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10/20/2009 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq (AFNS) -- Nearly 100 Iraqi children spent Oct. 10 running, playing and, more than anything, smiling as they had fun with American servicemembers on Joint Base Balad. The local Iraqi youths, from 5 to 18 years old, were invited to the base as part of a project initiated by the U.S. Department of State's Salah Ad Din Provincial Reconstruction Team, and Joint Base Balad Airmen and Soldiers jumped on the idea to coordinate the details for the children. Capt. Amy White, the 332nd Expeditionary Mission Support Group executive officer and lead organizer for the...

Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed. Childhood play is crucial for social, emotional and cognitive ­development. Imaginative and rambunctious “free play,� as opposed to games or structured activities, is the most essential type. Kids and animals that do not play when they are young may grow into anxious, socially maladjusted adults. On August 1, 1966, the day psychiatrist Stuart Brown started his assistant professorship at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, 25-year-old Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower...

WASHINGTON – Wall Street is not going to play as dominant a role in the economy as regulations reduce "some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common," President Barack Obama says.

George Orwell's 1945 satiric novel Animal Farm was performed with a distinctively Palestinian flavor in a debut production this week at the Freedom Theater in the Jenin refugee camp, taking aim at internal politics and the alliance between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In scene one of the play, Farmer Jones assassinates the animals' leader. In scene two, the animals - a few horses, a donkey, a crow, a chicken and some pigs - rally around a revolutionary sow named Snowball, who leads an uprising against their oppressive master. "Intifada!" the animals scream, using the Arabic word for uprising....

The comparison of the Holocaust to the Gaza conflict in the ten-minute drama Seven Jewish Children is not coincidental. British playwright Caryl Churchill's controversial play opened last month at London's Royal Court Theater just after its staging of The Stone, which deals with a German family living in a formerly Jewish house and in which "very difficult questions about the refusal of some modern Germans to accept their ancestors' complicity in Nazi atrocities" are asked (according to its official description). In Churchill's play Jewish parents discuss what to tell their children about their history in a series of monologues that...

excerpt: Steve Martin once played “The Jerk.” Now some Oregon parents think he’s being one in real life. Here’s the situation: A high school production of Martin’s play, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” was canceled when parents objected to its adult content. ....

Burris testified that in either July or September he told Monk: “Lon, I'm interested in that Senate seat and I think you've got access to the governor, so just let him know that I'm interested." Burris said he doesn’t know if Monk passed along the message. Burris also confirmed Thursday that he and his companies had donated over $21,000 to Friends of Blagojevich since 2002. The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that clients of Burris’ lobby firm have donated $107,690 to Blagojevich while winning over $3 million in contracts from the state. Burris also hosted a $1,000 a plate dinner for...

Kids and adolescents in Australia are so scared of the outdoors that it has restricted them to hang out in shopping centres, play computer games or go to school, according to a new survey. According to the study of Sydney kids, both primary school-aged boys and girls and adolescents have nowhere to play in a modern city. The data from the New South Wales child watchdog, the Commission of Children and Young People, comes after the New South Wales (NSW) Government failed to act on a two-year-old inquiry that warned children were missing out on playtime. According to the Commission's...

WooHoo.....It's Friday!!! Time To Play Just watch where you're going Don't leave anyone behind, no matter how different they are And make sure you do it correctly

Bo (woof) In Commentary: Imagine, if you will, walking in the rain but instead of raindrops coming out of the sky it’s bacon flavored bubbles. Sound like a dream you’d twitch to? Well, purchase the Bubble Buddy and according to its maker, Happy Dog Toys, it may very well come true. Recently I was in PetSmart, perusing the aisles with the old man in tow when the Bubble Buddy caught my eye. Once I read the packaging, I knew I had to get one for myself. It read… * Blow ‘em! Chase ‘em! Chomp ‘em! * Get ready for bubble...

British sense of fair play proven by science By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 06/03/2008 The British sense of fair play has been scientifically proven by experiments held in 16 cities which show that, by comparison, the Russians and Greeks thirst for revenge. The idealised games held around the world have shed new light on the way in which people co-operate for the common good - and what happens when they don't. The research published today in the journal Science shows that taking revenge is more common in relatively corrupt and undemocratic traditional societies based on authoritarian...

On a drizzly Tuesday night in late January, 200 people came out to hear a psychiatrist talk rhapsodically about play — not just the intense, joyous play of children, but play for all people, at all ages, at all times. (All species too; the lecture featured touching photos of a polar bear and a husky engaging playfully at a snowy outpost in northern Canada.) Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library’s main branch on 42nd Street. He created the institute in 1996, after more than 20 years of psychiatric practice...

Children at Oakdale School here in southeastern Connecticut returned this fall to learn that their traditional recess had gone the way of the peanut butter sandwich and the Gumby lunchbox. No longer could they let off youthful energy — pent up from hours of long division — by cavorting outside for 22 minutes of unstructured play, or perhaps a vigorous game of tag or dodgeball. Such games had been virtually banned by the principal, Mark S. Johnson, along with kickball, soccer and other “body-banging” activities, as he put it, where knees — and feelings — might get bruised. Instead, children...

Click on the link below for a short sideshow of what appears to be a Polar Bear and Husky engaged in play fighting in Hudson Bay, Canada. Duration about 2:16.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2007 – A Utah-based troop-support group is providing anyone who wants it the opportunity to play Santa Claus to troops serving in Iraq through the holidays. Paul Holton, founder of Operation Give, sifts through donations received for the 2006 “Operation Christmas Stocking” project at the program's warehouse in Salt Lake City. Items will be sent from the warehouse to troops stationed in Iraq in time for the holidays. Last year’s program reached servicemembers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Courtesy photo by Operation Give  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Those interested in brightening the day of...

Soldiers, Local Leaders Create a Place for Kids’ Play Children in the Tisin neighborhood of Kirkuk, Iraq, have a safe playground at which to play, courtesy of their local government leaders and U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. By Sgt. Mike Alberts 3rd Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs KIRKUK, Iraq, Sept. 27, 2007 — The children here show no shortage of energy or imagination. On any given day, some play soccer in dirt alleys; others noisily run among parked cars playing in an Iraqi equivalent of “tag.� What the children in Tisin, an ethnically mixed neighborhood in northwest Kirkuk, lacked was...

A generation of children are being "contaminated" by a cocktail of addictive computer games, test-driven schooling, increased traffic and an irrational fear of strangers which leaves them unable to play outside, according to a lobby of more than 270 experts. In a letter to the The Daily Telegraph, the group of academics, authors and charity leaders say modern life has eroded children's ability to leave their homes unsupervised, seriously undermining their long-term development. They call for a rethink on the nature and value of play to ensure a generation of children do not grow up lacking creativity, independence and basic...

Kevin Ryan | Friday, 3 August 2007 No way to raise a boy Do boys have to be bored, fat and dumber than their sisters? The first in a series about educating boys today. A ten year old boy, whom I watch with an eagle’s eye, is reading The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. The book is teaching him how to play poker, build a go-cart from scratch, how to fold a paper glider so that it really flies, to makes a paper water bomb and much, much more. He has found his Holy Grail. Wedged...

Experts fear today's empty playgrounds http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070709/A_NEWS/707090322 http://tinyurl.com/3d4fpu By Jennifer Torres July 09, 2007 Record Staff Writer Heat on Friday nudged outdoor playtime earlier and cut it shorter than scheduled for nearly 70 children at Stockton's Seifert Community Center day camp. Once it got going, though, campers cheered on teammates during a running, jumping, twirling relay race, while other groups played basketball or made up their own games on playground equipment. Some outdoor play - any outdoor play - is important, recreation leader Michaiah Martin said. "Keeping them inside compresses a lot of the negative energies." According to environmentalists, child-development specialists...

Hormones affect men's sense of fair play 11:33 04 July 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Next time you have to negotiate a deal with a male business contact, you might want to check his hormone levels first. A new study shows that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to turn down low offers, even if they stand to gain money by accepting them. According to researchers, the finding demonstrates that our hardwired biology can cause us to make irrational economic decisions. In what is known as the "low ultimatum game", an anonymous individual can offer either...

How children lost the right to roam in four generations http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=462091 http://tinyurl.com/yt6geg By DAVID DERBYSHIRE Last updated at 01:03am on 15th June 2007 When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere. It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision. Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom. He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride...

JOSEPH GALLO, 10, of Santa Cruz, Calif., is well armed in the battle against childhood boredom, with a bedroom arsenal that includes a computer hooked to the Internet, a DVD player, two Game Boys, as well as an Xbox and GameCube. But in recent weeks, the hum of that war room of machinery has quieted because Joseph has acquired a new playtime obsession that would have seemed quaint even in his parents’ day: marbles. But lately, a number of educators like Mr. Cohill, as well as parents and child-development specialists are trying to spur a revival of traditional outdoor pastimes,...

I have a play -- a very loose (EXTREMELY LOOSE) adaptation of Shakespeare -- and I'm trying to get it produced. Does anyone know where I can find companies that do Shakespeare parodies and actors to perform it?

Is a Tragicomedy about Current Polish Antisemitism, Self-Hating Jews, and Mormons Who Won’t Let the Dead Rest in Peace: No Wonder Someone Wants to Stop This Play Poland may be trying to shed its reputation as a hot bed of antisemitism, one that, today, must exist virtually without Jews (living, that is; Poland has often been called “one giant Jewish cemetery”), but, in this effort, the country will receive no help from Tuvia Tenenbom. The artistic director of the Jewish Theater of New York (JTNY), Mr. Tenenbom is also the playwright and codirector of the group’s current production, “Last Jew...

Dorothy Riesing as "Glenda Splenda" and Kelly Hoppe as "Dorothy" rehearse with Debra Patterson, whose character, "Little M," uses a special device to speak.

Families count . . . . . . And a 5-day workweek doesn't? It sounds that way, as some in GOP grouse about more hours in Congress The new Democratic leadership plans to require members of Congress to put in a five-day workweek in Washington rather than the current three-day schedule. That change of pace has prompted protests from some Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah. "Keeping us up here eats away at families," he told the Washington Post this week. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that's what this says." That statement is...

Overt review "Katie Couric's The Brand New Kid" made its world premiere at the Kennedy Center during the weekend, and while the "CBS Evening News" anchorwoman says she was unable to make the opening performance, Valerie Plame of CIA-leak fame was in the audience and sends her rave reviews. "I got a note from Valerie Plame, who said she really liked it," Miss Couric told Inside the Beltway by telephone yesterday from New York. "She wrote, 'It was so well done and enjoyable for all of us. It teaches important values. And fun songs. Good work!' " The musical, playing...

The show will go on. The University of Minnesota said Friday that the academic and artistic value of the satirical play "The Pope and the Witch," to be staged in March, is stronger than Catholic claims that it's blasphemous. Italian Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo's 1989 work, one of several productions in the Department of Theatre Arts this school year, features a paranoid, drug-addled pope, a witch in nun's habit and a chaotic comedy of errors. Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis met last week with university President Robert Bruininks to voice concerns about the...

Go outside and playhttp://www.cleveland.com/living/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/living/1158309564312510.xml&coll=2 http://tinyurl.com/pg6bd That's the advice nature educators have for increasingly reined-in kids and their very protective parents Friday, September 15, 2006 Susan Glaser Plain Dealer Reporter When Steve Cadwell was a kid, he had the North Chagrin Reservation in his back yard, and he used to disappear for hours. "My mom said, 'Go outside, and don't come back until the streetlights are on,' " said Cadwell, 47, now executive director of the Nature Center of Shaker Lakes. Rare is the mother who issues that directive these days. Thanks to everything from fears about stranger danger to video...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (NNS) -- The 354th Civil Affairs Brigade (CAB), the first civil affairs brigade in Iraq made up primarily of Sailors, completed its first four months here, Aug. 16, as the primary administrative controlling manager for civil affairs units throughout Iraq. During the first months of its year-long deployment to Baghdad, the 354 CAB coordinated and ensured the successful completion of numerous community-oriented projects. Among the active-duty individual augmentees and Reservists called upon to deploy with the unit, more than 75 percent of the brigade headquarters is Navy. Army Col. Vernon Harris, 354th CAB's commander, said working in a...

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, offered the following comments today on the popularity of Catholic-bashing plays: “The Helen Hayes Theatre in New York must be experiencing hard times these days, otherwise it wouldn’t be home to ‘Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway.’  According to Variety, the play claims that the Catholic Church is run by the Nazis and that ‘the devil really does wear Prada’; the devil is the pope.  To show how timely they are, the play’s producers manage to squeeze in a smack at Mel Gibson, dropping the line ‘now he wants the Jews to treat him...

Nature-deficit disorder is ruining our kidshttp://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20060816/OPINION/108160053 http://tinyurl.com/zchy3 by jim stiles August 16, 2006 No matter how old I live to be, there will never be a place so full of mystery and adventure as a place of my childhood called The Woods. The stories that grew out of those trees still kindle powerful feelings, even after all these years. My friends and I knew the place was haunted. It had no boundaries, and in our 10-year-old minds, it went on forever. Jump ahead a few decades to a familiar topic: the commercialization of wilderness. What created the demand for such...

A boy tries to light dry grass under a pyramid of twigs. Eventually, it catches and he lies on his side to blow the embers into crackling life. Tonight he and his friends will dine on a thin stew made of thistles and heather leaves, cooked over the fire. They will sleep in a makeshift bivouac on a bed of ferns. This is not a scene from Swallows and Amazons. It is an increasingly popular kind of educational holiday for children. On this particular course, groups of children aged from nine upwards will be pretty much alone. They have a...

Want healthier kids? Send them outsidehttp://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=212657 BY JASON KING Daily Herald Staff Writer Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 Sean Taylor watched as 5-year-old son Payton played "snake tag" with other children at the Grant Woods Forest Preserve in Lake Villa. The father and son were participating in the Lake County Forest Preserve District's Knee High Naturalist program, which focused on snakes that day. Taylor said he wants his son to play outdoors as much as possible and, luckily, Payton loves to do so. "If he stays inside all day, at night he's just crazy," said Taylor, of Lake Villa. "He...

MEL Gibson was speeding, drunk and absolutely certain of how this episode would end when he was pulled over and arrested by a police officer in Malibu. Gibson, 50, told Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy James Mee he "owned" Malibu as he was driven, handcuffed, to the Los Hills sheriff's station early on Friday morning, and he would "get even" with him. "I'm going to f--- you," Gibson reportedly said. "You're going to regret you ever did this to me." What followed will cast a shadow over the remainder of the American-born, Australian-raised Gibson's career as one of Hollywood's most...

Take a Hike, Kidhttp://www.utne.com/webwatch/2006_258/news/12198-1.html Bears, sharks, and strangers -- oh my! How kids are taught to fear the outdoors By Rachel Anderson, Utne.com July 20, 2006 Issue Kids say the darnedest things. "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are," one fifth-grader told Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Raise the age bracket and you might hear, as did one high school teacher querying his students on the environment: "If you go out [in nature], there has to be a parent because you can't protect...

Are your children bored this summer? Good!If your children like to stay in bed until lunchtime, then slouch around saying there’s nothing to do – don’t worry, it’s no bad thing. Joan McFadden explains

Reid’s role in Nevada House race seen as 2010 political playBy Alexander Bolton Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is active behind the scenes trying to help defeat Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) in what Nevada political observers interpret as an effort to protect himself from a future challenge. Reid’s prominent role as Democratic Party leader and spokesman is seen as politically risky in a red state that President Bush carried in 2000 and 2004 and Ronald Reagan won twice with over 60 percent of the vote. A recent poll showing that Reid’s approval rating has declined in Nevada raises the...

By Claudia Parsons NEW YORK (Reuters) - The third vampire musical to try its luck on Broadway in four years drew all the familiar puns in scathing reviews Thursday that said "Lestat" was "bloody awful," "sucked of life" and the "kiss of death." "Lestat" was Hollywood studio Warner Bros.' first attempt to challenge Disney's dominance of the mass-market musical genre, reportedly with a budget of up to $12 million. Based on Anne Rice's vampire novels, the show features songs by Elton John and his writing partner, Bernie Taupin. Expectations had been low after a critically savaged trial run in San...

Stones Play Mainland China for First TimeBy CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 36 minutes ago Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, left, performs with Cui Jian, China's best known rocker, in the 8,000-seat Shanghai Grand Stage in Shanghai, China, Saturday April 8, 2006. Cui, whose songs were anthems for student protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, described the show as a 'milestone' for him and for all rock fans in China. The Rolling Stones were performing for the first time in mainland China, after an earlier scheduled performance was cancelled in 2003 due to the SARS crisis....

Time to dust off the whoopee cushions and hand buzzers. April Fools' Day is here and there's no better place for wisecracks and shenanigans than at work. In its annual April Fools' Day survey, CareerBuilder.com found 33 percent of workers have played a practical joke on a co-worker and 17 percent are planning office tricks for this year's holiday. Although it might be thrilling to finally one-up the office funnyman, pranks also help beat something that's no laughing matter: workplace stress. More than half of workers reported working under stress in another CareerBuilder.com survey. Stress and worry on the job...

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2006 – Raymond Harris hopes to do something no other performer is doing. The country music singer plans to spend five years on a tour to every possible military installation to support America's troops. America Supports You member Raymond Harris (center) poses with Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore and Army Col. Angela Manos-Sittnick at Fort Gillem, Ga., Dec. 14. A country music entertainer, Harris is in the midst of a five-year tour of military installations to support America's troops. Photo by Sherrye Ehrenberg   In the past 13 months, Harris has played to crowds at 70 military...

WASHINGTON, March 8, 2006 – Multiservice U.S. special operations forces are at the tip of the spear in the war against global terrorism, a senior DoD official said on Capitol Hill today. America's special operators continue "to play a leading role in our nation's current campaigns" against international terrorists at far-flung battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and other locales, Thomas W. O'Connell said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Armed Services Committee. Terrorists in these places are being given a drubbing by U.S. military and allied forces, said O'Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity...

TFP Student Action launches effort to restore modesty on Catholic campuses Feminist groups on twenty-one American Catholic Universities are planning a new assault against the Church’s traditional moral teaching, by organizing showings of the lewd play, “The V***** Monologues” in the weeks surrounding St. Valentine’s Day. (Asterisks added for modesty). TO SIGN YOUR E-CARD AND JOIN THE GROWING PROTEST, visit: http://tfp.org/student_action/php/monologues_2006.php The choice of St. Valentine’s Day is particularly offensive, since it is a feast day the Church instituted to honor three martyrs who died to defend the Faith. According to the Cardinal Newman Society1, the play is a conglomeration...

US peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who won wide attention with a vigil outside President George W. Bush's ranch in the name of her soldier son killed in Iraq, is the subject of a new play by Nobel laureate Dario Fo. Peace Mom received its world premiere in London yesterday, starring British actress Frances de la Tour, with both Ms Sheehan and Italian dramatist Fo in the audience. The one-woman show is based on extracts from Ms Sheehan's letters to Mr Bush and other writings. De la Tour delivered the monologues beneath large pictures of Ms Sheehan's son Casey and a...

When the University of Nebraska’s Studio Theatre advertised its plans to stage the blasphemous anti-Catholic play "Corpus Christi," the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) and its TFP Student Action and America Need Fatima campaign immediately launched a prayerful protest. "Corpus Christi" portrays Our Lord and His twelve Apostles as homosexuals. Just as Our Divine Savior was abandoned, insulted and mocked during His Passion, so is He offended by the sins of men today. Yet as we recall the tragic abandonment of Our Lord, we also behold the heroic example of Our Lady at the...

bill's bud explains1.... by Mia T, 11.26.05 Hillary, it seems, is not only "watching me like a hawk," as Bill puts it at one point,1 Having failed to snare the Nobel Peace Prize by ignoring terrorism, clinton has apparently decided to intensify his America-bashing on foreign soil, the method employed by Jimmy Carter to great (if somewhat belated) effect. (The Nobel committee, sufficiently mollified only after 24 years of the peanut president's America-bashing, awarded Carter his 1978 Peace Prize finally in 2002.) Meanwhile, back in the Senate, the missus, the other half of the clinton construct, maintains her hawkish...

Rick Cleveland tells Bill Clinton stories in his one-man show. Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, Westwood, CA Through Dec. 18 Bottom line: A must-see, must-hear show to open the fine new second space at the Geffen. What is it like to pal around with Bill Clinton? Rick Cleveland gives us the skinny in "My Buddy Bill," a fascinating and finely executed one-man show based on Cleveland's friendship with the former president. The friendship is over now, for reasons that become clear in the evening's most revealing episode. But no matter what you might have thought of Clinton...

A downtown St. Paul charter high school will go ahead with tonight's play about the homeless but decided Wednesday to exclude the man who inspired it after learning he was convicted eight years ago of third-degree sexual misconduct. The short set of monologues — based on young mothers, former white-collar managers and drug dealers whose lives converged at a St. Paul homeless shelter — was the brainchild of a Dorothy Day Center resident. Over the past few weeks, he teamed up with the drama club director of the Minnesota Business Academy to transfer those real-life personalities onto the stage. But...

America was fighting the war against terrorism long before 9/11 and will continue to do so for many years to come, with Fort Huachuca playing a critical role. Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, deputy chief of staff G-2, United States Army, made these remarks as guest speaker at the Military Intelligence Corps Association luncheon. There are many challenges facing this country, he told the audience at the fort’s Thunder Mountain Activity Centre, none more so than extremist insurgency groups. And it is an issue America has been dealing with for three to four decades, long before Sept. 11, 2001, he added....