Chess Lesson in the Park

[Photo description: In a grassy park on a sunny day, shaded by trees, a man in an orange shirt is teaching a chess lesson to a small group of children--other adults and children are standing nearby.]

All the best things happen at the accessible playground, right? Saturday at Aidan's Place in Westwood, young volunteers from Chess Tutors (a division of People Making Progress) were there to teach a free basic lesson to anyone who would listen, of any age or ability. (My son is the fluffy-haired kid on the hip of one of the tutors, Neisha, at left. I think she's Neisha Ellington, who is also a local unsigned hip-hop artist. She danced him through the songs.)

They taught some of the history of chess and rap-like chants, some of them in Spanish, to remember how to set up the board, what each piece can do, all that. It's hard to see, but they brought a large-scale chess set for demonstrating--each piece is about the same height as a seated child, but light enough for a child to lift or push into place; and a hanging banner showing the chessboard, with clear pockets for moving the pieces (on cards) around. They did a nice job with making chess interesting, using various media and models, to meet a very diverse group of kids wherever they were.

Shameless plug

[Image description: Inside a green circle, there's a picture of two blond children outdoors at a playground; the foreground child is in a wheelchair, with both arms in the air, smiling]

Got the new Landscape Structures catalog today, and there's a picture of my kids on page 40 (shown at left)--part of a spread describing a nearby accessible playground, in Playa Vista. We went to the photo shoot (basically a playdate with cameras) last summer, but I never knew what happened to the pics until now.

Landscape Structures is a Minnesota-based playground equipment company, that specializes in fun, innovative, safe, accessible, durable, and green designs. Until recently, they were one of the largest woman-run companies in Minnesota, too. (Co-founder and president Barbara King died in March.)

Definitely living!

[Image description: Smiling blond boy in a zip-up hoodie, sitting in a cylindrical playground structure made from red mesh.]

Jacqui at Terrible Palsy says, "You all know how much I hate the media portraying a person as suffering from cerebral palsy. So I was thinking to myself - how come they can’t say that a person is living with cerebral palsy." She follows this with some joyous recent photos of her kids--definitely living, not suffering! I'll follow suit. Here's my boy Jake, at left, not suffering at all, at our favorite park last spring (cerebral palsy isn't his primary diagnosis, but it's one of the many boxes we check on his medical forms).

Wordless Wednesday: Swing

Visual description: A blue accessibility placard with the word "SWING" under the usual symbol; attached to a horizontal bar, to which a heavy-duty playground chain is attached; against a background of trees and blue sky.

For Wordless Wednesday. Taken at the Shane's Inspiration playground in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles, on Sunday.

Wordless Wednesday: Casts, in the Park

My kid's legs, in casts, taken last week in the park. His sister wrote his name on them.

Two weeks down, two more weeks till the pins come out...

Wordless Wednesday.

While Strolling through the Park One Day...

...In the Merry Merry Month of May...

Okay, I can't pretend it was a surprise, so the song ends there. But I did take this photo today in the park--at Aidan's Place, an accessible playground near UCLA. It's Heather Mills showing a prosthetic leg to a little girl named Sammy, who recently had an amputation, while Sammy's older sister looks on from a swing. Today is Sammy's eighth birthday. (What you can't see is the film crew from Entertainment Tonight, and the very long white limo that was waiting a few feet away.) We were there because Shane's Inspiration, an organization that builds accessible playgrounds here in Southern California, asked some of the park regulars to be there during Mills' visit, even though it was a Monday morning--going to school or playing in the park? Not a difficult call, really. So we knew there'd be some hoopla, and cake, but it was such an "only in LA" bizarro family outing, we couldn't resist. (I think the story will be on ET Tuesday night--I doubt we're actually in any of the footage, but if we are, I'm the mom in the black hat.)

Spring Break Field Report: The Torrance Treehouse

Torrance, California, comes in for no end of mockery. It's called "Borrance" by some, and music fans may remember director Spike Jonze's ironic "This is for Torrance!" shout-out from the podium at the MTV Music Awards a few years back. Torrance is where Quentin Tarantino grew up. A lot of high-school scenes in movies and television are filmed in Torrance, for some reason.

So, it's hardly a destination on par with Disneyland for the first day of Spring Break. But it's closer (it's the next city over), it's cheaper, and it's got "the first universally-accessible treehouse in a public space in California"--which is what we went to check out today. The treehouse was funded by the Annenberg Foundation, designed and constructed by the national non-profit Forever Young Treehouses in collaboration with the local non-profit Pediatric Therapy Network. It's in Charles H. Wilson Park, which also features a skatepark, tennis courts, batting cages, basketball courts, a baseball diamond, a hockey rink, a duckpond, picnic areas with grills, and a playground near a large open field with a hill. (The playground is not even a little bit accessible--it's built in sand, for one thing.) On Tuesdays and Saturdays, you'd also find a bustling farmers' market in the parking lot nearby. (Stop at the pupusa stand for lunch. I always do.)

The treehouse was made with environmental sensitivity in mind, according to the Annenberg website:

The treehouse decking is made of stamped, sustainably-harvested South American Ipe wood, and the oak posts were recovered and repurposed from fire-damaged forests in southern Oregon and trees damaged by grazing horses. The wooden branches in the arbor are recycled; they would normally have been chipped or thrown away in the logging process. The helical pier foundations are among the most environmentally sound methods for placing posts near living trees. The design and placement of the treehouse will enable the adjacent trees to grow unimpeded.

There are many photos of the 2500-square-foot treehouse online here (including the photo above).

The on-the-scene report: it's still in great condition after a year's use. Accessibility isn't just accomplished with the no-steps, no-ladders entry--there are also wide smooth walkways throughout, and sturdy railings. It's "just" a treehouse--no built-in toys or anything--but it's big, and most of the kids who play there seem to get a kick out of chasing each other around the structure. The wider "rooms" would be fun places for a group of children to sit together for a circle time. I liked that there were parts that were very shady, and parts that were sunny--nice variety there. It's not especially close to any parking, though the parking area for the park itself is large and otherwise accessible.

So, if you're feeling the need for a treehouse and you happen to be within a few miles of LAX, it seems Torrance is the place. (And I'm stunned to learn that Nay Aug Park, in the city of my birth, Scranton PA, is the process of getting an accessible treehouse from the same designers--hmm!)

"Hogging the swing"

It's hard to know exactly what's up in this ugly story, but I'm suspecting it's a junior version of the "people with placards hog all the good wide parking places," or even closer, "why should that woman in the wheelchair get to use the nice big stall in the ladies' room?" For readers unfamiliar with accessible playground equipment, the Jenn Swing is pictured here. It's true that accessible playgrounds are often the most popular playgrounds around --in Los Angeles, the 2-acre Shane's Inspiration space at Griffith Park is counted as the single most popular playground in the city, for example. They're often the newest, safest, most creative parks available. But where two ten-year-old boys can threaten the mother of a three-year-old for "hogging" a therapeutic swing (when other swings are empty), and the nannies nearby are on the boys' side, that's a park that I'd avoid for reasons other than inaccessibility. It's not enough to build these playgrounds--there has to be some community education to make them function as they should. Or, in the case of the West 70th St. park, a whole LOT of community education.