Practically the Olympics

In my first year of high school, the girls’ basketball coach took one look at my height and informed me I was going out for basketball. Practices happened every morning at 6:30—this teenager’s definition of insanity. I lasted four days.

Fast-forward fifty years and I finally have an answer to the age-old question, “What has basketball ever done for me?” This summer, basketball brought my daughter and her family to Manitoba for an extended visit and for the largest sporting event ever hosted in Winnipeg, the 2023 World Police and Fire Games, held July 28 through August 6. According to their website, the World Police and Fire Games is “a biennial Olympic-style competition with more than 8,500 athletes representing law enforcement, firefighters, and police officers from more than 50 countries across the world. These athletes compete in more than 60 unique sports.” My favorite son-in-law plays basketball with the Calgary Police.

We arrived early enough on the U of M campus to catch the end of a women’s game between the Philippines and Brazil. I loved the energized atmosphere of all the different languages and skin tones on the court and in the stands. At our son-in-law’s first game, against the Hong Kong Customs team, eight of the spectators’ seats were taken by our family. My kids, knowing my usual indifference to sports, seemed as entertained by my enthusiasm as by the game itself. It makes a difference when someone you love is on the court, right? Besides, it was clear from the start that our team would be the underdogs. Seven players, most of them forty or older, up against eight well-toned warriors who looked like they might be missing their college Algebra class. Our guys gave it their sweatiest best, though, and the game ended with a score of 61-39 for Hong Kong, the exchange of small gifts between players, and one mother-in-law hoarse from cheering.

If you look up the history of basketball, most sources will tell you it’s an American game invented in 1891 by James Naismith at the YMCA International Training School (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts. What most sources don’t tell you is that Naismith was a Canadian. Dr. James Naismith, physical educator, author, inventor, chaplain, and physician was born in 1861 in Almonte, Ontario. As an instructor at the school, he responded to the need for an indoor winter recreational activity that could be easily learned. Naismith wanted to develop a game that emphasized skill instead of force. The result was a team sport in which the object was to score by throwing a large ball into a peach basket placed about ten feet above the floor. Naismith also defined 13 basic rules, including prohibitions against running with the ball. Also outlawed in basketball are shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking in any way. From Springfield, basketball spread throughout the world and it became an official Olympic men’s competition in 1936.

Naismith worked and lived in Springfield for 41 years until his death in 1939 in Lawrence, Kansas. He became the first member of the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959 and was posthumously inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame. In 2010, his original hand-written rules for the sport of basketball were sold at auction for $4.3 million, a sports memorabilia record. And finally, in August of 2023, basketball made it into Terrie Todd’s “Out of My Mind” blog, a world record of Olympic proportions.

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 4

Time for an update on the ol’ list of 40 things.

We actually took an unexpected, last minute trip to South Dakota to spend Easter weekend with Jon’s mom as well as seeing some extended family and friends who have sort of become family ever since Jon’s mom married our friend’s dad. It’s complicated. We took our grandson Allistar, age 7, with us. He was a real little champ and a joy to have along. Though this trip wasn’t on our list, it did offer some opportunities to add to our list of 40 different places to kiss, so we added Grandma’s house, our friends’ house, the U.S./Canadian border, and beneath the world’s largest buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota. (Which, I argue, is a bison, not a true buffalo. In any case, it was built the same year I was born and it’s still standing strong. But I digress.) Allistar was a great sport to take a picture of us kissing and he did a pretty good job, wouldn’t you agree?

The jigsaw puzzle remains unfinished on our dining table and we continue to slog through Black Beauty at a first-grader’s pace. I have my theories about that book, but will save them for after we’re actually done reading it.

                                                                                                               

The one thing on our list we’ve actually checked off since my last post was:

#20. Eat at a Revolving Restaurant. I’d always wanted to visit the open-again, closed-again, open-again Prairie 360 Restaurant above Fort Garry Place in Winnipeg, so had placed it on our list. Lucky for us, it’s currently open again. Since we had an appointment nearby this past week, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a reservation. It was terrific! You ride up to the 28^th floor in a glass elevator, then board a second elevator to the 30^th floor.

The service and food were excellent (and yes, pricey, but we knew that going in.) The view was stunningly gorgeous, and we thoroughly enjoyed the complete circle we made as the sunshine transformed to twilight. Viewing familiar buildings from a decidedly unfamiliar vantage point reminded me that a fresh perspective can change everything! Life is not always what it seems from our every-day, limited, earth-bound view. Something to remember when days seem too difficult or too dull. Ask God what he sees, and see what he shows you!

The closer building is Union Station, mentioned in my books Maggie's War and Bleak Landing. The odd-shaped one is the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is also on our 40s list.

I wish we'd had the waiter take this when there was a better view behind us.

Of course, the experience provided us another new place to kiss (in the elevator) and our kissing list is now up to 21—more than halfway there, and the year isn’t half over yet. I’d say we’re doing all right in the smooching department. Now if we could just remember to kiss a little more often at home.

Until next time…

Oh, the Pressure! Part 4

If you’re wondering what happened to Parts 1, 2, and 3, they appeared on this blog a year ago when I subjected myself to the pressure of an eight-hour playwriting competition at Femfest in Winnipeg. The event turned into a continuing saga when my resulting script, although not chosen as the winner, was eventually selected to be expanded to an hour and granted a public reading with professional cast and director at this year’s Femfest. With the assistance of dramaturge Ellen Peterson, I finished the final script in July and am pleased to announce that Irony: A Tragic Comedy about Life and Death will be performed at the Asper Centre for Theatre, 400 Colony Street, at 9:00 pm on Monday, September 14. You can find more details about the festival and how to get tickets at www.sarasvati.ca  

Here’s the premise of the play: when Judy develops a lung condition, she becomes convinced she has cancer and proceeds to make everyone else’s life as miserable as humanly possible. An ironic twist brings her and those she loves to a new appreciation of the meaning of irony.

Meanwhile, I applied to the Bake-Off play-writing competition again this year and was very surprised to win one of the five spots, especially since they’ve added a cash prize to the event! Five hundred bucks sure would help this grandma buy a plane ticket for Calgary to snuggle my new grandson when he arrives next month!

Here’s how this “Bake-Off” contest works. I show up, along with the four other contestants, at the theatre by 10:00 a.m. this Friday. We’ll be told what three random ingredients our script must include, then we’ll have until 7:00 p.m. to email our completed ten-minute script. We’re allowed to be thinking about possible scenarios ahead of time (how could they stop us?), but the actual writing must be “from scratch.”

So. I’m asking you, my readers, to help me out here. I’ve thought of a couple of scenarios that might make an entertaining story. Which do you like? 

First idea: four generations of women are in the car riding to an event together: two bickering sisters in their 50’s, their nearly deaf 80-year old mother, and one nervous daughter with a newborn in a car seat. Maybe they get a flat tire or some other kind of car trouble. 

Second idea: the scene opens with two couples crawling onto the stage. Their cruise ship has capsized and they’ve washed up on an uncharted island. As the play unfolds, we learn that the wife from one couple and the husband from the other were planning an affair before tragedy struck.

Of course, it’s possible that the required “ingredients” will not lend themselves to either of these scenarios and I’ll need to dream up something else. Do you have a better idea? Comment by Friday morning and your idea just might end up on stage! 

You can see the finished product (along with the other four plays) the same night as “Irony” is presented, and at the same place. The Bake-Off starts at 7:00, and tickets for that event sell out quickly. You can get yours at a name-your-own-price deal on the aforementioned website. The audience votes on the winner so, in theory, filling the theatre with one’s own friends should improve one’s chances. 

What sort of pressure are you choosing to subject yourself to this week? Remember: no pressure, no diamonds.