4. The basket is suspended on a ten-foot pole. There is no backboard. To make a goal, one stands within the goal circle, aims for the front or back of the rim, and shoots high, with some backspin. Oh, and no jumpshots, as at least one foot must stay on the floor. Each goal is worth one point, though a goal shot from outside the goal circle yields two points.
5. Defense players can intercept passes any way they like, but they cannot charge, intimidate, or move closer than three feet, or 90 centimeters, toward the player with the ball. Moving in too close is called obstruction, and results in a penalty pass.
6. A game has four 15-minute quarters, with 3 minutes between the first two and the last two, and a luxurious 5 minute break at halftime.
7. Netball is a no-contact sport, which means players cannot push, trip, knock, bump, elbow, hold, or charge each other. Although a player should attempt to intercept the ball while it is being passed, grabbing the ball while another player holds it is considered a foul. Breaking the personal contact rule results in a penalty pass for the opposing team, and a penalty shot should any of this—or any untoward attempt to move the goalpost—happen within the goal circle.
Korfball is another basketball-like game. Korf is the Dutch word for basket, and like netball, the korfball basket is suspended on a ten-foot pole, with no backboard. Popular in Belgium and The Netherlands, and with players in Asia, too, korfball is one of the few sports in which women and men play together; each team consists of four women and four men.
Palm Reading
ANALYZING THE SHAPE of people’s hands and the lines on their palms is a severalthousand year old tradition. Once the province of Gypsies and mysterious magicians versed in astrology and perhaps even the so-called “black arts,” chiromancy (from the Greek cheir, “hand” and manteia, “divination”) is now more of a diverting amusement that can be performed for fun by anyone willing to suspend their disbelief and entertain, for a moment, the idea that a person’s hand is an accurate indicator of personality.
A palm reader usually “reads” a person’s dominant hand by looking at the hand’s shape and the pattern of the lines on the palm. Often a palm reader will employ a technique called “cold reading”—using shrewd observation and a little psychology to draw conclusions about a person’s life and character. Good cold readers take note of body language and demeanor and use their insight to ask questions or make smart guesses about what a person is hoping to know. In this way, the reader appears to have knowledge the person whose palm is being read doesn’t have, and may even seem to have psychic powers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HAND
As with so many things we know today, palmistry has its roots in Greek mythology. Each part of the palm and even the fingers were associated with a particular god or goddess, and the features of that area gave the palm reader clues about the personality, nature, and future of the person whose palm was being read. The pointer finger is associated with Jupiter; clues to a person’s leadership, confidence, pride, and ambition are hidden here. The middle finger is associated with Saturn, originally a god of agriculture, and its appearance communicates information about responsibility, accountability, and self-worth. The ring finger is associated with the Greek god Apollo and its characteristics shed light on a person’s abilities in the arts. The little finger is associated with Mercury, the messenger, and tells of a person’s strengths and weaknesses in communication, negotiation, and intimacy.
Another method of reading the hand is to take note of its shape. In one tradition, hand shapes are classified by the elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Earth hands are said to have a broad and square appearance, with coarse skin, a reddish color, and a palm equal in length to the length of the fingers. Air hands have square palms with long fingers, sometimes with prominent knuckles and dry skin; the length of the palm is less than the length of the fingers. Water hands have an oval palm with long, conical fingers, and the length of the palm is equal to the length of the fingers but usually less than its width. Fire hands have square palms with short fingers and pink skin.
Other traditions classify the hands by appearance—a pointed hand, a square hand, a cone-shaped hand, a spade-shaped hand, a mixed hand—and assign personality traits to the various shapes. For instance, a person with a pointed hand appreciates art and beauty; a square hand indicates a grounded, practical, earthy person; a coneshaped hand suggests an inventive, creative personality; a person with a spade-shaped hand is a do-it-yourself go-getter; and a mixed hand denotes a generalist who is able to combine creativity with a practical nature.
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
The four lines found on almost all hands are the heart line, the head line, the life line, and the fate line.
The heart line lies toward the top of the palm, under the fingers, starting at the outer edge of the palm and extending toward the thumb and fingers. This line is said to indicate both metaphoric and literal matters of the heart, revealing clues about romantic life as well as cardiac health. The deeper the line, the stronger your emotions.
The head line begins at the inner edge of the palm beneath the index finger and extends across toward the palm’s outside edge. The head line is often joined or intertwined with the life line at its start, and the line itself is thought to indicate a person’s intellect and creativity as well as attitude and general approach to life.
The life line starts at the edge of the palm above the thumb, where it is often joined with the head line, and extends in an arc towards the wrist. This line is said to reveal a person’s vitality, health, and general well being. The life line is also said to reflect major life changes, including illness and injury—the one thing it doesn’t indicate, contrary to popular belief, is the length of a person’s life.
A fourth line found on most hands is the fate line, also called the line of destiny. It begins in the middle of the palm near the wrist and extends toward the middle finger. The deeper the line, the more a person’s life is determined by fate. A line with breaks, changes of direction, or chains indicates a personality prone to change due to circumstance beyond a person’s control.
The History of Writing, and Writing in Cursive Italics
THE FIRST writing instrument resembled the first hunting instrument: a sharpened stone. These stones were used to etch pictures on cave walls depicting visual records of daily life. Over time, drawings evolved into symbols that ultimately came to represent words and sentences, and the medium itself shifted from cave walls to clay tablets. Still, it wasn’t until much later that the alphabet emerged to replace pictographs and symbols. Another milestone in the history of writing was the advent of paper in ancient China. The Greek scholar Cadmus, who was the founder of the city of Thebes and proponent of the Phoenician alphabet, was also the purported inventor of the original text message—letters, written by hand, on paper, sent from one person to another.
Some cultures lasted for many years before having a written language. In fact, Vietnamese wasn’t written down until the 1600s. Two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries named Gaspar d’Amiral and Antonio Barboza Romanized the language by developing a writing and spelling system using the Roman alphabet and several signs to represent the tonal accents of Vietnamese speech. This system was further codified in the first comprehensive Vietnamese dictionary (containing over 8,000 words) by Frenchman Alexandre de Rhodes in 1651. This is why its written language uses Roman letters instead of characters like the surrounding Asian countries do.
At first, all letter-based writing systems used only uppercase letters. Once the writing instruments themselves became more refined, lowercase letters became possible. And as writing instruments improved, and the alphabet became more elaborate, handwriting became an issue. Today we have an incredible variety of things to write with—all manner of pens, pencils, markers, crayons—but the writing instrument most used in recent history was the quill pen, made from a bird feather. (Elsewhere we’ve included instructions for making your own quill pen.) Before we can discuss the art of
writing with a quill pen, we must talk about penmanship. Even in the age of computers a clear handwriting style is a useful and necessary skill, and drawing a row of tall and loopy As or Ps or quirky-looking Qs, twenty to a line, and making them all look font-perfect, can actually be a pleasurable act. Nowadays, when we are more likely to type than to write with a pen, cursive might seem old-fashioned. But at the time of its invention, the notion of standardized handwriting was a revolutionary idea.
The first use of cursive writing, or Italian “running hand,” was by Aldus Manutius, a fifteenth-century printer from Venice, whose name lives on today in the serif typeface “Aldus.” Cursive simply means “joined together” (the word has its roots in the Latin verb currere, to run), and one of the primary benefits of the “running hand” was that it enabled the writer to write quickly, and took up less space. But the uniform look of the script proved equally useful: in later centuries, before the typewriter was invented, all professional correspondence was written in cursive, and employees—men—were trained to write in “a fair hand,” so that all correspondence appeared in the exact same script. (Women were taught to write in a domestic, looping script.)
Cursive Italic
With the introduction of computers and standardized fonts, handwriting cursive documents is no longer seen as professional business etiquette—although for invitations, certificates, and greeting cards, handwritten is still the sophisticated way to go.
Nowadays, there are severalschools of thought about what nice cursive writing looks like, and writing in “a fair hand” is no longer entirely the province of men, as it originally was. Currently schoolchildren study a range of cursive, including D’Nealian, Getty-Dubay, Zaner-Bloser, Modern Cursive, Palmer, and Handwriting Without Tears. All of these styles are based on similar precepts about letter width and height, and all are designed to bring some uniformity and legibility to the handwritten word. (The Getty-Dubay team even has a series of seminars specially designed for the sloppiest of handwriters—doctors.)
Cursive Italic is a fancier way of writing cursive that can dress up even the most mundane correspondence. Like regular cursive, the letters are connected, but Cursive Italic has a more decided slant, and the rounded lowercase letters have more of a triangular shape to them. The form also lends itself to decorative flourishes, which is why you often see Cursive Italic used for wedding invitations, menus at fancy restaurants, and the like.
Italic lettering is written at a slant of about 10° from the vertical, with your pen held at about a 45° angle from the baseline.
Victoria Modern Cursive
In Victoria, Australia, a new style of handwriting was developed in the mid-1980s for primary schools. Now Victoria Modern Cursive is used across the country and is appreciated for its readability as well as its ease of elaboration—a few flourishes and the script is transformed from practical to fancy.
To practice, some writers like to write out their favorite poem as they work on perfecting their form. Here is a famous haiku from the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Issa that is a nice reminder of both the gradual evolution of human writing and the sometimes painstaking pace good penmanship requires.
Little snail
Inch by inch, climb
Mount Fuji!
Fourteen Games of Tag
AGAME OF TAG can be as basic or as complicated as you like: you can revel in the pure straightforwardness of one person chasing another, or liven things up by adding rules and strategy. Either way, tag requires no equipment, no court, no uniform—just someone willing to be It, and others willing to run as fast as it takes to avoid getting tagged and becoming It themselves. Here are fourteen ways of playing tag.
1. Blob Tag/Chinese Dragon Tag
In Blob Tag or Chinese Dragon Tag (also known as “chain tag,” “amoeba tag,” and “manhunt”), one person is It. But instead of being able to tag someone and no longer be It, the person who is It tags a player, and each player who is tagged then has to link arms with the tagger and join in as It. As more players are tagged, the link of taggers grows, making it look like a blob of people, or a Chinese dragon (hence the name). No tags count if the Blob separates. The game is over when the last player is finally tagged.
2. Freeze Tag
When a player is tagged in Freeze Tag, she must freeze in place immediately. Sometimes the game is played with the rule that other untagged players can unfreeze anyone who is frozen; the game can also be played so that the person who is It only wins when every single player is frozen.
3. Tornado Tag
Also called Hurricane Tag, Hurricane, and plain old Tornado, this variation of tag requires the person who is It to spin around like a tornado, with arms outstretched. If the person who is It tags someone without spinning, it doesn’t count.
4. TV Tag
In this version of tag, your generally useless TV knowledge comes in handy by saving you from becoming It. When a player is about to be tagged by the person who is It, she can keep herself safe by touching the ground and shouting out the name of a TV show. If a player can’t think of a show title before being tagged, or if she says a title someone else has already used, that player becomes It. (Another variation is to use movie titles or book titles.)
5. Shadow Tag
This game is perfect toward the end of a sunny day when shadows are long, since the main rule of Shadow Tag is that whoever is It can tag a player by stepping on her shadow.
6. Time Warp Tag
This kind of tag is played just like regular tag, except that at any point during the game play, any player (including whoever is It) can call out, “Time Warp!” whereupon all players must move in slow motion. When “Time Warp!” is called again, play returns to normal speed.
7. Line Tag
In Line Tag, which is played best on a playground or other surface with lines or painted areas on it, players are allowed to run or walk only on the lines. These can be hopscotch lines, basketball court lines, or even lines on the sidewalk—if it’s a line, you can step on it. Otherwise, you’re out. If a player is tagged, she must sit down, and the only player who can move past her is the one who is It.
8. Zombie Tag
The person who is It must chase after the players “zombie-style,” staggering with her arms out in front of her and groaning like the undead. When the It zombie tags a player, that player also becomes a zombie. The game ends when all players have been transformed into moaning zombies.
9. Electric Tag
When a player is tagged (complete with electric-sounding “bzzt!” noises by person who is It), she must sit on the ground and become “electrified,” which means that although she cannot stand up or move from her spot, she has the power of being It. The players who are not It and who have not been tagged must avoid being tagged by It and running too close to the electrified players, who are allowed to reach out and touch any player running past. Getting tagged by It or an electrified player means sitting down on the ground and becoming electrified yourself. The game continues until there is only one untagged, un-electrified player left.
10. Battle Tag
In this game, there are two players who are It: the Freezer, and the Heater. Everyone else is a Runner. The Freezer and Heater battle for control of the Runners—the Freezer wants everyone to be frozen, while the Heater wants everyone to be unfrozen. The Freezer freezes other players as in Freeze Tag, and the Heater unfreezes frozen players. The Heater cannot be frozen by the Freezer, and the Freezer cannot be melted by the Heater. The Freezer wins when all players are frozen before the Heater can get to them; the Heater wins when all players are unfrozen before the Freezer can refreeze them; the game is over when everyone is too tired to run anymore.
11. Inverted Tag
For Inverted Tag, everything is backward. There is only one player who is Not It, everyone else is It, and the object of the game is for everyone to chase the player who is Not It and tag her. Whoever stays Not It the longest is the winner.
12. Infection Tag
In Infection Tag, the player who is It infects everyone she tags, making every tagged player become It too. The last player tagged by any of the Its becomes the first It for the next round of infection.
13. Hot Lava Monster Tag
This version of tag is similar to the game of “hot lava,” where certain areas of the ground are deemed hot lava, making them untouchable. In Hot Lava Monster Tag, which is best played on a playground, the entire ground is hot lava, and the “hot lava monster” (the person who is It) is the only person who can stand on it. Everyone else must move around on the play structures, being careful not to touch the ground. Any player who touches the ground or gets tagged by the hot lava monster becomes the new hot lava monster.
14. Hide and Seek Tag
This is best played in woods with lots of places to hide. Everyone who is not It runs off while the Seeker closes her eyes and counts to 100 next to a designated tree. The Seeker calls “Ready or Not, Here I Come,” and begins searching for everyone else. The goal for those hiding is to get back to touch the tree before being tagged. Those who are tagged before touching the tree are also It and join the Seeker. The last one to reach the tree or be tagged is the Seeker in the next game.
Spanish Terms of Endearment, Idioms, and Other Items of Note
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
* * *
Mi chula
My pretty one
Querida
Darling
Hermanita
Little sister
Muñeca
Doll
The Daring Book for Girls Page 2
