Winter competition by teams playing "hungry hippos" on city ice rink

This past Sunday while waiting for the free downtown area shuttle bus (D.A.Sh) at city center of Grand Rapids, the sounds of recorded music on loudspeakers and a few shrieks and other excited sounds from the outdoor ice rink caught my attention. So I walked across the grass embankment for a closer look (right-click the image to view the video in full-size, directly on Youtube).

The table-top game, "Hungry Hippos," has been adapted for the "live action" scale of competition, here at the public ice rink in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Each team has a designated color and is dressed in matching T-shirts, pulled over top of their winter coats. At the starting signal each team launches one player on an inner-tube, tethered to a rope. This player uses an upside-down laundry basket to trap as many plastic balls as possible from the middle of the ice. The team then reels in the player when the basket is full and relaunches the person to gather more. The object is to take as many of the balls as possible for one's team before the supply of colored plastic balls is used up.

For a spectator coming from a warm country, this vigorous embrace of the cold and disregard for the gusts of snow might look outlandish. For a spectator of this region, but coming from 100 or 150 years earlier, the concept of leisure time might seem odd, because in those earlier lives so much of living required time and effort: pump the water, empty the chamber pot, secure something to prepare for cooking on stove, fireplace, or oven. Much of what passed for recreation or diversions in those conditions somehow had to fit into work routines or in the brief interval between one task and the next. So to see so many people gathered in matching outfits with music emanating from boxes atop poles for a couple of hours really would be a rare use of daylight hours on a Sunday late afternoon and evening. But for the people there on this day, completely accustomed to snowy weather and well-insulated for it, doing something outdoors that involves major muscle groups, social interaction, and active involvement (nothing virtual or digital or asynchronous about it) is a precious thing to prize and fully enjoy. Even in the short span of 24 seconds in this video clip, the pleasant engagement of the people pulling their teammate on the rope while standing on the ice can be sensed.

Italy's "sardines movement" (sardini contro Salvini) - vigorous civil society in play

As many parts of the world wallow in dictators and the "strong man" model of governing in fearful times of much change of social status, livelihoods, and environmental destruction, there is a hopeful outburst of citizen activism in the north and central parts of Italy that calls itself "the sardines movement," in part for the symbolism of small fish in great abundance that can slip through many kinds of net and go unnoticed, but when gathered together the mass can cause things to happen. There is the heritage of the poor man's meal in the humble fish, too. Despite the low cost, it provides lots of flavor and nutritional value in an unpretentious way.

so many sardines packed into a single tin today and long ago, too

The imagery of small fish tightly packed is particularly fitting in the case of the 2019 movement that stands up to criticize the country's conservative political leader, Mr. Matteo Salvini. From the standpoint of powerful and monied individuals and organizations this cacophony of voices is an inconvenient nuisance: too loud to disregard, too sincere to disrespect, and too persistent not to notice them. Still another way to play with the sardine idea is that they come together to form a school (a place where things can be taught).

While the scale of voluntary gathering into an enduring and focused movement here is different to the one in the quote, below, the sentiment is the same: people in common cause can cause change.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

[attributed to Dr Margaret Mead, U.S.A. anthropologist, 1901-1978)]

Perhaps the closely-packed crowds of protestors in Italy will dissipate after the person whose policies and pronouncements have provoked this response disappears onto the pages of history. But in the hours and days that so many people come together from so many walks of life, there is real purpose and potential to change minds and habits and standards of accountability; if no where else, then in their own hearts and minds. For to publicly engage in the open space of civil society there are at least two audiences, the ones who are protesting and the ones who are being addressed by the movement. Both sides may well come out changed at the end of the cycle of engagements, shaped partly by the words and images of news media and other chroniclers who articulate the jumble of expressions, feelings, thoughts, aspirations, and fears.

May the sardines long persist in their movement and in so doing inspire others, too, to group together into a mass that commands some attention and is able to hold up the mirror of accountability for those in power to see how things look.