Sunday night, I did a little experiment with “giving”. I had played in the “Chess4Charity” event on
Oct. 19 in Vienna, VA and seem that the group was going to have a presence at
the “Giving Back” night at Tysons Corner Mall in northern VA Sunday night, Nov.
23. Washington Nationals baseball player
Ryan Zimmerman was to be present with the charity.
I found the concierge desk on the lower level, and
indeed in a ring there was a giant chessboard set up, and a ping pong
table. But then the game turned to
checkers. I was told that the Mall did
not have an index as to whether all the various charities were. You had to walk the entire Mall to find them
(which meets the self-interest of the Mall).
I never did find a table for “Chess4Charity” (link ) . I see that I covered this on the Issues blog Oct. 20).
I had brought a chess set and old mechanical clock,
and was ready to play. So I played my
MacIntosh MacBook today the “makeup game” and actually lost with White to an
Albin Counter Gambit. I’ll have to take
more time and care when playing the computer (which will change defenses every
game). (The computer uses the Stephen Hawking voice.) The computer was a proxy for Ryan, whom I
presume knows how to play chess as well as baseball. (I’ve often tweeted that the Nationals and
Redskins both [yes, would like a name change] should lean the game.) OK, I lost my game to Ryan Zimmerman. If I were a character in "South Park" I could lose a chess game to Brian Boitano,
Some of the charities were for rather personal causes
(like a last wish for a child), but one was for rescuing animals. I showed them, on my iPhone, the link for
Reid Ewing’s pet adoption cause (Facebook link)
. (See also, Feb 23, 2013 here. Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg said
recently (in the CNN film “Ivory Tower”)
that “nothing in life is free”. Wish
Reid’s films about “what in life is free” would reappear.)
The charities were spread out among all the entrances
on the lowest level. I even looked
upstairs at the Food Court, near the AMC Theaters, and spotted someone outside
Friday’s familiar to me from my past life in Minneapolis.
At First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC
on Sunday (followed by a catered Thanksgiving dinner) Rev. Deborah Cochrane
spoke about “Inheriting the Kingdom” (source Matthew 25:31-46). For all the importance of charity, that wasn’t
what this passage is about. Yet, all the
moral paradoxes in the gospels do seem to address the idea that in any
civilized culture, people will be “unequal” and will have to deal with it.
The “chess for charity” idea does sound like something
I should be able to do something about. Note also, that in front of Ted's Bulletin, Match Factory and Angelika Theaters in Merrifield, VA, there's a giant chess set that is missing two white knights.
Update: Nov. 28
The Washington Nationals on the MLB site report that Ryan Zimmerman (and his wife Heather) volunteered packing Thanksgiving dinners at Food and Friends, MLB video link here. Wikipedia reports that Ryan's mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995, so he had to take responsibility for others in family earlier in life than many people.
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