Post by Chris_Wendt on Mar 21, 2011 11:51:03 GMT -5
Chess has been around for 1,500 years. My brother and I learned how to play chess together during the summer of ’57. Outside on the wrap-around porch of our grandparents’ farm house at Hannington Avenue and Valentine Place, we first got the hang of how the various pieces moved, along with the basic rules of the game. After a few weeks of trial-and-error we got a book about chess, from which we learned strategy, classic openings, classic defenses, and other essentials like gambits, when and why to castle, capturing en-passant, playing for stalemate or draw, etc.
We got pretty good at chess that summer, and enjoyed matches that occupied us for hours on-end during lazy summer afternoons. But, kids being kids, and my brother being little (younger), he sometimes got dopey ideas like abandoning traditional strategy and classical play, instead breaking out into mad-dog attacks on my pieces, swapping recklessly for the dual purposes of getting me angry and confused, and then taking advantage of my apoplectic reaction to his veering off the path of proper gamesmanship…often beating me in the bargain.
For years since, I maintained that characterization of “dopey” for chess play that resembled Attila the Hun sweeping across the chessboard rather than the meticulously plotted machinations of any classical imperial battleground. Until the first time I watched a chess match in Bryant Park, Manhattan. Mostly young guys making moves with lightning speed, swapping down to bare minimal pieces, bringing their games to a state described in textbooks as generally un-winnable.
This caused me to realize an important concept. Chess had been around for 1,500 years, and the pieces and classic play all resembled warfare from the middle ages or earlier. There are no chess pieces that are proxies for the mechanized armor, artillery, submarines, aircraft, bombs & missiles or WMD of modern warfare.
In the ensuing 1,500 years since the inception of chess the world had changed a lot. In the last 50 years, the game had changed to suit. Chess players either had to adapt to the new lightning game, or, simply not bother to engage in any matches.
School budgeting, the way school budgets are conceived and put together by the people who engage in those matches, and they are matches, struggles in earnest, are experiencing right now what my brother and I and then our kids, and now our grandchildren have all encountered in the wonderful game of chess. It has become a whole lot faster, and a whole lot simpler than all those worn-out formulations and gambits of yesteryear. To play chess today, you still need to know the rudimentary rules of the game, To win at chess today, you must be nimble, bold, and decisive. Devious plotting and surreptitious scheming have given way to Slam! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am! (but without even taking the time to insert the apostrophe in Ma’am).
For successful school budgeting, the same thing. You have to know the rudiments, the fundamentals, cold. But you have to give up all that devious plotting and that surreptitious scheming; you have to abandon any of those old tried-and-true approaches or attempts to put a school budget over on the public, and instead get right down to the bottom line, determining up front how much pain needs to be meted out and then deciding who gets how much of that pain, and then driving it home. Slam! Bam! Check and Mate! It is no longer about how you play the game; it is win, or, well, losing is not an option.
The pain will hurt a lot less that way. Attila went fast.
Chris Wendt
PS - Oh, and remember, once you take your hand off the piece, you cannot undo your move! So don’t even ask….
We got pretty good at chess that summer, and enjoyed matches that occupied us for hours on-end during lazy summer afternoons. But, kids being kids, and my brother being little (younger), he sometimes got dopey ideas like abandoning traditional strategy and classical play, instead breaking out into mad-dog attacks on my pieces, swapping recklessly for the dual purposes of getting me angry and confused, and then taking advantage of my apoplectic reaction to his veering off the path of proper gamesmanship…often beating me in the bargain.
For years since, I maintained that characterization of “dopey” for chess play that resembled Attila the Hun sweeping across the chessboard rather than the meticulously plotted machinations of any classical imperial battleground. Until the first time I watched a chess match in Bryant Park, Manhattan. Mostly young guys making moves with lightning speed, swapping down to bare minimal pieces, bringing their games to a state described in textbooks as generally un-winnable.
This caused me to realize an important concept. Chess had been around for 1,500 years, and the pieces and classic play all resembled warfare from the middle ages or earlier. There are no chess pieces that are proxies for the mechanized armor, artillery, submarines, aircraft, bombs & missiles or WMD of modern warfare.
In the ensuing 1,500 years since the inception of chess the world had changed a lot. In the last 50 years, the game had changed to suit. Chess players either had to adapt to the new lightning game, or, simply not bother to engage in any matches.
School budgeting, the way school budgets are conceived and put together by the people who engage in those matches, and they are matches, struggles in earnest, are experiencing right now what my brother and I and then our kids, and now our grandchildren have all encountered in the wonderful game of chess. It has become a whole lot faster, and a whole lot simpler than all those worn-out formulations and gambits of yesteryear. To play chess today, you still need to know the rudimentary rules of the game, To win at chess today, you must be nimble, bold, and decisive. Devious plotting and surreptitious scheming have given way to Slam! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am! (but without even taking the time to insert the apostrophe in Ma’am).
For successful school budgeting, the same thing. You have to know the rudiments, the fundamentals, cold. But you have to give up all that devious plotting and that surreptitious scheming; you have to abandon any of those old tried-and-true approaches or attempts to put a school budget over on the public, and instead get right down to the bottom line, determining up front how much pain needs to be meted out and then deciding who gets how much of that pain, and then driving it home. Slam! Bam! Check and Mate! It is no longer about how you play the game; it is win, or, well, losing is not an option.
The pain will hurt a lot less that way. Attila went fast.
Chris Wendt
PS - Oh, and remember, once you take your hand off the piece, you cannot undo your move! So don’t even ask….