List, as so lovingly compiled by Neatorama, by means of its very length and variety adds significant legitimacy to what is essentially the Computer Age equivalent of junk art/play.

According to Wikipedia: "Case modding or Case modification is the modification of a computer chassis (often just referred to as the case). Modifying a computer in any non-standard way is considered a case mod. Many people, particularly hardware enthusiasts, use case mods to illustrate a computer's power, and for aesthetic purpose."

According to Bernie, case modding is a modern example of the transformational power of play. Taking something ready-made and purpose-driven, and just thinking about how you could make it into something that is uniquely yours is already a semi-revolutionary act. Doing it seriously, beautifully, creatively, playfully - you redefine the world.

Rethinking youth sports

I found my way to this article - Parks & Recreation: Rethinking youth sports - cooperative games - Research Update, authored by Georgianna Ramsey and Bryan Rank, and published in 1997.

"The movement from competitive games to cooperative games can be beneficial for many reasons. Cooperative games can increase self-esteem, decrease aggressive behaviors, and enhance positive socialization. There have been efforts to study the effects of cooperative games on young children (Chambers & Abrami, 1991; Milton, Cleveland, Bennett-Gates, 1995). One such study evaluated the effects of competitive and cooperative games on aggressive and cooperative behaviors in young children (Bay-Hintz, Peterson & Quiltich, 1994). To evaluate the differences in behavior between competitive and cooperative games, the participants played both types of games, during which behaviors were recorded. The results revealed that during cooperative games, cooperative behaviors increased and aggression decreased. Conversely, competitive games were accompanied and followed by a decrease in cooperative behaviors and an increase in aggression (Bay-Hintz et al). It appears how we play can influence how we behave."

Though I haven't found any webpages documenting how these findings have been put into practice, my guess is that a lot of people like myself are also very busy rethinking youth sports. And me, well I seem to think that the issue is really not between competitive and cooperative games, but rather the community, the playground culture within which these games take place. Like Brian-Sutton Smith, I think a lot of deeply healing fun goes on even in rough-and-tumble play. It's wonderful that people have found that aggression decreases in cooperative games. It's not the games, Horatio, but in the play wherein we catch the consciousness of the players.

You Can't Say You Can't Play

ElizabethVivian Gusson Paley worked as a kindergarten teacher and author of children's books. To read her book You Can't Say You Can't Play, is to be returned to the mind of a child, as understood by the heart of an artist. The author weaves a children's story into the account of an almost painfully democratic attempt to make children's play more inclusive.

Paley discovers the power of rules on children's play. She noted how children responded to being excluded from games - which, at the time, was a rule of play. She saw how profoundly negative, and how long-lasting the pain of rejection could be. And yet, it was almost taken for granted that, even in kindregarten, the unpopular aren't welcome, and that the kids who started the game could keep other kids out. Respecting children and their rules as deeply as her own, Paley authors a new rule, knowing that a rule that seems just and clear and sufficiently universal can actually change the way children play. The rule: "you can't say you can't play."

If you don't appreciate children's stories and being invited to listen in to the rush of interweaving streams of fantasy and actuality, and if you need research results and suggestions for next steps, you're reading the wrong book. For the rest of us, it is a journey through remarkably pure expressions of love and wisdom, fantasy and truth, growth and play - a journey that will teach us and touch us, and all those young lives we learn from and are touched by.

Confab: a conversation-based blank-card game

To play Confab, you: "Get a load of blank cards; at least ten per person. Everyone then scribbles arbitrary conversational sentences ('Hello.' 'How are you?' 'Yes.' 'No.' 'You're very tall.') onto the cards, until they're all covered. Shuffle them all together, deal five to each person and leave a face-down draw pile."

And then, basically: "Taking turns, players must either play a card from their hand that follows conversationally from the previous card (or opens the conversation, if they're the first to play), or - if they can't go - draw a new card from the draw pile."

If that's not clear enough to result in mutual merriment, you'll find everything you need to know on the aforementioned webpage.


Found through Discordian Games!: "Discordian Games
Making Play Less Work Than Ever."

Why We Laugh

The text for today's FunCast can be found here.

What can't be found either place follows:

Marie Martin. That's the wonderful person who gave me the Gumleaf album. An amazing spirt, that Marie. Playful. Caring. Passionate.

Herb Patton's CD and booklet "How to Play the Gumleaf" can be found here.

Fun is Good - (and how to make it so)

(I added the "and how to make it so" part. I'll explain why before the paragraph is over.)Fun is Good is the actual name of a Rodale Press book by Mike "Maverick Marketing Whiz" Veeck and veteran sports and business journalist Pete Williams, is, as you might guess, an exhortation. To fun and those who want to have it. Exhorting us to do just that, to have it. Now. How? By making it fun.

It's an important, empowering message for anyone who believes that work should be more fun. It tells them: you're right, it should. Therefore go, ye, and make it so.

In the business world, where many of us are still really not sure that it is OK to have fun, or even to look like you're having fun, or even to want it to be fun; fun is often a hard, hard sell. So when Veeck, with all his many successes in minor league baseball, makes it all kind of actually well GOOD to have fun, good even for business, we basically want to ignore him passionately or embrace him with equal passion.

Everyone, in every sphere of human endeavor and society we can imagine, can use a champion like Veeck, a coach who pushes you, pushes you, pushes you to make things fun, to have fun, to be fun, to believe in the bottom-line power of fun.

So we welcome Mr. Veeck, and anoint him with the title of "Defender of the Playful." Another voice for fun. A different voice. A voice that is making itself heard.

There are other games, other ways of playing, other ways to invite fun, and I am certain that as Mr. Veeck continues his explorations he'll have new and better news to bring us about the sheer goodness of fun, and the sheer devotion it takes to make work fun, and vice versa. In the mean time, and in the future, whether we partake or not, we are all a bit better off because of Mr. Veeck's vision and passion.

Humor and Play: Joyfully Overcome Relationship Hurdles

Humor and Play: Joyfully Overcome Relationship Hurdles is a new article appearing in a rather remarkable health information resource called "Help Guide." Rather remarkable, at least from my perspective because it also coincidentally just happens to include an article that I co-authored with Dr. Jeanne Segal "Playing Together for Fun."

The article itself is also of the rather remarkable ilk, opening with a quote from Major Fun, himself, and mine, too.

Now that you know what peaked my interest, let me go on to suggest what might peak yours with some semi-random samples:

"Love play is not a competitive game; it has to be fun, interesting and equally engaging for both partners. There can be no winners or losers in interactive play. Something isn’t funny unless it is funny to both parties – and this includes teasing. Each person has to be excited and drawn into the experience. When this is the case, nothing is more stimulating. If, or when, the playful experience isn’t mutual, the play isn’t interactive and may detract from, rather than support, a love relationship..."

"Play gives us an opportunity to turn frustrations and negative experiences into opportunities for shared fun and intimacy. In the context of interactive play, we replace judgment and criticism with humor, and can say and do things that might be awkward or offensive in other contexts. In playful settings we hear things differently and can tolerate learning things about ourselves that we otherwise might find unpleasant or even painful. Play also gives us a positive way to address differences."

"Play is a powerful survival mechanism that supports our ability to surmount life’s hardships and tragedies. Whole civilizations brought to their knees have survived over time by enlisting the force of humor and play to counteract their distress. Deeply experienced emotions can alternate rapidly. One moment we can be in the throes of grief and the next laughing at a ridiculous memory or comment. Such is the nature of primary emotion. Humor and play are respites from sadness and pain but, more than just time out, play also imbues us with the courage and strength to find new sources of meaning and hope."

Of Art and Fun, cont'd

I received an email from Mr. Smith, asking me if I thought his art would be of interest to my readers. I clicked, pointed, clicked again, and saw wonder after wonder of playful art and artful play and sometimes even both. I wrote back to Mr. Smith, asking him if he might say something to us about what he perceives as the art-fun connection. He responded:

"People often ask me how I get the ideas for creating my sculptures. The truth is I usually don’t know what a sculpture will be until it is actually in the process of being built. I approach my work with a very wide expectation of what it may become, and I try to allow myself to let it go in the direction it wants to go.

"Most of it is trial and error, a kind of form follows function construction process. If an element is not working or just doesn’t do what I had hoped, I will cut it off and try something else.

"I enjoy the raw creativity in this process. I am constantly observing the world around me seeing things that capture my attention. Sometimes I will try to incorporate these elements into my art somehow or it will spark an idea that leads to another idea and so on. My strongest pieces are usually the ones I had the most fun making. Art doesn’t always have to be serious, political or even emotional. Sometimes it can just be fun.

"Sometimes when people look at my Kinetic or Rolling Ball Sculptures they will ask, 'What does it do?' I usually answer, 'It’s doing it.'"

The Romance of Sound and Senses

Ken Feit was a fool. He touched our lives briefly and profoundly, teaching me, for example, how to make my very own Hand Frog.

He died as we all eventually do, tragically, and too young. Those he touched are forever connected through his inspired madness. One, performer, story-teller and fellow Feit-follower Sam Yada Cannarozi, sent me a copy of an old work of Ken's, called "The Romance of Sound and Senses." As I read it, everywhere in it I could feel Ken's loving wonder, still present in my life.

Here's a taste:

dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut

klinkerufff

alora fasoma

salugot fasinkel

dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut.......pooff!

"This is what this poem says to me. The first line tells me of a sculptor who’s beginning to work on a block of marble. He’s digging into it with his chisel and hammer, and pulling out pieces of marble...dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut...dug, dig, gotcha, got you marble, I got you, dug, dig, dugacha......cha, penetrating, kut, cutting and resisting with a blunted point....ttt....dugacha chakut. In the second line he blows the dust off his chisel....klinkeruff, the klinky metal....ufff of a blow and the dust flies off all over the floor with the chips. And then he stops and looks at his statue and imagines it complete, a masterpiece, so smooth and fine and brilliant....flora fasooma. But he opens his eyes again and sees it for what it is, very rude, incomplete....salugot fasinkel. The fasooma and the fasinkel is the difference between a dream and the real thing. The sculptor is a realist with a twinkle in his eye and he goes back to work....dugacha chakut, dugacha chakut....pooff!"

I made unauthorized PDF of the file, for you to read and give to every one. As soon as I fix my printer, I'm going to make a copy to read to my grandchildren. If you know of anyone who actually has the copyright for this work, please let us know about each other.

Here is the file.

For more about Ken, see: Joseph Martin's "Foolish Wisdom: Stories, Activities, and Reflections from Ken Feit, I.F. (Itinerant Fool)"

FunCast: Fun, Work, and the ImagineCam™

Today's Funcast: Fun, Work, and the ImagineCam™, is beyond a light-hearted romp into the powers of the imagination. Not much beyond. But beyond enough to make one think that one could build whole new enterprises with little more than an ImagineCam™ and assorted Imaginary Multimedia™