deepFUN.com | Bernie DeKoven

glee anywhere

April 26, 2012

Sometimes glee lights up in the unlikeliest, most mundane of places. I was waiting to cross an intersection, behind a couple of pedestrians. We waited and waited, yet the contrarian crosswalk signal kept playing a game of chicken with us. Law-abiding citizens, we remained standing at the curb, even though the traffic on either side [...]

Fun of the not so ha-ha kind

April 25, 2012

There is fun, and there is funny, and, as I’ve said before, funny fun is one of my favorites. But there are other kinds of fun, some sometimes deeper, that are just as much fun, and yet not funny, really, unless you have reached maybe enlightenment or godheadhood. I’m writing about this because I have [...]

dizzy fun

April 24, 2012

Speaking of circles, researching for yesterday’s post on the Osani Circle game I found myself on a site called The Science and the Joy of Twirling, where they also mention the Osani game, but in a different context – one that, as the title stipulates, delves into the “Joy of Twirling,” or, as some would put [...]

The Osani Circle Game

April 23, 2012

I first saw this image, what, decades ago? I’ve loved it, loved imagining who those people were, why they were sitting like that, what they were playing or praying at. I saw it once more circulating, so to speak, on Google +, and this time, thinking of things like “crowdsourcing” and “on-line community” sought solution [...]

making fun

April 20, 2012

The thought-provoking thing about the words “making fun” is the implication that fun is something we can make, that not only can we find fun, have fun, be fun, we can also make it. Now that I think about it, I am not so sure that we really can make fun. We can make games [...]

naughty fun

April 19, 2012

We first met naughty on the inner playground in 2003. And then, in the other playground,when we were contemplating what could or might be called the opposite of play. When we’ve talked about fun in the past, we (royally speaking) divided the conscious universe into two parts: the want to part being where the fun is. [...]

recycled playspace

April 18, 2012

If I were designing an indoor playground, and I happened to be as clever as Tali Buchler, the Outside the box indoor playground, installed at the community center in Zichron Yaakov, Israel, is precisely what I would have created. I would take as many cardboard boxes as I could find, take them neatly closed, and proclaim them [...]

The Game of Graces

April 17, 2012

When I first played the Game of Graces I had no idea what it was called. It was then sold by a company in Delaware, Ohio that made beautiful wooden games (and has since gone the way of many beautiful wooden game-making companies), and all I remember was the fun of it. It surprised and [...]

bears and dogs funning around

April 16, 2012

I can’t get my fill of these videos – actual, documented, interspecies play. There’s something about seeing this that restores my faith in the possibility that we can set aside whatever it is that keeps us apart, at least from time to time, when we’re not too hungry or sick or afraid – and play [...]

the games list

April 13, 2012

When I prepare for a presentation, I generally make a list of games – usually at least twice as many games as I could possibly need. This is after 50 years of teaching games and fun and funny stuff. No matter how often I play or how many games I’ve learned, I’ve found that there [...]

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