Christopher Rush

You saw what I did there, didn’t you: the ol’ switcheroo.  It started out like a reference to that song, fitting enough since we are about to embark on summer vacation 2015 (as of this writing), but then it became an American Civil War reference.  Pretty clever, if I may say so myself.

As you may recall from earlier issues this season, we (my family) had a very enjoyable Summer 2014.  We say that with some hesitancy, of course, since so many terrible things went on in the world, thanks to real-life Armies of Darkness marching around doing horrible, horrible things.  Perhaps some day the Forces of Light will get around to doing something about them — but we don’t want to be cynical.  Our Death to Cynicism 2015 Campaign is rolling along — how’s it going for you?  Perhaps this summer will allow you time to reflect and focus on purposefully extirpating cynicism from your, though we know wholeheartedly it can only be done by the power of God — it’s certainly not something we can just work out of ourselves, no offense to the Benjamin Franklin fans out there.

But as we were saying, we are going to do our best to make Summer 2015 at least as good as Summer 2014.  We may even fix our central air conditioning this year.  It was our fault for buying a system with broken coils and no Freon in the first place, so it makes since we should pay for something under warranty.  Life is strange some times, but you just have to press on and put cynicism behind you.  We have some plans to make 2015 different from 2014 (you can’t just hope it happens, you have to plan for them).  We’ll probably get back to the library, work on our math and reading skills (mine, too), maybe even head on up to the Gardens a few times, especially before those other kids get out of school (no offense to them).  We’ll probably schedule our summer a bit more this year, but since form and structure never hinder creativity only enhance it, no doubt that will only enhance the experience of the summer as well.  If all goes according to general plans, I’ll even be back home for my birthday for the first time in quite a while (I’m rarely back there for my birthdays, as you may recall).

In the meantime, we are bringing back Historical Gaming for the coming school year, which always seems like a good idea three months before it starts happening.  We have set aside most of our summer Wednesdays to have the kids come over and learn how to play these sorts of wargames (or conflict simulations, if you prefer).  We’ll see how that works out, won’t we.  It’s all part of another of my finely-tuned cosmic plans of helping other individuals who have no desire to be helped.  Perhaps the guise of gaming will be an avenue in which the assistance will be successfully transferred, desired or not.  Sometimes you have to be sneaky.

We’ll also play other sorts of fun games, too: my brother got me Marvel Legendary for an early birthday present this year, and despite my initial reservations about it I am really enjoying it.  I’m hoping to get some expansions for my real birthday coming up.  I’m still not sold on Marvel Dicemasters, yet, but that’s okay — I don’t need all the games in the world.  We’ll try to get some good ol’ Civilization and Battlestar Galactica in as well, perhaps even some Arkham Horror if things really go swimmingly.  On our visit back home, my brother has some plans to play some other things I’ve never played yet, which will be nice.  Ideally we’ll get some Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and perhaps some Mage Wars in.  Maybe we’ll all have another go at Here I Stand, if I can remember to pack it.

I did put some other classics on my birthday list: Cosmic Encounter (probably the only genuine “classic” on the list), Twilight Struggle, Summoner Wars, and Jamaica.  I put more wargames on the list, of course, though I disguised them under “Things I Need for School.”  We’ll see how that goes.  Some people I know are not as susceptible to sneakiness as others.  I already got Forbidden Desert, but since it was for my birthday and was accidentally shipped to my house, my mom says I can’t play it until my actual birthday.  That’s fine.  I can wait.  It’s nice to have that, though, since that will be one I can play with the kids sooner than a lot of the other games on the list or already in the collection (though Julia usually wins when we play Carcassonne).

It’s been interesting to get back into more family-style board games.  We are indeed in a 2^nd Golden Age of Boardgaming.  Of course, the resurgence in popularity of boardgames has its downside, as with all avenues of popular culture (people still write bad books that somehow get published, people still make bad music that also somehow still gets produced).  This is neither the time nor place to weigh in on Kickstarter, though it does at times seem like the American Idol version of game design: a modern-day get-rich-quick sort of scheme without going through the tried-and-true avenues of design and distribution — but I could be totally wrong.  It’s a new day, after all.  Tough times demand tough hearts, as we know.  Things aren’t the way they used to be, and that’s not all bad.  As with everything else, we can delight in the positives, overlook or excoriate (or improve) the negatives, and move on with life, always further up and further in.

I have written elsewhere of my general plans for what I want to read this summer, though if I am going to be spending so much time on the road, brushing on reading and writing skills, “going to Busch” (as the kids say), reading and preparing for and playing games, playing in the yard and going to parks, who knows if I’ll have a lot of time for reading books.  People expect you to read books, though, as an English teacher, and for no sensible reason they get deeply offended and antagonistic when you admit (freely and without shame, unlike their reactions) you haven’t read a book they have read.  This happened the other day in class.  I calmly reminded them their mathematic teacher hasn’t counted all the numbers in the universe, so why should I be expected to read all the books in the universe?  That quieted them.

Even so, I certainly do want to get some good books read.  I definitely need to re-cleanse my reading palate after having read yet another book by Mark Noll and another by John Eldredge (I know, I know), things I vowed I would never do again.  But they happened, and here we are.  It made me tougher, as they say.

I still have those long-term books hanging around, gathering too much dust:

• Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
• The Mirror and the Lamp, M.H. Abrams
• Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Browne and Keeley
• The Demon Princes, Jack Vance
• The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins
• Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Ludwig von Mises

And here you thought I just read Star Wars books.  Though, since I haven’t finished those books yet, you could accurately so I have been mostly reading just Star Wars books.  Ever ambitious, completely unsatisfied with already having too much planned and too much to do, I have also loosely committed to reading other things as well:

• The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman (you know me and Tuchman)
• The Courtship of Princess Leia, Dave Wolverton (I’m not going to stop reading Star Wars or Star Trek novels just because)
• Centennial, James A. Michener
• Guards! Guards!, Sir Terry Pratchett (much missed)
• The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
• The usual generic commitment to keep going with Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men and New Mutants (this will be the year, I promise)
• The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, Jan Potocki
• The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan (might as well get going on that)
• Prisoner’s Base, Rex Stout (I say this like it will be the only one I’ll do — you know Nero Wolfe stories are like Pringles™)
• Histories of Thucydides and Herodotus (got to keep going with the Great Books of the Western World — one volume a year will not be a fast enough pace if I want to finish them before my 80^th birthday)

Not bad for a general plan.  Could be worse.  I could have to get a job over the summer.  Next year.  As Ivanova says, “no boom today.  Boom tomorrow.”

Well, friends, we made it through another season.  Our comeback year is at an end.  Thanks to the alumni for making this issue so diverse and exciting.  Thanks, too, to the current students and recent graduates who have contributed throughout the year in this year of More Better Different.  Next year, as F. Scott says, “we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.…  And one fine morning —”

Have a great Summer 2015, Friends!