Comprehending the Chess Board

 

I’ve mentioned, more than once, that strategy is not my strong suit. But I do play chess, a bit, because the guys in the family enjoy it. Actually, at this point, I’m not often playing chess games; I’m playing chess puzzles, on the chess.com app. They’re set up so, if you make the right one or two moves, you can get a checkmate. And I’m pretty good at it.

Our grandson is a chess puzzles champion, in his interscholastic league. One day he showed me how to play a chess puzzles match (which I haven’t tried since). You needed to make the right moves almost instantly, which he does. I take an average of 5-7 seconds. So I guess I’m very slow.

one of the family chess matches
several years ago

Occasionally I take a free lesson, which shows you how to make good opening moves, and a bit of strategy from there—which makes sense when it’s explained to me, but otherwise I’m at a loss.

Because the chess puzzles seem so easy to me, and the situations follow patterns that come up a lot, I’ve asked my sons how a player would allow those situations to arise. But they assure me, those situations do happen in the natural course of play.

All of this is to say, common sense requires some experience, some careful observation, some understanding of the whole board, and some pattern recognition.

In our somewhat chaotic world today, is there a skilled player who understands the board, or a wild-and-wooly take-any-piece-you-can player?

Glenn Beck thinks we may have a chess champion handling the board. He says,

“If this war ends without spreading, and this theory that I'm going to lay out for you, these six things, if this is what it is, it will all have been done without the kind of global war that has defined the 20th Century. This is America reclaiming its golden age. Just smarter, stronger, and sovereign.”

Thursday’s overview (it was on radio, so you have to just imagine the chalkboard) is similar to one I wrote about a few weeks ago—also because of what Glenn Beck was saying. I don’t think we can say definitively that he’s right, but I think the evidence is building that our President Trump has a good grasp on the worldwide game board—and a plan.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Executive Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part IV

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday.

·       Part I: The Declaration of Independence 

·       Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution 

·       Part III: Lawmaking 

·        In our Part IV today, as we’re walking through the Constitution, Article II covers the executive branch, the powers vested in the President of the United States of America.

Before we get started, I just want to mention a version of the Constitution I got in the mail, from Turning Point USA. It’s all there, like a pocket version, although it’s slightly bigger than pocket sized. It includes illustrations, and on every page a definition of terms down at the bottom. (Some pages the definitions take up half the page.) The whole thing is there—all the original wording. But with the helps, it just seems easier to understand. If you’ve got a young person in your life—or if you just want an easier way to read and understand the Constitution—this might be a handy version. They sent me mine for free, in an envelope requesting a donation. But you can get these from their website, here. 

Article II, Section 1: Electing the President

OK, Article II of the Constitution first goes over the election of the President, which is using the Electoral college.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Life Is Full—Because the Tomb Is Empty

"He Is Not Here," by Walter Rane

As I do most years, I celebrate more than just Easter day; I celebrate the Easter season, and particularly Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Resurrection Sunday.

Celebration can take a lot of forms, as it does for other holidays (holy days) as well. For me, that involves home decorations, food, family traditions, music, study, and anything that helps me focus on the reason for the celebration. Easter is particularly rich in meaning, so it’s full of opportunities.

At Christmas I’ve been filling my decorations with nativity scenes my entire adult life, so I have a pretty sizable collection of small ornaments and table decorations. For Easter there are beginning to be decoration items related to the actual meaning of Easter, little scenes, maybe with moving parts, to tell the story. But I haven’t acquired any yet. I have a couple of small art pieces, and I painted one last year, of the moment of resurrection. This year I have plans to do one of the empty tomb. It’s still in planning stages, but I’m hoping to get time this weekend to make it a reality.

Music celebration is something I fully embrace. This year on actual Easter Sunday, the twice-a-year Worldwide General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be taking place (it’s always the first Saturday and Sunday of April and October). So we’ll be listening to the Tabernacle Choir and hearing messages from general church leaders, including our prophet and apostles, as well as a few others. So music locally was done this year on Palm Sunday. Our ward (congregation) did a very nice program, mostly music, for our sacrament meeting (worship service) this past Sunday. I was assigned the organ that day, and I play for the choir and the Primary (children 3-11). And I sang a solo, accompanied on organ.

I did that solo again in the evening for our stake concert (a stake is a geographically combined group of congregations, like a diocese; ours has eight wards). I also sang in the choir.

The piece I sang was “He Was Despised,” an alto aria from Handel’s Messiah, not one of the more well known ones, but one I really like to sing. Handel knows how to write for the different voice parts, and all of the alto solos are a good fit for my voice; they feel good to sing. This one is mournful. It uses the words from Isaiah 53: “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” written some 700 years before they happened.

To read the full article (which includes a video I made), FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.