Playfulness In Storytelling and Art

Sports Day Illustration Racey Helps (1913-1970) sack race

As God contains all good things, He must also contain a sense of playfulness — a gift he has shared with Creatures other than ourselves, as witness the tricks Crows play, and the sportiveness of Squirrels, and the frolicking of Kittens.

Margaret Atwood
“You will find the future wherever people are having the most fun,” Johnson argues. He chronicles how, throughout history, world-transforming innovation emerges from the endless quest for novelty in seemingly trivial entertainments–fashion, music, spices, magic, taverns, zoos, games. He celebrates the observation of historian Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens), “Civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.”

PUTTING ON A SHOW

June page 2 from A Time to Keep, The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor, published by Macmillan, New York, 1977
June page 2 from A Time to Keep, The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays written and illustrated by Tasha Tudor, published by Macmillan, New York, 1977
Czech illustrator Jiri Trnka (1912-1969) illustration for Andersen's Fairy Tales 1969
Czech illustrator Jiri Trnka (1912-1969) illustration for Andersen’s Fairy Tales 1969
Father Tuck’s Puppet Show
Charles Hunt - Children Acting the ‘Play Scene’ from “Hamlet,” Act II, Scene ii 1863
Charles Hunt – Children Acting the ‘Play Scene’ from “Hamlet,” Act II, Scene ii 1863
Frederick Daniel Hardy - The Volunteers
Frederick Daniel Hardy – The Volunteers
John Burr - Little Soldier
John Burr – Little Soldier

PARTY GAMES

William Heath Robinson (English,1872-1944) - The Egg and Spoon Race
William Heath Robinson (English,1872-1944) – The Egg and Spoon Race

PLAYING AT THE SEASIDE

Postcard by Muriel Dawson (1897-1974)
Postcard by Muriel Dawson (1897-1974)

PLAYING GROWN-UPS

States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895-1945

A number of curious communities sprang up across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: simulated cities, states, and nations in which children played the roles of legislators, police officers, bankers, journalists, shopkeepers, and other adults. They performed real work—passing laws, growing food, and constructing buildings, among other tasks—inside virtual worlds. In States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895-1945 (MIT Press, 2020), Jennifer Light examines the phenomena of “junior republics” and argues that they marked the transition to a new kind of “sheltered” childhood for American youth. Banished from the labor force and public life, children inhabited worlds that mirrored the one they had left.

Light describes the invention of junior republics as independent institutions and how they were later established at schools, on playgrounds, in housing projects, and on city streets, as public officials discovered children’s role playing helped their bottom line. The junior republic movement aligned with cutting-edge developmental psychology and educational philosophy, and complemented the era’s fascination with models and miniatures, shaping educational and recreational programs across the nation. Light’s account of how earlier generations distinguished “real life” from role playing reveals a hidden history of child labor in America and offers insights into the deep roots of such contemporary concepts as gamification, play labor, and virtuality.

interview at New Books Network
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin (Franc-Brossier) 1878-1942
Eastman Johnson - The Old Stage Coach
Eastman Johnson – The Old Stage Coach
Frederick Brown - Candidates for Girton 1884 play
Frederick Brown – Candidates for Girton 1884
Harry Brooker - Children at Play
Harry Brooker – Children at Play

DANCING AND SINGING

Nikolaos Gyzis (Greek, 1842 - 1901)
Nikolaos Gyzis (Greek, 1842 – 1901)
Richard Scarry’s Best Mother Goose Ever London Bridge game 1970
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin (Franc-Brossier) 1878-1942

FUN AT THE FAIR

John L. Wimbush (1854 – 1914)
John L. Wimbush (1854 – 1914)

TABLETOP GAMES

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHESS PLAYERS AND POKER PLAYERS

Chess players are strategic, constantly planning ahead and anticipating counter moves.

Poker players can still win with a weak hand so long as they raise the stakes.

Vladimir Putin is described as a poker player by the world’s top Russian chess player living in New York.

New Yorker magazine cover July 1973 Gerhard Richter
New Yorker magazine cover July 1973 Gerhard Richter
Sir William Orpen (Irish, 1878-1931) The Chess Players
Gustav Wintzel’s picture ‘The Chess Players,’ (1886)
Draughts illustration by Edmund Dulac
Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 – May 3, 1935) Checkers
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass Brigitte Bryan 1969
Thomas Faed - A Game of Draughts
Thomas Faed – A Game of Draughts

Types of board gamer:
– The one who can’t bear the stress
– The one who simply refuses to grasp the rules
– “Competitive Colin”
– The cheat
– Mr/Mrs Shouty
– The quiet genius
– The one who tries to keep everything jolly
– The one who can’t keep the dice on the bloody table

@SoVeryBritish
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHESS AND GO

Go is a game of complex strategy that exists in a closed system, much like the game of chess. The difference is that Go has many more possible paths of play and is consequently more complex than chess. In the narrative of the film, Thrombey’s genius is the genius of a master strategist. This is how he writes his novels, with their perfect internal structure, and this is how he masters his family, and maintains careful control over their machinations, including the ones they try to keep secret from him. Nobody can best Harlan at life because nobody can best Harlan at Go. In fact, Harlan is rather convinced that nobody can best him even in death. When presented with the inevitability of his death and the potential consequences for Marta, Harlan almost instantly constructs a complex plan that will, he believes, protect his friend.

Popular Culture and Theology, A Beautiful Pattern: The Aesthetics of Virtue in Knives Out
Jogo de Damas, by Abel Manta, 1927

SPORT

Our Jolly Holidays Put-together Book story by M. Helena Crofts pictures by Helen E. Ohrenschall 1928
Winslow Homer
Johan Mengels Culverhouse
Winslow Homer
Lady Cricketers – A Good Catch 1889
The English Lady Cricketers – Miss Stanley Batting
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin (Franc-Brossier) 1878-1942 badminton
Marie-Madeleine Dauphin (Franc-Brossier) 1878-1942 badminton
The Tabby-Fur Family written by Tracey May, illustrated by Hilda Boswell, published by R. A. Publishing Company, London, 1948

Honestly I’m not sure what’s going on here.

DIE WUNDERFAHRT (1929) Sándor Bortnyik
DIE WUNDERFAHRT (1929) Sándor Bortnyik
Harry Brooker - The Tug of War
Harry Brooker – The Tug of War
A Christmas Dance - The Lancers 1889
A Christmas Dance – The Lancers 1889
Members-of-a-Ladies-Hockey-Club-at-play
Members-of-a-Ladies-Hockey-Club-at-play

STRING GAMES (CAT’S CRADLE)

Kathleen Hale, Games for a wet camping holiday, ‘don’t touch the inside of the tent’ taken from her first Orlando title, A Camping Holiday 1938
Kathleen Hale, Games for a wet camping holiday, ‘don’t touch the inside of the tent’ taken from her first Orlando title, A Camping Holiday 1938

FOOD GAMES

Charles West Cope – Breakfast Time, Morning Games

HIDE AND SEEK

The Little People by Garth Williams (1912-1996) c1948 an unpublished illustration for Housekeeping Magazine
1952 Children’s Book Hide-Away Puppy Rand McNally
Edna Eicke
Marie-Madeleine FRENCH NOHAIN
HIDE AND SEEK PICTURES -1944 Samuel Lowe Busy Bee Book
Hairy Maclary and Zachary Quack playing Hide and Seek
Coming Ready Or not by Lolita Séchan, Camille Jourdy

SKIPPING

Marie-Madeleine FRENCH NOHAIN skipping rope
Marie-Madeleine FRENCH NOHAIN skipping rope
Vernon Thomas the skippers 1894

Header illustration: Sports Day Illustration Racey Helps (1913-1970)

CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)

On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.

Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:

1. Get a pet dog

2. Find a friend. Just one. Not too intense.

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