Jen Shahade at The Washington Post: "Five Myths About Chess"

Hola darlings!  Hope you are all staying warm and safe.  it's getting brisker and colder by the day here, soon I'll be inside nearly full-time except for my daily 30 minute exercise outdoors doing - whatever - just moving and breathing trying to stay warm, for emotional health sessions (they help keep me in physical as well as emotional/mental health shape).

I've got a handful of articles to post links to about Netflix's "The Queen's Gambit," based on the novel by Walter Tevis that I promise to post soon, mostly good stuff from The New York Times.  Today up popped this article by WGM Jen Shahade at WaPo.

Five Myths About Chess

By Jennifer Shahade
November 20, 2020

Chess is having a moment. Chess is also having a decade. The game has been on an upward trajectory in pop culture ever since the charismatic Magnus Carlsen, who has even worked as a model, won the World Chess Championship in 2013. That same year, Congress declared St. Louis the country’s “chess capital.” Now Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” has ratcheted interest up to new heights. As millions of converts download chess apps and buy boards, it’s time to dispel a few myths about this ancient game.

Myth No. 1.  Chess is Dull and Unsexy. [My comment: HA!]

"Does it seem to you like there just isn’t enough televised chess on these days?” David Letterman joked sarcastically in 1989. More recently, coverage of “The Queen’s Gambit” has expressed doubt about the visual and dramatic appeal of the game. Vanity Fair said that, to most people, the game seems “dull and buttoned-up.” And the Cut cried, “The Sexiest Show on Television Is About . . . Chess?"

The Netflix series plays up the royal game’s glamorous side and, yes, its sensual side. But the connection between chess and sex goes back centuries. Historian Marilyn Yalom writes that medieval artists — in manuscript illustrations, tapestries and stained-glass windows, among other art forms — treated the game as synonymous with seduction: “A chess scene between a man and a woman signified romance.” Yalom also describes a work of fiction from around 1400, called “The Book of Erotic Chess,” in which “each move on the board represented a decisive moment in the game of love” between the characters.

Today’s international chess competitions often feature just one game a day, in the midafternoon — leaving players with plenty of time to connect at drinks, long dinners and parties. Some enthusiasts have even compiled lists of the greatest “chess couples” to have “found romance over the 64 squares,” and who have a combined rating of over 5000 from the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

Myth No. 2.  It takes genius to win at chess. [My comment:  It doesn't take genius, but it does take rhythm and being a good dancer helps a great deal.  And yes, I know this probably won't make sense to male players, HA!]

The public often associates chess with intelligence — and chess champions with preternatural brilliance. In the second episode of “The Queen’s Gambit,” a librarian tells the protagonist, Beth Harmon, that a grandmaster is a “genius player.” A Wired article about chess in pop culture cited the joy of “watching genius at work.” In 2009, Time asked Magnus Carlsen how he dealt with people “assuming you are 40,000 times more intelligent” than average: “You’re clearly not a normal intellect,” the interviewer declared.

Carlsen, the highest-rated grandmaster in history, has reiterated many times that he considers himself “a normal person.” In an interview with Rainn Wilson in 2013, he said that the first sentence of his autobiography would be: “I am not a genius.” What differentiated him from his competitors, he explained, was commitment; he didn’t treat chess as a “normal hobby."

FIDE recognizes more than 1,700 grandmasters — and what they have in common is hard work. Chess playing is a skill more than a fixed trait; excellence takes dedication, time and a love for the process. Along with practice games and tournaments, and individual and group coaching sessions, a serious chess training regimen often includes the study of top players’ games, opening strategies, endgames and checkmating patterns. Serious players also use computers to deeply analyze their own games.

Myth No. 3.  Strong chess players see dozens of moves ahead. [My comment:  Oh brother.  Just stay off of drugs and booze before playing and let your instincts take over.  Unlike the fictional Beth Harmon, you really are not at your best when you're drug or alcohol hung-over.]

It’s an old cliche that the best players plot long lines of future moves. In a 2010 profile, Time magazine described Carlsen’s “beautiful mind” and how he “often calculates 20 moves ahead.” A recent ESPN story about an 8-year-old chess prodigy similarly marveled at his “ability to think 20 moves ahead."

In fact, great chess players use a combination of strategic intuition, pattern recognition and calculation to decide their moves; intuition alone is plenty to beat much weaker players. Chess players do think deeply about a position and its possible outcomes. But they look sideways as much as straight ahead, scanning the board to see any possible moves they are missing in their current position. If I look ahead three moves but check five different counters, that’s more total moves than looking down a 10-move tunnel. It’s much more useful, too: If you miss your opponent’s “reply” in the middle of your 10-move line, all the energy you spent looking beyond your error is wasted. Man plans, God laughs — or as we say in chess, “Long variation, wrong variation."

Myth No. 4.  Deep Blue's win in 1997 meant the end of chess.  [My comment:  Give me a computer that looks and talks and moves like Don Johnson ("Miami Vice") in his hey-day and then we'll talk, but only if Phil Collins' iconic "In The Air Tonight" is playing in the background...  I ask you, what woman in her not so right mind would not want to sit across the board from such a gorgeous hunk of male and - well, never mind.]

Don Johnson color art                 

"What would it really mean if Deep Blue won?”  

Newsweek asked before the match between Garry Kasparov and IBM’s computer engine: “Some people have argued whether chess would be diminished by this upheaval.” I got a chance to visit the match in New York; I remember the audience’s simultaneous horror and awe at Kasparov’s loss — and the laments that the computer had “solved” chess. More recently, New Scientist claimed that computers had been “ruining” chess ever since Deep Blue and that AI was “conquering” the game.

It’s true that, in time, the top computers dismantled the top humans so easily it was no longer competitive enough to be fun, and the epic man vs. machine matches were discontinued. But the death knell was premature. The game’s popularity has soared, as players and viewers find new ways to connect online. According to the founder of Chess.com, the site’s traffic has grown up to 50-percent each year since its founding in 2007; it had a huge spike in registrations and site use in 2020, due to the pandemic and “The Queen’s Gambit.” And where, in 2015, a few dozen people watched streams of chess on Twitch at any given time, today the average viewership is over 4,000, according to Fast Company.

At any rate, chess has not been “solved.” Even the top computers don’t know the best sequence of moves in every position — they just play enough fantastic moves (and very few bad ones) that they beat humans over and over. Recent progress in artificial intelligence shows just how much more there is to explore: In 2018, Google’s AlphaZero achieved new levels of greatness when it defeated Stockfish, a traditional computer chess program, entrancing the chess world with sacrifices and pawn storms.

Myth No. 5.  The King is the most important piece in chess.  [My comment:  You don't want to ask Donald Trump that question right now...  Ask Philidor - he knows.]

Teachers and how-to guides often reiterate that, while the queen is the most powerful piece, the king is the most important — a principle repeated in online chess tutorials and enshrined on Wikipedia.

But eight foot-soldiers have something to say about that. The mighty pawn, the only piece that captures differently than it moves, trudges ahead one step at a time. Since it’s the only piece that cannot move backward, every push is final. Pawns form the bones of the game: Play would be a mushy mess without them.

Pawn power was sent to the lab for study when, this year, Alpha Zero played against itself in nine variations on chess. Five of the variants tweaked the rules governing pawns. In torpedo chess, in which pawns can move two squares at a time, tactical volatility was hugely increased. Another variant, in which pawns moved backward, led to fewer decisive games, since that rule allowed for the reversal of strategic errors. Change the pawn, and you shake the very essence of the game. In the words of 18th-century French chess champion Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, “The pawns are the soul of chess."

Jennifer Shahade is a chess champion, author, poker player and Women’s Program Director at U.S. Chess. (c) The Washington Post. (Excluding the Don Johnson photo).  

The Lion in the Clouds

 Hola!  I just had to take a little bit of time out of these incredibly busy days to post this photograph I saw in an article by one grandmother who will NOT be attending a family get-together Thanksgiving dinner this year out of fear of COVID-19.  One of her granddaughters assured her that they will be together soon, one day.

This photograph of what I call "The Lion in the Clouds" came from this opinion article in the New York Times on November 19, 2020.  It was captioned "Alvaro Dominguez; photographs by Getty Images."  Is it real?  Is it fake?  I don't know.  I just thought it was beautiful and as I'm a Leo, born under the astrological sign of the Lion, it holds special meaning for me.

What child - and any adult whose inner child is still alive and kicking and talking to you constantly - has not looked at the clouds and seen all sorts of things in them?  I've seen individual horses and  galloping herds of horses.  I've seen grand figures that I call "Angels" playing what appears to be trumpets.  I've seen buffalo, and an alligator, and ships with masts from the old days.  I've also seen lots and lots of "faces" or what might be faces, with a little imagination :)

He's so beautiful!  And to me, Leo the Lion symbolizes hope.  And indeed, we have reasons to have hope for our future, not too far off, although it seems every day is like a thousand years, sometimes.  Today Pfizer applied for an emergency approval to release it's COVID-19 vaccine which completed trials have shown is between 94-95% effective.  Not far behind is a vaccine from Moderna.  And other vaccines are on the horizon.

If Pfizer's vaccine is approved, there are hurdles that will need to be overcome to properly distribute it across the country, including capability to maintain subzero temperatures to keep the vaccine viable for extended periods of time.  Distribution will go first to medical personnel and first responders, which is only right.  These are our modern-day heroines and heroes, who have worked endlessly throughout the past nine months and counting to treat and save as many Americans from COVID-19 as possible.  Next will be people like me, above age 65 (when the hell did that happen?) and with threatening underlying health conditions.  But before I go for a vaccination, I want to make sure my siblings who are over age 65 get theirs first.  As the oldest in the family, that's my responsibility.  

So, hang on tight.  We're all tired of this, we're all exhausted and want to get back to normal.  But wishing won't make it so.  We have to continue to keep ourselves safe, so that those with whom we come into contact with will be safe, too.  Six months - I know it sounds like a lifetime right now but trust me, from my viewpoint it's a couple blinks of my eyes.  Hang in there, stay safe.  Keep your loved ones and friends safe.  That means no Thanksgiving other than virtual and only celebrating with those who live with you.  I live by myself so I'll be doing virtual Thanksgiving this year.  No Christmas family luncheon at Meyer's Restaurant this year.  But how much sweeter it will be in 2021 to be able to have these gatherings once again.

Keep your eyes on the prize, people.  Eyes on the prize.  And look into the clouds and find your Lion.

The Goddess and the Green Man, Samhain, the Pleiades and the Four Quarter Days

 Hola darlings!  Today is Hallowe'en.  Because of the pandemic, there is no trick or treat this year in my city, and no nighttime neighborhood children will be out in their costumes going door to door as my subdivision normally hosts.  In a way I'm relieved, because it's  windy out there today, and I can imagine it will be very cold again tonight.  When I got up this morning there was a heavy frost on most everything and the water in the bird bath was frozen.  Brrrrrrr! 

Yesterday morning I received Katherine Neville's Newsletter  October 30, 2020 "Time Out" Newsletter, which she titled "Three Days Out of Time."  It was brief but fascinating; she explained how Hallowe'en arose out of an ancient Celtic celebration called Samhain.  I was shocked to discover that the word is pronounced "sow-win."  Why on earth is it spelled like it is?!?

As I mentioned long ago, in my 2009 Hallowe'en Newsletter: tomorrow--beginning at Sunset on October 31--we enter a period of Time that resembles pushing the "pause" button on a video or musical recording:

"In the ancient Celtic calendar, so it is said, All Hallows Eve (which begins at sunset on October 31) marks the end of the old year, and the new year doesn’t begin until dawn on November 3. The intervening days (All Souls and All Saints days in the Christian calendar) are days outside of Time, days when we can celebrate what happened in the past and discover what is about to happen in the future."

Neville, one of my favorite authors, wrote the incredible novel "The Eight," a book that I can easily say changed my life in ways I never would have dreamed possible.  I could not recall ever having read or heard that particular description of what Samhain is about.  And, as she usually does in her always too short newsletters, Neville wrote just enough to intrigue me; I went digging around on the internet a bit to get more information.

I found the idea of taking a "pause" or "time out" to think about the past and contemplate the future is just what I need right now, a necessary and welcome break.  I could not help but ponder the past four years, during which I dedicated my efforts, my skills and my money to take Wisconsin back, one office at a time. from what I believe to be destructive political forces and restore our state to the great state it was before 2010.  I also worked to advance the same cause in elections around the United States.  On November 3, 2020, three days away - Federal and State election day for us, those "three days out of time" will wane, and early voting tallies after the polls close may reveal what direction the United States will take for the next four years - our future.  I could not have imagined that what many consider one of the most consequential elections would take place in my lifetime.  But here we are.

I discovered an interesting website called the Goddess and the Green Man out of the UK, and an article on the origins and traditions of Samhain.  I couldn't help but think of Mr. Don during our Goddesschess get-together in August 2007 at my place, along with Georgia (a/k/a Isis) and her daughter, Michelle.  He did a lot of yard work around the house, helping me get the back and front yards in tip-top shape for Georgia and Michelle.  I had him tackle chopping down and getting rid of an out of control wild grapevine that had possessed the wood picket fence along the north line in the backyard.  Here's a photo of Don as the Green Man, dressed in some of the remains of the wild grapevine (you can see he still had a great deal to do as the bulk of the grapevine, still up on the fence, was laughing at him behind his back!)

As the legend of Samhain goes, the Goddess is born again in the spring as the Virgin, but at Samhain she is old and worn out, the hag (witch).  Her mate, the Green Man, has died from the cold and the increasing darkness but the harvest is safe and secure in storage.  In his honor, the Green Man's remains are seeded in the earth during the Three Days Out of Time, in which the past is recalled and the future is pondered, awaiting to be discovered.  A new year starts at the end of the third day (daybreak on November 4).  The Green Man will be reborn in the Spring on the Equinox from his seeds.  My own Green Man passed away in his sleep on October 12, 2012.  I hope he has been reborn, the world needs more people like Don.  

I also found this very interesting article at EarthSky on astronomy and learned more about Samhain (never too late to learn something new).  Halloween, the modern descendant of Samhain, is one of the four cross-quarter days.  I don't recall ever reading or hearing about cross-quarter days, but after reading the article they makes perfect sense!  Basically, there are eight main dates on the ancient calendar - the Summer and Winter Solstices and the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes.  About mid-way between each solstice and equinox is one quarter-day (Autumnal Equinox - Hallowe'en (quarter-day October 31) - Winter Solstice -  Ground Hog Day (quarter-day February 2) - Spring Equinox - May Day (quarter-day May 1) - Summer Solstice - Lammas (quarter-day August 1; cycle repeats), marking eight main days of celebration or Holy Days/Days of Memory on the ancient calendar.

These eight days marked on the calendar, as noted in the article "Samhain/Halloween" at the Goddess and the Greenman website are called "The Wheel of the Year."  I was reminded of a ship's wheel which generally feature eight spokes, and how many ancient cultures compared the Heavens to the seas on Earth.  Water, of course, is the ancient "void" and with the water there was only darkness and a shapeless chaos, out of which light (life) sprang forth.  The analogy from the ancient Egyptian tradition is in the Biblical account of creation at Genesis 1:1-5.  The ancient Egyptian god Nun (or Nu) and his female double Naunet is/are the origin from which all things were created.  Nun represented the void/the dark waters that surrounded an amorphous something, out of which sprang his "son" who was known as the Creator god Atum or Atum-Re - the original sun god from which light sprang forth.  So again, there are the elements of creation:  a watery void (sometimes depicted as a canopy of water over a "sky" hovering above an amorphous gaseous nothing, and darkness, and from out of these elements first light and then life springs forth.  Nu and Naunet were part of the most ancient gods and goddesses of Egypt, the Ogdoad or eight (yes, there's that eight again): Naunet and Nu, Amaunet and Amun; Hauhet and Heh; and Kauket and Kek. It is no surprise that Moses, to whom the writing of the Biblical account in Genesis is attributed, would analogize the creation of the Earth and the life on it to the Egyptian account with which he was no doubt quite familiar, having been raised by Pharaoh's daughter as a member of the royal court.  

 The constellation "The Seven Sisters" (Pleiades) also has an ancient connection to Samhain. (Read more about it at souledout.org "Halloween and the Pleiades.")  The tiny "dipper" shaped constellation is one of my favorites from my sky-exploring years in my pre-teen and early teen years.  If we do not have clouds tonight, I will go out and look for them in the sky.  Right now you can spot it where Mars rises after the sun sets.  It's hard to miss Mars in the eastern sky, it is one of the brightest "stars" out right now.  It was spectacular last night, but I wasn't looking in particular then for the Pleiades!  

We're also experiencing a full Moon tonight, folks.  You know what a lot of people (anecdotally, police and medical personnel) say about how strange or cray cray things happen when it's a full Moon.  I can't help but wonder if Katherine Neville was well aware of all these things when she wrote her brief paragraph about "the Three Days Out of Time," and said just enough to make some of us curious enough to go digging about for more information.  Hmmm...

2020 U.S. Chess Championships (Girls' Junior, Junior, Senior, Women's U.S. Championship and U.S. Championship)

 Just received notification that all five U.S. National Championships will following sequentially and hosted at the St. Louis Chess Club, October 8 - 29, 2020.

Information at St. Louis Chess Club website.  You will be able to watch all events online at U.S. Chess Champs .

October 8:  Combined Opening Ceremony and drawing of lots for all events.

October 9 - 11:  U.S. Girls Junior Chess Championship

October 13 - 15:  U.S. Junior Championship

October 17 - 19:  U.S. Senior Championship

October 21 - 24:  U.S. Women's Championship

October 26 - 29:  U.S. Chess Championship

Ancient Boardgames: Experts find the missing piece (but can't figure out how the game was played)

Hola darlings!

The last of weather warm enough to be able to sit outside in my screened Shezebo and enjoy the breeze, the last of the flowers in my gardens and the sunshine is here this week.  It should last for the rest of the week, but with temperatures declining from the mid-70s F to the mid-60s F by the end of the week.  Being able to sit outside in the privacy of my yard and gardens is such a treat after numerous rainy streaks and cold streaks! 

Below is an interesting article I found this afternoon.  I immediately thought of Mr. Don, and what he might make of this.  How I miss him!  Don would have found this absolutely fascinating and would have chewed on it for weeks, coming up with all kinds of potential hypotheses.  Me, I'm just the same old, same old pragmatically minded legal eagle, LOL!  Don was the experimental balloon, flying high; I was the anchor.  What a team we made.  The 8th year since Don's death will be here in a few days, and yes, it's heavy on my mind.

 The photo above is one of the last taken of Don and I together.  We revisited Spain in 2012, a little more than 10 years after our first trip there in 2002.  This was taken on a cliff-side road overlooking the ancient town of Toledo in mid-January, 2012.  

Article from Middleeasteye.net:

Ancient boardgames:  Experts find the missing piece (but can't figure out how to play the game)

'Dogs and Pigs', a set of 5,000-year-old figurines found in Turkey's southeast, is nominated as one of the world's oldest and most crowded games but its rules remain a mystery

By Nimet Kirac in Siirt and Batman, Turkey
9 September 2020 09:18 UTC/Last update:  3 weeks 5 days ago

It’s a curious sight inside the Batman museum, Turkey, where attention seems to be focused on a section to the right of the main exhibition room.

Within a glass display case in the corner, more than three dozen colourful animal figurines are presented on a chequered wooden board. Alongside the elaborately sculpted animals stand similarly tiny artefacts in various abstract and pyramid shapes.

The visitors, including a group of schoolchildren, hover in awe over the gaming pieces in the corner. They speculate over the origins, discussing excitedly the intricate connections they may have.

For 11-year-old Rasan Ekinci, a Batman local who’s been playing chess for three years, usually with her younger sister, the stones in the back rows resemble pawns from a chess board.

"But this seems more fun than chess,” Ekinci says. “I’d want to save up lots of money and buy this."

Her school friends, meanwhile, think some of the more abstract games pieces look like burgers, trees and meteorites.

According to the museum's director, Seyhmus Genc, out of all the collections, visitors are most surprised to see these pieces. “They often ask us how the game may have been played,” he said.

"[They] are signature pieces of our museum by now. I must say they transport me to other worlds also."

Game Set

According to the carbon dating, these handcrafted pieces are around 5,000 years old.

Discovered in an archaeological site in Turkey’s south-eastern Siirt province, they could possibly represent one of the world’s oldest-known board games, sitting alongside the Egyptian Senet, Chinese Go, and Mangala, which is still played in Turkey today.

With or without the title, these items tell an intellectual, sociological story from the Early Bronze Age in eastern Anatolia - a major crossroads and corridor for trade and culture circa 3,100-2,800 B.C.

Despite tensions caused by occasional periods of regional conflict, including the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party’s (PKK) armed campaign against the Turkish state and the Syrian War across the border, the field phase of the project, which was carried out as part of the Ilisu Dam rescue excavations, launched in 2007 and ended in 2019, before the hydroelectric plant became active.

"[I’m] very happy we found all the pieces before excavations had to end,” Saglamtimur, who teaches at Ege University in Izmir, told Middle East Eye.

"The gaming set of 40 pieces discovered in the [Basur Mound] is nominated to be the world’s oldest and most crowded game set ever found."

"Although they steal the show from the other findings,” he said, adding that to him the Early Bronze Age site is most remarkable because of the large number of findings in 18 tombs.

These include 80kg of metal objects (mostly copper alloy, as well as gold and silver), thousands of beads and jewellery with mountain crystals, and human bones, which hint that children were sacrificed here.

As for the game, the first 39 pieces were discovered in 2012, found buried together by one of the tombs, and were then moved to the neighbouring Batman province for public display in the museum.

In February this year, Saglamtimur announced that the game's pieces were complete - the fourth elephant figurine had been discovered in the excavations in late autumn, completing all 40 pieces.

"All but the board,” the archaeologist noted. “It must have eroded over time. We found some wooden pieces that had eroded by [the tomb]. The [board] in the museum was made for display purposes."

Katherine Neville (Author of "The Eight") on the Autumn Equinox

 Hola darlings!  I hope everyone is staying safe and sound during this awful time in our history.  I have been more of a homebody since retiring at the beginning of 2015, but now I can't even take my couple of trips a year - too afraid to travel for fear of getting infected with COVID-19.  

I've always been pretty darn cautious and perhaps over-analytical at times, but now, I'm downright paranoid about staying as safe as I can.  My ventures out these days are limited to the supermarket and talking to neighbors from a distance of 6 feet or more - outside only.  I wonder if I'll see as many of them in the depths of winter when it's 20 below.  Can one still do yard work in the winter??? Other than shovelling snow, of course.  Maybe I'll keep my exercise up this winter by shovelling my way around the block...

Katherine Neville has sent her quarterly email letter to fans of hers who sign up at her website (katherineneville.com).  

Here is the introduction to her Autumn Equinox Newsletter 2020:

KATHERINE NEVILLE'S Autumn Equinox Newsletter September 21, 2020

Equal Day and Night

The Equinox ("Equal Night") is the event that comes twice a year, when day and night are equal in length. The autumn equinox (in the northern hemisphere) marks the turning point when our daylight hours grow shorter and darkness grows longer. Read more about this turning point of the year in my previous (and prescient) Autumn Equinox Newsletter from 2017. And so, here is what she wrote about autumn in the 2017 Newsletter: KATHERINE NEVILLE’S Autumn Adventure in Art Newsletter September 21, 2017 Happy Autumn Equinox Happy New Moon of Autumn! On the equinox (the time each year when day and night are equal) we’d better get stocked up for the winter — which already proves, this year, to be a long one, ushered in by hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves of change. As described in my book, The Magic Circle: Mother Nature fires the first shots over the bow in our major transition to a new cosmic cycle. This flux, as predicted since ancient times, is soon to be followed by upheavals in the fabric of the world socio-economic order. Those who will survive and prevail in this roller-coaster ride are those (like my heroine Ariel Behn) who can out-ski an avalanche! Or at least those who can be flexible enough to “hang ten” on the Surfboard of Life.

Flux, indeed!  Ha.  I think I need to pull out "The Magic Circle" and read it a second time, perhaps I missed something the first time around, admittedly years ago.  Perhaps it could give me some comfort while we wait out this pandemic, the economic destruction it has wrought and waiting for the Fascists in the party formerly known as Republicans to drop dead or be kicked out of office by we, the people, whichever comes first.  

I keep telling myself "this too, shall pass."  And I know it will.  But for far too many, they will pass away to the Happy Hunting Groundes and never see the end to this horror movie.  I may too, although I really really really want to live long enough to spit on Donald J. Trump's grave - if the family is stupid enough to disclose his burial location when he finally does croak.

I am worried about my country, the people in it, and everybody else all around the world.  Most people do not WANT or NEED Fascist dictators to tell them what to do, what to think and how to act (grovel at their stinking feet, of course).  But here in the United States, that what we've got - a traitorous fraud masquerading as a human being living in the White House, and other countries have been taken over by the same kind of vicious, selfish, murderous and monstrous mentality. 

Neville wasn't kidding when she called her 2017 Autumnal Equinox post prescient.  We most certainly are in "flux" in all ways - the environment, the climate, mass extinctions of animals and humans soon to follow (due to mass starvation as well as world-sweeping pandemics, we ain't seen nothing yet), natural disasters of unimaginable scope, collapsing economies inflicting utter destitution, homelessness, starvation and death on billions, collapsing governing institutions all around the world, and the Fascist world of "1984," Hitler's Germany, Stalin's and Putin's Russia, China, again rearing its vile/evil head in countries that people used to consider sane, the list is endless. Notice that vile and evil are anagrams of each other, how fitting.

And here I sit, typing away, in between running outside every 30 minutes to move the hose around the back yard lawn and garden beds.  And now I'm going to move my computer out to my Shezebo because it's above 75 out and lovely, warm and dry enough to be easily breathable, despite the haze in the sky (smoke way up in the whatever-sphere from the wildfires out west, visiting us and Europe via the Jet Stream).  Talk about cognitive dissonance, Holy Hathor!  I will pour myself a glass of cheap pink (out of the box) wine and settle in for a few hours of reading with my feet up on a hassock.  

Celebrate the Autumn Equinox, start stocking up for the winter, it's going to be a tough one and I'm not only talking about the weather.  Thinking of you all, darlings, worried for you and the entire world.  But as the beautiful blooms on this Rose of Sharon attests, I thought it was a goner for sure after the two hard freezes we had in April after everything had thawed and the snow was finished (so we thought).  It looked - and felt - dead.  I waited and waited and waited for it to show some sign, any sign, of life.  I would carefully snip off branches looking for green underneath the bark.  Nope.  Looked for any sign of leaf buds forming in June.  Nope.  Toward the end of July, when I'd finally decided that the sad ghost of what used to be a lovely shrub should be hacked up and dug out of the garden bed, she started showing life - barely enough to justify keeping her, but keep her I did.  And this photo was taken about 30 minutes ago.  She gives me the most beautiful flowers pure white, large, with a deep burgundy center and a bright golden yellow stamen.  During these desperate times, she came through again.  We will survive.  We will - persevere.  

Who Thinks Chess Isn't Sexy?

 Hola darlings!  I'm still here, alive and kicking, and I haven't forgotten you.  Take a look at this, and feast your eyes on Keira Knightley while you're at it (mine went right for the chess board and pieces - YUM!)  Take care, stay safe.

CCI Biennial Meeting Lectures in St. Louis In Person and Online!

Hola! Received an email from Tom Gallegos of Chess Collectors International with an update on the arrangements made for the re-established CCI Biennial Meeting coming up soon in St. Louis.

Dear CCI Members and Friends,

We hereby announce that CCI’s 19 ^th Biennial will be what is called a “hybrid” event – part in-person, and part online.  We cordially invite you to attend, from the comfort of your own home.

PLEASE ATTEND OUR SCHEDULED WEBINARS, 9 am to noon, CDT, September 3 and 4, 2020.

It breaks our hearts that so many of our friends and fellow collectors cannot be with us in St. Louis for our meeting in September.  We’d been hoping to welcome as many as 60-80 of you on the originally scheduled date, back in May.  Now, with our September postponement date just around the corner, and the pandemic grinding on and on, it looks like the actual number of attendees will be much closer to 10.  (And we need every last one of these folks!)

With this in mind, we have decided to share as much of the conference as possible with the rest of you.  We know the morning lecture series is only part of the overall conference, but it's an important part.  These lectures, at least, can be broadcast as Zoom webinars.  Most of the lectures will also appear in our printed program (currently over 100 pages, and counting) which will be available to non-attendees shortly after the conference.  For a small donation to the club to cover costs, of course.

A few days to a week before the conference, you will receive a Webinar invite from our Zoom account.  This is not spam, though some of you may find it in your spam folders.  To register, please click on the link you will find in that invitation.  You will have complete flexibility to attend as much or as little of the talks as you wish.  The talks will hopefully also be recorded, so as to be available for posterity, just like the printed versions. They will be posted, either on our new CCI website, or possibly on YouTube.

We have a wonderful group of talks scheduled.  You will hear a great deal about the relationship between chess and pandemics; the French Enlightenment as it relates to chess history, and John McCrary of the USCF will speak about the evolution of chess rules.  We will even have Dr. George Dean presenting some of his 18 ^th century sets; and Allan Savage to enlighten us about Thomas Jefferson as a chess player, both of them speaking to you remotely.  We will also squeeze in a short business meeting on Friday.  Our latest revised schedule is as follows:

Thursday, September 3rd

09:00 – 09:15  CONFERENCE WELCOME – Tom Gallegos & Luann Woneis
09:15 – 10:15  HOW TO CHECKMATE A VIRUS (Keynote Address) – Luann Woneis
10:15 – 10:30  Fresh air break, and coffee
00:30 – 11:30  ENLIGHTENMENT – Tom Gallegos
11:30 – 12:00  CHESS MASTERWORKS OF THE 18 ^th CENTURY – Dr. George Dean

Friday, September 4th

09:00 – 10:00  THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS RULES – John McCrary
10:00 – 10:15  Fresh air break, and coffee
10:15 – 10:45  JEFFERSON AS A CHESS PLAYER – Allan Savage (online)
10:45 – 11:15  CAISSA, A POEM – Read by Tom Gallegos
11:15 – 12:00  CCI BUSINESS MEETING – Tom Gallegos & Gordon Clapp

Our timeframe for these talks is an estimate.  We will endeavor to stay on schedule, but you may find one or more sessions do not begin or end exactly on time, depending on what is happening in the room.  There will be a Q&A button for you to ask questions at the end of each speech.  The speaker will repeat your typed question, and will normally answer it verbally.

This means we will be scheduling TWO SEPARATE, 3-HOUR WEBINARS.  One for each morning, starting at 9 am.  However, you should only need to register one time, for both.  You may then attend as much or as little of the talks as you desire.

This is CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME.  If you are in another part of the country, please adjust for your time zone.  If you are in the UK, the talks will begin at 15:00 (3 pm) your time.  Most of the Continent of Europe will find the talks beginning at 16:00 (4 pm).

There is no cost to register and attend these two webinars.  If you have a reasonably up-to-date computer and an internet connection, you should be able to attend.

I’m afraid with only Luann and I running the system while also speaking, there will not be a tech support person to help if you have system issues either morning, but we will record these talks and post them later for those of you who are interested, but cannot attend the live version for whatever reason.

Luann and I have been taking a crash course in how to host webinars on Zoom, so our skills are still somewhat fresh, but we really think we can do this.  We hope the webinars will allow everyone to participate in our conference, at least to some extent.

The CHESS AUCTION at Link Auction Galleries is scheduled to take place the next day, at 10:00 am on Saturday, September 5 ^th.  That’s 16:00 (4 pm) for the UK; and 17:00 (5 pm) for most of the rest of Europe.  You will find it online at Link Auction Galleries.

The auction is one more segment of the conference that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.  Link has 267 lots of chess sets and other chess items ready to go.  Get ready to bid!

And ... "SEE" you in Saint Louis!

Best Regards,

Tom Gallegos and Louann Woneis
Organizers

Chess Collectors International (CCI) Biennial Meeting in St. Louis Back On

Hola,

I am terribly delinquent in posting this information, but in case you are interested in possibly attending, here is the information.  

Oops - I see the registration form was supposed to be submitted by July 31, 2020 - but if you are interested I would recommend you contact CCI directly about registration.

June 17, 2020 

Dear CCI Members, Friends and Associates, 

As the economy, and indeed, civilization itself, slowly begin to reopen following the coronavirus pandemic of the past few months, I am pleased to announce that we will now go ahead with our postponement date, and hold CCI's 19th Biennial Congress in St. Louis from September 2 - 6, 2020, as planned. 

This has not been an easy decision. Far from it. Nor is it a final decision. New cases of COVID-19 are beginning to spike in some of the states that are reopening too quickly. There is still no vaccine in sight, though treatments have improved somewhat. And problems with things like PPE and testing have become much less acute since we were forced to postpone back in March. The recent civil unrest across the country in response to the tragic killing of George Floyd and other incidents of police brutality seems to be calming down. And who knows what other disasters may await us in the near future? 

Our meeting could still be canceled due to circumstances beyond our control. Rest assured that we will not attempt to hold the meeting in contravention of any duly authorized public health directives. If widespread lockdowns and stay-at-home orders return, particularly to the state of Missouri and the city of St. Louis, we would surely be forced to cancel the meeting completely, probably for the duration of this year. Short of that, however, we will be going forward with the meeting. There is no real "certainty" to be found, but we simply believe it is time for someone to strike a note of optimism, and reclaim the right to make plans about our futures. St. Louis is reopening in phases. By July 20th, businesses and restaurants there will not have any capacity limitations, as long as physical distancing can be maintained. Mask-wearing is strongly encouraged in the city (and required for most employees in public areas). 

We have already been in contact with many of you about our meeting. And we've heard every opinion under the sun, ranging from, we MUST cancel the meeting altogether, to we MUST hold the meeting, if at all possible. And every opinion in between. It has been interesting: Some of our older members have said they will not travel at all this year, period. But just as many of our OLDEST members have said that if the meeting is delayed until 2021 or 2022 (as many have urged), they fear they just may not live long enough to see it happen. They say they want to attend a meeting THIS year, and the virus be damned. It is for these members that we feel we must proceed with the meeting. However, you will note many important changes: It will probably be a much smaller gathering than we had originally planned. Quite a few of you have said you would not chose to travel so soon after the pandemic. And many European members may still have travel bans in place preventing them from attending, even if they wanted to. At this point, we think a meeting of even 15 - 20 people would be a great success. (Of course, if the meeting turns out to be larger, we will welcome you all!) 

We are getting a lot of help and encouragement from the hotel, the auction house, and the World Chess Hall of Fame (WCHOF), among others, that this small, yet historic meeting should take place. But the pandemic is not exactly over, and it will not simply be business as usual. There will be, as they say, a "new normal" with which we must all cooperate. There will be masks and hand sanitizer provided for all our conference attendees. We are hoping to create a chess-themed mask, in honor of this unprecedented meeting, guaranteed to become the most unique chess collectible to appear in many a year. The wearing of masks will be encouraged to the extent it is practical, but not required. There may even be disposable gloves available at certain times. We will be practicing physical distancing to the extent possible and practical for the various events. We will have temperature guns available, which we may use to take attendees temperatures at registration and various other times. Feel free to grab one and take OUR temperatures as well, if the spirit moves you. Temperature-taking will not be required, nor forced on anyone who objects. 

We will NOT ask attendees to sign any sort of liability waiver. However, we do emphasize that this meeting is being held for the benefit of persons who voluntarily CHOOSE to attend, and we therefore do ask that you take some personal responsibility for your own attendance. CCI is not a deep-pockets organization anyway, and as a practical matter it would be extremely difficult to recover damages for an allegation that you contracted COVID-19 by attending our meeting, given the standard of proof that courts require. (I am not an attorney, however, and this may not be construed as legal advice.) Our common goal is to hold this meeting without ANYONE becoming sick as a result, and we therefore plan to take any and all reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of our attendees. 

Here's what's still ON about the meeting:

HOTEL: The Chase Park Plaza has said they will work with us, and not hold us to the room minimums we had previously negotiated. They understand our meeting is likely to be much smaller than originally planned. We should still be able to have some sort of gala dinner there, though it may be a reduced and somewhat muted affair, with physical distancing measures in place. 

NOTE: If you previously made a hotel reservation for the May meeting, it has NOT been cancelled, unless YOU cancelled it. All such reservations have simply been moved to the September dates. The hotel is expecting you. If you have NOT yet made your reservation, please contact Kelly Toal at ChiChi Travel, at telephone 314-678-0500. ChiChi Travel is our exclusive booking agent for the Chase Park Plaza, our official conference hotel.  Only they can ensure that you receive our special Chess rate of $159 per night, which applies whether you wish to sleep 1, 2, 3 or even 4 people to a room. 

AUCTION: Link Auction Galleries is continuing to hold auctions this summer as scheduled. They are still planning to hold ours on Saturday, September 5th. Previews are in-person, but all bidding is online only. They will make an exception to this for our group, so if you attend the meeting, you will be able to bid in person at Link, if desired. They are planning to add a second online bidding platform for maximum internet exposure. CCI members who don't attend the meeting will still be able to participate in the auction, at least, from the comfort of their own homes. Link is currently holding roughly 300 lots of chess sets and other chess items, primarily from the Sarisohn collection, with additions from the Raphaelli and Gallegos collections. They are still able to take more items, if any of you wish to consign.  

WORLD CHESS HALL OF FAME: The WCHOF is currently closed to the public until further notice, but our latest information is that they are considering a reopening date sometime in July. Our museum exhibition, "Dare to Know: Chess in the Age of Reason" is almost completely set up, but still awaiting several world-class sets from the Dean collection which were held up due to the pandemic. They should arrive and be installed in plenty of time for our meeting. In the unlikely event that the WCHOF does not reopen to the public by the time of our meeting, they have said they would give our group a private tour of this historic exhibition. 

GATEWAY ARCH MUSEUM: This should be fully reopened, and our excursion there should not be impacted in any way.

Here is what we DON'T KNOW about the meeting: 

WHITHERWARD CONCERT: This was not held on May 27th, as all events at the WCHOF were cancelled. We doubt this will be rescheduled for our Labor Day weekend meeting, but we will let you know if it is. 

RIVERBOAT CRUISE: The Gateway Arch riverboat cruises are slowly beginning to reopen. We have a signed contract with them, and had already made a deposit when the pandemic hit. However, we have not yet been able to make contact with them to confirm our reservation. 

CHESS MARKET AND SIMUL: We will hold these events if at all possible, but at the moment we are still working out the details, and cannot guarantee that they will occur. Both events would have to be held in a new, physically distanced format. 

SPEAKERS: Several of our scheduled speakers have had to drop out, and we are currently in the process of scheduling replacements. There should still be a full slate of talks (probably to be given from behind a sheet of plexiglass), but they will be on a somewhat different group of topics. If you agreed to give a talk and still plan to attend, we still want you on the schedule. One of the talks we are now planning will be entitled, "How to Checkmate a Virus: Lessons from the Enlightenment." 

Hope to see you all in St. Louis, or as many of you as possible! 

Best Wishes, 

Tom Gallegos and Luann Woneis, Organizers

Pretty Darn Cool Ancient Viking Board Game Piece Discovered

(Originally written on April 6, 2020 and somehow, it ended up in my "Drafts" and did not get publish - until now.  JN)

I'm very delinquent reporting this discovery, but now that I'm essentially grounded at home base for who knows how long during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that, of course under our MAGA orange-faced Cheerleader in Chief has projected the USA into the top world position for most infected citizens and on track to outpace every other country in deaths attributed to COVID-19, I'm going to be doing some catch-up because there's only so much yard work a girl can do in a day.  Besides, it's going to be raining for the next four days straight.  Blech!

Take a look at this beautiful gaming piece!

Hnefatafl gaming piece discovered from an archaeological dig trench dated
to the 8th or 9th centuries CE at Lindisfarne, United Kingdom.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/06/boardgame-piece-first-viking-raid-found-lindisfarne-archaeology

A Timely Reminder of the Lessons of History: Katherine Neville's August 1, 2020 Newsletter

I hope you are all staying safe during this extremely trying time in our country, in the world, and in our history.  May the Hand of the Goddess Shelter you from all harm.

Dealing with one crisis is bad enough; trying to deal with three is - existential.  We are facing a world health crisis in the form of the insidious COVID-19 pandemic, a world economic crisis that has resulted from the killer pandemic (although the current recession in the United States actually started during the last two quarters of 2019 under the auspices of Donald J. Trump, before the novel coronavirus pandemic was a "thing."  Whatever Trump touches dies*).  The third crisis is, perhaps, even more destructive in the United States particularly, than the first, because it threatens not only the lives of Americans, but the life of our very country: a crisis in the form of battle fronts in a variety of forms against the forces of Trump's Fascism.

Katherine Neville has not been a prolific writer of novels in her lifetime, but a couple of the novels she has written had a tremendous impact on my life - in ways I could not foresee at the time I read them.  Indeed, the seeds for the synthesis of what would eventually become Goddesschess were planted years before in the form of Katherine Neville's novel "The Eight."  It was first published in January 1989 and I purchased my paperback edition in early 1990 for $5.95.

Image from Wikipedia.

Seems an eon ago in more ways than one. I don't remember the exact circumstances in which I decided to buy the book, perhaps it was this tagline on the back cover "A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark."  The Washington Post Book World.  And the symbol on the front cover - a sort of "figure 8" laying on its side.  For some reason, it struck me - maybe because for many years back in the 1960s when I was a teenager I watched "Ben Casey," a television medical drama that every week's intro started out with a hand holding a piece of chalk writing on a chalkboard and describing the symbols as a male hand drew them:  Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity. That sort of "sideways 8" was the symbol for "infinity."  

And the tag line appealed.  I was and remain a feminist.  I was born and raised a feminist from two bloodlines of families with generation after generation of strong, tough women. They had to be, in order to go through what their lives were and to survive.  Women who didn't take NO for an answer, women who were never afraid to go toe to toe with anybody, women who were strong, tough, fighters when necessary.  Women who were pioneers and helped settle our country; women who sought out education, including the first college-graduates in our respective family lines.  It was the women who led the charge, and the men in our family, including my father and his father before him, who encouraged their daughters to go for it all.  

Now yellowed with age and with permanently dog-earred pages and scribbled inked notes in margins here and there, I have read my beloved copy of this novel a few times and parts of its I have read over and over many times.  And like watching a favorite movie over and over again, each time, I gain some new insight.

Many of Neville's fans are devotees and she maintains a popular website, issuing periodic newsletters.  I think this August 1, 2020 newsletter is especially relevant to our time and what we in the United States in particular are going through right now.  Maybe you won't agree, or maybe you will gain some new fresh insight, who knows?  Katherine Neville's Lammas New Letter, August 1, 2020.

*From the non-fiction best seller "Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever," by Rick Wilson.  Wilson is one of the co-founders of The Lincoln Project, which has the uncanny ability to get under Donald J. Trump's skin and truly killer sensibilities when it comes to making gut punches in the Project's political ads.

WIM Arianne Caioli Dead at 33 (1986 - 2020)

Sad news.  I remember many years ago reading about two chessplayers who got into a fistfight over her at a FIDE event.

Not accredited.  Photo found at Public Radio of Armenia website.
Caioli and her husband GM Levon Aronian.

Caioli was married to GM Levon Aronian in 2017.  She died in hospital on March 30, 2020 two weeks after being involved in a serious car crash.

Articles:

New York Times, "Arianne Caoili, Chess Master, is Dead at 33," by Dylan Loeb McClain, April 2, 2020.

Asbarez.com, "Chess Champ Levon Aronian's Wife Died Two Weeks After Crash," by Asbarez Staff, March 31, 2020.

St. Louis Chess Club (video at Youtube), "2019 Croatia Grand Chess Tour: WIM Arianne Caioli Interview," by GM Maurice Ashley, July 6, 2019.