"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players"
I love playing chess. But don't worry: if you don't play chess--and not many do, especially these days in the U.S.--my comments are for you, too. And have no fear: This blog is not about teaching you how to play chess or urging you to do so. And it's not about defending geeks who just wanna have fun. No, I'd just like to share some random thoughts about how playing chess has given me insights into my role as a player on life's chessboard.
I taught myself at an early age how to play chess from reading a library book and began playing competitively in high school, where I became the club president and team captain. I joined the Peninsula Chess Club in Newport News that met on Thursday nights in the cafeteria of Warwick High School (where I would later teach and eat lunch for 22 years) and joined the United States Chess Federation, and for several years I played in rated tournaments at our club and other sites in Virgina, North Carolina, and New York, rising slowly to the level of an average to a-little-above-average Class B club player, below the Class A's, and our one Expert (we could boast of no Master). This was actual over-the-board play with three-dimensional chess sets and opponents we looked in the eyes and shook hands with. I've been a high school teacher for the past 36 years, and during most of that time have sponsored the chess club. Aside from my few games at the school chess club, all of my many other chess games these days are against often anonymous online players and robots.
The chess hero of my youth, of course, was Bobby Fischer, just five years my senior, a chess prodigy who won the U.S. Championship eight times, starting at age 14, once winning with a perfect score (no losses or draws, never duplicated), becoming the world's youngest Grandmaster at 15 1/2, and by the 1970s, the most dominant player in the world, beating a swarm of Russian greats who had tried to gang up on him, achieving his pinnacle of success as he was crowned world champion in 1972, the only American world chess champion of modern times, although Paul Morphy of New Orleans was recognized as the world's best player and unofficial champion in 1859. Unfortunately, like Paul Morphy before him, the rest of Fischer's life after reaching the top was a sad and tragic.
Chess is a board game played on an 8 x 8 grid of alternating light-and-dark shaded squares (same as a checkerboard); each side, White or Black, has 16 pieces, 6 different types with varying strengths and movement-capture capabilities. The King is said to be "checked" when attacked and "checkmated" (the object of the game) when not only attacked but also unable to escape what would be its capture on the following move. However, the King is always spared such an indignity. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw including a "stalemate," which occurs if a King is not in check but obligated to move although any move would place it in check, sort of a paradoxical double jeopardy.
All of this may sound complicated to a someone who doesn't play chess, but learning how the pieces move and capture is easy, something most children can quickly accomplish, and the remaining rules are not difficult to understand.
Playing chess involves concentration, focus, planning ahead, moving, diagnosing, attacking, counter-attacking, risk-taking, capturing, retreating, problem solving, waiting, coordinating and manipulating forces of various strengths in time, space, and sequence--all for the common purpose of bringing a single task to a successful conclusion.
Yes, as Shakespeare tells us in "As You Like It," "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." The "chess game" of our life is competitive, requiring all these skills throughout its different phases, whether competing in sports, earning grades, getting hired, earning, saving, and spending money, fighting creditors, courting lovers, marrying wrong, raising children, divorcing, remarrying right, grand parenting, parenting adult children who return to the nest, retiring and dying. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes we call it even. Sometimes dying will take care of itself, and it can happen any time as suddenly as a two-move checkmate.
Shakespeare tells in the same speech that as we act on life's stage, we have our "exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages": infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, old man, and second childhood. I'm definitely in the "old man" phase, I fear, and not looking forward to a "second childhood." But I will continue to fight the fight, drawing upon the skills I've developed over the years playing chess. Each chess game is a brief "mini-life" of its own whereas we go through our one allotted role on life's stage in slow motion. If I get another life after this and can retain these chess playing skills, maybe I'll do better the next time out. I hope so.
This is the truth as I see it, and you got it from "Tom Stroup's Blog, "Straight Up"!
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
This is my first very post from my very first blog! Wow!
I've been thinking about blogging for some time now and have viewed a few from my friends such as that of former student Mike Bazemore, a very bright and funny guy, whom I admire and highly recommend: http://intothedeepwater.blogspot.com/
I have been a high school English teacher in Newport News for the past 36 years. When I recently set up a Facebook account, something magical occurred right away. I had often wondered over the years about many of the 5000+ students I've taught, last seeing them usually when they were 17 or 18, and never seeing or hearing from them again, except for a few. Were they alive or dead? What type of lives had they had since high school? Happy? Unhappy? How did they now regard me and high school? Well, as a result of FB, I have been connecting with many of them, some now in their 50's with grandchildren. I get to see their pictures, hear about their lives, see how they look today, and how they've changed or not over the years.
I have often wondered whether I made a positive impact on them or not, especially since many people today speak so disparagingly of their high school experience, or so it seems. However, I've been getting tremendous validation from many students who are telling me that, yes, they appreciated me and, yes, I did make a positive difference.
I remember as a child watching one of the original episodes of "The Twilight Zone," the one titled "The Changing of the Guard," about an old English teacher (Donald Pleasence) who has doubts at the end of his career, as I have had. Ghosts of some of his deceased students appear to him and give him the validation he needs so that he can retire and have peace of mind that what he did was worthwhile and was greatly appreciated. I was only 12 when I first saw it, and I just recently viewed it again online at Comcast, realizing now that way back then it was showing me a peek of my future. I wish Rod Serling were still alive so that I could share this with him. I think he'd like that and be amazed of the impact "TZ" has had on millions of fans.
One former student, Tim Fasano, who goes all the way back to 1974 when I first started teaching, just got in touch with me via FB, and now we are playing chess again as we did when I was sponsoring the chess club then; he was also active in the plays I directed as head of drama, "Dark of the Moon" and "Rebel Without a Cause." He's leading an fascinating life that includes transportation work, blogs, and field work in the Florida swamps as he seeks to document evidence of a "bigfoot" type creature there. I have also got in touch with his twin brother Tom Fasano, who's an English teacher himself out in California, who recently published a book on the early poetry of Robert Frost, which was an Amazon.com best seller among poetry books. I hate it when I hear someone say, "Those who can't, teach." Tom can and does, and his children are also blessed to have him as a dedicated teacher.
Tim and I have just begun a correspondence chess game (up to 3 days per move). I am reminded of how many years ago I was an active postal chess player and at times had over a dozen games in progress all over the world. We postal players would send our moves on post cards and had 3 days upon receipt of a move to get our reply back in the mail. A game then would typically take 3 months to about 2 years to complete. We had to be patient!
I discovered at the time that one of my postal opponents was Jill Grenzer of Baltimore, "age 6 1/2 and I will be 7 in 2 months." I suspect her father, an MD, assisted her some with her moves, although I couldn't prove it. Jill and I played two games at once: she amazingly won one, but we never finished the other, if I remember correctly.And I actually got to meet her when the family vacationed at Colonial Williamsburg. Aside from her extraordinary chess ability, she seemed to a normal little girl who lived Barbie dolls, whom she spoke of in notes on post cards with her chess moves. I knew of a place here that custom made wooden bedroom furniture just to Barbie's scale. I had some made that I gave to her as a birthday present and she was delighted. That too, was over 30 years ago. Maybe someday our paths will cross again.
Of course, today I can go online to a game site and play chess games in real time, sometimes blitz games (games with short time limits), 5 or 1o minutes, total. Those games are like mental workouts and don't rise to the level of sophistication the slower games can evoke, which many players do not want to commit to, it seems, in today's fast-paced world, one that includes 24/7 texting, sending/receiving email, surfing the net , grooving to IPOD tunes, playing video games, and driving at dangerously high speeds on the freeway, all at the same time!
This is what summer is for me, a time of reflection, a chance to look back, connect, and be amazed about the times of our lives and how they all go by so quickly, as Emily observes at the end of "Our Town," another play I once directed. Summer for teachers--at least for me--is a sort of limbo as we purge our sins and guilt, recharge our batteries, and hope we'll have enough juice to carry that charge to the end of the next school year, and, I hope, do a better job of not mixing the metaphors!
Best Wishes Until Next Time,
Tom Stroup
I've been thinking about blogging for some time now and have viewed a few from my friends such as that of former student Mike Bazemore, a very bright and funny guy, whom I admire and highly recommend: http://intothedeepwater.blogspot.com/
I have been a high school English teacher in Newport News for the past 36 years. When I recently set up a Facebook account, something magical occurred right away. I had often wondered over the years about many of the 5000+ students I've taught, last seeing them usually when they were 17 or 18, and never seeing or hearing from them again, except for a few. Were they alive or dead? What type of lives had they had since high school? Happy? Unhappy? How did they now regard me and high school? Well, as a result of FB, I have been connecting with many of them, some now in their 50's with grandchildren. I get to see their pictures, hear about their lives, see how they look today, and how they've changed or not over the years.
I have often wondered whether I made a positive impact on them or not, especially since many people today speak so disparagingly of their high school experience, or so it seems. However, I've been getting tremendous validation from many students who are telling me that, yes, they appreciated me and, yes, I did make a positive difference.
I remember as a child watching one of the original episodes of "The Twilight Zone," the one titled "The Changing of the Guard," about an old English teacher (Donald Pleasence) who has doubts at the end of his career, as I have had. Ghosts of some of his deceased students appear to him and give him the validation he needs so that he can retire and have peace of mind that what he did was worthwhile and was greatly appreciated. I was only 12 when I first saw it, and I just recently viewed it again online at Comcast, realizing now that way back then it was showing me a peek of my future. I wish Rod Serling were still alive so that I could share this with him. I think he'd like that and be amazed of the impact "TZ" has had on millions of fans.
One former student, Tim Fasano, who goes all the way back to 1974 when I first started teaching, just got in touch with me via FB, and now we are playing chess again as we did when I was sponsoring the chess club then; he was also active in the plays I directed as head of drama, "Dark of the Moon" and "Rebel Without a Cause." He's leading an fascinating life that includes transportation work, blogs, and field work in the Florida swamps as he seeks to document evidence of a "bigfoot" type creature there. I have also got in touch with his twin brother Tom Fasano, who's an English teacher himself out in California, who recently published a book on the early poetry of Robert Frost, which was an Amazon.com best seller among poetry books. I hate it when I hear someone say, "Those who can't, teach." Tom can and does, and his children are also blessed to have him as a dedicated teacher.
Tim and I have just begun a correspondence chess game (up to 3 days per move). I am reminded of how many years ago I was an active postal chess player and at times had over a dozen games in progress all over the world. We postal players would send our moves on post cards and had 3 days upon receipt of a move to get our reply back in the mail. A game then would typically take 3 months to about 2 years to complete. We had to be patient!
I discovered at the time that one of my postal opponents was Jill Grenzer of Baltimore, "age 6 1/2 and I will be 7 in 2 months." I suspect her father, an MD, assisted her some with her moves, although I couldn't prove it. Jill and I played two games at once: she amazingly won one, but we never finished the other, if I remember correctly.And I actually got to meet her when the family vacationed at Colonial Williamsburg. Aside from her extraordinary chess ability, she seemed to a normal little girl who lived Barbie dolls, whom she spoke of in notes on post cards with her chess moves. I knew of a place here that custom made wooden bedroom furniture just to Barbie's scale. I had some made that I gave to her as a birthday present and she was delighted. That too, was over 30 years ago. Maybe someday our paths will cross again.
Of course, today I can go online to a game site and play chess games in real time, sometimes blitz games (games with short time limits), 5 or 1o minutes, total. Those games are like mental workouts and don't rise to the level of sophistication the slower games can evoke, which many players do not want to commit to, it seems, in today's fast-paced world, one that includes 24/7 texting, sending/receiving email, surfing the net , grooving to IPOD tunes, playing video games, and driving at dangerously high speeds on the freeway, all at the same time!
This is what summer is for me, a time of reflection, a chance to look back, connect, and be amazed about the times of our lives and how they all go by so quickly, as Emily observes at the end of "Our Town," another play I once directed. Summer for teachers--at least for me--is a sort of limbo as we purge our sins and guilt, recharge our batteries, and hope we'll have enough juice to carry that charge to the end of the next school year, and, I hope, do a better job of not mixing the metaphors!
Best Wishes Until Next Time,
Tom Stroup
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