Month: November 2018

My grandfather passed away last weekend, so we flew down to Guatemala for the funeral service. As we drove into Antigua, we could see one of the nearby volcanoes, Fuego, sending off red puffs of smoke and lava. From that image I wrote this poem (noting that I don’t usually write poetry, it isn’t my style) for Grandad:

Fuego’s Lament
The volcano spewed fire and ash into the sky,
And from the town below rang a cry,
For he was gone.

Fuego mourned his dear old friend,
Shooting smoke out of his head,
For he was gone.

The mountain climber’s days at end,
His house filled with grieving friends,
For he was gone.

His family comforted by the neighbors,
Friends in all who once were strangers,
For he was gone.

Wonderful grandfather, husband and son,
Father, neighbor, and librarian,
Before he was gone.

The path he walked was not one of glory,
And yet in many he would live on in memory,
When he was gone.

Fire’s tears burned the sky,
As around the world rose up a cry,
Antigua sang its last goodbye,
For he was gone.

Keeping in theme with last week’s post about simple things that make life more enjoyable, I want to talk about one of the most multi-purpose things of all: snow.

I mean, think about it. You can make shapes out of it, make shapes in it, throw it, hide behind it… Heck, you can even eat it. I used to. Ugh, now I’m craving snow. Look what you’ve done, blog post. Look what you’ve done.

But there are lots of things that you don’t really think about that you can do with snow. Point in case: sculpture. People make snowmen all the time, sure, and forts too, but that’s it. Really? You have nature’s Play-Doh and all you’ve made out of it are a pile of balls with a carrot in it and a slapped together wall from the snow you shoveled off your driveway? The way we made forts, I’m not sure it even counts as sculpture. We literally just hid behind the piles we had removed from blocking in the cars. Nah. Make something interesting! Little snow bunnies, birds, bananas… Whatever you want, but make something unique!

Going back to forts… there’s an alternative for that too. My cousins and I were too lazy to build out own forts, so we just used the climbing tower in the backyard instead. That isn’t to say that we didn’t incorporate snow… we did. We just had a sturdier base. We fortified the tower with packed snow between the wooden boards in the walls to block incoming snowballs, between the footholds in the climbing wall to make it unpassable, and rubbed melting fistfuls of the stuff on the monkey bars and slides (all of us were quite good at climbing slides, so this was indeed a necessary step in fort defense).

Even unused, snow, like much else in nature, is an amazing gift if only for beauty. When undisturbed upon tree branches and fields, it is a truly marvelous sight. It is more than nature’s toybox. It is nature’s way of decorating for the holidays. And to those people too far south for snow: I’m sorry. You’re missing out. There’s not much to say past that.

I spend a lot of time talking about YouTube and computer games or board and card games with complicated mechanics. Yet I frequently overlook some of the simple things that can be just as entertaining.

Slinkys, for instance. It’s just a boring metal coil, right? Nope. This isn’t a commercial, so I’m not going to delve into all of the cool things that this metal coil can do, because I don’t get paid to do that. I’m just pointing out that there are plenty of things you can do with a Slinky when you’re bored that are just as fun as other games. People obsess over bottle-flipping. You can Slinky-flip too! Or just swing it around like a lasso, or bounce it on the floor, or… Never mind. Not a commercial, not a commercial….

Some people use stress balls, but I’ve always found those to lack entertainment value and engagement. I prefer Chinese medicine balls (Wikepedia says that they’re also called Baoding balls), which are a pair of (usually) metal balls that you rotate in one hand. That alone opens up several possibilities. Clockwise, counter-clockwise, over each other (not how they were meant to be used, but sometimes when I’m bored I rotate them vertically instead)… but then when you’re a master with your dominant hand, you can switch sides!

The last seemingly simple entertainment form that I’m going to mention today are fidget spinners. Yes, that fad has come and gone. They always do. But I feel that they were overlooked as an actual fun thing to do, and that people just got them to be “cool” and “with it.” I generally avoid joining fads like that, so, I’ll admit, I was a bit hesitant about getting one, but I’m glad that I did. Instead of rotational direction, like with Baoding balls, I generally switch which finger I’m flicking the spinner with.

It should be noted that I use all three of these mostly as an absent-minded form of entertainment, particularly when I’m doing something else (namely watching YouTube or TV). Not only are they fun, but they help me focus by giving me something to do with my hands while I’m watching (I’m one of those people who has trouble sitting still and paying attention, even when whatever it is that I’m watching is fun or interesting).