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Friday, March 19, 2010

The lessons of Cribbage...

Fron ChicoER.com:

Susan Levine shares cribbage, and all its lessons

By MARY NUGENT - Staff Writer
Posted: 02/20/2010 12:00:00 AM PST

CHICO — Susan Levine thinks Cribbage is so much fun, and so valuable, that she devotes time to teaching children to play.
"It's complicated — but it's less complicated than bridge," she said Tuesday, as she played the game with fifth grader Gage Sell at Citrus School.

Gage, 11, likes the game and looks forward to the days Levine visits his class. "I've been playing for a year," he said. "I taught my 15-year-old brother to play."

That's exactly what Levine hopes will happen — that her students will teach their families and friends.

Levine, a retired school library clerk who most recently worked at Citrus School, said there are endless reasons why she likes the game that originated about the same time the Pilgrims were settling at Plymouth...

Full article here.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Pegged Out: 114-year-old Mary J. Ray


From The Boston Globe:
"Almost until the end, Mary Josephine Ray would take song requests, crooning traditional Acadian tunes from her childhood and Tin Pan Alley standards. From her New Hampshire nursing home, she played cribbage with a youthful zeal, tallying every point herself. At 106, she shrugged off hip replacement surgery like she had skinned her knee.

She said the rosary, watched her soaps, and cheered on her beloved Red Sox. Hershey’s Kisses were always close at hand. Sometimes, so was a dainty snifter of port.

Ray, who died in her sleep Sunday at the age of 114, had been widely acknowledged as the oldest person in the United States and the second-oldest person in the world. As she climbed the ranks of the world’s most aged, she would say she owed her longevity to God alone. But another reason, her family believes, was that she welcomed each day with gratitude and wonder..."

Full article here.